He’s called the tempter, the accuser, the evil one, and the god of this age. On this episode of Simply Put, Barry Cooper looks at the biblical—and very real—figure of Satan.

If you are a true believer, Satan hates you because you bear the image of Christ and because you were snatched from his power. You deserted Satan, and he wants you back. He wants to sift you like wheat. While we should not overestimate Satan’s power, to our peril we underestimate an enemy who is living, intelligent, resourceful, and cunning.Every Christian is in a battle that is fierce, spiritual, and necessary between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to know the enemy—his personality, his strategies, his weaknesses, and his defeat at Calvary and his final judgment.In a day when society has in many ways placed itself under Satan’s rule, when Satanism is flourishing in Western nations, when certain branches of the church are preoccupied with “deliverance ministries,” and when others deny the devil’s existence, Fighting Satan is a sober, practical perspective on this vital subject. Joel R. Beeke states, “We must know our enemy… . We must know how to withstand him and what spiritual weapons to take up against him. We must defeat him by faith through lives that bear fruit and spread the truth.”With questions for reflection and discussion at the close of each chapter, Fighting Satan is ideal for group and individual Bible study.

the Creator. Satan is potent; God is omnipotent. Satan is knowledgeable and crafty; God is omniscient. Satan is localized in his presence; God is omnipresent. Satan is finite; God is infinite. The list could go on. But it is clear from Scripture that Satan is not an ultimate force in any sense.

We are not doomed to an ultimate conflict with no hope of resolution. The message of Scripture is one of victory—full, final, and ultimate victory. It is not our doom that is certain, but Satan’s. His head has been crushed by the heel of Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega.

Above all suffering and death stands the crucified and risen Lord. He has defeated the ultimate enemy of life. He has vanquished the power of death. He calls us to die, a call to obedience in the final transition of life. Because of Christ, death is not final. It is a passage from one world to the next.

God does not always will healing. If He did, He would suffer endless frustration, seeing His will being repeatedly thwarted in the deaths of His people. He did not will the healing of Stephen from the wounds inflicted by the stones that were hurled against him. He did not will the healing of Moses, of Joseph, of David, of Paul, of Augustine, of Martin Luther, of John Calvin. These all died in faith. Ultimate healing comes through death and after death.

Teachers argue that there is healing in the atonement of Christ. Indeed there is. Jesus bore all of our sins on the cross. Yet none of us is free from sin in this life. Likewise, none of us is free from sickness in this life. The healing that is in the cross is real. We participate in its benefits now, in this life. But the fullness of the healing from both sin and disease takes place in heaven. We still must die at our appointed times.

the result of controlling demons. The first is that we yield to the temptation to take no personal responsibility for our sin. How can we be responsible if in fact we are not able to resist? Second, we are lured into thinking that we are powerless without the aid of the deliverance minister. We are encouraged to think that we are not really guilty and that we are actually helpless without a minister with special powers of deliverance. This negates the entire biblical concept of sanctification. It is surely unbiblical to teach that we cannot lead lives pleasing to God unless some so-called expert on deliverance enters into the battle. Therefore, I say with all urgency that believers must turn away from those who teach such things. Indeed run, for your very spiritual lives.

There’s only one supreme Lord over all the world, and that’s God. We are told in the Old Testament that this whole concept of dominion was shared with Adam and Eve. Man was given dominion over the earth to be vice-regents for God, that is, vice kings to represent God’s reign on this planet. Of course, we made a terrible mess out of it, and we were subjected more and more to the power of Satan. That power of Satan was dealt not just a significant blow but a fatal blow by Christ in his incarnation.

We’re told, first of all, that God the Father gives to Jesus all authority in heaven and on earth. In his ascension, Christ is seated at the right hand of God, where he is crowned as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. That was a tremendous blow to all worldly or satanic powers, principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places. So if you ask me who is in dominion over this world right now, I think the New Testament is perfectly clear on that. The one who is in dominion is the Lord. The Lord God omnipotent reigns, and the Lord Christ reigns over this world right now. His kingdom may not be of this world, but it certainly includes this world, and Jesus has all authority over heaven and earth.

