Revelation 19:21

‘And the remainder were killed with the sword of him who sat on the horse, even the sword which came out of his mouth, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.'

Those who are human die a shameful death, pictured in terms of being eaten by birds. They do not share the fate of the beast and the false prophet. We are told that they are slain by the sword that came out of the mouth of Him Who sat on the horse. But that sword is spiritual and connected with His words of power. Thus the actual method of their deaths is unknown to us. They are slain by His judgments.

In the Old Testament the last battle is always between earthly forces, and it may well be that even to the end, in the face of God's judgments, men behave as they have always done and attack each other and do battle, and it may be that their deaths to a large extent result from those battles. But that is not this ‘battle', for this was no battle at all. It was a vivid description of Jesus Christ arriving to judge the earth and deal finally with Satan and his emissaries. We are to gather the ultimate ideas and not concentrate on the literal descriptions.

It is significant in all this that there is no mention of Satan, even though we might have expected it. Indeed, there has only been one mention of him since chapter 12 (in Revelation 16:13 where he was making his last attempt to deceive mankind). Unlike in Revelation 12:7 he is not directly involved in this ‘battle'. It is left to his minions. The foes of the people of God since Revelation 13:1 have been the Beasts representing empires, and Babylon the Great representing idolatry and commercialism The description of Satan's end will now follow in a new vision, and in it we learn why Satan has been kept out of the way. He has been under close guard.