So much has been made of these verses, and the immediately surrounding context, with such extravagance and variety of interpretation, that a different approach might recommend itself.

First – it might be helpful to concede that the verses are not (despite the protests of their interpreters) straightforward to interpret.

Second – the popular interpretations (pre- post- or a-millennial theories) do not have much (if any) corroboration in other parts of the NT, though huge systems have been built on them using unmodified OT supporting material.

Third – an interpretation in which simplicity combined with agreement with what can confidently be affirmed elsewhere in the NT is recommendable – especially where the use of the passage as a foundation for major novel eschatological categories can be avoided.

Bearing these thoughts in mind, we can approach the verses.

Translators have not found Greek to English translation of the verses straightforward, and a number of factors add to the difficulties.

There is a strong possibility that John sees three, not two groups of people in 20:4-6

The first group is those who are seated on thrones – 20:4a. The “thrones” which the narrator sees recall the “thrones” referred to elsewhere in Revelation (4:4; 11:16). An unqualified third person plural then follows: “and they sat upon them”. Who are “they”? In the two other usages in Revelation, the thrones are occupied by the 24 elders (4:4; 11:16). This is unlikely to be an exception. But who are the 24 elders? The description is figurative: but recalls the 24 divisions of the priesthood (1 Chronicles 24), and in a more unlikely sense, could suggest the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles – or the whole number of the church in OT and NT. Otherwise, 24 is not a number used in the bible.

20:4a – The NIV “They had been given authority to judge” is better rendered more literally: “a sentence was given for them” – where ‘krima’ conveys the meaning of “sentence” (rather than judgment), as in its other two usages in Revelation (17:1; 18:20). An interpretation would be that God gives a verdict (the sentence) in favour of those on the throne and against their persecutors, instead of those on the thrones pronouncing judgment on others. Whatever sentence had been passed against the faithful witness which the elders gave in their earthly lives is now reversed, so that all the faithful may share in the vindication of those who are raised up and “seated with Christ in heavenly places” – Revelation 3:21; Ephesians 2:6.

The second group John saw is the “souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and the word of God” – 20:4. The plural “psychas” repeats the idea of “psychas” in Revelation 6:9-11 – where the souls of the dead beneath the altar await vindication and re-embodiment in resurrection bodies. Unless the narrator is introducing a new meaning, it is unlikely that those seated on the thrones (20:4a) are limited to the martyrs who died for their faith, something that interpreters have emphasized by starting a separate sentence with additional words not in the Greek text: “And I saw” or “And also I saw” to introduce the faithful martyrs. The occupants of the thrones have already been identified in Revelation with the 24 elders – the priesthood of all believers who worship at God’s throne.

In 20:4b a third group comes into view. Where the NIV (and other translations) assume that 20:4b is simply part of the description of the martyrs, “They had not worshipped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their forehead or their hands”, the Greek inserts – kai hotines – “and those who” as the third direct object of the introductory “And I saw”, which points us to a third group: faithful witnesses besides the martyrs who had not lost their lives. The whole sentence flowing from the introductory “And I saw”, which governs three qualifying statements, runs as follows:

“And I saw (1.) thrones and they sat upon them, and a sentence was given for them; and (“I saw”) (2.) the souls of those beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus and on account of the word of God; and (“I saw”) (3.) those (kai hotines) who did not do homage to the beast or his image and did not receive the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand”

This now means that in 20:4b, all who had not worshipped the beast – whether they experienced martyrdom or not – “lived”/ezesan – (better rendered than “came to life”) and reigned with Christ for the same period that Satan was bound – the 1000 years.

By contrast, and in parenthesis, “the rest of the dead” (20:5a) did not live until the 1000 years were ended.

“This is the first resurrection” (20:5b) completes the thought of verse 4.

The “rest of the dead” now comprises all those who had not believed in Jesus and been faithful to him. Those who “lived” comprise all who believed in Jesus and were faithful to him – martyrs and survivors of persecution. These are they who experience “the first resurrection”.

What is “the first resurrection” and when did it take place? Nowhere in the NT is it explicitly suggested that faithful martyrs of the 1st century will experience a resurrection separate from martyrs of any other time, or believers of all time, and neither need that be understood here.

There is no reference to a “first resurrection” in the NT apart from 20:5b and 20:6a. But there is a reference to a two–part resurrection in John 5:24-25 and John 5:28-29, where the first part is the dead passing from death to life (24), and the dead living (25) before physical death, and the second part is the dead experiencing resurrection after physical death (29).

The living (before physical death) are also said to be resurrected in Ephesians 2:6 and Colossians 2:12, where the verb, egeiro/synegeiro is elsewhere used of physical resurrection after death (Matthew 11:5, Romans 6:9 etc). In other words, there is an experience of some aspects of resurrection before death, and a full experience of resurrection after death.

There are grounds for thinking therefore, that in Revelation 20:5b and 6a “the first resurrection” is this experience of some of the benefits of resurrection, by faithful witnesses whether martyred or not, before the full experience of physical resurrection. The experience of death and resurrection in this life before physical death and physical resurrection is also developed in 2 Corinthians 1, 4, 6, 12 & 13, and Philippians 3:10-11.

As those who reign with Christ through “the first resurrection”, the faithful witnesses to Christ also participate in his 1000 year victory now – not in some eschatological distant future. (20:4b, 6b).

Although 20:6b has this period of reigning as priests and kings in the future tense, it is only future in the sense of following the “first resurrection” – which is experienced as a present reality by all who believe in and are loyal to Jesus.

The 1000 years is more about the extent of the triumph over Satan than it is about a particular period of time. Tyrannies like to describe themselves as having a “1000 year” duration. Rome was the tyranny of the time of Revelation – but the reign of God through Christ was even greater than Rome, and would long outlast it.

To summarise: faithful followers of Jesus in the 1st century experienced life (readily qualified as the life of the Spirit) in this life, whether they were martyred or lived through and survived persecution; they “reigned” with Christ in this life. The reign of Christ is not to be thought of as something beginning at some point in the future – it begins in the present (Cp Romans 17:5b) in the lives of all believers; believers are a “royal priesthood” in the present, not in the future (1 Peter 2:9); the second death has no power over believers in the present (20:6), not simply when they die physically. The “thrones” of 20:4 (4:4; 11:16) have implications for the living as well as the dead, earth as well as heaven – for they are not the thrones of power as it is understood in worldly terms (Cp Ephesians 1:20-23, 2:6), but of those who “reign in life”.

This interpretation, which readily fits the available data, does away with the need to create complicated eschatological scenarios, or hypothesize a category of 1st century resurrected beings living in heaven (or maybe coming back to earth in a pre-millennial kingdom). It magnifies the victory of Christ in his first advent (but not to the extent of triumphalistically eliminating Satan entirely). There is only one category of the faithful living, and only one category of the faithful dead – alongside one category of the unfaithful dead (“the rest of the dead”), all of whom will experience resurrection at the same time, as suggested by John 5:28-29 and 1 Corinthians 15.

In this interpretation, Revelation can take its place alongside everything suggested about eschatology in the NT. The focus resumes its rightful place – on the Jesus who died, and was raised from the dead, as the basis of everything that we believe and experience now, and will do in the future.