Dan Olinger

On Spiritual Decline, Part 4: Defective Leadership

August 7, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Situation | Part 3: Jacob, not Esau

Malachi’s audience has questioned God’s love for them, and God has demonstrated that their suspicion of him is both unfounded and inobservant; they simply haven’t been paying attention.

Next God turns the tables on them, demonstrating that it is their love for God, not God’s love for them, that is in question (Mal 1.6-3.15). He begins with the leadership, the priests (Mal 1.6-2.9)—it being often observed that “the fish rots from the head down.”* (Of course, with the end of the monarchy at the Babylonian exile, the priests are the only real leaders Judah has.)

How are the priests failing in their spiritual leadership? Malachi, quoting God’s words, identifies two problems, which we might call pollution (Mal 1.6-14) and perversion (Mal 2.1-9). I would suggest that these are common failures in leadership, ones that we should watch for in our own spiritual leaders.

On Spiritual Decline, Part 3: Jacob, not Esau

August 4, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Situation

After God declares his love for Judah in the opening verse of this prophecy, the rest of the book flows neatly. First, Judah rejects his assertion of love (chapters 1-3), as evidenced in the sins of the priests (chapters 1-2) and then in the sins of the people (chapters 2-3). And then God demonstrates his love for them despite their rejection (chapter 4). That is, of course, the point of the prophecy, and it’s the primary application for us when we find ourselves in spiritual decline.

When God asserts his love, he is immediately challenged: “How have you loved us?” (Mal 1.2). Given the long history of God’s relationship with Israel, those words come as a shock. But as we’ve noted, the recent history since the return from Babylon has given Judah what they think is a basis for complaint. And as we’ve noted further, the proper response when you don’t understand what your friend is doing is to start by defaulting to trust.

They don’t do that. They demand that God defend himself.

Perhaps surprisingly, he does.

His defense is simply to call to mind his long relationship with them. He focuses on his ancient choice of Jacob over his older twin brother, Esau.

It’s often observed that if you had known these two boys, you’d definitely have preferred Esau. He’s an outdoorsman, and good at it. He doesn’t hold a grudge (Ge 33.1-9). He is what we might call a Good Old Boy. Jacob, on the other hand, is a cheat; he’ll lie and steal if it’s to his advantage.

God has no reason to prefer the scoundrel. But he reveals himself to him as he’s fleeing from the wrath of his cheated brother (Ge 28.10-15), and then again as he’s leaving his father-in-law Laban after a sharp disagreement (Ge 32.24-29), and he makes it clear that his covenant with Abraham, and then with Isaac, is now bestowed on Jacob.

We learn later that God made this choice before the boys were even born (Ro 9.10-13), and thus not on the basis of anything they had done to deserve (or not deserve) it.

That’s grace.

What does it look like when God gives a people what they deserve? The rains don’t come; the crops don’t grow; the buildings fall apart; the wild animals make themselves at home in what had once been a civilization (Mal 1.3-5).

God sends destruction to Edom, the land of Esau’s descendants. Interestingly, during the Babylonian invasion the Edomites had avoided the kind of devastation that came to Jerusalem and the surrounding territory of Judah. (There were reasons that Nebuchadnezzar was particularly angry at the Jews.) But here God promises that destruction is coming to Edom too.

Malachi alludes to an earlier prophecy from Jeremiah, given before the exile to Judah:

I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; And I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant (Jer 9.11).

But here he applies it to Edom (Mal 1.3). And he keeps that promise: shortly after this prophecy, Nabatean Arabs invaded and possessed Edom, and the Edomites migrated around the Dead Sea to southern Judah (the Negev), where they were eventually called Idumeans. The Herods were part of this tribe, which was destroyed by Rome during the Jewish Wars of the first century AD.

The end was not pretty.

God chose Jacob, and even after the exile Judah was benefiting greatly from that choice and the love that accompanied it.

A historical footnote:

⁷But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judaea, ⁸And from Jerusalem, and from

—well, lookee here!—

Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him (Mk 3.7-8).

Descendants of Esau, the rejected one, come to Jesus, and he receives them.

As he does all who come.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Spiritual Decline, Part 2: Situation

July 31, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: Introduction

Malachi begins his message to Israel by assuring them that God loves them:

¹The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. ² I have loved you, saith the LORD.