Even at this moment, as I’m discussing this question, Satan’s authority and power are limited and subordinate to the authority that is vested in Christ. Christ right now is the king of this earth. His kingdom is invisible, and not everybody acknowledges it. People are giving more allegiance to the prince of darkness than to the Prince of Peace, but that is an act of usurpation on the part of Satan. His power is restricted, limited, and temporal. What has happened briefly is this: The power and authority of Satan has been dealt a fatal blow by Christ. The Cross, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Ascension tremendously weakened any power or authority that Satan enjoyed, but it didn’t annihilate him. That will come later, when Christ completes his work of redemption with the consummation of his kingdom. All things will be brought into captivity to him, and every knee will bow to him, including the fallen angels, who will bow in submission to his authority.

course all authority in heaven and on earth is His.” But Jesus is speaking in a particular context, saying that the dominion Satan won in the garden of Eden has been overthrown, and that authority is now His.

The second is to pick up what Derek said: the limiting context of the expression regarding the binding of Satan is that he would no longer deceive the nations. It isn’t just a general statement, “Satan is bound,” but that Satan is bound in this particular respect: until the resurrection of Christ, the sending of the Holy Spirit, and the coming of the last days, Satan was deceiving all the nations except the one nation God was undeceiving in His mercy. On the day of Pentecost, the crowd that gathered was analogous to the crowd that gathered to build the Tower of Babel in an attempt to pull God down. God judged the nations at Babel and committed them to the deception of Satan. But from the day of Pentecost onwards, the nations are being undeceived by the preaching of the gospel. That is symbolized by the gatherings of the people at Pentecost and has now been experienced for two thousand years.

This is just another way of saying that we always need to look at the context in which phrases are used. We don’t just see a phrase and then make up ourselves what it means. In specific ways, the Scriptures help us to see these statements within a particular grid and context. So, when the Scriptures say that Satan is the god of this age, we realize that those who are not Christians are living in this age. However, the end of the ages has dawned on believers, and the preaching of the gospel continues to invade this age to bring people into the new age, which will continue until the Lord comes. And then, whatever your eschatology, comes the end.

In Matthew 24:24, Jesus warns His disciples, “False Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

These words appear to refer to the events surrounding Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70. But the deception Jesus has in view is part of an ongoing pattern. From the beginning, Satan has been deceiving God’s people (Gen. 3:13). He will continue to do so until the lawless one is revealed “with all power, signs, and lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9–10). John’s vision of the millennium ends with a worldwide rampage of deception on Satan’s part (Rev. 20:8). Jesus’ warning is therefore relevant to us.

Missing the Point

“Fortunately,” we may say to ourselves, “the elect are in no danger. For Jesus’ words imply that we are incapable of falling prey to Satanic deception.” But to read the text in this way is to miss the point, for two reasons:

It fails to take account of the evidence of history. Christians have been, and are, capable of being deceived. Have none of the elect been deceived in recent years into supporting “ministries” that have proved so tragically different in reality from what they professed to be? Sadly, we are more easily addicted to the spectacular (“signs and wonders”) than to the substantial, to novelty (“false prophets”) than to a wholesome orthodoxy. If we think Christians cannot be deceived, the deception has already begun.

It misunderstands the nature of the impossibility. Jesus did not say the elect were incapable of being deceived. We are all only too capable of it. Nevertheless, we are given this assurance: God will protect and preserve His people. Like Simon Peter, they will be shielded by the prayers of Christ and the power of God (Luke 22:31–32). This is accomplished through the activity of faith (1 Peter 1:5).

Guarded

But how can we guard ourselves against spiritual deception? By developing sensitivity, we become aware of Satan’s strategies in our lives (2 Cor. 2:11). Have you learned what they are?

By developing self-knowledge, we recognize how weak we are. Since nothing good dwells in our flesh (Rom. 7:18), we need constantly to depend on the Lord. Do you?

By developing an appetite for God’s Word, we are “trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14, ESV), and we grow in discernment. Is that true of you today?

Since fallen humanity is already unable to come to God, what role does Satan play in blinding unbelievers? Today, Derek Thomas explores the biblical doctrine of total depravity and how Satan affects humanity’s resistance to the truth of the gospel.

