Ezekiel’s Gog and Magog being slain in the battle of Armageddon, how or where shall we find those of John?  They are to be found precisely on the same principle on which we find the witnesses of Christ in this chapter.  Satan is loosed “a little season,”—­little as compared with the thousand years of Messiah’s reign; or rather, as compared with the 1260 years of the dragon’s successful enterprises against the saints through the beast and false prophet as agents.  These being now cast into the lake of fire, Satan is for ever deprived of their agency.  During the millennial period people will be born in sin as at other times; and at the close of that happy period, Almighty God will display his sovereignty by withholding his grace, that a last demonstration may be given to all the world of the necessity and efficacy of that grace in changing the heart of a sinner.  Without the intervention of the beast or the false prophet, Satan will prevail by more direct temptations to gather together to battle a multitude of the same spirit as Ezekiel’s Gog and Magog displayed against the saints before the millennium.  These are the “rest of the dead that lived not again till the one thousand years were finished.”  As the “deadly wound” of the civil beast “was healed,” and he received a new life, to the astonishment of spectators, (ch. xiii. 3,) as the witnesses received “the Spirit of life from God,” to the dismay of their enemies; (chs. xi. 11; xx. 4,) so Gog and Magog re-appear in the persons and bloody cruelties of their genuine successors.  And in language similar to that in the context we may warrantably say,—­this is the second resurrection; for when it is declared that the “rest of the dead lived not again,” it is manifest that two classes of dead are intended.  All are said to be dead; the witnesses, slain by the beast; their enemies, slain by the Lord.  The witnesses rise, and “this is the first resurrection.”  A first implies a second of the same kind.  Well, “the rest lived not again till the thousand years were finished.”  What then?  Why, simply this,—­that the other remaining class of the dead lived again; and this appears to be the obvious scope and meaning of these terms, so vexing to many critics.

By deception Satan prevails to assemble the nations in vast multitudes, “as the sand of the sea,”—­a proverbial form of expression applied to Abraham’s seed. (Gen. xxii. 17.) “They went up on the breadth of the earth.”  Coming from the “four quarters of the earth,” they “compassed the camp of the saints.”  The allusion here is twofold:  to Israel in the wilderness, in the time of Moses; and to the holy city Jerusalem, in the days of David; (Ps. cxviii. 10-12,) for often did the enemy with “joint heart” attempt to “cut off the name of Israel.” (Ps. lxxxiii. 4-8.) Never was Pharaoh or Sennacherib more confident of a sure and easy victory over the saints. (Exod. xv. 9; Isa. xxxvi. 20.) As in the days of Noah, most of