Is Satan Bound Today?

BibleBB ^ | Mike Vlach

[irishtenor]

Here is a question for you... Do you believe that Christians can be demon possessed?

[anncoulteriscool]

This is a really good website. Alot of John Macarthur sermons and stuff on here too!

[anncoulteriscool]

*****I think Satan is currently disguized as the junior senator from New York.******

LOL !

[berned]

An interesting side-question for those who believe that the events in Revelation have already happened...

Talking about the Anti-Christ in Rev 13:

5 Then the beast was allowed to speak great blasphemies against God. And he was given authority to do what he wanted for forty-two months. 6 And he spoke terrible words of blasphemy against God, slandering his name and all who live in heaven, who are his temple. 7 And the beast was allowed to wage war against God's holy people and to overcome them. And he was given authority to rule over every tribe and people and language and nation...

Now, how can this be when in Matthew 16 Jesus promises:

18 Now I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.

How can this "apparent" contradiction be reconciled?

[RnMomof7]

Perhaps if Satan is a junior senator from NY, we can ask her legs.

I just heard at my class tonight that Hillary is NEAR to a confession of faith...apparently some people near her are Christians that have been witnessing to her.There was general laughter in the class as the one couple were asking for prayer for her..but I will pray ..other freepers PLEASE

[drstevej]

Saul became Paul. Radical change is God's specialty.

[RnMomof7]

Ok all calvinists listen up, YOU WIN, we give, we know we are all going to hell, and your all going to heaven, so you can stop posting now.....PLEASE.

Pathetic .You are really scared that you did not save yourself aren't you?

[Tenega]

I was glad to see this article posted, although I firmly disagree with the author's conclusions. I have come, after many years of perplexed thought, to agree with the amillennial viewpoint as the most logical, scriptural, doctrinally correct and liveable view of things to come and things as they "is."

All children of God are forever on the defensive to be able to explain how a loving and all-powerful God could allow evil (rebellion) and tollerate the suffering of his creation.

The basic answer is that despite having the power to decree otherwise, He chose NOT to dictate our affection and obedience to Himself. Instead, He has created an environment in which WE must choose to follow Him, and accept the forgiveness he offers. Often, we are against stiff headwinds in doing so, because "the whole world is in the power of the evil one" (I John 5:19).

When we do come to that point by His leading, through repentance, surrender and commitment, He responds by granting us his own spirit to resist evil and grow in faith. And he leads us into the safety of His kingdom; a realm which is somehow beyond the tethered reach of the Devil, who "prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour" (I Peter 4:4).

A good analogy would be to a circus tiger chained to a stake. Since it appears tame, and may be docile much of the time, you might be able to walk up and pet it. Once. Twice. A hundred times. But sooner or later, if we keep walking into the radius of its chain, we risk become his meal. That is the risky game MOST people and MOST Christians play every day: consciously straying outside of the kingdom and tempting fate.

That is different from the daily testing we get from God, who is forever trying to teach us and build us up to resist evil and endure the kind of hardship the Devil thought could make Job curse God. For that training, God "uses" Satan. Indeed, a handy way to understand Satan's role in God's plan is to think of him as a quality control supervisor run amok. Or, as Paul aludes at one point, Satan is a kind of "enforcer" when we get out of line.

Still, since the temptation of Christ in the wilderness (the real point at which Satan's ultimate power was broken), Satan's sphere of influence has been significantly curtailed within the kingdom of God. That is the (probably) small but powerful domain on earth in which God's will is perfectly done.

The fearful warning, however, is that as the Day of the Lord draws near, this horrendously powerful, dark spiritual force called the Devil will be loosed to "decieve the nations." Combine that warning with the interesting line in Rev 17:17, which explains in a nutshell how the worldly powers and systems will be brought to calamity: "..for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose."

You start to get the picture that God himself won't need to dirty his hands by destroying the world. It will destroy itself, having been driven mad by the Devil. God's most effective punishment is to take away the ability of people to see Him and hear Him: He literally allows their mind's eye to go dark. Doom follows with certainty.

As we watch the kingdoms of this world mindlessly gathering for some kind of mad bloodletting; as reason and charity, humility, truth and simple righteousness evaporate all over the globe, one can't help but wonder if we are watching this prophecy fulfilled before our very eyes.

Lord lead us to that cleft in your Rock, and cover us there with your hand.

[Wrigley]

Wouldn't that be fantastic?

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

I have a question that might make this thread a bit more interesting than a box of metamucial.

I always get agitated by accounts of time in the Bible. The primary reason for this is that the measurement of time is an invention of man, based on our relative position in the universe.

