# Current state of Satan within the amillennial framework- Loosed or Bound?



## pilgrimmum (May 15, 2021)

Revelations 20 describes the beginning of the Gospel Era where Satan is BOUND by a mighty Angel a 1000 yrs FROM DECEIVING THE NATIONS.. This 1000 yrs symbolizes the reign of Jesus Christ on the earth from the time of His Resurrection and ascension and the spread of the Gospel to all the nations of the earth. I believe we are in the "SHORT SEASON" of Satan having been LOOSED and are now experiencing his satanic chaos in the world.. To me this is exceedingly obvious. Satan was bound in order for the nations to be evangelized and become Christian. By nations becoming Christian I mean their leaders, constitutions and monarchies taking on Biblical Christianity and it's principles, laws and statutes as their foundation for their governments, societies and churches. This is also exceedingly obvious to me that this happened during the course of the last 2000 years of the reign of Christ. Of course not every member of those nations may be Christian but that is not what the text says. It says "the nations ( Gk ethnos). Also the Holy Roman Empire does not count for the Christianizing of the Nations as it persecuted to death most true Christians. Celtic and Ancient Christianity besides many other Christian groups were alive and well during the Dark Ages ( .....rumble of the Revisionists I hear) 

During Satan's short season of being loosed he will go out to DECEIVE the NATIONS once more! This I observe is EXCEEDINGLY OBVIOUS! The NATIONS are being EXCEEDINGLY DECEIVED. Wow how blind can one be not to see that! Christians who are bemoaning our status and looking to the latest book, sermon or leader to point the way should look to the scriptures for clarity as well to the current state of affairs which is absolutely ghastly! When Satan during this short season goes out to gather the enemies of God to come up on the breadth of the earth ( Rev 20"7-9) and surround the Camp of the Saints, Fire shall come down from heaven from God and shall destroy them! Jesus Christ will then return with the host of heaven and the sound of the trumpet and the voice of the archangel and we shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye ( new bodies) and shall be caught up to the Lord, The Christian dead will be raised too with new bodies to be with the Lord. The heavens shall be rolled back like a scroll and the earth shall be burnt up with fire ( 2 Peter 3) and a new heaven and a new earth created and the judgment will begin of all the dead. The righteous shall go into eternal life and the unsaved into the Lake of Fire along with the devil and his angels, hell, the grave and death. The New Jerusalem, our dwelling place forever descends upon the New Earth. There shall be no more sun or moon or sea and God and the Lamb will be the the LIGHT of this new earth. Death and tears and sad memories will be gone forever. So when you see these things we now see happening ie. Satans loosing LOOK UP dear
Christian for your REDEMPTION draws near!

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## Ryan&Amber2013 (May 15, 2021)

I like how you have thought through what you believe and have made sense of it in a real way. That's really neat!


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## Scottish Presbyterian (May 15, 2021)

I dont think Satan has been bound thus far such that he could deceive the nations no more. Many, perhaps most of the nations have continued to be deceived for the past 2000 years. The Christianisation of laws, constitutions, leaders and monarchies was: a, very imperfect, b, very brief, and c, very localised (to a small handful of European nations, arguably just 2). Satan has been deceiving, for example, India for the past 2000 years (and very many other nations could have been named as examples).

Further, the examples you cite of true Christianity under the reign of Antichrist in the middle ages, were small, persecuted remnants, not sweeping movements giving grounds to think that Satan had been bound to deceive the nations no more.

I'm Post-millennial, and I sincerely believe this binding of Satan you speak of will occur in the future and doubtless have roughly the effects you describe, only I can't possibly look at history and say it has occurred already.

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## Scottish Presbyterian (May 15, 2021)

To add, because I know you are speaking to those of an amillennial persuasion, amillennial thought typically places the binding of Satan at one of two points, either the death/resurrection/ascension of Christ, or at the very end of the world (the period of Satan being bound being eternity in the second view). Those of the first view typically dont look for evidence of the nations not being deceived any more beyond the bare fact of the gospel being preached to the Gentiles. The main reason for this is that history would have by now long since disproved that view if they made the not deceiving the nations mean any more than that.

