Is Satan Bound?
A few days ago I did a post called Is Reformed Eschatology Hard to Understand? in which I dealt with a prior comment on another post to the extent that it is. In that I contended that Reformed eschatology is actually fairly easy to understand (although I suppose I should admit that many of us have a gift for making the easy difficult). It may be completely wrong, but I don't think it is hard to understand conceptually.
So, that post wasn't meant to be an explanation or apologetic defense of Reformed eschatology. And really, it is hard to pin down one particular eschatological view and call it the Reformed view, as several views have been tolerated within the Reformed camp. What all of the views have in common is that they see a unity between Israel and the church, but beyond that, it's hard to pick one as the reformed view. For my purposes I think I'll just drop that terminology for now and say that I am speaking of amillennialism, since it's my own view.
Since that post was neither explanation nor apology I thought it wise to provide something in the way of such. The prior post was simply to saying that amillennialism is easy to understand, I love it and makes me feel all tingly inside. Today I want to begin what I hope can become a series of posts explaining and defending the amillennial position, but I want to interrupt this series here at the beginning to address a matter that came up in a comment.
One of the commenters objected to the way we amils twist the Scriptures and suggest that we live in a world where Satan is bound. I want to take up the idea of Satan being bound here.
To give you some perspective most of us amils believe in the recapitulation view of the book of Revelation. This means that Revelation isn't written chronologically, rather it is written as a series of seven cycles of judgment. What is germane to this discussion is that we believe there is a break in cycles between Revelation 19 and 20. Thus, the events of Revelation 20 don't follow Revelation 19 chronologically, they start a new cycle of judgment. I don't want to argue that right now, I'm just using it for background.
We believe that the millennium described in Revelation 20 is the period of time between the first and second advents of Christ. Hence, we now live in the millennium. And, if you read Revelation 20 you can see that Satan was bound at the beginning of the millennium. Thus, amils interpret that to mean that Satan was bound during the first advent of Christ.
This is what is objectionable to many. Exegetical concerns aside, the main reason most folks have trouble believing that Satan is bound is because they see so much evidence of his activity on the earth today. From looking around, it appears that Hal Lindsey was right - Satan is alive and well on planet earth.
Sometimes we amils get mocked when we say that Satan is bound, or at least people say "yeah right, he sure doesn't look bound to me."
But our contention is simply that believing Satan to be bound is the result of using a consistently literal hermeneutic when it comes to interpreting all of Scripture. By literal we mean that we interpret the literal, literally and the figurative figuratively. Also, the literal should interpret the figurative. Along with this we believe the clear should interpret the unclear, and the new should interpret the old.
Before I flesh this out let me use an analogy that I think is almost exactly parallel. The rationale for saying Satan is not bound is that the presence of Satanic activity on earth rules out the notion that Satan could be bound.
Having said that, who here believes they are dead to sin? Raise your hand if you believe this? The Bible states absolutely and unequivocally that we are dead to sin.
Romans 6:2 - We died to sin
Romans 6:6-7:
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Galatians 6:24:
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
And yet, I still sin every day. There is ample evidence to me and anyone who looks around that I sin. And yet, the Bible says I am dead to sin. Paul himself writes in Romans 6 that he is dead to sin and in Romans 7 he writes about his ongoing struggle with sin.
My point is that, if we say Satan cannot be bound because we see so much Satanic activity, then we need to argue just as strongly against these statements in Romans and Galatians which say that we have died to sin. But nobody does that. We affirm the truth of these verses - that we are dead to sin, while interpreting them in the light of other Scriptures that speak of our ongoing struggle with sin. Whatever the details of your particular exegeis of these Scriptures or mine, we come out with something affirming that there is a sense in which we can be dead to sin, and yet still sin.
Amillennialists say the same thing about Satan. There is a very real sense in which he can be bound, yet active.
That Satan is bound is so clear from the New Testament that I am frankly surprised that anyone would argue otherwise. It may be that we amils completely misunderstand (or twist) Revelation 20, but when it comes to the larger question of the binding of Satan, the burden of proof is not on the amil to prove he is, it is on our critics to prove that he isn't.
