6. The loosing of Satan. “ And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison"--20:7. After the catastrophic fall of Judaism, and the victory of the saints over the imperial persecutors, there was a renewed struggle of the church with heathenism, a spiritual conflict symbolized by Satan being loosed out of his prison. With Judaism removed from the path of the church, and the cessation of persecution by the imperial rulers, the way was open for the expansion of Christianity, as foretold by Jesus in Matthew 24:31, and envisioned by John in Revelation 11:15. But it was not without opposition--the remaining enemy was heathenism. Satan’ s theatre of activity in this struggle was not persecution, but spiritual and doctrinal: And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth--20:8. That declaration was in opposition to the angel--messengers of the gospel--of Matthew 24:31, gathering his elect “ from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” This part of the vision was descriptive of the battle with heathenism, hence the reference to Gog and Magog (a combination of one name), the mythical ruler of heathendom, and which title was so used in similar symbolic reference, by the prophet in chapter 38: l-23, prophesying the threat of heathenism to Israel from Gog and Magog. As the beast was symbolic of the Roman empire, personified in the persecuting emperors, so was the Gog and Magog personification symbolic of the spiritual forces of heathenism launched against the church in the “ battle” of verse eight, in which the heathen forces of Gog and Magog were represented to be in number as the sand of the sea, which symbolized the proportions of the conflict and its challenge to the church; and verse nine stated that they compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city. The reference to the “ beloved city” here could not mean Jerusalem--the apostate harlot Jerusalem was no longer “ beloved,” and was no more. This beloved city was the church, the New Jerusalem, which was compassed about with heathenism, in the midst of its idolatries, surrounded by all of its antagonism to the church.