I am no expert on amil thought though, so if I've gone way off the rails, I'm sure someone will be along to tell us what amils actually believe on this topic.


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## pilgrimmum (May 16, 2021)

Ryan&Amber2013 said:


> I like how you have thought through what you believe and have made sense of it in a real way. That's really neat!


Thanks! Do you hold to any particular view regarding Revelations 20?


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## pilgrimmum (May 16, 2021)

Ryan&Amber2013 said:


> I like how you have thought through what you believe and have made sense of it in a real way. That's really neat!


Thanks! I just follow the scriptures really. What do you believe about Rev 20?


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## Ed Walsh (May 16, 2021)

pilgrimmum said:


> Thanks! I just follow the scriptures really. What do you believe about Rev 20?



I think Revelation is still a closed book for the most part. Parts for the Revelation remind me of Daniel 11 (and 12) which were totally hidden from Daniel's contemporaries in 6th-century bc. Until that is, history revealed the meaning to the faithful and wise Jews during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanies after 175± BC.


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## lynnie (May 16, 2021)

I loved your post. I am amil obviously. I believe the binding of Satan, when Jesus spoke of binding the strong man, happened 2000 years ago. The Greek for the term bound/bind from what I've read is the same for both ( ie Jesus' time on earth and Rev 20). There does seem to be a significant global Christianization that has eroded.

That does not mean Satan is unloosed. I think people could say there is still evangelism going on and many people still getting saved, and the terrible time of the unloosing is future. But I agree with you in an intuitive, prayer burden sort of way that can't be proven and is perhaps more "newspaper theology" than biblical exegesis. My husband who is quasi post mil but slides back into his 40 years of amil now and then ( they both have a good theological basis) cautions me that things can get much much worse. But the era of human sacrifice before Christ seems to have come back in the form of abortion.

One thing that has affected my thinking is that my son married a girl years ago whose father spent his life in private nuclear waste disposal. He is retired now, near the Savannah River plant, where they turned plutonium waste into a glass like slurry and encased it in steel drums to try and keep it out of ground water. He is one of the top ten people in the world for exposure to gamma radiation who is still alive, and he probably should be dead. He credits his life now entire to the Lord sustaining and healing him. 

Anyway, according to him, Fukushima is an extinction level event. The endless stream of ground water through the core into the Pacific is a steady stream of radiated water, that will spread to all the oceans and also evaporate and rain down. A gradual build up of DNA mutations and cancers and diseases will kill off all life. Unless the postmil vision sees some way to stop it and fix it, which currently does not exist ( I've read that other countries have offered to try and been rejected by the Japanese government) our time is measured in decades, not centuries. There is still time for a glorious post mil period before that extinction scenario, and of course a way to stop gamma radiation and its effects could be discovered as well, but overall I'm with you OP. 

Thinking we are at the final time of Rev 20 drives me to prayer for the lost like nothing else, so even if we are wrong, at least it leads to fervent intercession. Thanks for the post!!


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## Jerusalem Blade (May 16, 2021)

Hello @pilgrimmum,

Here's something from the respected amil commentator, William Hendriksen, discussing Rev 20:7-10,

“. . . the era during which the church as a mighty missionary organization shall be able to spread the gospel everywhere is not going to last forever; not even until the moment of Christ’s second coming. Observe what is happening in certain countries even today. *Are certain regions of this earth already entering Satan’s little season?*” [emphasis added] (_More Than Conquerors_, pp 194-195)​
Note that he wrote this around 1962! _Were he writing today almost 60 years later he would no doubt express himself far more strongly_. We are being slaughtered in so many countries around the globe, and the “civilized” West appears to be gearing up for a massive dealing of the “problem of Christians” and their “witness” – which many can see, though it has been slow coming. It may well be speeding up.

