I came across the above short clip by the Ligonier Ministries put out a few days ago, in which the panelists Chris Larson, Derek Thomas, Robert Godfrey, Sinclair Ferguson, Stephen Nichols, Steven Lawson, and Burk Parsons are answering theological questions, put to them presumably by the audience. It is a short clip from a much longer video obviously. In this clip they are answering the question: “Is Satan bound? Or is he the ruler of this world?” To that then three of the panelists give the following answer:
THOMAS: Well, Satan has been bound in the sense that under the old covenant, the gospel was more or less confined to the Jews. There were occasional proselytes, but they were occasional, but in the ministry of Christ and the ministry of the seventy, when they come back from that mission of theirs, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” So, an aspect of Satan’s control over the world was affected by the ministry of Christ and by the death and resurrection of Christ and the day of Pentecost which suggests that now the gospel is to be preached in all the world, but he is still referred to as the “prince and power of the air.” He still has power, maybe not as much power as he did under the old covenant, but he still has power. He is still to be reckoned with: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.” I mean C.S. Lewis said somewhere, in his Screwtape Letters, possibly, that you can make too much of the devil, but you can also make too little of him. He hasn’t yet been cast into the bottomless pit that the book of Revelation speaks of in chapter 20. So, he is very much to be reckoned with even in the new covenant.
GODFREY: But I think we have to be ... I certainly agree, but we have to be very clear, Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords now, and I think Lewis is exactly right. We can’t make too much or too little. On the “too much” side, sometimes we talk about Satan almost as if he were a minor god. He is a finite creature, which I think means—now, I am only a church historian, a humble church historian—but I think that means he can’t be everywhere at once. He can’t be the Holy Spirit, and so he has all these minions who serve him. But we almost talk sometimes as if there is the Holy God and then there is the evil god, Satan. Satan is not God. He is a finite creature. He is limited by his finitude as well as by God’s sovereignty. And so, he is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, but he is chump change compared to the sovereign God. He has been defeated and he will be destroyed, and our calling is not to let him destroy us before he is destroyed.
FERGUSON: We all try and put things and answers to questions saying the same thing in different ways, and I think two things I have found helpful in this context are, one, what Bob has alluded to in Matthew 28:18 to 20. What Jesus is saying in Matthew 28:18 to 20 is that as the second man and the last Adam, He has won back the dominion on earth that Adam lost. Adam lost his dominion. He fell to the tempter. Christ has overcome the tempter so that He now says, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” Now, we instinctively think, “Well, He is the Son of God. All authority in heaven and earth is His.” But He is speaking in a particular context here of saying that now the dominion that Satan won in the Garden of Eden has been overthrown and that authority is now His. And the second thing is to pick up what Derek said and to remember, I think, the limiting context of the expression about the binding of Satan is as Derek said, so that he would no longer deceive the nations. So, it is not just a general statement, Satan is bound, but that Satan is bound in this particular respect, that until the resurrection of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, the coming of the last days, Satan was deceiving all of the nations, except the one nation that God was undeceiving in His mercy and that what is actually happening on the day of Pentecost in the crowd that gathers, that is analogous to the crowd that gathered in order to build the Tower of Babel and to pull God down, and God judged the nations, committed them to the deception of Satan, is that now from the day of Pentecost onwards, symbolized in the gatherings of the people and now experienced for two thousand years, is that the nations are being undeceived by the preaching of the gospel. I mean, that is just another way of saying, you know, we always need to look at the context in which phrases are used, so that we don’t just see a phrase and then make up ourselves what it means when the Scriptures are in very specific ways helping us to see these statements within a particular grid and context, so that when the Scriptures say that he is the god of this age, we realize that those who are not Christians are living in this age whereas we, the end of the ages has dawned on us and what the preaching of the gospel does is continues to invade this age to bring people into the new age and that this will continue until the Lord comes. And then comes the end, whatever your eschatology, then comes the end.
None of them, however, have been able to give the right answer to that question. The question consists of two parts. The first part of the question is: “Is Satan Bound?” The short answer to that question is, No, not yet. That won’t happen until the Millennium begins:
Revelation 20:
1 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
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 a little season.
At the end of the Millennium he will be released for a short period of time, after which he will be bound permanently and forever. That is the correct answer to the first part of the question.
The second part of the question was: “Or is he the ruler of this world?” The answer to that question is that Satan is not, and never has been, and never will be the “ruler of this world”—only to the extent that mankind (or any portion of them) yield to his temptations, and allow him to rule over them. Satan is permitted to tempt mankind in this world, so that they can act as free agents, and decide for themselves if they want to follow Satan or follow God. That is the role that Satan plays in this brief period of mortal experience. They could not exercise that moral agency, that “choice,” if the temptations of the devil did not exist, to enable them to choose between the two options. But that does not make Satan the “ruler of this world”—only to the extent that people yield to his temptations, and allow him to “rule” over them.