A classic passage on this is Matthew 12:25-29:
25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? 27 And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. 28 But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
29 “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.
Notice the parallel between vv. 25-28 and verse 29. The binding of the strong man in verse 29 is analogous to Jesus' casting out of Satan by the Spirit of God. There is a ton of eschatological meaning in this passage and it goes beyond particular instances of demonic deliverance. It is a paradigm for the coming of the kingdom of God. The fact that Jesus casts out demons by the Spirit of God is evidence that a) Satan has been bound, and more importantly b) the eschatological kingdom of God has come upon us.
So, the point is that the coming of the kingdom entails the binding of Satan. The timing of the coming of the kingdom is given here. It is not a time somewhere in the future - it is at the time that Jesus demonstrates His binding of Satan by casting out demons. This happened at His first advent.
This is seen more clearly in several other passages.
In John 12:31, predicting His death, Jesus says this:
31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.
Please notice that, and notice the parallel to Revelation 20:1-3. Jesus says "now the prince of this world will be driven out." Who is the prince of world? Satan. Where is he being driven from? It has to be this world. In Revelation 20 the angel comes down out of heaven to seize Satan, so in Revelation 20 it appears that Satan is on the earth when he is bound. In John 12:31 Satan is driven out of this world. And, according to John 12:31, when is Satan to be driven out (bound?)? At the time of the crucifixion.
Colossians 2:15 says:
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
At the cross Christ disarmed the powers and authorities and triumphed over them. It wasn't the Roman or Jewish authorities He disarmed, it was the satanic, spiritual powers and authorities.
I realize that "binding" and "disarming" are two different words, but they both have the same idea of defeat and subjection to Christ.
Hebrews 2:14-15 says:
14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
As in Colossians 2:15, Hebrews 2:15 says that something happened to Satan at the cross. In Colossians Satan was disarmed, in Hebrews 2 we see that Satan was destroyed. Again, the word "destroy" is not the same word as "bind" but the idea is the same - Satan is defeated and subjected to Christ on the cross.
I John 3:8 says:
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
Here we see that the Son of God "appeared" - past tense. This appearance was at His first advent. What did He do at His first appearance? He destroyed the devil's work.
All of this is to simply say that we must let the Scriptures interpret our experience, not the other way around. Again, the objection that is raised against the amil view of the binding of Satan is that our experience tells us otherwise. I am trying to show that the Bible is very clear, apart from Revelation 20, that Satan is bound, and we need to interpret our experience in light of the Bible, not vice versa.
As a reminder, my focus has been very narrow here. I have not attempted to prove that amils understand Revelation 20 correctly (although I think we do). It may be that we are wrong in our assertion that Rev. 20 does not follow Rev. 19 chronologically and that we have messed up all kinds of eschatological details.
But, if one plank in the argument against amillennialism is that Satan cannot be bound because our experience tells us differently, then that plank needs to be removed.
On a larger note though, this does give an example of the amil contention that we ought to interpret Revelation in light of the whole of Scripture, not the other way around. When we look at the whole of Scripture we see that it is very clear that Satan was bound at the first advent of Jesus. So, when we see Revelation 20 talking about Satan being bound and cast out of the earth we say hmm . . . All of those other passages, and especially John 12:31 insinuate that Satan was cast out of the earth during the first advent of Jesus, maybe there is a correlation.
I didn't want to get into the particulars of exactly how it is that Satan was cast out, just to prove that he was. However, while I was working on this post a comment came in from Clive on the prior post that I agree with:
Satan "bound" does not mean inactive. It means that his activity is restricted here in the millennium. It means that he can’t stop the Gospel from going forth, he is being restrained from exercising all that he is capable of exercising.
You may disagree with me and Clive on these particulars - some may think that Clive's description of "binding" sounds too weak, i.e. Satan doesn't seem to be very bound. But I will push you back to the very strong language of Scripture describing what happened to Satan at the first advent - he was bound, disarmed, destroyed and cast out. The Scripture itself can use that strong of language while acknowledging the continued activity of Satan.
So I conclude by restating that, though Satan may still be active, the Scripture is unmistakeably clear that he is bound and we are to interpret our experience in light of this rather than the other way around.
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