Lucifer/Satan/the Devil - Part 2

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Revelation 20:3.  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.

     Somewhere deep in the center of the earth a prison cell has been reserved for a special prisoner, a cell in the remotest recesses of the bottomless pit. The Greek word for this central cavity is abussos, meaning literally “without depth” or “bottomless.” Modern translations call it the “abyss,” but “bottomless” is a more precise derivation. Located at the very middle of the earth, one could not fall any deeper down, and every boundary is a ceiling. It seems that such a place will be Satan’s confine during the millennium, as far removed from human beings as is possible to be on this planet. He who is the father of lies (John 8:44) and the deceiver of the whole world (Revelation 12:9) will be absolutely shut off from exercising his wiles (Ephesians 6:11) for a thousand years.

     Not only will he be hurled to the center of the earth, but he will be shut up in his cell, with its entrance invincibly sealed so that he cannot even direct his own demonic hosts while so restrained. These latter will presumably likewise be bound in appropriate compartments of Hades or the abyss, as will the spirits of lost men and women, there to await the judgment of the great day. A central cavity no more than ten miles in diameter could easily confine the spirits of all the fallen angels and of all lost humanity through the ages, even if each spirit still required as much space as a human body. It is doubtful whether such a cavity could ever be detected by scientific measurements made by geophysicists on the earth’s surface, but the Bible says it is there.

     Eventually, toward the close of the millennium, Satan “must” be released for a brief period, apparently because the people born during the millennium must be tested. Incidentally, this is further proof that the binding of Satan is more than a relative semi-restraint on his power by virtue of Christ’s victory over him at Calvary. It is true that on the cross the Lord Jesus despoiled principalities and powers (Colossians 2:14, 15) but if this is all that is meant by the millennial binding of the Devil, then what is the meaning of his subsequent unleashing? Is the victory at Calvary to become defeat again? Such an idea is preposterous.

     In the meantime, with Satan bound for a thousand years, the world will be freed from its most virulent source of evil. The awful physical trauma through which the earth had just passed during the seven years of its tribulation will not only have purged it of its human and demonic corruption but also, in considerable measure, of its natural deformities. Thus it will be prepared to serve appropriately as the physical setting of the great millennial messianic kingdom.

     The violent earthquakes and upheavals will have leveled all the polluted cities of a sinful world, the better to facilitate the erection of new, clean, peaceful communities at the beginning of the millennium. These great land movements will also have eliminated the great mountain ranges and islands of the world, filling up the ocean depths and restoring gentle, globally habitable topography and geography all over the world, as it had been in the antediluvian age, before the cataclysmic upheavals of the great Deluge. As Isaiah the prophet had foretold, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain” (Isaiah 40:4).

     This reversal of the topographic upheavals of the Flood, however, will not send waters over the continents again, since much of the waters of the oceans will already have been reelevated above the atmosphere, restoring in some measure the antediluvian “waters above the firmament.” The worldwide drought of the first half of the tribulation, the cataclysmic splashdowns of bodies from the heavens during the trumpet judgments and the intensified solar radiations of the bowl judgments will all have contributed to the translation of vast quantities of water vapor far into the skies.

     Quite probably, the immense tectonic movements, eruptions, and landslides may also have trapped vast quantities of water beneath fresh sedimentary and volcanic deposits, reinstating in partial degree the primeval pressurized reservoirs of “the great deep,” facilitating the birth of copious artesian springs, including one which will feed the vast river emerging from the millennial temple in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 47:1-12; Zechariah 14:8).

     Thus the seas of the millennial world will be relatively narrow and shallow once again, as in primeval days. Furthermore, the restoration of the vapor canopy should, in large measure, restore the globally pleasant warm climate of the antediluvian period to the earth again. No longer will great atmospheric movements generate violent rainstorms, blizzards, hurricanes, and tornadoes, because the uniform temperatures of the global greenhouse will inhibit air mass movements of more than local extent.

