Revelation 20:5Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

For whoever did not live before the thousand years were ended, that is, throughout the whole period in which the first resurrection takes place, did not hear the voice of the Son of God and pass from death to life.

At the second resurrection, which will be the resurrection of the flesh, he will finally pass with that flesh into the second death.

Then it is said: "This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection" (Rev 20:5-6). That means the one who is a participant in it.

A participant in it is one who not only returned to life from the death that consists in sins, but also remained steadfast in the life to which he returned.

"Over them," he says, "the second death has no power." Therefore it has this power over those others of whom he said above: "The rest of the dead did not live until the thousand years were ended."

For however long each of them lived in the body during that whole interval called a thousand years, none returned to life from the death in which ungodliness held him.

Had he thus come to life, he would have become a participant in the first resurrection, and the second death would have had no power over him.

Concerning this resurrection he says: "I saw the Lamb standing, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand," that is, standing with Christ. These are those who in the last times are going to believe through the prophecy of Elijah.

The Spirit bears witness concerning them that they are virgins not only in body, but also in tongue (cf. Rev 14:4-5).

Therefore above he mentioned that the twenty-four elders said: "We give thanks to Thee, O Lord God, who hast reigned. And the nations were enraged" (Rev 11:17-18).

At the first resurrection this Scripture also depicts the beautiful city to come.

Concerning the first resurrection Paul spoke thus in the Epistle to the Macedonian churches: "For this we say to you," Paul declares, "by the word of God: the Lord Himself, intending to raise the dead, will descend from heaven with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thess 4:15-17).

We have heard that he said "trumpet." This must be considered, for elsewhere the apostle speaks of another trumpet.

In the Epistle to the Corinthians he says: "At the last trumpet the dead will rise," becoming immortal, "and we shall be changed" (1 Cor 15:52).

He said that the dead are the immortals who are going to rise to bear punishment. But it is evident that we shall be changed and clothed with glory.

Therefore, when we hear that there is a last trumpet, we must understand that there is also a first. These are the two resurrections.

Therefore, however many are going to rise at the first resurrection and reign with Christ over the world, over all the nations, they will rise at the last trumpet after a thousand years.

That is, they will rise at the last resurrection among the ungodly, sinners, and those guilty of various kinds of offenses.

And he rightly adds, saying: "Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; over him the second death has no power." The second death is punishment in Hades.

Clearly dead and worthy of pity are those who were not buried with Christ and did not rise with Him in baptism, but remain in spiritual death. They will not rise with Him until the thousand years are ended, that is, the time from His first coming to His glorious second coming.

Rather, they will return to the earth, as those born of the earth and not of the Spirit. For in their death lies the beginning of their future torments.

This too was ordered in a way most fitting to the Godhead, beyond what the human mind could have hoped. In the Old Testament the Father had been proclaimed and known. In the New Testament period the Son was known through the Incarnation and through thousands of miracles and signs.

But the Holy Spirit had not yet been clearly revealed to mankind. In the Old Testament there was only a word concerning Him, as also concerning the Son. There were not yet manifest works plainly perceptible, which most of all bring men to faith.

Yet those who had reached the depths of contemplation knew Him. Certainly everything produced and created is accomplished by the Most Holy Trinity.

The Lord clearly established this when in one place He said: "The Father gave Me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak" (Jn 12:49), and also: "I can do nothing of Myself" (Jn 5:30).

Again, in the Gospel according to John: "The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it" (Jn 5:19). Elsewhere He affirms: "If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God" (Mt 12:28).

Nevertheless, since, as was said, the Holy Spirit did not visibly manifest Himself to man in action, it was ordered that nearly all men should receive the faith of Christ through the presence and power of the Comforter and of God the Father.

This was so that it might become evident to all that He is consubstantial with the Father and the Son and equal in power to Them.

During the Incarnation, certainly no more than one hundred and twenty believers are attested. The book of Acts counts that many as gathered in the upper room (cf. Acts 1:13-16).