Since time is, in fact, relative,and God is a timeless being that exists on many planes, for Him, the human concept of time would be competely irrelavant. Thus, we cannot understand phrases in the Bible such as "six days" or "forty days and forty nights" or "1000 years" to be literal explanations of human time. Especially since the methods of keeping time have developed throughout human history. And, if one takes the creation story literally, before the creation of the earth and the sun, there would been no such thing as a "day", because that measure of the time is based on period of rotation of the earth.

These are just the thoughts that run through my head. Would love to har how others react to them.

[xzins]

Dan, this is a CONCLUSIVE article. I've never read one better written on this subject.

It absolutely decimates the position that Satan is bound in our era.

[xzins]

You are asking about time being relative in the bible. Am I correct?

It is a good question. Any use of time in the bible must be based on the context in which it is found. There must be something that decidedly says we should take the time element "figuratively" rather than "literally" for us NOT to assume a normal reading.

If there is not specific indication that a referral to "days, months, years" is to be taken figuratively, then one can never PROVE their position that it is to be taken figuratively. However, everyone is always free to hypothesize and speculate.

[Bat_Chemist]

a handy way to understand Satan's role in God's plan is to think of him as a quality control supervisor run amok.

LOL! We call one of our Quality Supervisors "Satan's Mother-in-Law"! (So I guess he CAN'T be the junior senator from NY...)

[xzins]

Tenega, you said this: Still, since the temptation of Christ in the wilderness (the real point at which Satan's ultimate power was broken), Satan's sphere of influence has been significantly curtailed within the kingdom of God. That is the (probably) small but powerful domain on earth in which God's will is perfectly done.

The article points out this: 3) The amillennial view conflicts with the New Testament's depiction of Satan's activities in the present age The view that Satan is bound during this age contradicts multiple New Testament passages which show that Satan is presently active and involved in deception. He is "the god of this world [who] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is our adversary who "prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). In the church age he was able to fill the heart of Ananias (Acts 5:3) and "thwart" the work of God's ministers (1 Thess. 2:18). He is one for whom we must protect ourselves from by putting on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-19). Satan's influence in this age is so great that John declared "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). These passages do not depict a being who has been bound and shut up in a pit. As Grudem has rightly commented, "the theme of Satan's continual activity on earth throughout the church age, makes it extremely difficult to think that Satan has been thrown into the bottomless pit."31

If we follow just the scripture, the points mentioned by the author in 1-4 in the basic article seem to made your view hard for me to buy into for myself.

I'm sure you can see why I believe the opposite.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

I undertand this point very well and it is a good one. Especially because there are passages which indicate that a figurative interpretation is called for.

Nevertheless, since humans were the ones who wrote the Bible, even if it was dictated by God, I always wonder a bit whether they could have understood the concept of a million. It is hard to imagine for us today. 1 billion is really not a number a human can grasp. Plus, the number system at the time didn't even allow for quantities of those types. Throw in what Einstein theorized about space-time (naturally even he believed that God set up the rules that way) and a lot of confusion would have ensued had God tried to explain this to our mathematically less-advanced fore-fathers.

Thus, my tendency is to take all references to time that don't specifically refer to a human life, with a grain of salt.

[fortheDeclaration]

Thanks, I will bookmark it!

[fortheDeclaration]

Is Satan Bound Today? Only in Utah.

Utah? That is where Ithought he was being held!

just kidding!

[fortheDeclaration]

Ok all calvinists listen up, YOU WIN, we give, we know we are all going to hell, and your all going to heaven, so you can stop posting now.....PLEASE.

It was always predestinated that you would say that!

[gdebrae]

...multiple New Testament passages which show that Satan is presently active and involved in deception. He is "the god of this world [who] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is our adversary who "prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). In the church age he was able to fill the heart of Ananias (Acts 5:3) and "thwart" the work of God's ministers (1 Thess. 2:18). He is one for whom we must protect ourselves from by putting on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-19). Satan's influence in this age is so great that John declared "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19).

Excellent point. Satan can only decieve those who are physically alive. He cannot decieve those who are physically dead. And the result of his decieving someone physically alive is that they are spiritual dead. Ephesians 2:1-6 makes that exceedingly clear.

Now what does that say about the meaning of the word "dead" in Rev 20:5 and 20:11-13. Since satan cannot decieve physically dead people, the decieved nations of Rev. 20 cannot be the physically dead in need of the resurrection of the body, but the spiritually dead in need of the new birth. Since the nations in verse 3 are not physically dead his binding does not and cannot result in the resurrection of the body.

John 5:24-29 clearly distinguishes between spiritual and physical resurrection.

Something to think about.

[xzins]

I didn't follow your point.

Could you rewrite for a dummy like me?