Why does he do that?

It helps if we understand the historical situation.

As noted in the previous post, when Judah returned from the Babylonian Exile, two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, brought messages from God to them. The first message was to rebuild the Temple despite opposition from the local non-Jews. But both prophets included a look into the future, promising that God would bless his people, and that all nations of the earth would bring their treasures to Jerusalem and worship there (Hag 2.7; Zec 14.16-21).

Now, we know that this promise is long-term—so long-term, in fact, that it still hasn’t happened. Premillennialists (of which I am one) believe that this will happen in the future Millennial Kingdom (Re 20.1-6), when Christ reigns on earth for a thousand years (hence the name).

But these returnees had no idea that it would be that long. We know that over the next four centuries (what we call the Intertestamental Period) Messianic expectations would be at a fever pitch. Some speculate that the reason Judas betrayed Jesus was that he was not overthrowing the Roman overlords and establishing his kingdom. And after Jesus’ resurrection, even the remaining disciples apparently expected that Now Is The Time for the kingdom to come on earth (Ac 1.6). And even then Jesus said that it was not yet time (Ac 1.7-8).

Now, from our lofty perch here millennia later, we may be tempted to look down on these misguided folks as overly eager and slow to comprehend. But I suspect that all of us would have had similar expectations at the time. The prophets of the return said that this new Temple would be something really great, specifically because God was going to make Jerusalem a global focus (Hag 2.3-9). I’m not going to criticize the returnees for believing him.

Well, as we all know, that didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean God was mistaken or was deceiving them; lots of biblical prophecy has very long-term fulfilment. Given their disappointment, what would be a natural response?

“Welp, I guess it’s not gonna happen.”

And what’s a predictable next response? Disappointment with God, a decline of spiritual focus, frustration with the way things are currently going. Oh, maybe make your sacrifices, but don’t knock yourself out—don’t sacrifice your best animals—and don’t take it all that seriously. Already tried that, and it didn’t work.

And that’s exactly what we’ll see Malachi dealing with in his brief prophecy.

Now, before we get to that, it’s worth thinking for a minute about how they should have responded.

What do you do when God makes a promise but takes his time fulfilling it?

A couple of things.

First, you remind yourself that God is not a stranger. You know him. You have asked him for things, and he has answered. Even when you have not asked, he has been abundantly gracious to you, giving you everything you really need. Do you trust your friends? Of course. Why? Because they have proved themselves trustworthy. It’s not naive to trust your long-time friends.

Second, you look to the Scripture to see further evidence of his trustworthiness. He has made promise after promise that has been fulfilled, from the seed of the woman (Ge 3.15) to the Abrahamic Covenant (Ge 15.1-21) and well beyond. He has predicted scores of things about the first advent of Messiah; why should he be unreliable about the second?

As we’ve noted, Jesus himself taught just before his Ascension that it was not yet time for the Kingdom. But earlier he had said, “Occupy till I come” (Lk 19.13; cf Lk 19.11-27).

They should have believed him, and they should have continued to work for the future kingdom.

As should we.

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On Spiritual Decline, Part 1: Introduction

July 28, 2025 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Every generation has believed that the future was in peril. “Kids these days …” has been a constant cry.

I don’t buy that, for a couple of reasons:

The lesson of history: the kids are scary because they’re kids. But they don’t stay kids; they grow up, and they deal with the world that, for better or worse, was handed to them. Thus has it always been. I’ve been working with “the next generation” my whole adult life, and while there is always a spectrum of talent, wisdom, and morality, there is always a high end of that spectrum, and they’re all right.

The lesson of theology: God is working his plan throughout the passage of time, and he will bring it to a successful conclusion. He is great, and he is good.

So on the big picture, I’m at peace and wildly optimistic.

But along the way, there’s brokenness. Times are tough—cyclically—and we are called to steward the times in which we live, to address the problems we face, and to leave the world a better place than when we found it.

Some of my Christian fellow travelers might take issue with that. The Bible does speak of a time, at the end of time, when things pretty much fall apart, apocalyptically (literally). They would say the world is fated to decline generally rather than to improve. But I think it’s clear from history—both biblical and extrabiblical—that things get better, and then they get worse, and then they get better again, and on it goes. I believe it will all fall apart in the end, but in the meantime, I think it’s foolish to assume decline as a general characteristic.