And even if the power of Christ's teaching reached many, faith was preserved through the descent of the Spirit itself.

One may see here something like seed cast into the ground. While it lies wholly hidden in the earth, it springs up visibly when rain comes and the sun illumines all the seeds previously concealed and hidden in the ground.

So also it happened at the descent of the Holy Spirit. All those to whom the Lord's teaching had reached sprang up in faith. Therefore the book of Revelation speaks still more exactly: "The rest of the dead did not live until the thousand years were ended."

Then they will receive the "good" toward which they truly strove throughout their whole life: corruption.

Other dead are those who endured, for Christ's sake, the struggle against their own passions and died to this swiftly passing world. Such dead are blessed, for they have been delivered from eternal torment, from the second death.

The veneration of the saints who have departed into the Kingdom of Christ clearly shows the close bond between heaven and earth. It shows the bond between the heavenly and earthly Church, and the true reign of the Lord and His saints both in heaven and on earth.

Through holy Baptism the soul rises from the tomb of unbelief and impiety, or from ancestral sin and personal sins committed in impiety. Through repentance the believing soul rises from the death inflicted on it by mortal sins, or by negligent and pleasure-loving life after Baptism.

The accomplisher of the resurrection is the Holy Spirit. St. John the Theologian saw those risen from the soul's death and said of them: 'I saw thrones, and those seated on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years... This is the first resurrection' (Rev 20:4-5).

This resurrection consists in the soul being made alive from its death by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the washing away of sins by holy Baptism, in life according to Christ's commandment, and in cleansing by repentance from sins committed after Baptism.

The thrones of the saints are their dominion over the passions, over the demons themselves, over human infirmities, over the elements, over beasts, and the abundance of their spiritual gifts. Judgment is given to them, that is, spiritual discernment. By it they expose sin, however much it may be covered by plausible appearance, and reject it.

Judgment is given to them, by which they judge the angels of darkness when they assume the appearance of Angels, and do not allow them to deceive them. They did not worship either the beast or his image, neither the Antichrist nor those persecutors of Christianity who prefigured him.

These persecutors demanded that Christians renounce Christ and reject His all-holy commandments. They did not receive on their foreheads or on their right hands the marks of God's enemy. Instead, having made the mind of Christ their own, they constantly expressed it in thought and action.

They did not spare their blood in order to seal their faithfulness to Christ, and therefore they reigned with Christ. For them there is no death. For them, the separation of soul from body, to repeat Basil the Great's thought cited above, is not death.

It is the passage from sorrowful earthly pilgrimage to eternal joy and rest. The second death, that is, final condemnation to eternal torments in Hades and surrender to them, has no authority over those risen by the first resurrection.

Those who have risen by it will be priests to God and Christ, and will reign with Him a thousand years (Rev 20:6). This reign of God's priests in the Holy Spirit cannot be interrupted by the separation of soul from body. It is developed and confirmed by it.

'When the thousand years are finished' (Rev 20:7), the times will be fulfilled, and the whole rational fruit of the earth will ripen. Then the second resurrection will follow, the resurrection of bodies.

After it, the blessedness of the righteous, who rose in due time by the first resurrection, will be doubled. After it, the death of rejected sinners, who were deprived of the first resurrection, will be doubled.

'Although in the future regeneration,' says St. Gregory Palamas, 'when the bodies of the righteous rise, the bodies of the lawless and sinners will rise with them. Yet they will rise only to undergo the second death: eternal torment, the sleepless worm, the gnashing of teeth, the outer and impenetrable darkness, and the gloomy and unquenchable Gehenna of fire.'

The Prophet says: 'The lawless and sinners shall be crushed together, and those who forsake the Lord shall come to an end' (Isa 1:28). In this consists the second death, as John teaches us in his Revelation.