Some thoughts on the binding of Satan in Rev 20:1,2,3 – Satan was originally bound by the word of the Lord Jesus (Matt 12:28-29), and his power over humankind was utterly broken at the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus (Heb 2:14; Col 2:15). After the Holy Spirit was given to the church at Pentecost and the preaching of the Gospel of the victorious Christ began to spread throughout the earth in the power of the almighty Spirit of God, the powers of darkness began to recede as the binding of Satan was made effectual across the earth. The nations – as national entities – were not under the deception and thrall of the evil one and his hordes, although individuals within those nations _could_ be deceived.

So when is the "little season" of Satan's loosing to begin? I think, along with Hendriksen's surmise, it _has_ started, and will progress as the antichrist spirit working throughout the world's various cultures prohibit the witness of the Christians, nation by nation, that is, silence the preaching of the Gospel – meaning, it shall be outlawed. And the wicked in the respective cultures – civilians – will be glad to aid it by their grass-roots violence against the saints. And God will be sending judgments against such persecutions.

Paul wrote – speaking of the _final_ Antichrist that he shall be revealed in the last time (2 Thess 2:6,7,8); with his winsome boldness – for the wicked in the world's cultures shall love him – his reviling Christ, God, and the people of God, lauding the new immorality and the throwing off of the Law of God (Psa 2:1,2,3), ushering in the "strong delusion" that shall grip the nations of the world – from princes to peasants – to assault the church world-wide, in the midst of which horror (Zech 14:2,3) the LORD shall return to rescue His Bride, call them up to Himself in the clouds (Rev 11:9,10,11,12; 1 Thess 5:16,17,18), after which He shall wreak vengeance on those who hurt His beloved (Rev 19:11-21). A thing about the Antichrist, it does appear he shall arise from within the professing church (2 Thess 2:3-4), yet have political power; so we need to keep our eyes open. 

Another cameo of this scene:

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever (Rev 20:-7-10).​
We already see – particularly in these United States – with the increasing legalization of recreational grass, a surge of both random violence and craziness everywhere, as well as a loosening of the very foundations civilized society – an ill wind blowing across the earth, emanating from the abyss. And then we have the Old Grey Lady (the New York Times) and its sisters continuing their long promotion of the stronger psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin (magic) mushrooms, DMT, MDMA, mescaline, for their purported "therapeutic" value – which is how marijuana got its foot in the door; after all if it's good as a medicine, it must be basically harmless – seeing these developments we might expect even more palpable evil in the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist.

But putting on the spiritual lenses, we see the barrier between the human and the demonic realm breached through this modern phenomena of recreational sorcery, whereby the spirit of the Abyss lifts his gruesome and malign head, and fills the collective human consciousness with his wild madness and rage against the Holy One.

The timeline I do not know, whether it be a few years, or a few decades. The players also, I do not know for sure if America is that Babylon to be destroyed earlier than the rest of the world (if you see the government shedding the blood of the Christians - Rev 17:6, that will be a sign she is), and if so, will its "beasthood" be instantly transferred to another political entity, say, in Europe or China (political sovereignty may be transferred overnight, as was the case with the Medo-Persian empire under Cyrus conquering Chaldean Babylon in one night).

This I do know, we are privileged to be alive in these times, to be the LORD's people at the end of days. True, our mettle will be tried, and we have to go to the Lord our King and Guide, admitting our poverty of spirit, and rest in His grace, care, and presence.

Personally, I don't know if I'll be in this country or in Cyprus in the next year – I have citizenship in both – and if we can't sell our home we can't move there (I've been asked to return and co-pastor the Church I planted in Cyprus in 2006). Oddly, I am at peace in this situation – I can rest in the Lord's providence – as His plans are better than mine. Though if we are to remain in this land we need to be joined to a sound church here.

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