     In the original world, the only rains were gentle mists, from localized daily evaporation and precipitation (Genesis 2:5), keeping the world everywhere at comfortable temperatures and humidities, and supporting an abundance of plant and animal life in all regions of the globe. There were no deserts or ice caps or uninhabitable mountain heights. It was all “very good” (Genesis 1:31). The cataclysm of the great Flood destroyed that beautiful world, but the global upheavals of the great tribulation will restore it, at least in measure.

     For example, note Joel’s prophecy: “Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things. Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month” (Joel 2:21-23); see also Hosea 6:3, and Zechariah 10:1).

     The redistribution of earth’s topography and restoration of its vapor canopy will soon result in an elimination of many, if not all, of its wastelands and deserts: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. . . . for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water” (Isaiah 35:1-7; note also Isaiah 30:23; 32:15; 51:3; Ezekiel 34:26; 36:33-35; etc.).

     Somehow there will also come a great healing of the lands and waters of the earth. Before the great Flood, the soils were rich in all needed nutrients, and the drinking waters all came pure and fresh from artesian springs fed from deep underground reservoirs. The destruction of these deep fountains and the devastating land erosion of the great Flood largely destroyed God’s primeval terrestrial ecology, leaving the lands depleted and waters polluted. Originally all animals, as well as man, were to derive nourishment only from plant foods (Genesis 1:29, 30), but under the far more rigorous conditions of the postdiluvian environment, God authorized man to eat animal flesh as well (Genesis 9:2-4). Evidently for the same reason many animals also had to become carnivorous.

     These conditions were further aggravated during the long centuries after the Flood, with the lands becoming further impoverished and the waters further contaminated, requiring increasingly great expenditures on fertilization and purification. The traumatic upheavals of the tribulation period had brought these conditions to a climax, with devastating famine conditions and with terrestrial waters so depleted and poisoned that all the animals of the sea had perished. Had such conditions been allowed to persist much longer, all life on earth would soon have become impossible.

     In some marvelous way, however, God will use the physical convulsions of that awful period of purging to cleanse the lands and waters of the earth as well as its moral and spiritual climate. Possibly the tectonic and volcanic upheavals, and perhaps even the atmospheric bombardments, will implant new supplies of needed nutrients and trace elements in the soils. Even the multitudes of dead animals and plants in the lands and oceans, as well as the skeletons of the millions of dead men and horses at Armageddon and elsewhere, may well become fertilizing agents for the lands as their remains are scattered far and wide.

     The unprecedented global earthquakes and eruptions will trigger vast and violent landslides and showers of dirt and rocks, entrapping tremendous volumes of ocean waters beneath great overburdens of solid materials which will rapidly become pressurized, lithified, and partially sealed.

     This will likely produce at last two important effects. In the first place, the sea bottoms will be raised to higher elevations than at present, compensating for the great losses of water caused by the restoration of the atmospheric canopy and by the entrapment of vast volumes beneath the huge landslides and rock showers. The entire crust itself will, to some unknown extent, have shifted and slipped over the earth’s mantle, rearranging the various continental plates to a more nearly uniform distribution of land and sea surface areas, but with relatively greater land areas than at present.

     Second, this extensive rearrangement of topography and formation of large pressurized subterranean water pockets will facilitate the development of a new terrestrial system of springs and spring-fed rivers, the waters of which will be purified by the processes of heating and percolation. “I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” (Isaiah 41:18). 

     Whether or not the ocean population of fishes and other marine organisms will somehow be replenished is uncertain. The second bowl judgment (Revelation 16:3) had caused the death of “every living soul . . . in the sea,” so that at least those fishes requiring a marine environment had apparently been eliminated from the so-called food chain. The third bowl judgment had similarly affected the fresh waters, except that no reference was made to death of fresh-water organisms (Revelation 16:4) so that probably many of these had survived, and they would be more important for the future millennial economy.

     In the description of the great millennial river in Jerusalem, for example, the following intriguing statement appears: “And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, withersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh” (Ezekiel 47:9). This river will emerge from the new temple (Ezekiel 47:1) and may well contain health-giving minerals acquired from source beds deep under the city. Perhaps also it may be artificially purified and fortified as it issues from its spring in the temple, using the knowledge and ingredients obtained from the accumulated research of the greatest minds of the ages, now redeemed and perhaps instructed by Christ Himself.