Hear also the great Paul: 'If you live according to the flesh,' he says, 'you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live' (Rom 8:13). Here he speaks of life and death belonging to the age to come.

'This life is delight in the ever-existing Kingdom. Death is surrender to eternal torment. The transgression of God's commandment is the cause of every death: of the soul, of the body, and of that death to which we shall be subject in the age to come, eternal torment.

Death properly consists in the separation of the soul from divine grace and in its union with sin. For those who have understanding, this is the death that must be fled. This is true and terrible death.

For those who think rightly, it is more fearful than the Gehenna of fire. Let us flee it with every possible effort. Let us subject everything, leave everything, and renounce attachments, actions, and desires.

Let us renounce everything that drags us down, separates us from God, and produces such death. Whoever has feared this death and preserved himself from it will not fear the approach of bodily death.

He has true life dwelling within him, and bodily death only makes that life inalienable.'

'As the death of the soul is properly death, so the life of the soul is properly life. The life of the soul is its union with God, just as the life of the body is its union with the soul.

The soul, having separated itself from God through transgression of the commandment, died. But through obedience to the commandment it is again united with God and made alive by this union.'

For this reason the Lord says in the Gospel: 'The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life' (Jn 6:63). Peter, who understood this from experience, expressed the same thing in the words he said to the Savior: 'You have the words of eternal life' (Jn 6:68).

'But the words of eternal life are words of life for the obedient. For transgressors, the commandment of life becomes the cause of death. So also the Apostles, this fragrance of Christ, were to some an aroma from life to life, and to others from death to death' (2 Cor 2:16).

Again, this life belongs not only to the soul but also to the body, granting it immortality through the resurrection. 'It not only delivers the body from mortality, but also from the never-ending death of future torment.

It grants the body ever-existing life in Christ, free from pain, despair, and sorrow, and truly immortal. In due time bodily death followed the death of the soul, that is, transgression and sin. This was the union of the body with the earth and its return to dust.

After bodily death came the placement of the rejected soul in Hades. So also, in due time after the resurrection of the soul, which consists in its return to God through obedience to the divine commandments, the resurrection of the body must take place by its union with the soul.

After this resurrection there must follow incorruption and eternal abiding with God for those worthy of such abiding. They have been made spiritual from fleshly, and are able, like the Angels of God, to dwell in heaven.

'And we shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord' (1 Thess 4:17).

'The Son of God, having become man, died in the flesh. His soul was separated from His body, but it was not separated from the Godhead. Then, having raised His body, He brought it up to heaven in glory.

So it is with those who have lived here according to God. When they are separated from the body, they are not separated from God. After the resurrection, they will be brought up to God also in the body.

They will enter with ineffable joy where Jesus, our Forerunner, has ascended, to enjoy with Him His glory, which will then be revealed' (Heb 6:20 and Rom 8:18).

'They will become sharers not only of the Lord's resurrection, but also of His ascension and of every Godlike life. Those who lived here according to the flesh will not be deemed worthy of this. Nor will those who entered into no communion with God at the hour of their departure.

Although all will rise, yet each, says Scripture, in his own order' (1 Cor 15:22-23). 'He who here has put to death the deeds of the flesh by the spirit will there live the divine and truly ever-existing life with Christ.

But he who here has put the spirit to death by desires and passions, alas, will be condemned with the worker and author of evil. He will be delivered over to unbearable and unceasing torment, the second and endless death.'

It will continue "until the thousand years are ended." This must not be understood as though spiritual life will return to sinners after this term is completed.

The particle "until" very often in Scripture does not signify the continuation of an action up to a definite limit. On the contrary, it signifies its complete denial, as in Mt 1:25.

So here it means the everlasting denial of blessed life to the souls of the ungodly dead.

This blessed life in heaven according to the spirit is called man's first resurrection, because it precedes the resurrection before the Last Judgment. Then the bodies of all men will be united with their souls, and that will be the second resurrection.