Inducement number two is about the binding of Satan that is spoken of in Revelation 20. The description of this binding begins at verse 2: “And he [the angel of verse 1] laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.” When I first heard that this binding was symbolic, or figurative, and that it therefore meant that the devil was bound right now and that he had been bound since the first advent, I dismissed the assertion as impossible because of the obvious wickedness going on in the world. The idea seemed like an absurd opinion, not a biblical fact. How could the devil be bound in any sense when evil is so obviously abounding? The answer to this question is in the exposition of verse 3: “And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed for a little season.” The devil is not literally bound because the book of Revelation is emblematic; and neither is he literally cast into a bottomless pit. He is, rather, limited in some way. And verse 3 tells us about this limitation. He is limited in that he can no longer ‘deceive the nations’ like he once did—like he did in Old Testament times. Since the incarnation of the Son of God, what has happened? The use of the word ‘nations’ in other books of the Bible tells us what has happened; and what has happened has been largely fulfilled since the dawn of Christianity. It is true that Christians have been given over to be afflicted and killed and have been hated ‘of all nations’ for the sake of faith in Jesus’ name (Matthew 24.9.) But it is equally true that the gospel has been preached ‘in all the world’ (verse 14; Romans 1.8) and that ‘all nations’ have been taught the gospel and that vast multitudes of persons among the nations have been baptized into Christ (Matthew 28.19.) Outside of Israel, the saved souls that we are told about in the Old Testament are few. There are the Assyrian Ninevites; they repented at the preaching of Jonah. There is Job, the Arab; Rahab, the Canaanite; Uriah, the Hittite; Ruth, the Moabite; Naaman, the Syrian; maybe even King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian. Others do not easily come to mind. In the time of Jesus’ ministry on earth, we have instances like the faith of a Greek woman (Mark 7) and of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8) as the gospel of the kingdom begins to spread out beyond Israel. (See also Matthew 12.15-21.) But in the book of Acts is recorded the history of the sudden explosion of the gospel to other nations. When the gospel was miraculously preached in tongues to dispersed, devout Jews who were ‘Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,’ and others; as well as ‘strangers of Rome’ and ‘proselytes,’ the result was that thousands were saved (Acts 2.) This is the evidence of the devil being bound to deceive the nations no more. When the apostle Peter received the revelation that he ‘should not call any man common or unclean’ no matter what nation any man was of, it was because the gospel was going out to the nations and was being extensively embraced (Acts 10.) What is this but the devil, as it says in Revelation 20, not deceiving the nations as in former times? “But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10.35.) The nation chosen by God to be ‘his peculiar treasure’ and ‘a special people unto himself’ (Psalm 135.4; Deuteronomy 7.6) was destined, through the loins of Abraham and the promise of God, to be the conduit to multitudes from many nations coming to faith. “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations” (Genesis 17.4.) The Messiah is foretold by the prophet Haggai and is called by him ‘the desire of all nations’ (Haggai 2.7.) He says there that “the desire of all nations shall come.” When did ‘the desire of all nations’ come? The answer is Sunday school level theology wherein the puzzle concerning the binding of Satan is solved. When the Magi came from the east to find ‘he that is born King of the Jews’ (Matthew 2.2), what was happening on the deeper level? “The coming of these Gentiles to Christ indicated that religion was no longer to be restricted to the Holy Land. The swaddling-clothes of Judaism were to be cast aside, and religion to march forth free and unfettered to claim the whole world in the name of the new-born King. The prophetic word had already gone forth: ‘All nations shall call Him blessed.’ And now these Gentiles come from afar to put their appropriating hand on the Holy Child Jesus, and claim Him as the Saviour for the world of Gentiles as well as the world of Jews” (Richard Roberts, My Later Ministry, p. 9.) The chokehold that the devil had on the Gentile nations was about to be broken. What is that but another way of saying what Revelation 20 tells us concerning his binding ‘that he should deceive the nations no more’? The ‘light to the Gentiles,’ foretold by the prophet Isaiah, had come. Why had he come? His coming was for ‘salvation unto the end of the earth’ (Isaiah 49.6.) In other words, it was for the salvation of souls among the nations, for which work, to be effectual, the devil would have to be limited, restricted, prevented, chained, fettered, or bound. There are prophecies like the one in Psalm 22.27 about ‘all the kindreds of the nations’ worshipping before God and the one in Zechariah 2.11 about many nations being joined to the LORD. What is included in all of this but a seal being set on Satan like it says in Revelation 20 ‘that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled’? If