Eve was the first person deceived by Satan, but she would not be the last. Today, Sinclair Ferguson identifies common tactics our enemy uses against the people of God, helping us be prepared for when temptation comes.

In Scripture, the term Satan means “adversary.” We know him as the devil. He is a high angelic creature who, before the creation of the human race, rebelled against God and has since battled with human beings and God. He is called the prince of darkness, the father of lies, the accuser, and the beguiling serpent. The real portrait is nothing like the horned, trident-bearing, comedic adversary to which we have become accustomed. That image, at least in part, arose out of the medieval church. The silly picture of Satan was intentionally created by the church in order to poke fun at him. The church was convinced that an effective ploy to withstand Satan was to insult him. His most vulnerable part was seen as his pride. To attack his pride was seen as an effective way to repel him.

The biblical view of Satan is far more sophisticated. He appears as an “angel of light.” That image points to Satan’s clever ability to manifest himself under the appearance of good. Satan is subtle, beguiling, and crafty. He speaks with eloquence; his appearance is stunning. The prince of darkness wears a cloak of light. Scripture also speaks of Satan as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Christ is also referred to as a lion, the Lion of Judah. He is a redeemer, the anti-lion and devourer. Both images speak of strength.

How, then, should the believer react to Satan? On the one hand Satan is indeed fearsome. In 1 Peter 5:8 we are told that “your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” The believer is not to respond, however, in sheer terror. Satan may be stronger than we are, but Christ is stronger than Satan. The Bible declares, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Satan is, after all, a creature. He is finite and limited. He is limited in space and time. He cannot be in more than one place at a time. He is never to be regarded in any way as an equal with God. Satan is a higher order of being than humans; he is a fallen angel. But he is not divine. He has more power than earthly creatures but infinitely less power than almighty God.

his adultery with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11. That one sin opened the door for other sins to follow, culminating in this sin, which cost the lives of seventy thousand people (2 Sam. 24:15). Yet the Lord had redemptive purposes even in allowing David to sin like this, since it was through David’s repentance over this sin that the site of the temple was identified (2 Sam. 24:18–25). Where sin abounded, grace was multiplied even more (Rom. 5:20).

The Chronicler wanted to clarify one aspect of the story, which is the role of Satan as the intermediary in this process. After all, God does not tempt people Himself (James 1:13); He is not the author of evil. Sometimes, the source is in our sinful nature, while at other times it comes from the allure of the world around us (1 John 2:16). Yet there are times, as the Chronicler notes in this case, when temptation comes from the evil one. This is not a contradiction of what 2 Samuel said, since (as Martin Luther put it) the devil is “God’s devil.” He can only color within the lines drawn for him by the Almighty, as the book of Job makes clear. Satan has no more power than the Lord allows him, and ultimately, he can do nothing other than what the Lord has purposed from the beginning (Gen. 50:20).

Together, these passages make an important theological point: the Lord is ultimately in control of all temptations that come to us—and of those to which we give in. In Luke 22:31–32, Jesus told Peter that Satan desired to sift him like wheat—that is, to subject Peter to severe temptation. However, Jesus prayed for Peter—not that he wouldn’t be tempted or wouldn’t sin, but that his temptation and failure would not destroy his faith. Satan comes against us like a roaring lion who seems ready to swallow us alive (1 Peter 5:8). But he has no more power over us than he has been given, and God’s grace is sufficient for us in the midst of our failure, just as it was for David. God is able to enhance His own glory and our good even through our greatest sins, which He uses to humble us and make us more grateful for the gospel. That is good news for great sinners like us.

Jesus tells us to pray for deliverance from the evil one. But how does Satan influence us as Christians? Today, W. Robert Godfrey considers how the temptation of the devil manifests itself in our lives and reminds us of the hope we have in the midst of our enemy's attacks.

the end of the age, when after a brief uprising by Satan, the final judgment takes place (20:7–11). That means that the evil one is bound from deceiving the nations until just before the conclusion of salvation history.

