| (Copyright) by Albert Hudson (United Kingdom) |
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| “I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit (abyss), and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old (ancient) serpent, which is the Devil…Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit (abyss), and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more… and after that he must be loosed a little season” (Rev. 20:1-3). The vision of the conflict between good and evil in the Book of Revelation comes at length to a time when a mighty angel is seen descending from heaven with a great chain in his hands; he takes forcible hold of the great red dragon which alone survives of the enemies of righteousness, binds him with the chain, casts him into the abyss, and seals the entrance with the sign of Divine authority that the nations should be deceived no more throughout the thousand years—the Millennium. Ardent longing for that day has led many to watch earnestly the signs of the times, and the question “Is Satan now bound? Is he in process of being bound? Is he yet to be bound?” are common. The literal personality of the Devil is not always accepted nowadays; many feel that the Scripture references to Satan and Satanic power can be well understood as allusions to the presence and influence of evil in an abstract sense over humanity. There is no doubt, however, that the New Testament writers believed in Satan as a powerful celestial being in a state of open rebellion against God, directly responsible for the introduction of evil into the world and its promotion and development throughout human history. Origen in the 2nd century claimed that not only all humanity, but eventually the Devil himself, will succumb to the drawing power of Christ and so become reconciled and attain eternal life, but on the other hand at least three of the inspired writers—John, Isaiah, and Ezekiel—foresee the extinction of the personal Satan with the passing of evil from Divine creation and any exposition of Revelation 20 can only be on the basis that a personal being is referred to, and he is, and will be until his end, incorrigibly and persistently evil. This 20th chapter of Revelation pictures the work of the Millennial Age, when the Lord Christ is the acknowledged ruler of this earth and all its peoples are to be made fully conversant with the Divine standards of life and enjoy the opportunity to make their momentous choice, for good or evil, for life or death. The decision isto be a personal one, and none will be able to say that powers of evil from outside have hindered or thwarted their desire to be converted and find reconciliation with God. In that Age a man will die only for his own sin, only because, with full knowledge and ability to choose and practice that which is right in God’s sight, he nevertheless elects to remain evil for the love of it. Hence this picture in these few verses, drawn to delineate the suppression of the power of external evil so that it can no longer adversely influence or affect men against their will. In that Age it is to be true that “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.” (Isa. 65:25). In order to accomplish that end it is obvious that the Devil must be deprived of power to instil evil and sin into the hearts and actions of men, and this preliminary to the work of the Millennial Age logically introduces this 20th chapter. What is this binding? Quite evidently, it is closely connected with the restraint of evil which is a feature of the Millennial Age. Rev. 20:1 indicates clearly that its fulfilment is at the beginning of that Age. This does not necessarily mean, though, that the binding takes place simultaneously with the commencement of the Second Advent. The dragon of Rev. 20 is the last enemy of righteousness to be dealt with after the other great enemies, the “Beast” and the “False Prophet” have been cast into the Lake of Fire. Now, since Rev. 19, dealing with the warfare between the Rider on the White Horse and these two enemies, is evidently a phase of the Advent, the binding of the Dragon, coming next in order, would seem to belong to a later phase of that Advent. This binding also coincides with the commencement of the reign of the saints, and since that reign does not commence until the saints have been “changed” and the marriage of the Lamb completed, and the Lord must first come “for” his saints before the marriage feast and his subsequent revelation to the world “with” his saints, it would seem clear that the “binding of Satan” is to occur after all these things at the time of the establishment of Christ’s kingdom in power in the earth. That time has not yet come. The background is this world at that time during the course of the Second Advent when the Lord Christ, having already resurrected his Church to be associated with him in his Millennial work, has destroyed those factors in society which have stood in opposition to his assumption of power. Included in these forces are those institutions of men which are in themselves evil and have oppressed the sons of men. Under symbols of the “beast,” the “false prophet,” the “kings of the earth,” in chapter 19, these are pictured as drawn up in battle array to contend with the Rider on the White Horse from heaven—the Lord Christ in martial guise—and they all are defeated and destroyed, their destruction being symbolized by the fiery lake. Only the dragon remains, and this 20th chapter identifies this dragon of Revelation with the serpent of Eden and Satan the destroyer, so completing the identification. The lesser evil powers having been dealt with, and the time having come for the resurrection of the dead to experience the call to conversion and life of the new Age, it remains to deal with Satan so that the last hindering influence is removed. Hence the angel descending from heaven with a great chain in his hand is another representation of our Lord at his Second Advent, specifically as respects that aspect which has to do with the restraint of the Evil One. From that time onward, the practice of evil will be restrained. “Nothing will hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain” (Isa. 11:9 NLT). Men will not be prevented from thinking evil thoughts or harbouring evil designs; some will yield “feigned obedience”(Psa. 18:44 marg.); but the power to inflict evil or harm, physical, mental or moral, upon another will be lost. We do not know how. Divine power will be exercised here in a fashion of which we have