these prophecies, and others like them from the Old Testament, are applied by premillennialists to the epoch of a literal future millennium and not before, can we not protest that this process of salvation among the nations began on a large scale two thousand years ago? Has the devil not been restricted from deceiving the nations like he once did in the olden time before the first advent? God used even Caiaphas, the high priest who delivered Jesus to Pilate to be executed, to prophesy the fulfillment of the devil being bound: “…he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad” (John 11.51, 52.) This is an unintentional prophecy of the devil being bound; this is a prophecy of his deceptive power over the nations being broken. The apostle Paul could speak, in the early days of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of ‘obedience to the faith among all nations’ (Romans 1.5) and of heathen being justified through faith (Galatians 3.8.) He could speak like this because the devil was deceiving the nations no more like he once had done. The thousand years of Revelation 20 had begun. Some of what is related in Revelation 20 had not begun. Satan was not ‘loosed out of his prison’ (verse 7) yet; the final judgment (verses 11-15) was not in effect; and no one and nothing was being cast into the fiery lake. (Full preterism is a heresy; not all prophecies are fulfilled yet; that they are not all fulfilled yet is a negotiable article of faith only for persons willing to be damned.)
The report given by the seventy disciples upon their return from preaching substantiates this teaching of the devil’s figurative binding. They exclaimed, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name” (Luke 10.17.) Their Lord answered, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven” (verse 18.) Compare this with some of Revelation 20 to see the similarity; indeed, in order to see how what is said in Revelation 20 was fulfilled during Jesus’ ministry: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years” (Revelation 20.1, 2.) This is why the devils were now subject to these disciples. It was because of this binding. “And cast him into the bottomless pit” (verse 3): This is the fall of the devil ‘as lightning from heaven’ during the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In the following words of Jesus, we have this fall associated with nations coming to the Lord because of it: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12.31, 32.) This goes far to show, also, that the book of Revelation does not present a simple chronological sequence of events. The fulfillment of some of Revelation 20, which is very near to the close of the book, happened way back during the ministry of our Lord. That the book of Revelation is not chronological is the answer as to why the wrath of God closes chapters 11, 14, 16, and 19. It may be progressive in a sense; but it is not strictly chronological. It recapitulates from the incarnation of our Lord (roughly) to the consummation of all things.
Why could it be sung in heaven of sinners being redeemed to God by the blood of the Lamb ‘out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’? (Revelation 5.9.) This message could be sung because by this time the devil could deceive the nations no longer. The inhabitants of heaven could sing of the redemption of multitudes among the nations because the thousand years had begun. They could sing in chapter 5 of what is written in chapter 20 because the book of Revelation is not chronological, but a series of parallels. This structure has been called both ‘recapitulation’ and ‘parallelism.’ My two names for it are ‘progressive recapitulation’ and ‘progressive parallelism’ because of the additional revelation that is disclosed, especially in the final chapters. So often was I confused about how the book of Revelation is wont to begin at the beginning again right after a climax. It does this over and over. This riddle is solved once progressive recapitulation is noticed. The end of the age occurs, according to that schema, at the ends of chapters 3, 7, 11, 14, 16, 19, and 22; and each ending is more climactic than the one before it. The choir singing of God’s redemption has multiplied many times since the book of Revelation was written. This has been made possible because of the limitations put upon Satan since then. The proof of this multiplication is written in books on the great revivals that have taken place since the symbolic millennium started so long ago. We have had such outpourings of grace since that spiritual watershed that some of the Gentile nations have been called ‘Christian’ nations. They have not been wholly Christian any more than every member of Israel could be said to have been circumcised in the heart. But any nation has had to have been divinely affected to a large degree for it to be classified by anyone as Christian. The binding of the devil has meant the liberation necessary to souls coming to Christ in droves throughout the centuries among the nations of the earth. The devil’s binding, then, is interpreted for us in many parts of the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments. Even without this corroborative data, we should know that this binding is figurative because the devil is a spirit, and a spirit cannot be bound by a chain. And if the chain in Revelation 20.1 is figurative, why would the thousand years in verse 2 be literal?