Why, then, does Revelation use the expression a thousand years? In terms of biblical numbers, ten represents fullness, and a thousand is ten times ten times ten, hence fullness times fullness times fullness. It seems to equal a vast number of years without being a precise chronology of human history. Nowhere else does Scripture limit the binding of Satan and the success of the church's mission to a specific period of time before the end of the age. Moreover, there are other places in Scripture where the word thousand is used without being a literal number. In Psalm 50 this same number is employed in a different context, where it says that God owns "the cattle on a thousand hills" (v. 10). This could not mean that the only thing God owns in His creation is one thousand hills, for "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (24:1). It is an expression for fullness. It is the same in Psalm 68:17, where the chariots of God are said to be "twice ten thousand." It is highly unlikely that God has only twenty thousand active angels at his behest, for Christ on the cross could have called down twelve legions of angels (Matt. 26:53), which is far more than twenty thousand. The message in Psalms 50 and 68 is one of fullness, and it is the same in Revelation 20. One day, the fullness of the elect will be brought into the church, and then the end will come. It is not a matter of literally one thousand years, but of God's secret timing as to the gathering of His people into union with Christ, however long that may take from our human perspective.

Although the evil one still has limited power in a fallen world, it is far less than what he had when he was able to bind and blind all nations outside Israel. And believers can still overcome even Satan's limited power, for James 4:7 commands us, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Revelation 12:11 testifies of the embattled saints that "they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony." Hence, on the foundational truth of Satan's having been bound from blinding the nations, the church may daily pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10), and find comfort in God's assurance: "Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession" (Ps. 2:8).

for eighteen years” (Luke 13:11, 16), we have no warrant for directly attributing all physical illness to satanic or demonic activity. There are those who have claimed that demons are responsible for every affliction, disease, or aberration, but the American theologian Augustus Strong was on safer ground when we wrote, “We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency only when this is a matter of special revelation.”

What of demon possession?

There are several New Testament instances of this (for example, Mark 1:23). Liberals have suggested that the Bible was merely reflecting contemporary ideas, or that Jesus was indulgently accommodating people’s beliefs, while others have assumed that demon possession was limited to biblical times, and especially to the time when Jesus was on earth, directly opposing the work of Satan. But all these ideas fly in the face of facts. There is no evidence that the work of Satan or his agents has lessened in intensity as the centuries have passed; in fact, a case could be made for saying the opposite.

In cases of demon possession, the personality of the person concerned is eclipsed by the demon, so that demonic personality is what is revealed. Can a Christian be demon-possessed? There is limited anecdotal evidence that in certain circumstances Christians have been subject to intense demonic attack, but we need to give full weight to the Bible’s assurance that as far as the believer is concerned “the evil one does not touch him” (1 John 5:18). The word translated “touch” here means “grasp, so as to detain,” and it is matched by Jesus’ assurance that as far as believers are concerned “no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:29). When our doctrine is determined by Scripture rather than by mere emotions, experiences, or clinical case studies, it is clear that a true believer cannot be possessed by the forces of evil.

We must also beware of what Martyn Lloyd-Jones called “capitulation to phenomena,” especially in the area of exorcism, when it is clear from Matthew 7:22–23 that even the casting out of evil spirits does not guarantee the person doing so a place in heaven! The need, as in all our living, preaching, and counselling, is to focus on Christ.

Even this whirlwind overview of the subject is inevitably sobering, but when viewed through the lens of Scripture, we can be assured of two things. Firstly, neither the Devil nor his demons are independent, omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. Their power and influence, in time and extent, is limited by the permissive will of God, who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). Secondly, Jesus made it clear that their ultimate fate is to be cast into “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).

It is the nature of Satan to be deceptive. Scripture says he has been a liar from the beginning. His first appearance in Scripture comes under the guise of a serpent. The credentials of this malevolent creature are announced in his introduction: "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" (Gen. 3:1).

These words fall as a sudden intrusion into an otherwise glorious account of God's majestic work of creation. With the words "Now the serpent," the whole atmosphere of the biblical record changes dramatically. A sudden and ominous sense of foreboding enters the narrative. An uninspired author of Genesis 3 may have introduced the record of the fall by saying, "It was a dark and stormy day." But such hackneyed prose would have failed to yield the foreboding dread contained in the words "Now the serpent was more cunning."

Cunning. Craftiness. Subtlety. Guile. These are the descriptive qualifiers that paint the biblical portrait of Satan.