With all that duly noted, I think we can agree that times are tough for a lot of people today. There’s an almost palpable sense of frustration in the current world. I sense it more deeply in my own country, due, I suppose, to the political polarization and the resultant chaos in our public spaces. No, that’s not unprecedented, but it does exist currently, and I would suggest that Christians have a duty to contribute, as best we can, to ameliorating its worst effects.

I wonder whether we as the Church are in a position to do that.

There’s been significant failure among Christian leaders in recent days—again, not unprecedented—and I would suggest that that’s a symptom of weakness in the broader church. Are the believers sitting in the pews generally being prepared to live out their faith, to proclaim it, to answer objections to it, to improve the conditions in which they live through spiritual power?

Or is the church largely feckless because it is largely powerless?

I wonder.

There have been other such times in the history of God’s people—times that come with irritating regularity. Pick a biblical book—Genesis, Numbers, Judges, Kings, pretty much any of them—and you find God’s people cycling through malaise and revival, ad nauseum.

There’s a part of biblical history—just a thin slice of it—that I think can serve as instructive for us. This period doesn’t get mentioned in Sunday School, I suppose because it doesn’t feature any significant names. It occurs after the return from Babylon. Several biblical books—Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah—discuss the mechanics of the return itself and the rebuilding of the Temple; but what then?

There’s just one prophet who addresses Israel as it settles into life after the Exile, in what we call The Persian Period. He calls Israel to account for its sin, and he prescribes a solution.

But apparently nobody listens, and God goes silent for 400 years.

What if they had listened?

What if we were to listen today?

The prophet is called “My Messenger” (“Malachi,” in Hebrew). Is that his name, or a title?

Nobody knows.

He may be just an unnamed preacher speaking for God as He goes out the back door for a few centuries.

Perhaps we should give him some attention.

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On Protest, Part 4: Protesting Well

July 24, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: First Things | Part 2: The Landscape | Part 3: Levels of Authority

It’s time to get down to brass tacks, as they say. We’ve looked at the key biblical material on authority and civil disobedience; now how do we live that out today?

What do we do when the government—the law—orders us to disobey Scripture?

Let’s get specific. Should you feed and house an illegal immigrant (or undocumented migrant, if you prefer)? Should you hide him from ICE? Should you lie to ICE? Should you try to stop them physically?

You and I have Christian brothers and sisters who are asking themselves these questions right now, and who need answers—right now.

Let me suggest a pathway for thinking through to a wise and right decision.

 First thing first: recognize that God has providentially brought you to this place for His purposes (Ps 37.23). This issue didn’t come out of nowhere, and you are precisely where you are by the will and plan of God. He will provide the wisdom you need to make a right decision.

Further, a significant part of his plan is to develop in you the character of Christ (2Co 3.18). Look for His purpose in your own character development, submit humbly to it, and pursue it. That might include improving your understanding of his Word, interacting appropriately with other believers (especially those further down the path of sanctification than you are), deepening your prayer life—Jesus, the perfect Son of God, felt the need to pray all night sometimes; how about you? and me?

Evaluate your disagreement with the authority figure in light of the Bible’s teaching. Be honest with yourself. And as I noted earlier, consider carefully the thinking of believers, particularly long-time believers, who disagree with you. To do this, you’re going to have to swim against the polarizing forces in the current culture. You’re going to need to talk calmly and respectfully with people you disagree with.

Nobody does that anymore.

Further, recognize your own limitations. You cannot reliably discern motives, nor can you know all the considerations in any decision by an authority. 

If you are convinced that the authority is acting unbiblically, begin by submitting to the authority’s procedure(s) for challenging the decision. It is not an accident that you are under that particular authority. Most of us live in a democratically oriented state system, and there are things we can do short of burning it all down. We can interact with those in authority; and there are legal ways to exert political pressure.

If your conscience, informed by Scripture, forbids you to submit to that authority’s procedures for redress, then disobey humbly and graciously, and submit to the penalty. On the other hand, if you can and do follow the procedures, and the authority overrules your plea, then you need to make the same decision: must you disobey in order to protect your conscience? If so, then do so, and accept whatever penalty the authority determines. 

