Arial
Active member
@Tambora
From the idealist/amillennialist point of view, and considering that the thousand years is a period of time starting with the resurrection and will conclude with His second coming, what is meant by Satan being bound for a thousand years and then released? Keep in mind that John is seeing these things as a vision, which itself suggests the probability that both these thousand years are the same, and that the things in the vision are representative. For example of what I mean: Then I saw an angel coming down from the heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
There is not much, if any dispute that the angel was not holding a literal key, or that it opened a bottomless pit or that there was a literal giant chain, or that Satan is a dragon as well as a serpent. So why all of a sudden are the thousand years literal?
So if Satan has been bound since the resurrection (according to idealism), why is he still active. The scripture tells us that he was bound from a particular thing---deceiving the nations. Satan has already been bound (John 12:31; Col 2:15; Rev 12:9; Matt 12:29). The present spread of the gospel is initiated in Acts. Before that all nations except for Israel were deceived. The deceiving of the nations takes place largely through the Beast. The Beast we saw, way back at the beginning of this thread, is the counterfeit of Christ, sent by the dragon to execute the plans of the dragon. He suffers repeated defeats over the course of history and Satan therefore repeated reverses in his power over the nations. His being released then would be his final attempt to deceive the nations and his final defeat. And he is always attacking the church and its people.
From the idealist/amillennialist point of view, and considering that the thousand years is a period of time starting with the resurrection and will conclude with His second coming, what is meant by Satan being bound for a thousand years and then released? Keep in mind that John is seeing these things as a vision, which itself suggests the probability that both these thousand years are the same, and that the things in the vision are representative. For example of what I mean: Then I saw an angel coming down from the heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
There is not much, if any dispute that the angel was not holding a literal key, or that it opened a bottomless pit or that there was a literal giant chain, or that Satan is a dragon as well as a serpent. So why all of a sudden are the thousand years literal?
So if Satan has been bound since the resurrection (according to idealism), why is he still active. The scripture tells us that he was bound from a particular thing---deceiving the nations. Satan has already been bound (John 12:31; Col 2:15; Rev 12:9; Matt 12:29). The present spread of the gospel is initiated in Acts. Before that all nations except for Israel were deceived. The deceiving of the nations takes place largely through the Beast. The Beast we saw, way back at the beginning of this thread, is the counterfeit of Christ, sent by the dragon to execute the plans of the dragon. He suffers repeated defeats over the course of history and Satan therefore repeated reverses in his power over the nations. His being released then would be his final attempt to deceive the nations and his final defeat. And he is always attacking the church and its people.