At the expiration of the thousand years, Satan will be loosed a “little season,”—­little, as compared with the thousand years; so little, as not to be deemed worth estimating.

4.  And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them:  and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands:  and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

V. 4.—­“And I saw thrones.”  Here there is no mention of heaven being opened.  Nothing henceforth obstructs John’s vision.  “The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.”—­“At evening time it shall be light.” (Zech. xiv. 7.)—­“And they sat on them.”  Who?—­There is here what may be termed a remarkable chasm in the language of the text.  There is no visible or proximate antecedent.  Who are they who “sit on thrones?” Did Millenarians only put this question, and patiently search for the solution in the context, agreeably to the allegorical texture of this whole book, all their hallucinations might be easily and happily obviated.  The inspired writer assumes, of course, that the reader will readily identify these persons, who are thus promoted to honour, now that Antichrist is no more, and society is to be reorganized.—­Daniel furnishes a satisfactory answer to our question.  “I beheld till the thrones were cast down.” (Dan. vii. 9.) The Roman imperial thrones of civil despotism were subverted.  Again,—­“But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end.” (v. 26.) The Roman imperial throne of ecclesiastical domination shall be destroyed.  Then when Messiah “shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power,” of both sorts of tyranny, “the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions, (rulers) shall serve and obey him,” (v. 27.) The “saints of the Most High,” according to Daniel, are to be exalted to civil rule, and these are the same whom John saw “sitting on thrones.”  Now, the effect of the seventh trumpet becomes a fact in history.—­“The kingdoms of this world,” which had been controlled by the beast, and bewitched by the sorceries of the lewd woman, “are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.”—­For in the millennial state of the world, there will be a plurality of kingdoms.—­Hence a very common petition of pious but ignorant people,—­“That the kingdoms of this world may soon become the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” neither will, nor ever can be answered.—­Under the righteous and benign administration of the saints, “kings shall be nursing-fathers, and their queens nursing-mothers to the church:”  for “the