Is Satan the master of hell? Do Satan and his demons punish people in hell?

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.

Satan reigns in hell, according to the popular belief; and Milton's picture, while it reflects this, has done much to confirm and make it vivid. But hell is a place of punishment, and Scripture is quite plain that he is not confined there. Then he must have broken loose, is the idea. God's prison was not strong enough! One might ask, How do we know, then, it will ever be? Think of the government which allows the chief malefactor to reign in his prison over those less evil than himself, and to break prison, and roam freely where he will! God's government is not chargeable with this. In hell, Satan will be, not king, but lowest and most miserable there; and once committed to it, no escape will be permitted. But this will not be till after the millennium, as Rev. 20 assures us.

Finally, the king is the angel of the abyss, the same perhaps as the fallen star, who had the key of the pit. If so, it is a dark Satanic destroyer, if not Satan. It is in this world that the devil is so exalted, its prince; he is ruler also of the power of the air and the god of this age. In the abyss he will be bound as a prisoner for a long season; in hell he will be tormented for ever and ever, the most miserable object there, and in no wise ruling as king in either the one or the other. So poets dream; but not so says the scripture.

352 There is nothing that the Lord has not gone through: death is the last effort of Satan's power; it ends there for the sinner, as well as for the saint. The unconverted even are out of Satan's power when they die: if they die in their sins, of course they come under the judgment of God, but Satan has no power in hell. He may have pre-eminence in misery, but no power there (his reigning is some poet's dream, it is here he reigns, and that by means of the pride and vanity, the evil passions and idleness, of men); he is "the ruler of the darkness of this world," not of the next.

It is untrue that Satan will reign in hell. The chief malefactor will be then chief sufferer, not tormentor of others, but himself tormented. His reign now is a thing permitted in the meantime by an all-wise God, wherein evil is allowed to manifest itself and show its fruit; and that good in conflict with it may be proved also, and show its supremacy over it as no arbitrary thing. God has cast (in a sense, and for a time) the rod out of His hand, and the rod, cast to the ground, has become a serpent!

Accordingly, Jerusalem has become a furnace which melts down the various things exposed to it into one mass of manifest dross. God surely has purification in mind, but what is here is the wrath itself — a wrath by which what cannot be changed may yet be limited and kept under. And such will be the fire of hell; corruption, at last, will be permitted no longer; none of the rioting will be there which has been in men's shameful imaginations of what is to come; Satan, then, is the arch-tormentor no more, but himself the most tormented. Suited and necessitated penalty, carefully discriminated, will be God's decisive repression of that which can be no more permitted to break out at all. Man's ways come to an end then, and God comes to His own finally and fully.

Satan then is cast into hell to be tormented forever (Rev. 20:10). Satan is not king of hell, but as indicated by the biblical principle found in Luke 12:48, receives the greatest punishment. Hell was prepared for Satan and his demons (Matt. 25:41), and those demons will not fail to meet their judgment date (Matt. 8:29; 2 Peter 2:4).

Verse 10. The beast and the false prophet are in the lake burning with fire and brimstone since the judgment of the earth. Satan is not there. He reigns in a public-house, in balls, in the opera, in the theatre, in concerts, etc., and he rules in the hearts of men by presenting to them things pleasant to their lusts. When Satan shall be in the lake burning with fire, he will not reign there; he will be there as the most miserable being. At the beginning of the millennium the beast and the false prophet will be thrown there alive. Satan is only bound in the bottomless pit, from whence he shall come out again to tempt men.

The next is Hebrews 2:14-15. To this I have nothing to say. Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. What then? It is not destroyed till death and Hades give up their prey. But how does that hinder Satan, who has the immediate power of its being bound for a thousand years? Christ can surely if He see fit, cut off the wicked out of the land. He has the keys of Hades and death, and this, Scripture speaks of, not of the saint dying at all. These He would not cut off. Ps. 101, Isa. 45 — He quotes Rom. 16:20, alluding surely to the old promise. But it is a fatal mistake, (which showed itself in a previous passage less closely,) to suppose that Satan being set aside "is equivalent to the complete destruction of all that stand in the way of our salvation." It is a fatal lie against the truth. There is our own sinful nature besides. How it acts when temptation is not there, men may have foolishly speculated on. But Dr. B. is utterly and fundamentally wrong. It is even false to say he actuates us in hell. There is no scripture for it at all. He is the most grievously punished there — has no power. All this argument is a total failure. That sin cannot exist without Satan's presence and tribulation, he has no ground for whatever. That they go together constantly now in us is true, not necessarily always. But there is temptation without sin being yet there, as in Adam, who fell under it, and Christ, who did not. There is temptation and sin, as in our case, and there may be a sinful nature without temptation, for it certainly subsists now without it and before it. It is there already when temptation is applied to it. Dr. B. sees only a moral internal state in Satan's power, not external power, of which scripture largely speaks. "Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means harm you." So the cases of possession, and Job's history to which I have referred. He refers further to Rev. 2, — Satan's throne being in Pergamos, — and says it "certainly refers to the powerful party which Satan had in the place!" Why? A throne is not a party, and no way of expressing it, but the contrary. Satan is the prince and god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of the darkness of this world. He has the throne. His having a party is a miserably false gloss.

But in fact "no one suffers punishment in hell on account of the evils which he has done in the world, but on account of the evils which he then does." And yet he speaks of the punishment of assassins as "dreadful," and has a special one for the popes who deprived emperors of their dominions. Punishment seems largely inflicted by the lost upon each other, and it is often terrible enough; but there are mitigations. Those who do their task well get food and clothing and beds to rest on. There are hypocrites, who, "by means of a holy external, have communications with some of the societies of the lowest heavens; and by means of a profane internal, with the hells; while others are able to persuade themselves and others that they are in heaven. Indeed, those in hell are permitted to live as they like and enjoy the delights they desire, with no other qualification, no other restraint, than is necessary to prevent their making each other miserable." "But this idea," says Dr. Pond, "is contradicted in a great many passages."