Daily Devotional For November 26, 2025
And when the thousand years have come to an end, Satan will be freed from his prison, and he will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, whose number is like the sand of the sea, to gather them together for battle. And they marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints, the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and consumed them. Rev 20:7-9.
Ragged ruins jut like broken teeth from the fractured earth. Splintered remnants of uprooted trees, long since petrified, protrude from between blackened boulders. Sterile and still, the whole earth is a vast, cratered graveyard. Not a green thing trembles. Not a breathing thing stirs. Until, incredibly, living bodies begin to materialize out of the craters and the ruins. Bodies almost without number, varied beyond description. From strapping giants, seemingly in the prime of life, to hollow-eyed waifs ravaged by age and disease.
Is this the opening scene of the latest sci-fi thriller? No, it is the scene implied by the sweeping story of Revelation 20. The thousand years are finally finished. It is time for the second resurrection, the resurrection of the damned at the end of the millennium. Why has God summoned these lost souls from sleep? Why not just let them remain in oblivion, since they are not going to change? God does this to bring closure to the great controversy between good and evil. He does it for the sake of the universe.
The wicked from the nations are raised just the way they died, with the same kind of thoughts, feelings and passions. One last time they face the deceptive temptations of Satan. Once again they fall for his deceptions. Once again they do what comes naturally, they attack the saints, who have returned to earth in the beloved city, the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2).1
Many are tempted to question the justice of God in saving some while allowing others to be lost. To the eyes of humanity, many of the saved seem defective and many of the lost seem righteous. They wonder how God could judge between humans that seem so much alike.
But the events at the end of the millennium demonstrate that little acts of “harmless” selfishness have transformed the characters of the lost. Their minds and hearts have become quietly twisted to where nothing will turn them away from sin. Faced with a clear and public choice between repentance and destructive action, they once more choose the latter. God’s judgment is verified. The lines have been rightly drawn. There are no doubts left. History can now come to its sudden and final end. Sin, suffering and death will be no more.
Lord, I see that little things have big consequences. Help me be faithful in the little things today.
1 The first part of the devotional is based on Leslie Kay, “Judgment Day,” Adventist Review, October 23, 2004, 24-25.