And whenever that has happened (beyond certain limits), it has always led to the destruction of those people—sometimes dramatically, such as by the Flood in the days of Noah; or by fire and brimstone in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah—but more often less dramatically, such as by foreign invasions, or by natural disasters or plagues. And just because the gospel does not exist, or has not always existed in all nations of the world, it does not follow that they didn’t know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. All mankind have some knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, by virtue of that Spirit that “lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9); hence they are left “without excuse” (Romans 1:20; see verses 18-24). The peoples of all nations and cultures know that stealing is wrong, lying is wrong, murder is wrong, adultery is wrong, etc.—and they generally have laws prohibiting those kinds of actions. They don’t have to be “Christians” to know those things. And on judgment day, they will be judged based on what they knew, and how they acted based on that knowledge: “They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:29).
That is the correct biblical answer to that question. Satan is not, never has been, and never can be the “ruler of this world”—only to the extent that the inhabitants of the earth (collectively or individually) yield to his temptations, and allow him to rule over them. The only “power” that Satan has over the world is to deceive and tempt mankind to do evil—nothing more. For the rest of this post I will briefly comment on what some of the participants have said in response to that question.
Derek Thomas begins by quoting the words of Jesus in Luke 10:18, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” But the conclusion he draws from it is not the correct one. That is a reference to the fall of Satan in heaven, when he rebelled against God, was defeated, cast down to the earth, to tempt mankind during this brief period of mortal experience:
Revelation 12:
7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
9 And the great dragon was cast out [of heaven], that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
• • •
12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.
Satan has power only to tempt mankind to do evil; but he never has (and never had or will have) any power to force his will in the world, or on anyone in particular—only to the extent that mankind are willing to yield to his temptations. The reason why Satan will be bound during the Millennium (for the most part) is because all of mankind will be living in righteousness, and Christ will personally be reigning on the earth, and no one will want to yield to his temptations. At around 2:27 minutes into the video Robert Godfrey Says the following:
“Sometimes we talk about Satan almost as if he were a minor god. He is a finite creature, … he can’t be the Holy Spirit, and so he has all these minions who serve him. But we almost talk sometimes as if there is the Holy God and then there is the evil god, Satan. Satan is not God. He is a finite creature. He is limited by his finitude.”
That is not entirely correct either. Satan is certainly not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent etc. like God is; but still, he has great power (permitted him by God) to tempt mankind. Just as God has a divine Spirit by which he is able to extend his influence in world; Satan also has his evil spirit or influence, by means of which he is able to exert his unrighteous, tempting, deceiving power over the world, and on mankind in general:
Ephesians 2:
1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Ephesians 6:
11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Revelation 12:
9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
He couldn’t “deceive the whole world” if he didn’t have the spiritual powers to exert his influence over the “whole world”. He also has his own “angels” (Matthew 25:41; Revelation 12:9) assisting him in his work (as God has his angels); but that does not diminish from Satan’s own spiritual powers to exert his evil, tempting influence over the world. Satan had been an angel of light, and a very powerful and advanced individual, before he rebelled against God in the premortal state, and was cast down from the presence of God; and he still retains many of his advanced spiritual powers; and uses them to oppose God, and to tempt mankind—and God permits him to do it for the reasons explained above; so that mankind can have the freedom to choose for themselves which way they want to go, and whose side they want to be on. Then at 3:29 minutes Sinclair Ferguson makes a long series of comments which would be a bit too tedious to analyze in detail; so I will briefly mention some main points:
Firstly, when Jesus says in Matthew 28:18 that, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,” it is not a reference to the “power” that Adam “lost” as a result of the Fall. Adam never had “all power in heaven and in earth”. That is the power of Christ’s divinity. Adam never had the power of divinity, and therefore never could have lost it. Secondly, the distinction that he tries to make between Satan’s “deceiving powers” before and after the coming of Christ, or that previously he had power to deceive the nations but not Israel; and afterwards he is bound somehow, and cannot deceive the nations as much, are pure hypothetical speculation. No such doctrines are taught or implied in scripture. Satan is not bound, and will not be until the beginning of the Millennium, as quoted above. Satan’s power and influence among men, however, is increased or diminished only to the extent that mankind are inclined to yield to his temptations, and reject the gospel message (or the light of Christ, that is given to all mankind—John 1:9), on the one hand; or to yield to the gospel message (or to the light of Christ), and reject his temptations and deceiving influence on the other. When mankind, collectively or individually, choose the way of righteousness, his power is diminished; when they choose the way of sin, transgression, and wickedness, his power is increased. And lastly, when scripture refers to Satan as the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), it doesn’t mean that Satan literally has divine power over this world. It simply means that he is the being that the majority of mankind (knowingly or unknowingly) have chosen to worship and follow instead of the true and living God.
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