little, if any, conception today. But it will be true that although a man may formulate an intention to do evil to another, he will find himself physically or mentally unable to put that intention into effect. That restraint will operate throughout the Millennial Age. This “binding of Satan,” that he should “deceive the nations no more,” (v.3) presupposes that he has possessed and exercised the power to deceive men and instil evil thoughts and influences into their minds during the present and past spans of human history and this supposition is confirmed by our Lord’s reference to him as the “prince of this world” and Paul’s “the god of this world.” (John 14:30; 2 Cor. 4:4). It is this power and freedom which will be taken from Satan throughout the whole period of the Millennium, and this constitutes his “binding.” His personal freedom of movement, so to speak, may not be limited any more than will be the personal freedom of evilly disposed men on earth during that Age, but he will be powerless to reach men’s minds in any way. A glance at daily events should make it clear that the binding of Satan has not yet taken place and is not yet even in progress. The powers of evil have greater control today in earth’s affairs than they have ever had, except, perhaps, in the early days at the period of the Deluge. Many of the devices and acts of certain classes of men are characterized by a coldblooded ferocity and disregard for human suffering which can quite literally be said to be Devil-inspired. The fearful experiences through which so many of earth’s peoples must pass are evidence that the archangel of evil is still the god of this world, and that his subjects still render him service. It is sometimes suggested that these facts are the result of Satan’s struggles to resist his binding and are evidence therefore that his binding is actually in progress. This reasoning is built upon a human conception of the binding as though the Most High finds it necessary to wage war and use the heavenly equivalent of physical force to achieve his end of rendering Satan powerless. Nothing of the sort. God is always master of the situation, and when in his wisdom the time comes for Satan to be bound and his influence restrained, one word from the Almighty and it will be done. It will not require battalions of angels drawn up in martial array, archangels in command of detachments and some spiritual equivalent of carnal weapons, with which to wage an invisible conflict with the hosts of Satan in the fashion in which men wage war today. God is omnipotent. “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”(Psa. 33:9). His ends are achieved by means oforderly development, and He permits the continuance of evil to a pre-determined limit for a wise purpose, yet when his time has come to act against evil and evildoers, none can resist his will. So Divine power will operate from heaven to end, in one moment of time, every scrap of influence Satan has over man and spirit. One may begin to wonder at this point just what is the attitude of Satan himself to all this. How does he regard this already well-publicized picture of his approaching doom? After a very successful career of crime, what, if any, preparation is he likely to make to resist any threat to the continuance of his present activities? What, if any, resistance can he offer to the omnipotent power of God? Is there any likelihood that Origen was right after all, and that eventually the Devil will abandon his evil ways and embrace righteousness? In the face of the positive statements ofScripture above referred to this would not seem likely. What perhaps is more probable is that in fact Satan, a fallen being separated from God by millenniums of sin, does not really believe in his heart that the threatened fate will ever materialize. The position is much the same with many of mankind. People today, in general, do not really believe in God. They have lost their knowledge of him, and with that any vital belief in his powers or interest in them. “If there is a God, He either does not care or has no power to put right things that are wrong in this world!” That sentiment fairly expresses the considered judgment of the natural man who has been separated from God by sin from the beginning. Yet in that beginning man knew God, walked with God, talked with God; that is clear from the Genesis story. The difference has been affected by sin. It is reasonable to think that the same principle can hold good in the case of Satan. He also had the privilege of knowing God, walking with him, talking with him, and appreciating his power. He embraced sin, and since nothing that is of sin can stand in the Divine Presence, he too from that moment must have been banished, separated from God just as truly as was Adam. Would it be surprising, therefore, if Satan, blinded by his own sin, concludes that after all this time God is evidently unable to complete his designs, and that sin can continue indefinitely on its apparently successful course? If this hypothesis be well founded, the great enemy of man will continue busily with his plans, waging war against all that is holy and true and lovely upon earth, unbelieving until the hour has struck. In the heyday of his dominion, attendant angels carrying out his dark orders, the cry of his suffering prisoners going up to heaven, his power will vanish as one snaps off the electric light. Suddenly he will find himself bereft of power, of influence, of servants, of an empire—alone. Too late, he will realize that the omnipotence of God has waited for this moment, and that his long course of rebellion against his Creator, with all its terrible consequences for humanity, has ended. Can one picture that lonely spirit through all the thousand years of earth’s jubilee? Free to roam through the vast spaces of God’s creation, free to observe, to meditate, to scheme, but powerless to affect or influence in any way the mind or the heart of the weakest or humblest of God’s creatures. Seeing all, hearing all, unable to interfere, the seal of Divine authority marks him out and sets him apart like Cain, an outcast, an exile, one upon whom is the judgment of God. He may translate himself out of our material universe into that spiritual sphere which is beyond the scope of human sense or understanding, and wander through the celestial land as alone and remote from the presence of God as when he presided over earth’s destinies. He may come back into our world of time and space to find the thousand years of