 Let me add a rider to this. The Bible indicates that Paul responded to government persecution in various ways. As mentioned in the previous post, sometimes he went underground with his civil disobedience (2Co 11.32-33). Some would see that as evidence that you need not disobey publicly and take the penalty. Fair enough.

More often, however, Paul disobeyed publicly and faced the state’s response squarely. But even in these cases his tactics varied. Once, tied to a whipping post, he asserted his right as a Roman citizen by turning to the nearest official and saying essentially, “Say, isn’t it illegal to beat a Roman citizen without a trial?” (Ac 22.24-29). At which point the whip disappeared.

That story always makes me laugh.

Earlier in his career, he used a different tactic. In Philippi, he and his colleague Silas took the beating, making no mention of their rights (Ac 16.22-24). The next day they confronted the authorities by revealing their Roman citizenship (Silas was apparently a citizen too, Ac 16.37), a fact that put these authorities in jeopardy of the death penalty. Paul insisted on a public escort out of town and even took the group by the church’s house (Ac 16.39-40), as if to say, “These are my friends. It would be a shame if anything happened to my friends.”

Is it too strong to say that Paul was blackmailing them? That’s a good question.

Paul knew how the system worked, and he worked it, to his own advantage and to that of the work of the kingdom.

Even an unjust steward knows how to do that (Lk 16.8).

Jesus instructed us all to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Mt 10.16). In this chaotic culture, he will enable us to do that.

Together.

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On Protest, Part 3: Levels of Authority

July 21, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: First Things | Part 2: The Landscape

Given that the world system, and its inhabitants, are broken, we have to expect that the divinely created order, as represented in the biblical authority structures, will not perfectly conform to the divine standard of justice. Thus those in various degrees of authority over us will at least occasionally be unjust.

What do we do then? Man the barricades? Take it to the streets? Burn it all down?

There are some that think this way. My suspicion is that they’re a relatively small portion of society, but they outsize their influence by the sheer volume of the noise they make. Squeaky wheels, after all, do get greased.

We’ve based our thinking about authority structures on a quick survey of the biblical material. Looking a little more deeply, however, makes a couple of things abundantly clear:

As just noted, our authorities are imperfect.
When they fail in their obligation to promote justice, we have options.

Since God created these authority structures (as noted in the previous post), and since God is Lord of Hosts, Creator of Heaven and Earth, he holds authority over the existing powers, and we owe him obedience in all things. Thus if your home, or state, or church orders you to do something that violates God’s will as expressed in his Word, then you must disobey that earthly authority.

We have multiple examples of this. David ran from King Saul (1S 19.18ff) even while respecting his position as king (1S 24.1-15). Paul escaped from the king of Damascus by going over the wall in the middle of the night (2Co 11.32-33). In an appearance before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, Paul called the high priest a “whitewashed [and by implication deeply filthy] wall” (Ac 23.3). (To be fair, I note that the interpretation of Paul’s intent here is disputed; some think he didn’t realize to whom he was speaking, as he says in verse 5. But I’m doubtful that he wouldn’t recognize the high priest, and I suspect he was being sarcastic in verse 5, implying that a genuine high priest wouldn’t act this way.)

Most interpreters think the clearest illustration of this principle of Higher Authority is in Acts 4, where the Sanhedrin orders Peter and John to stop preaching about Jesus. This restriction, if obeyed, would clearly be disobedience to Jesus’ last command, the Great Commission, which obligates the two to preach in his name.

Their response is classic:

Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. ²⁰For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard (Ac 4.19-20).

In the Olinger Revised Version, it reads,

You do what you want; we’re going to do what we have to do.

And they continued to preach, directly disobeying their governmental authority. In Peter’s case, that brought him imprisonment (Ac 12.1-3) and eventually, tradition says, execution by crucifixion. John, on the other hand, lived a long life and died a natural death—if you can call slaving in the salt mines in your 80s a natural death.

There is indeed a higher authority.

Now, if we are to obey God when our authorities contradict his will, then it’s really important that we know what that will is. If a voice in your head tells you to take a shot at the President, and you think that voice belongs to God, you’re going to be in a pile of trouble with guys in black suits who talk to their wrists, and even worse, it will all have been for nothing, because that voice in your head is not in fact from God.

There’s only one reliable source of God’s words and will, and that is the Scripture. We all need to know what it says.

