Revelation 19:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

When the antichrist has devastated everything in this world, has reigned three years and six months, and has sat in the temple in Jerusalem, then the Lord will come from heaven on the clouds in the glory of the Father. He will send him and those who obey him into the lake of fire, and to the righteous He will give the times of the Kingdom, that is, rest, the sanctified seventh day. He will restore to Abraham the promised inheritance, the Kingdom in which, according to the Lord's words, "many from east and west will come and recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (Mt 8:11).

They opposed Christ together with the kings and princes subject to them. Yet both were defeated: the antichrist and the false prophet, who worked miracles so that the deceiver might be received more readily. They were punished by the wrath of God. "Both were thrown alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone." Perhaps they will escape the common death. Yet, slain in the twinkling of an eye, they will be condemned to fiery Gehenna, to the second death. Those remaining alive will go to judgment, of whom the Apostle says that they will suddenly be changed in the twinkling of an eye (1 Cor 15:52). Conversely, these two adversaries of God will pass directly, not to judgment, but to condemnation.

And Daniel says: "No one will help him" (Dan 11:45). When the Lord fights against him, no one can come to his aid. The two cast into the fire were the prince of all sinners, the devil, and that greatest of the ungodly, called the antichrist.

It is said: "Both were thrown alive into the lake of fire," while the rest were slain by the sword. O highest justice! He did not deem the instigators of the war and their accomplices worthy of one and the same punishment. The two, that is, the devil and the antichrist, are condemned to the fire, in which they remain alive eternally. This is precisely what their being thrown alive into the fire means. The rest will be struck down by the sword. Certainly a swift punishment by the sword is far better than fire.

"And the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet," that is, the devil and the antichrist, or the leaders and his whole body. Both are meant: head and body, the devil and his community, which will exist until the end of the times. "And the rest were slain by the sword that came from His mouth." The sword divides the body into parts, wishing to show both those long dead and those whom the second coming of Christ found alive. It also shows the one of whom we read that the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of His mouth and destroy him by the manifestation of His coming (2 Thess 2:8).

According to Saint Andrew, there are two kinds of death. One consists in the separation of the soul from the body, and this is the death common to all. The other consists in being sent to Gehenna for eternal torment, which awaits only unrepentant sinners. Therefore it is believed that the antichrist and the false prophet will not die the common death, but will at once be condemned to the second death in the lake of fire. The remaining opponents of Christ, the accomplices of the antichrist, will be slain by the command of God and will die the common bodily death. After this they will be condemned to the second death, the lake of fire.