And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand.2 And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.†3 And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished. And after that, he must be loosed a little time.4 And I saw seats; and they sat upon them; and judgment was given unto them; and the souls of them that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and who had not adored the beast nor his image, nor received his character on their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.†11 And I saw a great white throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away, and there was no place found for them.†12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works.13 And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell gave up their dead that were in them; and they were judged every one according to their works.14 And hell and death were cast into the pool of fire. This is the second death.15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the pool of fire.1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more.2 And I John saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.†
There will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and... the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth.
My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.4 For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtle a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: Thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.5 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord: they shall praise thee for ever and ever.6 Blessed is the man whose help is from thee: in his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps,8 For the lawgiver shall give a blessing, they shall go from virtue to virtue: the God of gods shall be seen in Sion.
The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly and the Son more obscurely. The New [Testament] manifested the Son and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells among us and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Spirit; lest perhaps people might, like persons loaded with food beyond their strength and presenting eyes as yet too weak to look at the sun's light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but that by gradual additions, and, as David says, "Goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory," the light of the Trinity might shine on the more illuminated. It was for this reason, I think, that [the Holy Spirit] gradually came to dwell in the disciples, measuring himself out to them according to their capacity to receive him, at the beginning of the Gospel, after the passion, after the ascension, making perfect their powers, being breathed on them and appearing in fiery tongues.
And he spoke to them in a similitude. See the fig tree, and all the trees:30 When they now shoot forth their fruit, you know that summer is nigh;31 So you also, when you shall see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is at hand.32 Amen, I say to you, this generation shall not pass away, till all things be fulfilled.33 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
Or else, He says, the kingdom of God is at hand, meaning that when these things shall be, not yet shall all things come to their last end, but they shall be already tending towards it. For the very coming of our Lord itself, casting out every principality and power, is the preparation for the kingdom of God.
About CSB. A personal translation of the New Testament, rendered directly from the public-domain Greek in a literary style — not a scholarly critical edition, and not for liturgical or doctrinal authority. It is one reader's work, offered for enjoyment; where it matters, weigh it against an established translation. (Placeholder text — final wording to come.)