And further, we need to be sure of our biblical understanding. If the Bible-believing population is divided on whether the Bible actually says this or that, we need to slow down and evaluate what we’ve read. Maybe one side’s wrong and the other is right; but the very division among people who love God and believe their Bibles should call for some extra thought and careful consideration.

Next time: bringing it all together on a Thursday in July.

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On Protest, Part 2: The Landscape

July 17, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: First Things

As broken people—like everybody else—in a broken world, we will face disagreements and conflicts. To ameliorate and mediate these conflicts, God has established authority structures under which we all live and function.

Before I delineate those, I’d like to note that much of modern culture rejects the whole idea of authority structures. Anarchists, such as Antifa, reject all governmental authority. Non-religious people reject church authority structures, of course, and a majority of contemporary Western culture rejects familial authority structures, most obviously the authority of husbands over their wives and the authority of parents over their children—the latter seeming particularly unpopular with many teachers in public education.

Now, such people are of course free to believe whatever they want, but as is the case anytime humans reject the divine order, they run pretty quickly into a workability problem. Whether you’re doing away with government or other authority structures, you’re going to end up with chaos, with everyone doing what’s right in his own eyes. That’s been tried before (Jdg 21.25)—more than once—and it has never turned out well. Feel free to think of examples beyond the two I’ve mentioned; the pattern holds.

Arguments against authority typically simply cite examples of abuses of governmental or ecclesiastical or familial authority, and there are many. But the fact that something is done wrong is no argument that it cannot be done right, or that it is so inherently evil that it shouldn’t be done at all. Is Florence Foster-Jenkins proof that nobody should sing? Given the brokenness of the world and its inhabitants, there will always be abuses. When they occur, we ought to correct them, but we will never construct a system in which such abuses don’t happen.

How about

“Come on, people, now, smile on your brother;
Everybody get together, try to love one another right now”?

I heard Jesse Colin Young sing that live on Boston Common more than fifty years ago. Didn’t work then; doesn’t work now.

So I would suggest that it’s worth our time to recognize the authority structures under which God has placed us and to seek to live orderly, sensible, and realistic lives instead of insisting on the “freedom” of making things up as we go, all the way to utter chaos.

I’ve already identified those authority structures above (contextually, as formal debaters say), but let me list them formally here, in the order in which God created them.

The Home / Family

The first people God created he intended to be a unit, an organism. Specifically, they were to be husband and wife (Ge 2.18, 21-25), and, as the language indicates, they were to have children (Ge 2.24, “one flesh”; cf Ge 9.1, 7). Later Scripture speaks repeatedly of the authority of parents over their children (e.g. Ep 6.1-4).

The State / Government

There is obviously no need for a state until the human population grows beyond a single family, but that apparently came very early in history, given the extended lifespans in that time (Adam, for example, lived to be more than 800 years old [Ge 5.4]). Adam’s son, Cain, established “a city” (Ge 4.17), probably several centuries after creation. We’re not told what sort of government it had, but some organization must have been involved.

As Noah left the ark after the flood, God bestowed on humans the authority of capital punishment (Ge 9.6), which I think can serve as a clear indication of human government.

And if the state can kill you for violating its law against murder, then clearly it has authority and can command obedience.

It’s worth noting that pretty much all government in those days—indeed, all the way through the Medieval period—was autocratic. Of course the ancient Greeks experimented with democracy in Athens and Sparta, but that was short-lived and not influential. The current broad menu of governmental systems is a recent and unusual development. But the authority has always been there.

The Church

This third authority structure is a relative latecomer, having been instituted after the earthly ministry of Christ, at Pentecost (Ac 2.47 is the first biblical mention of the church as existing). It is never said to have authority over nonbelievers (hence the poor record of theocratic systems in the centuries since), but believers are often told to recognize and obey ecclesiastical authorities (e.g.2Th 3.7; He 13.7).

Now.

Since the world and everyone in it is broken, these authority structures are broken as well. There are mistakes and errors in judgment and execution, and often there are abuses.

Now what?

Next time.