Satan is powerful. He is more powerful than we are. That is why we desperately need the armor of God. But as powerful as he is, he is far less powerful than God. That is why the Bible declares that greater is He who is in you (the Holy Spirit) than he who is in the world (Satan) (1 John 4:4). Satan’s darts are quenchable; God’s are not. You can flee the presence of Satan; you cannot flee the presence of God.

We must be wary of Satan’s right and left fists. He is a kick-boxer as well. Just when we shield ourselves from his hands, he cheats and uses his feet. Here his guile is most effective.

One characteristic of Satan is his metamorphic power. He has the cunning and uncanny ability to appear under the auspices of good. He can transform himself into the appearance of an angel of light. You don’t find him so much in the Saddam Husseins of this world. He is not so crass. He appears as a saint, a paragon of virtue, waiting to seduce you.

He is, above all, a fraud. His work is anti-Christ not merely in the sense of working against Christ but in the sense of seeking to act as a substitute for Christ.

The good news about Satan is this: his doom is sure, and one little word will fell him.

I once asked a college philosophy class, "How many of you believe in God?" Out of thirty students, twenty-seven raised their hands in the affirmative; three abstained.

Then I asked, "How many of you believe in Satan as a personal reality?" This time the vote was reversed.

I pursued my inquiry. I asked, "Why do you believe in a supernatural being who has the capacity to influence us for good (God) and not in a supernatural personal being who has the capacity to influence us for evil (Satan)?" Their answers indicated that the Devil they were rejecting was what they perceived to be a nonexistent mythical caricature.

Many qualified their positions by saying, "I do believe in the reality of an impersonal force of evil in the world." I found this response fascinating. I asked them, "How can an impersonal force be evil?"

What is this mysterious impersonal force? Cosmic dust? Radioactivity? Impersonal objects, forces, or powers can be many things. One thing they cannot be is morally evil. Here the attempt to be modern and sophisticated becomes an exercise in intellectual regression.

The book of Job begins by introducing us to its three most significant characters: Job, Satan, and God. In this lesson, Dr. Thomas explores the difficulty of Job's suffering, Satan's involvement, and God's sovereignty.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph. 6:11). This exhortation falls in a section where Paul is addressing the need for frontline engagement in spiritual warfare as a necessary and persistent feature of the normal Christian life. Life in union with Christ is one that encounters hostility and opposition from three directions—the world, the flesh, and the devil. Here, it is the devil that is view.

As a prisoner in “chains,” Paul was surrounded by Roman soldiers (Eph.  3:1; 4:1; 6:20). And the Ephesian Christians, living as they did in the Roman Empire, probably thought of Roman soldiers when Paul referenced the various aspects of armor and weaponry in this famous passage at the close of the epistle (6:11–20).

As Christians, we find ourselves at war with the devil, because he is at war with us. As the “adversary” (the meaning of Satan), he hates God and everything God is doing. Since we were once his children (see John 8:44, “you are of your father the devil”) and under his dominion, his rage boils now that we are delivered from the kingdom/domain of darkness into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col. 1:13). The moment we believed, we were no longer his, and he is desperate to recapture us.

The fact is, he cannot snatch away those who are held in Jesus’ grip (John 10:28–29). But how do we know that we are in Jesus’ grip? The consistent answer of the New Testament is that we know through and not despite our perseverance. The electing purposes of God do not work themselves out “above our heads” but through our persistent persevering in the ways of godliness.

Satan or “the devil” has “wiles”—schemes and ploys to cause us to falter and halt our perseverance. One of these is to speak evil against us (as the label devil, which means “slanderer,” suggests), making us out to be worse than we think and therefore unworthy to be called Christians. This Satan does a great deal, but he overplays, as John Bunyan so brilliantly illustrates in The Pilgrim’s Progress. There, Apollyon (“destroyer,” another name for the devil; Rev. 9:11) mockingly berates Christian for the tardiness of his profession of faith. In short, he is a hypocrite. Christian responds:

We are much worse than we ever confess, but the gospel is for sinners. Christian, get to know this wily ploy of Satan’s—and stand firm in the gospel.

