One issue that is always brought up by opponents of Amillennialism is the binding of Satan which means Satan cannot tempt the nations from receiving the gospel. Many will mention countries where it is illegal for the gospel to be shared and where the church has been persecuted.
I think many believe when they hear Satan being bound, they might be thinking he has no power on the earth. His activity has been shut down till the return of Christ.
Kim Riddlebarger writes:
John’s visions in Revelation are given in the language of apocalyptic symbolism. John does not intend for us to understand these things literally, but rather to read them in light of the Old Testament, where these symbols and images appear previously. The symbolic nature of the vision is obvious. How can an angel bind an immaterial spiritual being (Satan) with a real chain? How can a spiritual being be locked away in a pit? This is apocalyptic symbolism plain and simple.
First up is the matter of the proper identification of this particular angel and then determining the meaning of the symbolism of the key to the abyss and the chain. The answer to the angel’s identity is tied to the use of “keys,” which are mentioned throughout the Book of Revelation. In Revelation 1:18, Christ holds the keys of Death and Hades in his hand. In chapter 3:7, the Holy One has the key of David which opens and shuts. In Revelation 9:1-2 we read that “the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss.”
Given the symbolism of the keys prior to this vision, we already possess the “key” (pun intended) to interpret correctly the symbols mentioned by John in Revelation 20:1-3, 7, with some degree of certainty. The Abyss is a reference to Death and Hades–the realm with which Satan is most closely associated in the Book of Revelation. Having been cast of out heaven (according to Revelation 12:7-9), John sees an angel (who is either Jesus, or an angel exercising the Lord’s authority) confining Satan to the abode of the dead. Satan has been cast from heaven where he had been making accusations against the saints (i.e., Job 1:6-12; Zechariah 3:1-10). According to verses 2-3 of Revelation 20, which are repeated here, the angel “seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.”
John’s vision should be interpreted in light of the background we have previously established. But we must also give due consideration to what John specifically says of this “binding.” Satan is bound to the Abyss–the realm of Death and Hades–for a specified time (a thousand years). He is bound for a specific purpose—he is prevented from “deceiving the nations” until the thousand years are over. The imagery of the devil being bound restates in apocalyptic symbolism the biblical data considered previously. Satan has been “cast down” and “bound.” After Jesus’ death and resurrection, Satan is prevented from deceiving the nations en masse. This is unlike the prior period of redemptive history (considered above) when the devil was able to mobilize pagan gentile powers to oppose and assault the people of God until his defeat on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. John is describing the age of the gospel, in which that gospel is to be proclaimed to all the nations. Therefore, the correct reading of Revelation 20:1-3 is that Satan is currently bound by the preaching of the gospel. His lies are exposed and his powers of deception are greatly diminished in the new covenant era. It is the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen which “binds” the devil.
But to be clear and avoid misconception as much as possible, the binding of Satan does not in any sense mean that all of his evil activities cease during the thousand years. In fact, John has already warned us in Revelation 12:12 that after Satan is cast out of heaven, “woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” Like a sick or wounded animal sure to die, Satan is more dangerous now than he was when he had free access to heaven–even while confined to the abyss. Satan has been defeated by Christ’s death and resurrection. His doom is assured. One little word shall fell him. The truth of the gospel exposes his lies for what they are. But with the time he has left, Satan rages against the people of God trying to muster his increasingly feeble power. The gospel of Christ crucified is to Satan what kryptonite is to Superman.
Nevertheless, John reports in his prior visions that since Satan has nothing to lose, he wages war on the saints and at times, appears to overcome them. This is why Peter speaks of Satan as our enemy who “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8). This is why Paul can speak of Satan as “the god of this age, who blinds the minds of unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4). You can put a vicious dog on a chain, but you sure don’t want to get within the radius of the chain, or you’ll still get mauled!
At no point does John say or imply that Satan ceases all activity during the thousand years. In fact, Scripture warns us that the devil’s rage increases because he knows the end is coming. But John does say that Satan is prevented from deceiving the nations so as to organize them against the people of God (Christ’s church) as he once did during the Old Testament era. Is this not what John has been reporting from the very beginning of his Apocalypse? The Beast was already manifest in John’s day in the form of the Roman empire (the fourth empire of Daniel’s vision—cf. Daniel 7). But Christ has defeated the Roman Caesar, evident in the fact that we can go to Rome today and walk among the ruins of a once great persecuting empire.
Rome’s Antichrist emperors have come and gone, relegated to the annals of history. Indeed, beasts in many forms have come and gone throughout the age, persecuting the church for a time, only to be overcome by the testimony of the saints and the blood of the Lamb. Hitler’s thousand year Reich lasted less than fifteen years. Stalin’s great socialist utopia collapsed before our eyes. Even though nations who persecute the church come and go, they are prevented from organizing against the church as a whole and destroying it as the Assyrians and Babylonians did to the divided kingdoms of Israel. Inevitably these empires all come to an end–often times a bloody end brought about by the providential intervention of God.
That said, in verse 7 John reveals that one day Satan will be released from the abyss at the time of the end. No longer bound, Satan will again organize the nations against Jesus Christ and his church, only to be crushed by Jesus on the day of his second advent when our Lord delivers his people once and for all, when we are raised from the dead, final judgment is meted out, and the new heavens and earth appear, the home of everlasting righteousness.
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