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On Protest, Part 1: First Things

July 14, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

We live in a culture of protest, and one that didn’t just recently arrive on the scene. Nearly a century ago Mahatma Gandhi advocated non-violent protest against the British Empire’s claim of sovereignty over Indian affairs. Martin Luther King Jr. borrowed significantly from Gandhi in his leadership of protests against Jim Crow practices during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Pro-life protesters have been active outside abortion clinics for decades. Beginning in 2009, Tea Party activists protested publicly. And more recently various Occupy and Antifa factions have engaged in protests, most famously in Seattle and Portland.

I’ve chosen to name these specific examples for their diversity—not just on the political spectrum, but the degree to which they advocate civil disobedience or violence. There are clearly different ways to protest.

Protest is an effective way, especially with political issues, to get a cause onto the political agenda. It’s even implied in the US Constitution. It’s a common tool for dealing with authorities with whom we disagree.

A context of protest provides a good opportunity for us to evaluate the biblical data on authority and to give some thought to how we can best respond when one of our authorities acts in a way we think is wrong.

So let’s begin, as we always should, by laying out some biblical principles that can help determine our philosophy of protest and then guide our application of that philosophy.

The Glory of God

The Prime Directive is the glory of God. Our thoughts, words, and actions must reflect positively on him; they must attribute weightiness to him, giving others legitimate reason to think well of him—whether they end up doing so or not. We cannot control the decisions others make about their view of God, but we must not give them legitimate reason to think poorly of him.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1Co 10.31).

Only He is worth all of our love, all of our loyalty, and all of our devotion. God is the only person we can follow blindly—and He doesn’t ask us to; he has left millennia of historical record of his goodness, greatness, and faithfulness.

This is a weighty task, one with eternal consequences. It must not be merely in the back of our minds as we lay out our plan of action.

Thus it’s worth stating here at the outset that the cause for which we protest is always—always—secondary to our primary purpose of glorifying God and carrying out his commission to take his gospel to the ends of the earth.

The Brokenness of Our World

Our world, and everything in it, is broken. In God’s good plan, sin has damaged his creation. It has rendered us broken as people, and it has broken our environment and our circumstances (Ge 3.1-19). I’ll get to some implications of that later in the series.

So we must not be surprised by evil, including injustice; but on the other hand, we must not be apathetic about it either, waving it off as “just the way things are,” with a flippant “if it doesn’t affect me, then what do I care?” As part of bringing glory to God, we are called to battle the world’s evil and bring healing and relief, to the degree that we can, where evil reveals itself.

God Reigns

God is not stymied or frustrated by evil; he is so much bigger than evil that he can use it to accomplish his own purposes (Ge 50.20). God is directing the course of each life for his glory (Ps 37.23). And for now, he has called all of us to walk as broken people in a broken world. Sometimes this means that we will experience evil and injustice (Job 1).

But in the end, his will—his good will—is always accomplished. He directs and sustains us through evil things purposefully, in order to accomplish His goal in us: to conform us to the image of His dear Son (2Co 3.18).

Next time, we’ll look more closely at the systems he uses to accomplish this.

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On Justice, Part 4: Accomplished

July 10, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: We All Want It | Part 2: The Perp | Part 3: Progress

The second paragraph of Revelation 20 turns its attention to what happens during the thousand years when Satan is confined in the abyss. But in the third paragraph (Re 20.7-10) the focus returns to “that old serpent, the devil, and Satan”—specifically, his behavior once he is released. And—spoiler alert—we find that the confinement has not reformed him; he continues in his evil ways.

He pursues his work as a deceiver (Re 20.8). During Jesus’ earthly ministry, the Lord taught that “the devil … is a liar, and the father of it” (Jn 8.44). Here Satan continues to be what he is, revealing his nature as an enemy of the truth. He “deceive[s] the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth” (Re 20.8). He lies on a massive scale, deceiving whole people groups, millions strong, across and around the globe. There’s simply no end, temporally or spatially, to his evil.

And these nations, millions strong and utterly deceived, decide that their enemy is not the one lying to them, but the people of God. They gather their forces to surround Jerusalem, “the camp of the saints … , and the beloved city” (Re 20.9).

What chance does a single city have against the combined armies of the world? Why doesn’t he pick on somebody his own size?

Well, because he’s a bully, and attacking the weak is what bullies do.

But we know that bullies are not in fact strong; they attack the weak because they themselves are weak, and they are cowards.

So is the snake.

And when bullies strut their stuff, typically someone stronger, who has a sense of justice, comes along and trounces them. And pretty much every member of the human race loves to see that happen.

