Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XXXI
THE DOOM OF SATAN
THE very personality of Satan is, as everybody is aware,
denied in many quarters in the present day. The only people with whom we have
to do just now, however, who deny this, are the followers of Dr. Thomas. With
these men, self-consistently enough, the devil is simply a personification of
sin, which, however, may be represented apparently by a variety of living
agents, in order to get rid of the distasteful idea of separate personality and
yet meet the texts in which personality is too manifest to be denied.
I
may be allowed, without being thought to wander too far from the subject before
us, to look briefly at this point.
Now, we read of one in the book of Job
who, when "the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, - came
also among them" He is expressly called Satan, and is a true "devil" according
to the meaning of that word "a false accuser."
These "sons of God" are
spoken of by Jehovah in the same book as present when He laid the foundations
of the earth (xxxviii. 7), and therefore are certainly not men but angels.
Among these angels then the accuser comes, as one of them: surely not a man
among angels, and hardly a personification of sin.
From the presence of
the Lord he goes forth to exercise manifest superhuman power against Job within
divinely ordained limits. He is here clearly an angelic, yet a fallen and evil
being.
In the book of Revelation we have a being figured as a "dragon," and
explained to be" that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan" (xx. 2). "That
old serpent" of course refers to Eden, and tells us who was the real tempter
hid under the form of the irrational creature. Here too the words of the Lord
apply: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth,
because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his
own; for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John viii. 44).
As a
tempter we accordingly again find him assailing the Lord in the wilderness, One
in whom there was no indwelling sin to seduce or personify; and there too he is
called the devil and Satan, and appears as one who claims the kingdoms of the
world as his. And he departing from Him for a season, the Lord speaks of his
return in a way which suits this claim of his: "the prince of this world
cometh, and hath nothing in me;" and of His own cross as that which was his
judgment, and would ensure his casting out (John xiv. 30, xvi. 11, xii. 31). In
all which we travel back once more to Eden, and find fulfilling the words to
the old serpent, "He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
We find his being and power so recognized among the Jews that the
Pharisees impute the Lords casting out of devils to Beelzebub the prince
of the devils; and the Lord rebukes them by asking, "Can Satan cast out Satan?"
and, recognizing the fact of his having a kingdom, asks in that case how it
shall stand? The devils He casts out, know Him in turn, call Him the Holy One
of God and Son of God, and beseech Him not to torment them before the time.
Everywhere in the Gospels the power of Satan is a thing as manifest as
malignant. A woman cannot lift up herself for eighteen years, and it is Satan
that has bound her. He puts into Judas heart to betray the Lord; and in
the apparent zeal for Himself of another disciple Christ discerns Satan also.
He sows the tares in the parable, and these springing up are the children of
the wicked one. Among the signs that follow those who believe is this, that
they cast out devils.
In the Acts the workings of the same malignant
spirit are as manifest. Satan fills Ananias heart to lie to the Holy
Ghost, and keep back part of the price of his land. Cases of possession are
still noticed, and as a common thing. Paul speaks of being sent to "turn men
from the power of Satan unto God." In the Epistles he is the constant adversary
of the people of God, whether openly as a roaring lion, or transformed into an
angel of light. He is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience;
the god of this world who blinds the minds of those that believe not. If
resisted he flees, but the shield of faith is that by which alone the fiery
darts of the wicked one are quenched. "Shortly," we are reminded, according to
the first promise, "God will bruise Satan under your feet."
All this is
but part of the testimony of the word of God as to the reality and power of
mans old enemy. If words mean anything they assure us of his true
personality, with that of numberless evil spirits, "his angels," possessed of
superhuman power, which is used to obtain dominion over mens souls and
even bodies, and from which nothing but divine power can deliver. I need not
pursue this further now. But we shall have to consider some common mistakes as
to Satan which it is of great importance to rectify", in order to have clearly
before us the Scripture view.
Satan has been considered commonly (as
one finds in the Paradise Lost of a great poet) to be here as a prisoner broken
loose from hell, into which he had been cast immediately upon his fall, a hell
in which even now he is supposed to reign, and to reign there eternally over
fallen spirits and lost men, the divinely appointed tormenter of those whom he
has made his prey. For no part of this is Scripture responsible, and its
grotesque horror has been the reproach of orthodox theology. What would be
thought of a government which allowed its prisoners so to break their bounds,
and which employed the. chief criminal to torture the lesser ones?
There is in Scripture not the slightest trace of a reign in hell,* or
of Satan tormenting anybody there. He will be there, doubtless, the lowest and
most miserable of all, but he is not yet in hell at all. Strange and startling
as it seems to many, instead of being in hell, he is in "heavenly places," and
instead of reigning in hell, reigns here, the prince and the god of this world.
*It may have arisen from a misconception of Rev. ix. 11. But the
"bottomless pit," or "abyss" is not even hell at all.
Thus we are
exhorted to "put on the whole armour of God, whereby ye may be able to stand
against the wiles of devil; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places" (Eph. vi. 11, 12). Our translators have shown how foreign the thought
was to their minds by putting "high" into the text instead of "heavenly." But
here the devil and his angels are looked at as the antitype of the hosts of
Canaan with which Joshua and Israel wrestled. We have long lost the type in
losing the antitype.
Alford. " Hosts" is not expressed in the Greek
it is "spirituals."
But in Job we have already seen Satan among the
sons of God; and the "heavenly places" were surely his original dwelling-place.
And if his casting down to hell has not yet taken place, he will be still
naturally there where he belonged by creation. Now his casting into hell
belongs to a time plainly yet future (Rev. xx. 10), and everywhere in the
Gospels, we find the devils anticipating their coming doom, but knowing it was
not yet come. "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" they ask. It is
plain then that hell cannot be their present portion.
The binding of
Satan precedes necessarily the millennial blessing. How could there be
righteousness or peace in a world in which he was still as active as ever?
Immediately, therefore, after the appearing of the Lord, among the other foes
That are dealt with, Satan and his hosts are not forgotten. The fate of the
beast and the kings of the earth is first shown us at the end of Rev. xix., and
then Satan is bound and shut up in the abyss a thousand years. The account may
be given in figurative language, and is, no doubt, but yet with perfect
simplicity, and Isaiah, eight hundred years before, gives us the same things
with almost equal plainness, and in perfect harmony with the obvious meaning.
For "it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of
the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth" -
the two classes of which Revelation speaks; "and they shall be gathered
together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the
prison, and after many days (plainly, the millennium) shall they be visited.
Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts
shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients
gloriously" (Isa. xxiv. 21-23).
"When the thousand years are expired,
Satan shall be loosed out of his prison." And this post-millennial loosing
seems again to stumble many. It is evident that the object is to distinguish
between the true subjects and the concealed enemies of the Lord, still such in
the face of the long reign of blessing and of peace. That there are these is
plain from such intimations as that in Psa. xviii. 44, 45. And the effect of
Satan being free is soon apparent. "He shall go out to deceive the nations
which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them
together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went
up upon the breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints about,
and the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured
them."
Then comes Satans final judgment. "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 forever and ever."
Concerning the nature of this punishment we are now ready to
inquire.
Go to Chapter Thirty Two
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