---
title: Revelation 20:1
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/revelation-20-1/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/revelation-20-1.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Revelation 20:1
testament: NT
section: Prophecy
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Revelation 20:1

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the Abyss, holding in his hand a great chain.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "I saw an angel coming down out of heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand"

## JW Usage

Watchtower commentary takes Revelation 20:1 as the opening of a literal future thousand-year period. After Armageddon, an angel binds Satan in the abyss for exactly 1,000 years; during this period Christ and the 144,000 rule from heaven over a paradise earth populated by surviving Witnesses and the resurrected dead. The binding has not yet begun and is the next major future event after the great tribulation.

## Protestant Usage

Reformed readings (amillennial, partial-preterist) hold that the binding has already begun. Jesus said in Matthew 12:29 that he could not be casting out demons unless he had first bound the strong man — present tense at his first coming. The Greek "bind" verb in Matthew 12:29 and Revelation 20:2 shares the same root. The purpose of the binding in Revelation 20:3 ("that he might not mislead the nations anymore") is exactly what changed at Pentecost: the gospel exploded out of Jerusalem to the Gentile nations who had been kept in darkness (Acts 14:16, 17:30). The Watchtower's strictly future binding requires denying that Christ's first coming actually inaugurated his kingdom — a position no traditional Christian reading shares.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Armageddon, the Millennium, and the Assurance Watchtower Cannot Give](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/jw-armageddon-millennium-doctrine.md) — Revelation 19-20 / 2 Peter 3:9 / 1 John 5:13 [Eschatology]
- [Satan Is Not Omnipresent — Locomotion, Not Ubiquity](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/satan-functional-omnipresence.md) — Job 1:7 — Going to and fro on the earth [Holy Spirit]