All human beings will experience suffering of one kind or another in their life. And almost all human beings will at some point wonder why. In this lecture, Dr. Derek Thomas looks at the root cause of all suffering in sin and the Fall. Particular attention will be given to what the book of Job teaches us about the suffering of the saints.

Arrogantly, many in the Corinthian church called into question not only the authority of the Apostle Paul and the wisdom of the cross (1 Cor. 5:1–2) but also the old covenant Scriptures. We see this in their toleration of a sexual relationship between a member of the church and his stepmother (1 Cor. 5:1; see Lev. 18:8). The solution, in light of the man’s presumed impenitence, is his excommunication or being cast out of the church (v. 2).

Paul gives the Corinthian church instructions on how to do this in today’s passage. First, he tells the church that he is present in spirit and has already made a prophetic judgment on the matter. He is probably responding to those who, as part of their questioning his authority, had been accusing him of abandoning them. Paul’s response to this is that although he had been absent in body, he had nonetheless been truly present with them. The idea here seems to be that because believers have been united to Christ by faith (see 1 Cor. 6:17), they are actually together, spiritually speaking, whenever the church gathers. Christ has said that He is present when the church gathers in His name (Matt. 18:20), and if we are truly made one with Him, there must be a sense that we are present wherever He is present even if not physically. This is confirmed by texts such as Hebrews 12:18–24, where we read that believers on earth enter the heavenly assembly of departed saints to worship the Lord. The only way this could happen is through our union with Christ by the Holy Spirit, which places us wherever Christ is, even if this presence is not discernible to our five senses.

Second, Paul says that he has made a prophetic judgment that the man should be excommunicated (1 Cor. 5:3). According to the standards of cutting off the sexually immoral in Israel (Lev. 18), Paul has exercised his Apostolic authority to excommunicate the man. So, when the church gathers in Paul’s physical absence, this excommunication is to be carried out, for the Apostle is there among them and they are present to affirm the decision (1 Cor. 5:4–5).

In excommunication, the church will be delivering the man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh (v. 5). God’s blessed domain is the church, and outside the church is the kingdom of darkness (see Col. 1:13–14). Effectively, the church will return the man to citizenship in the fallen world so that he will suffer outside God’s blessing, see his error, and return to Christ in repentance for his sin.

John Chrysostom, one of the most important early church fathers and a celebrated preacher, draws our attention to an important fact regarding 2 Corinthians 2:5–11. Commenting on the Apostle’s reference to the man who sinned against Paul, Chrysostom notes the significance of Paul’s silence concerning the nature of the transgression. Chrysostom says, “Paul nowhere mentions the crime, because the time had now come to forgive.” This is an important aspect of forgiveness: when we truly forgive an offender, we do not again and again remind people of the sinner’s misdeed. As Proverbs 17:9 tells us, “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.”

In not bringing up a sinner’s wickedness again and again once that person has repented, we show that we are not holding his transgression against him any longer, which is the essence of forgiveness. That is what the Lord does with our sins when He pardons us. He casts our sins “into the depths of the sea” (Mic. 7:19)­—not that God actually forgets our wicked deeds, but He puts them so far away that He will not rehash them with us, much as casting something into the depths of the sea keeps us from retrieving it again.

However, at the time Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, the church at Corinth was not operating by this principle of forgiveness. They continued to hold the sins of the man who opposed Paul against him, keeping him from fellowship with the church. Paul had written them a previous letter, telling them to discipline the man, and they had acted on his words. But they had gone too far and were failing to reconcile, which is the proper goal of church discipline. Now it was time to act in love and restore the man to fellowship (2 Cor. 2:5–8; see Matt. 18:15–20).

The Corinthians had obeyed Paul’s harsher letter of reproof and had disciplined the man. Lovingly restoring the man to fellowship would be their new act of obedience (2 Cor. 2:9–10). This forgiveness would keep them from being “outwitted by Satan” (v. 11). The idea here seems to be that Satan wants to sow discord among believers, and what better way to do it than to set forgiven sinners such as the congregation in Corinth against forgiven sinners such as the penitent man and any of his friends in the church who would be looking for his full restoration? When we do not forgive and restore professing believers who have repented, we risk giving the devil a foothold in our churches.

