7.  And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.

8.  And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle:  the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.

9.  And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city:  and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.

Vs. 7-9.—­“Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.”—­The Lord Christ will remove the restraint which had repressed the chief enemy during the thousand years, that the Faithful and True Witness may give a final testimony to the moral universe, that neither the philosophy of proud man, nor the law of Moses,—­no, nor the ordinances of the gospel, will ever change the nature of a sinner:—­That neither judgments nor mercies have any efficacy to subdue the stubborn will, or renew the desperately wicked heart of man; and that it is a righteous thing with God to render tribulation to them that trouble his saints and insult his Majesty.

Thus released “for a little season,” the prime enemy goes out as before to “deceive the nations.”  He is successful.  “The rest of the dead,” who lived not again during the 1000 years, at once re-appear in the persons of their genuine successors.  They are the children of them that killed the witnesses;—­the seed of the serpent aiming a last fatal stroke at the seed of the woman.—­They are called “Gog and Magog;” and because of the identity of names, many have supposed them to be the same as those enemies of the people of God described by Ezekiel, (chs. xxxviii., xxxix.) This view is, however, without sanction in the Scriptures.  The characters are mystical according to the uniform structure of the Apocalypse.  Ezekiel’s Gog and Magog come from the “north quarters;” those of John from the “four quarters or corners of the earth.”  It is also probable, if not absolutely certain, that the enemies predicted by Ezekiel are to appear before, while those of John are to arise after the millennium.  The overthrow of Gog and Magog, foretold by Ezekiel, is evidently connected with the conversion of the Jews, (ch. xxxix. 22, 29;) but that event must precede the millennial period. (Rom. xi. 26.)—­Magog is reckoned with Meshech and Tubal among the sons of Japheth, (Gen. x. 2;) and those nations called in history Scythians and Tartars, in the “north quarters” of Europe and Asia, as well as the “isles of the Gentiles,” are supposed to be their descendants.  By the “three unclean spirits,” (ch. xvi. 13,) a confederacy was effected under the sixth vial to the battle of Armageddon; and the same is again presented in ch. xix. 20, as the final attempt against the saints previously to the millennium, when two of the prime instigators, the beast and the false prophet, are cast into the lake of fire.  Thus we may suppose eastern and western Antichrist finally destroyed.