Thus we can anticipate the next verse without even reading it.

There is a God in heaven, who is just and right, and whose knowledge and power are infinite. He’s going to know about the 10-year-old thug who’s stealing the second-grader’s lunch money. And he’s going to know about the father of lies who’s deceiving the whole world into turning against his largely helpless people.

The time for justice has come.

As the armies mass around Jerusalem in John’s vision, “fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them” (Re 20.9).

Well. That changes things.

But justice requires more. The father of lies himself needs to face payback for the evil and destruction he has wrought.

So we reach verse 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.

Torment. Day and night. Forever.

Intensive, and extensive, and infinitely so.

A fitting punishment for such a being.

We don’t really know how Satan got this way. I don’t believe Isaiah 14.12-15 is telling us anything about that; I think it’s simply a description of the king of Babylon, predicted by Isaiah more than a century before. I do think, though, that Ezekiel 28.11-19 is a double reference to the king of Tyre and to Satan; and there we learn merely that “iniquity was found in” him (Ezk 28.15).

How? Well, because of pride, apparently (Ezk 28.17). But where did the pride come from?

It’s a puzzle, indeed.

But as uncertain as Satan’s origin is, there is no uncertainly about his future. He will face justice, and God’s people will be delivered.

Justice.

Even so.

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On Justice, Part 3: Progress

July 7, 2025 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: We All Want It | Part 2: The Perp

So what’s going to happen to this character, “that old serpent, … the devil, and Satan” (Re 20.2), the originator and perpetrator of all the evil in the world?

God is not the sort of person to be overpowered, and he is not the sort of person to let injustice go unresolved. To put it in the vernacular, he takes care of business.

The first three verses of Revelation 20 set the stage for this resolution.

¹And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. ²And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, ³And 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 (Re 20.1-3).

This single sentence gives multiple indications that God is greater than Satan. To begin with, he is overpowered by an “angel” (Re 20.1). Now, we’ve learned elsewhere in Scripture that angels are spiritual beings, created by God to be his servants (He 1.14), and particularly to deliver messages from God to humans (e.g. Lk 1.11 ff). They are greater than humans (Ps 8.5), but of course much less great than their Creator, God.

And just one of them is given divine tools sufficient to seize and to bind Satan (Re 20.2). If one angel is stronger than Satan, then God certainly is too.

So what about those tools? Is this a literal kay and a literal chain? Despite my bias toward taking the Scripture literally whenever possible, I don’t think so. The book of Revelation contains a lot of language that is clearly non-literal, and I strongly doubt that Satan can be bound by a literal chain. When we first meet him, he’s in the form of a serpent, and in Job, he’s a being who appears before God in the heavenly court, with no mention of snakishness (snakitude?). Since it seems that he’s non-physical, then he is bound and locked in a confinement that is effective for his non-physical nature.

We’re told that he is confined this way “for a thousand years” (Re 20.2). Now here I’m going to take the time statement literally (thus identifying myself as a premillennialist), primarily because John repeats it in every verse through the end of the paragraph (Re 20.3, 4, 5, 6, 7), seemingly emphasizing it, making a point of it.

The place of confinement is described as “a bottomless pit” (Re 20.3), literally an “abyss.” This word appears in the Greek translation of the OT a few times, initially in the creation account, where “darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Ge 1.2). Moses describes the Promised Land as “a land of … depths that spring out of valleys and hills” (Dt 8.7). In later Jewish and Christian writings it came to refer to the dark abode of the dead, similar to what we would call “hell.”

So Satan is temporarily bound in this deep (and by implication inaccessible and inescapable) place.

Why?

“That he should deceive the nations no more” (Re 20.3).

Here’s a second indication that God is greater than Satan. God forcibly protects the welfare of his people. He will not allow Satan’s destructive deception to continue. There is coming a time when injustice will end.

Why so long before God does this?

That’s a legitimate question. Many of God’s people, within the Scripture and since, have asked that question, and God does not attack them for asking.

But he also doesn’t answer their question.

The third indication of his greatness is that God chooses the timing, because he is in charge.

As the old child’s prayer reminds us, God is great (empowering his servants to bind Satan at the determined time) and God is good (acting to protect his people).

We’ll trace this story to its complete resolution next time.

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