     The scenario inferred in the foregoing is bound to be incomplete and may well be incorrect in many respects. Further study and research on these fascinating possibilities are in order, but the most important point is to realize that God is somehow going to revitalize this tired old planet and make it ready for the glorious kingdom of Christon earth.

     And, in order to do all this, the god of this present age, the old dragon, Satan, must be completely restrained from continuing his nefarious and baleful influence over the earth. He must be bound, and then the dominion usurped by him can be unbound. “No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house” (Mark 3:27). “Because the creature [better translated as “creation”] itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

Revelation 20:10.  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.

     “Brimstone” comes from the Old English name for sulphur (“brim” developed into “burn,” sulphur being the “stone” that burns). When sulphur ignites, it burns with a very bright light and with the noxious odor of sulphur dioxide. This smell was noted by the ancients both in lightning storms and volcanic storms, so both came to be known as “fire from God,” hence the Greek words or brimstone came to be theion or theiodes. Whether or not the lake of fire and brimstone will actually incorporate burning sulphur, the use of the term indicates that the fiery lake will always be associated with the fiery judgment of a holy God on willful sin.

     Here is the final end of the primeval cherub, the highest angel of all, the rebellious “son of the morning” who wanted to exalt his own throne above God’s throne. The great blasphemer, the idol, the false god, the breaker of God’s rest, the rebel against his father, the murderer from the beginning, the robber, the great adulterer, the father of lies, the coveter of divine worship, the one who is the very antithesis of the holy and gracious God, the Devil, will finally be cast forever into outer darkness.

     The great deceiver is gone! He had deceived the whole world, beginning with Adam and Eve, and even after a thousand-year confinement in Hades he had still been able to deceive the vast Millennial-Age populations. He had deceived a third of God’s innumerable company of angels into following him in his cosmic rebellion. But now he is gone.

     And if he had never realized it before, he surely must have realized as he was hurtling toward the lake of fire, that he had deceived himself first and most of all. God indeed was all He had said – eternal and omnipotent, the Creator. The cosmos was not the ultimate reality after all; God, in Christ, had created space and time and all things, and therefore He was, and is, King forever.

     For a thousand years Satan’s two greatest human accomplices had already been tormented in the lake of fire and, as he himself plunges into the fiery lake, he no doubt will see them there. Hell is torment, not annihilation. It is the place where these evil men are, not were, even a thousand years later. Their bodies and souls had been “destroyed” in hell, but they are still there. And so will Satan, and so will his angels, and so will all unsaved men and women from every age, the antediluvians as well as the millennialites, continue in the lake of fire, in conscious torment, day and night, forever (Revelation 14:11).

1 Peter 5:8.  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

     “Devil” means “slanderer,” and “Satan” means “accuser.” He is also called the “Adversary.” He is adversary to both God and man, slandering and accusing man to God and God to man. 

     Satan is like a “roaring lion” and also is “the great dragon” and “that old serpent” (Revelation 12:9), but he can also be “transformed into an angel of light” (II Corinthians 11:14).

I Peter 5:9.  Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in our brethren that are in the world.

     Despite his deceptions, as well as his accusation, his power, his hatred and his ferocity, Satan can be successfully resisted (James 4:7) and even overcome (I John 2:13,14; 4:4; 5:18). He is, in fact, already a defeated foe (Hebrews 2:14). However, for personal victory “against the wiles of the devil” in our present circumstances, we must “put on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11, 14-17).

James 4:7.  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

     The devil is far more intelligent and powerful than we are, so we cannot resist him in the strength of the flesh. Our example in combating Satan is the Lord Jesus who defeated the devil’s temptations by citing appropriate passages from God’s Word (Matthew 4:1-11). Note I Peter 5:8-10, urging us to resist the devil by being “steadfast in the faith,” not by compromising the faith. 

Commentary by Dr. Henry M. Morris