We know that the binding of Satan has happened because the purpose of his binding has been, and is still being, in some measure, fulfilled. He was bound in order to curb his power over the nations so that multitudes from these various peoples of the earth would receive the good news that salvation from sin may be accessed through faith in Jesus’ name; the devil was constrained so that the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ could come into God’s kingdom (Romans 11.25.) This is the movement that is spoken of in words like these: ‘out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’ (Revelation 5.9); and in words like these: ‘a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues’ (7.9); and these: ‘the everlasting gospel…unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people’ (14.6); and these: ‘all nations shall come and worship before thee’ (15.4.) I have not read the works of Tertullian (circa A. D. 160-240.) But Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) had some knowledge of these writings; and he was both a discerning and honest man. In his History of the Work of Redemption, Edwards gives this stunning summary of Tertullian’s testimony concerning the extension of God’s kingdom in his day: “in his day the Christian religion had extended itself to the utmost bounds of the then known world, in which he reckons Britain, the country of our forefathers. He thence demonstrates that the kingdom of Christ was then more extensive than any of the four great monarchies, and moreover says that, though the Christians were as strangers of no long standing, yet they had filled all places of the Roman dominions, their cities, their islands, castles, corporations, councils, armies, tribes, the palace, senate, and courts of judicature; only they had left to the heathen their temples; and that if they should all agree to retire out of the Roman Empire, the world would be amazed at the solitude and desolation that would ensue upon it, there would be so few left; and that the Christians were enough to be able easily to defend themselves, if they were disposed to rise up in arms against the heathen magistrates” (p. 305.) This is the kind of history that informs and confirms the verses quoted above, even by the early date of Tertullian’s life. We are not obliged to believe that each and every professor was more than nominal to assert that the kingdom of Christ, nevertheless, was filling the earth, as prophesied by the prophet Daniel (Daniel 2.35.) Readers of revival history will understand. The propagation of the gospel has at least partially fulfilled the prophecy of swords being beaten into plowshares (Isaiah 2.4.) Consider the startling fact that John Wesley’s (1703-1791) ministerial headquarters in London was a former cannon factory. Isaiah’s prophecy is not about literal swords and literal plowshares. Much more of the Bible has been fulfilled than we have been given, by contemporary Dispensationalists, to think. And much more could be shared about that, even concerning the final chapters of Ezekiel; but this would lead away from the point at issue about the binding of Satan in Revelation 20.
It can be somewhat traumatizing to discover that some prophecies that we’ve been looking forward to have been fulfilled already. But there are better and greater blessings awaiting us than if we had a millennium on earth to enjoy, or even a thousand of them, before entering in upon our final rest in the eternal state. The moon has a diameter of two thousand miles; that of the earth, about eight thousand; that of Jupiter, about eighty-seven thousand; that of our sun (a yellow dwarf), just under nine hundred thousand; that of Arcturus (an orange giant), about twenty-two million; that of Rigel (a blue supergiant), over sixty-eight million; that of Pistol Star (a blue hypergiant), about two hundred and sixty-five million; that of VY Canis Majoris (a red hypergiant), well over a billion; one light day covers sixteen billion miles; our galaxy (the milky way) covers one hundred thousand light years; and the observable universe encompasses a hundred billion light years. (These numbers vary to some degree among experts in cosmology.) A literal thousand year millennium is a puny thing compared to what a God large enough to create a universe like that has in store. “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147, 5.) The single act of redemption by ‘the Lord of glory’ being more awesome than the creation of whole worlds, it is no wonder that the word of God says that man has no idea what God has prepared for the recipients of his grace (1 Corinthians 2.8, 9.) This passage goes on to say that saints, in distinction from the ‘princes of this world’ who crucified the Lord, do know something about what God has prepared for them to enjoy. Shelves lined with materialistic ‘end times’ books make it appear as though Christians have received, not the Spirit of God that ‘searcheth all things,’ but ‘the spirit of the world.’ The literal millennium is refuted by the figurative binding of Satan. This fact lifts us up above the spirit of the world that craves the confinement of a three dimensional existence. The binding of the devil is allegorical; so is the thousand years during which he is bound; and these facts are consonant with Christians being spiritually minded. The binding of Satan is in force; the millennium is happening; both are for a thousand figurative years; and recipients of the ‘first resurrection’ become heavenly millenarians as soon as they die.
