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From Here to Forever
broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured
the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the
inhabitants of the earth are burned.”
Isaiah 24:1, 3, 5, 6
.
The earth appears like a desolate wilderness. Cities destroyed
by the earthquake, uprooted trees, ragged rocks torn out of the earth
are scattered over its surface. Vast caverns mark the spot where the
mountains have been rent from their foundations.
The Banishment of Satan
Now the event takes place foreshadowed in the last solemn ser-
vice of the Day of Atonement. When the sins of Israel had been
removed from the sanctuary by virtue of the blood of the sin offering,
the scapegoat was presented alive before the Lord. The high priest
confessed over him “all the iniquities of the children of Israel, ...
putting them upon the head of the goat.”
Leviticus 16:21
. In like
manner, when the work of atonement in the heavenly sanctuary has
been completed, then, in the presence of God and heavenly angels
and the host of the redeemed, the sins of God’s people will be placed
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on Satan; he will be declared guilty of all the evil which he has
caused them to commit. As the scapegoat was sent away into a land
not inhabited, so Satan will be banished to the desolate earth.
After presenting scenes of the Lord’s coming, the revelator con-
tinues: “I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of
the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold
on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and
bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit,
and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the
nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after
that he must be loosed a little season.”
Revelation 20:1-3
.
The “bottomless pit” represents the earth in confusion and dark-
ness. Looking forward to the great day of God, Jeremiah declares:
“I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and voi
and the
heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they
trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was
*
The word for “deep‘ in Genesis 1:2 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament is
abyssos, which also appears here in Jeremiah. This same word is found in the Greek text
of Revelation 20:1, rendered in the King James Version “bottomless pit.”