Archives for July 2025

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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On Justice, Part 2: The Perp

July 3, 2025 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: We All Want It

As we noted last time, we all want justice, but in spite of our best efforts, it continues to elude us. We’re surrounded by accounts of injustices, and while some of those accounts are probably exaggerated, not all of them are, not by a long shot.

Broken people, broken world.

The world has not always been broken, however, and it will not always be.

Scripture tells the story of how the brokenness arrived. It tells of a snake who deceived the first woman and of a man, her husband, who cooperated, even though he knew perfectly well what he was doing (Ge 3.1-6; cf 1Ti 2.14).

Yeah, a talking snake. A lot of people think that’s just ridiculous, and it’s easy to see why they do.

But I don’t. I view the Scripture as divinely inspired, inerrant, and authoritative, and I’ve explained why here.

So I’m biased toward the biblical accounts. All evil, including the world’s injustice, came from a talking snake.

So who was he?

The account says simply that he was a snake, and that he was “more crafty” than any other creature. In Job, possibly written even before Moses wrote Genesis, we meet someone named “The Satan” (Job 1.6), or “The Adversary,” who clearly opposes God; but beyond a handful of later references (1Ch 21.1; Ps 109.6; Zec 3.1-2), the Hebrew Scriptures have nothing else to say about him.

With the incarnation, though, he seems to get busy, throwing all his forces at the Christ when he is apparently most vulnerable. Satan appears in all four Gospels (Mt 3x; Mk 5x; Lk 6x; Jn 1x) and in Acts (2x).

He shows up often in Paul’s epistles (10x), and he explodes onto the scene at the end of history (8x in Rev). It’s at the very end of the story (Re 20.2, 7) that we find the answer to the question we have had from the beginning: who is the snake?

John tells us:

²And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.

Now, is it possible that Eve’s tempter was a different snake? I suppose so, theoretically, but I note that John has already called this creature a “dragon,” which would nicely continue the flow of the story, but he pauses to add that he’s a “serpent,” which looks an awful lot like an inclusio, a bookend reference back to the beginning of the Canon; and he calls him “that” serpent, a relative pronoun that indicates a previous reference—something that linguists call an “anaphoric” use. And then, John calls Satan “that old serpent,” a strong indication that our “inclusio” theory is correct.

So this creature—and he is merely a creature—started all this trouble, this pain and suffering and exploitation and injustice, and now the Scripture is going to tell us what happens to him.

Some people object that God seems to be taking his sweet time addressing the problem, and they assume that this indicates some sort of moral failing in God—if he even exists.

I don’t have the time or space here to address the large question of the problem of evil, but I intend to as occasion presents itself down the road. In the meantime, given my own observational and intellectual limitations, and given God’s demonstrated faithfulness to me over a lengthening life, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Suffice it to say that justice is coming, and that God’s view of time infinitely exceeds ours.

In the next post we’ll turn to an examination of this climactic passage revealing God’s dealing with his persistent but infinitely inferior enemy.

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