And now comes the event toward which the ages have looked. _The heavens open._ And _our Lord Jesus appears_ coming in glory to earth. At last He comes. There's a wonderful description. He comes as a conqueror, riding forth to judge the earth righteously, and to make war on evil. His eyes are as a flame of fire, and upon His head many diadems. He has a name indicating that He is all alone in the experiences He has been through, and in His character. He comes as King of kings and Lord of lords, to rule all the earth with a new absolutism, to right all wrongs, and visit the indignant wrath of God upon all sin.
As He appears an angel gives warning of what is coming. In words that are an echo of Ezekiel's, long centuries before, he calls to all the scavenger birds of the earth that haunt battlefields to come to a great feasting time.[164] And John sees the vast armies of the nations of the earth all gathered together for a last mighty battle, under the leadership of the great leader of lawlessness and his lieutenant.
And the utter impotence of their struggle against God is revealed in the quietness and brevity with which their defeat and capture are told. Satan's great earth leader and his chief who deceived the people with his miraculous power, both are taken and forever put away. And then Satan himself is chained and fastened securely in the abyss. Such is the tremendous consummation quietly told in a few lines. And then follows the setting up of the glorious kingdom on earth.
Whatever the immediate circumstances under which the Second Psalm was penned, it will be readily seen how it fits into this situation at the end.
"Why do the nations tumultuously assemble, And the peoples meditate a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against Jehovah and against His Anointed, saying, 'Let us break their bonds asunder, And cast away their cords from us.'"
But their efforts seem so puny, and the result so one-sided, that
"He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh: The Lord will have them in derision."
And we remember that, in these Revelation pages, it is always with the sword of His mouth that the Lord Jesus is said to fight, as we read on: