Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 20:11

"And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." — Revelation 20:11 (ASV)

And I saw a great white throne . . .—Or, And I saw a great white throne, and Him who was seated on it, from whose face fled the earth and the heaven, and place was not found for them. The throne is described as great and white, to set it in strong contrast to other thrones mentioned in the book, for example, Revelation 4:4; Revelation 20:4. It is a white throne, as a sign of the purity of the judgment that follows. He who sits upon it is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.

It is asked, Who is He who is seated here? Throughout the book God is called Him that sitteth upon the throne (Revelation 4:3; Revelation 5:1); but we must not understand this as excluding the Son of God, who sits with His Father on His throne (Revelation 3:21), and who, as Son of Man, declared that He would sit upon the throne of His glory and divide all the nations as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:31–32; Revelation 11:15–18).

At the face of Him who sits upon the throne the heaven and earth flee. Hengstenberg interprets this as the putting out of the way “all of the irrational creation which had been pressed into the service of sin.” Gebhardt interprets it as “the destruction of the whole present visible world.” A comparison, however, of the imagery used in Revelation 6:12-14; Revelation 16:19–20, should make us cautious in asserting that any great physical catastrophe is described here.

Doubtless revolution must precede renewal (Revelation 21:1); but it is never safe to ground our expectations of the nature of such changes upon language which is admittedly poetical in form. Some physical revolutions do in all probability await our earth, but the eye of the prophet looks more to the moral and spiritual regeneration of the world—more to the spiritual well-being of mankind, than to any physical changes that may synchronize with the culmination of the world’s moral history.