The Dragon’s Pursuit and Binding of Satan
The basic characters and events symbolized by Revelation 12 are actually not that difficult to grasp. As to the characters,
The woman is the church (vv. 1-2).
The dragon is Satan (vv. 3, 9).
The third of the stars are the rest of the fallen angels (vv. 4, 9).
The child born to rule all nations is Christ (v. 5).
The rest of the woman’s offspring is the church in this age (v. 17).
And as to the events depicted, note that there is a two (or three) part structure:
(i.) Verses 1 through 6 take us from the initial fall of the devil, to the First Advent of Christ, to the “church age.”
(ii.) Verses 7 through 12 raise us up to the war in heaven, in which the devil is defeated and cast out of heaven.
(iii.) Verses 13 through 17 chronicles the flight of the woman from the dragon in the time in between Christ’s first and second coming.
“Location” Difficulties Answered
What I am calling a “location” difficulty is a more general category. Eschatological difficulties will, to some degree, exist within this category. That is because at least part of the eschatological difficulties confuse categories of location. I use the word location here somewhat loosely to signify position. The trouble is that we think of positions mainly as spatial positions. We are not unaware that there are other kinds of positions. For example, there are positions of authority. At one’s place of work, one can be promoted to a higher position or rank or, in other words, a greater role of authority. There are also positions of opportunity. One can speak of being in a better or worse position to finish a course with a high grade or a candidate to run for office. More colloquially, we also speak of positions of propriety and health, as, for example, an inferior talking “out of place,” or a struggling soul being “in a bad place.” In each of these contexts, no one would take the speaker to mean that the referenced person was physically or spatially transported from one location to another.
When it comes to the devil and his demons, we too easily assume that the biblical contrasts between his appearances in heaven and on earth must follow a sequential-locational pattern. This misreading is further exacerbated by the popular conception of heaven’s location “up there.” As to which way is “up,” given the spherical nature of the earth, none have given a satisfactory answer. Do not misunderstand. Heaven is a real realm. Indeed it is more real than our world. Let me go further and say, it is what makes our world so real. Our world is actually more illusory to the exact degree that we divorce it from heaven. I am only pointing out that heaven is not such a quarantined material realm in which “in heaven” and “down” have spatial travels and material obstacles as their primary sense. It is much more like those other kinds of positions that we use in our language every day.
The fact that Satan reported in Job 1 that he was “going to and fro on the earth” (v. 7) and then “came among them” (v. 6) ought to be a clue that the state of being “up” and being “down” is relative. Heaven is “above” us in a majestic sense when the Scripture draws special attention to God’s habitation there; yet heaven is also “above” us in a transcendent sense in every case. One of its other aims, aside from highlighting divine majesty, is to provide a glimpse of the seat of ultimate spiritual war. Heaven is all around us. It permeates the world. There is no outer boundary of the world such that a solitary speck of heaven is on “its outside.” That heaven and earth are divorced with the fall may be compared to the unreconciled state of God and the sinner. The sinner is alienated from God, and yet there is nowhere in which the sinner can escape His presence (Ps. 139:7-9). There was never a time, after the fall of Lucifer, in which Satan was not a combatant there—the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2)—or in which he and his demons were not routinely summoned there to be ordered on the divine leash.
That he was (apparently) several times cast down references some loss of position, authority, control, etc. So in the beginning, when the dragon swept down the third of the angels (Rev. 12:4), this may be linked to the curse of the serpent in which he is sentenced to crawl on his belly. But one should understand that as a metaphor. The spiritual creature called Satan is not relegated to be an actual, biological snake, much less all snakes. When Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:7), one of two things may be occurring. Either our Lord is encouraging His disciples with what He had already seen at the beginning, or else, given that this realm need not correspond directly to earthly time anyway, it may refer to the decisive work of Christ that Revelation 12 looks backward and upward upon.
Eschatological Difficulties Answered
The position I have been defending—at least with respect to the meaning of the thousand years in Revelation 20—is the Amillennialist view. Now 1 John 5:19 tell us that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” At first, this becomes another part of the same tension. How can Satan have been bound at the First Advent and then John make this statement right afterwards? A false dilemma emerges for many at this point. The dilemma may be concisely stated:
“Either Satan is bound or the world is under the power of the evil one.”
Recall that we are not simply reconciling the devil cast down from Revelation 12 with other “downward” or “upward” motions, but also showing the harmony of this casting down of Revelation 12 with the casting down, and binding up, of Revelation 20.
Reconciling the second half of Revelation 12 and the first part of Revelation 20 has other texts to consider. It can be difficult to judge the time of the view on earth in what is clearly the “A.D.” period (Rev. 12:7-17). It seems to connect “he knows that his time is short” (v. 12) with the defeat at the First Advent; and even granting the broad New Testament use of eschatological time words—e.g. last, end, short, soon—why does it wait till the end of the whole section to finally mention the rest of the offspring (v. 17)? That is a fair question. However, the shift from the woman to her special Offspring, the Christ, to the rest of the offspring can easily lose track of the fact that she is more of a metaphor than either offspring. She is literally a singular; but she is figuratively a plural—a group of people.
She is the church and always has been in the broad view; it is only in the narrow view of those decades of the first century that “she” may also be referenced to Mary. Since the woman represents the church in general throughout, the fact that her relationship to the child is repeated in verse 13 does not mean that John is backtracking, or still speaking of the First Advent. It is more like a relative pronoun. It just showing that it is the same woman being discussed. This is a statement of her state throughout the “church age.” It says,
But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time (v. 14).