restitution still in progress, but wherever he goes and whatever he does, Satan will be bound, altogether unable to interfere further in the plans of God for his creation. Strangely, this is not the end. One might expect that, having destroyed the power of Satan in the world and established a rule of righteousness in which evil finds no place, God would ensure that there will be no revival of sin, by executing the penalty of sin—death—upon this arch-rebel against him. But no; he is bound, restrained, impotent to do evil, for the thousand years, but he lives still. God has not taken away his life. Further, at the end of the Millennium he is to be loosed again, set free to resume his evil work among men, if then he will. Of this “losing” it is necessary to speak guardedly, for the statement appears in only one text of Scripture, Rev. 20:7, and the words are vague and obscure. A little thought, however, seems to indicate that this final “loosing” is logical and in harmony with the general principles of the Divine Plan. All of mankind are to have such an opportunity to decide for good or evil after they have witnessed and experienced, during that last thousand years, the benefits of universal adherence to the righteous laws of God and full loyalty to him. The “spirits, in prison,” those rebellious angels who fell from their high estatein the days before the Flood (Jude 6; 2 Pet. 2:4; Gen. 6), and have since that day been under a form of restraint witnessing the evil that has come upon the world, will in that Age have the same opportunity as men to repent, and convert, and be reconciled to God. (1 Cor. 6:3). Is it not logical and in keeping with the known character of God, who is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9), that Satan himself should at least be treated similarly, and have the same opportunity after seeing for himself the results of the Messianic reign of righteousness? Is this “loosing” in fact an opportunity for him to demonstrate whether, after all that he has seen, he may yet, at the eleventh hour, repent of his evil deeds? If he should so repent, it must be that, despite his evil deeds, God would receive him. There are, though, three prophetic Scriptures which seem to indicate that the die is already cast, that the opportunity will not be taken. Here is concerned the revealed foreknowledge of God, which is something that we as human beings cannot hope to understand and into which we may not intrude. John in Rev. 20:10, after the episode of the “loosing,” says that “the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire” which in v.14 is defined as the “second death.” This is destruction, eternal death, the wages of sin. This is stated as an event that is certainly going to happen. Then Ezekiel in chap. 28 describes one under the cognomen (additional name) of the “king of Tyre” (v.12 RSV) who had been in Eden as a “protective cherub,” created perfect and sinless by God, lapsed into rebellion and sin, and receives Divine condemnation. “I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth…and never shalt thou be any more.”(vv.18-19) Isaiah in chap. 14, under guise of a Divine declaration addressed to the “king of Babylon,” (v.4) speaks of Lucifer, son of the morning, the morning star, who aspired to be equal with the Most High and to rule all creation conjointly with him but in the process “made the world as a wilderness” (v.17)and in consequence will be brought down to the lowest hell, the place from which there is no return. (A significant point justifying the application of these two passages to a supernatural being rather than to the kings of Tyre and Babylon is that although the kings of some peoples such as the Romans and Egyptians did identify their kings with their gods, neither the kings of Babylon nor of Tyre ever did this; they always insisted they were the “servants” of their respective gods; the language and allusions in both passages are impossible of application to human beings.) If these three passages are to be taken as meaning what they say, the implication is that the Lord already knows that the case is, hopeless, and has revealed this knowledge “to his servants the prophets.” A celebrated Anglican minister, Dr. Paterson Smyth (1852-1932), an advocate of Future Probation, laid down the maxim that it is possible for a man, continuously sinning against light, and knowing that he is sinning, to destroy his own capacity for repentance. After that there is nothing, God can do, because the man is spiritually dead; there is nothing left upon which God can work. The man has committed spiritual suicide. His incorrigible antagonism to righteousness has led him to renounce the possible life which can only subsist when righteousness is accepted as the way of life. If there is anything at all in this, it illustrates how God, who knows the hearts of all his creatures, can look upon this one and know that despite the opportunity which may yet be given, he will not repent, and so sentence has to be passed. So, the decree can already have gone forth, before the days of John, before the days of Ezekiel, before the days of Isaiah, to be recorded on the pages of the Book just as it is already recorded in the annals of Heaven. We do not know. Perhaps even then, at the end of the Millennium, Satan does not really believe that “the wages of sin is death.” (Rom. 6:23) Blinded by his own sin, obsessed with his desire to rule at least over men as God rules over all creation, fortified in his evil ways by the forbearance of God through the ages and apparent inability or unwillingness even then to inflict the final penalty of death, perhaps there is nothing left but an irrevocable determination to fight against God. Once, a long time ago, in the beginning, he deceived Eve, saying “ye shall not surely die.” (Gen. 3:4) Canit be that at the end he even deceives himself? If that should in fact be the case, in face of all that he knows of the goodness and love of God, there can be only one possible end. There is a terrible finality in those words spoken through the prophet Ezekiel “I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth… and never shalt thou be any more.” (Ezek. 28:18-19) —————————————————————————————————————– See Albert Hudson’s other articles at: Hudson, Albert – Church of God, Bismarck (church-of-god-bismarck.org) Reprinted with permission from: Bible Study Monthly http://biblefellowshipunion.co.uk/index.htm —————————————————————————————————————— |
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