Old Testament images fill the book of Revelation. For example, the woman in Revelation 12 recalls Old Testament depictions of Israel (Gen. 37:9; Isa. 54:1; Mic. 4:9–10). But these images do not necessarily appear to the exclusion of other images taken from the pagan culture of John’s day. For instance, some pagan myths also involved a woman giving birth to a god or an emperor who defeated a dragon. That the woman gives birth to Jesus in Revelation is a powerful message for first-century pagans—the great God or emperor whom you seek is actually Jesus, who was crucified and rose again from the dead. All others are merely pretenders.

We have seen that the vision in Revelation 12 explains the spiritual realities behind the suffering of God’s people. First, Satan attempted to destroy the male child—Jesus the Messiah—but He conquered death and ascended to heaven, where He is reigning at God’s right hand (vv. 1–5). We will see that Satan’s failure to defeat Christ has led him to pursue the woman—God’s faithful people—instead (v. 13). Before we look at that, however, we must consider today’s passage.

Revelation 12:7–9 describes a battle in heaven between Michael, the archangel, and his angels against the dragon, Satan, and his angels. Satan loses this battle, and he and his angels are thrown down to earth (see also Dan. 10). This battle parallels the devil’s failure to destroy Jesus, giving us a picture of what happened as a result of our Lord’s person and work. In sum, Satan suffered a decisive defeat. He was cast out of heaven, where he once accused God’s people (Job 1–2). To put it another way, the atonement of Jesus has rendered forever void Satan’s accusations that we should be punished eternally for our sin, for now we are clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ and reckoned as saints (2 Cor. 5:21).

The call to praise found in Revelation 12:10–12 confirms this. Christ has dealt the death blow to Satan, and though he continues to fight against Christ’s people, we overcome him by the blood of the Lamb (the work of Christ) and our testimony (the gospel of God that saves us). This overcoming occurs as we cling to Jesus, not renouncing Him when we are persecuted. Therefore, may what Matthew Henry says about the saints in today’s passage be true of us as well: “When the love of life stood in competition with their loyalty to Christ; they loved not their lives so well but they could give them up to death, could lay them down in Christ’s cause.”

For one thousand years, Satan is bound “so that he might not deceive the nations” (Rev. 20:1–3). If, as we have argued, this binding coincides with the church age—the entire period between the first and second comings of Christ—then the number “thousand” clearly refers to a long, indeterminate (to us) era and not a literal span of one thousand years. Viewing the thousand years as a metaphor for a long period of time is in keeping with texts such as 2 Peter 3:8. It is also worth noting that in Revelation 12:14, the interadvental period of the church age is three and a half years. Again, we see the flexible use of symbolism and numbers in Revelation. These alternate numbers tell us on the one hand that the church age will be much longer than we might expect (a thousand years) but that it is also short (three and a half years)—that is, from God’s perspective.

Today’s passage tells us that at the end of this era between the first and second comings of Jesus, Satan will be released from his bondage to deceive the nations and to gather them one last time for battle against God and His people (20:7–10). John is taking us back to other scenes of the final conflict and judgment in texts such as 6:12–17; 17:11–18; and 19:11–21. Whether we take the amillennial, postmillennial, or even premillennial interpretation of Revelation 20, then, it seems that we should expect an increase of wickedness and attack on the church just before Jesus consummates His kingdom. As no one knows the day or hour of this return (Matt. 24:36), however, we cannot say for certain whether the present spread of evil means that Jesus is about to return. He could come today, tomorrow, or a thousand years from now. All we can do is be ready today. For all we know, His second coming in glory could be at hand.

Satan’s final act is to deceive the nations and lead them against the church of Christ (Rev. 20:7–10). The human enemies of God’s people are named “Gog and Magog” in Revelation 20:8, which recalls Ezekiel 38–39, where “Gog, of the land of Magog” leads one last assault on the people of Israel. We likely should not identify Gog and Magog as specific nations, for the language is symbolic. Instead, we see these nations as the counterfeit people of God; their number “is like the sand of the sea” (Rev. 20:8), just as Abraham’s descendants were to be that numerous (Gen. 22:17). But this evil army, which has Satan and not Christ at its head, will be defeated (Rev. 20:9–10).