From this, we can rightly infer that the offspring are already included, as she is a figure for the spiritual Jerusalem anyway (Gal. 4:26). It is all Christians who are “into the wilderness” in this way.
Objection 1. If the devil being cast down is linked (by Amillennialism) to his being bound—that is, at the First Advent—then, how is it that his being cast to the earth seems to initiate his ravaging of the church or world (vv. 12, 13)?
Reply to Obj. 1. Of Revelation 20, we are given four adequate markers: First, to be cast down is principally his loss of authoritative position over the nations (v. 3). Christ has now purchased them as His heritage (Ps. 2:8). Second, to be bound is equally metaphorical, restricting his capacity to “deceive the nations” (v. 3). Third, this demotion and restriction is limited for a period called “a thousand years” (vv. 2, 4). Fourth, at the end of this period, Satan is release “for a time,” a time unspecified (v. 4).
The problem for some is nothing other than resolving how Satan could do any evil “under” such a restriction. This tension already exists between God’s sovereignty and the prevalence of evil, in general; and so this is nothing but the same dilemma applied to the eschatological realm. But we can offer a more specific and thorough response.
The Binding and Loosing of Satan
We ought to first take inventory of our assumptions about the spiritual realm. Are we quite sure that we are not being a little too selective in which portions we want to reserve as symbolic and which parts must be literal and thus have many literal implications? As it is with the supposedly geographical or locational movements of Satan up and down, and back again, so it is with the accommodations of those spiritual beings under differing kinds and degrees of judgment.
Are heaven and the “gloomy darkness” in which demons are said to be bound (2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6) even “beyond” the reach of our world? Again, we have the same faulty assumption of a “two-tiered” geography dividing the heavenly-spiritual realm and the earthly-material realm.
Even more generally, on the level of hermeneutics, have we considered the figurative nature of the imagery? We are presented with this finished picture to consider. It brings together our two layers of figurative speech.
1. The imagery of being cast out is spatial; but Satan is not a spatial being.
2. The imagery of chains is physical; but Satan is not a physical being.
I have always found it helpful to use the analogy of the mob boss giving orders from prison. He is no longer free to run the streets and oversee his whole city. But there is loyalty and habit and, after all, he is still alive in that prison cell, ruling by a residual fear. He sends letters. He receives contraband. He makes threats. Those on the outside that no of no higher power cannot tell if he will escape and make good on his threats. It is still the air over which he is prince. While he and his minions are banished from the courts over the nations that have embraced Christ, their malevolent signals still deceive, tempt, and accuse, and throne by throne, they seek a footing back in, like Worm-tongues lulling those earthly Theodins to sleep, who once stood in a line of Christian princes.
In other words, the objection also ignores the concept of rank among the demons. In order to argue conclusively that this binding restricts demonic activity in total, one would have to demonstrate that all demonic powers are as totally restricted as Satan is said to be (which conception is already dubious), perhaps arguing from 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 about the chains of the demons.
The argument from the imagery proves too much. Simply flip the same coin over on the 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 texts. If being in such chains necessitates the non-existence of their evil actions, then, logically, only two options are open to us: (1) These are only some demons being discussed and not all—the others are the ones who commit evil acts in the present age; or else (2) These are all, and yet this does not prohibit their evil activity in total. In either case, the entire objection is overthrown.
The Difficulties of the Other Views are Far-Surpassing
Binding and Loosing Satan in Premillennialism
Either Satan loosed while Christ is already on earth—Christ is depicted as returning from heaven to destroy all His enemies (2 Thess. 1:5-10; 2 Pet. 3:10-12; Rev. 19:11-21)—or else, Christ returns to heaven, then comes back again. Such is not impossible; but this would imply a deceiving of the nations (Rev. 20:7) that are presently being ruled by Christ. And though this fits better with Christ defeating His enemies in a return from heaven, nowhere in Scripture is there a suggestion of a second second coming to earth.
Binding and Loosing Satan in Postmillennialism
Either the binding does not coincide with Christ’s First Advent—Posmillennialists will typically agree with Amillennialists that it does in some way, which really becomes the key—or, if it does, then the initiation of the kingdom does not coincide with the devil’s binding. The realization of the kingdom talked about by the postmillennialist is one that must be initialized far after the resurrection and ascension. In one sense, these are less awkward problems than those within premillennialism, but it does unhinge the earthly manifestation of Christ’s reign from the spiritual center of gravity in Christ’s ascension and the devil’s defeat.
Binding and Loosing Satan in the more Modern Gnostic-Pietistic Amillennialism
Remember that there is a brand of Amillennialism that divides the spiritual reign from the kingdom’s advance through history. In this view, the binding of Satan is more or less the mirror of Christ’s protection of the church’s spirituality. As Christ’s rule is purely spiritual over the church’s internal governance and the piety of believers, so Satan’s defeat releases their souls from his spiritual bondage. But those are the limits.
It is precisely the loosing of Satan that can explain the more intense aspects of the picture of Revelation 12. So Satan’s opposition can be constant, building, and then come to an intensified ultimate version toward the end. That brings up one final consideration that is seldom entertained. What if the unprecedented demonic activity in the world around us is no anomaly of the chains to be explained, but is rather exactly what we would all expect once those chains have been released? In other words, since John did not specify in Revelation 20 exactly what he meant by that “for a time” in between the unbinding of Satan and the return of Christ, well, I will leave it to the reader to ask they have seldom heard that question asked by the sensationalists in pulpits and publishing.
