When will Satan be defeated?

There are three distinct stages in the judgment on Satan. First, he is cast down from Heaven to earth with his associated angels (v. 9); second, he is confined as a prisoner in the abyss for one thousand years (Rev. 20:3); third, he is consigned to eternal torment in the lake of fire (v. 10). The first two acts of judgment are executed by the instrumentality of angels; the third and final one is an exhibition of divine power irrespective of the agency employed to execute it, which is not named. The lake of fire! There the wail of anguish is never hushed, and the tear is never dry. No ray of light nor gleam of hope ever enters those caverns of eternal despair. Mind cannot conceive nor pen trace the horror of such a doom. Satan’s reign in the lake of fire is but the dream of the poet, and is without a shred of Scripture to support it. There he suffers — not reigns — the most degraded and abject of God’s creatures. How patient is our God, but how sure His threatened judgments! Satan after seven thousand years of active hatred against God, and of hostility to those who are His, is at length crushed, shorn of power and ability to work further mischief, and shut up with his angels to his and their “prepared” doom, “everlasting fire” (Matt. 25:41).

Finally, at the close of the thousand years, Satan shall be loosed, and permitted to make one more desperate effort — an effort issuing in his eternal defeat and consignment to the lake of fire, there to be tormented with the beast and the false prophet throughout the everlasting ages.

The last act of Satan, before his final doom is sealed, will be to head the last great revolt of men against God, described in Revelation 20:7-10. He is then cast into the lake of fire.

Upon the close of the thousand years, Satan is let loose - deceives the nations - a separation takes place; and he brings up the deceived against the camp of the saints and the beloved city, to wit, the earthly Jerusalem. Then the devil is cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet are already, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

The next chapter shows us Satan bound and shut up in the bottomless pit a thousand years, while for the same time Christ and his saints reign together, the wicked dead not yet being raised.

At the end of the thousand years Satan is loosed out of his prison, and after having deceived the nations, and the judgment of God overtaking his followers, he is again taken, and this time cast into the lake of fire. There we are told expressly, a thousand and more years after they have been cast in, "the beast and the false prophet are,"* and it is added of them, "and they shall be tormented day and night unto the ages of ages" (ver. 10).

At the end, Satan, who has been bound, will be let loose for a little season. The result will be, that after men have experienced the untold blessings of the millennial age, they will again yield to Satan's temptation, and readily fall in with his suggestions. Such is man! Myriads of them will enlist under the banner of the great deceiver, according to the twentieth of Revelation, and encompass the camp of the beloved saints at Jerusalem. You will notice that there will be saints then on the earth. The result of Satan's deception will be, that the Lord, after His reign of a thousand years over the earth, will call down fire from heaven in consuming judgment on those who have been thus led astray, "the number of whom is as the sand of the sea." And more than this: He will then take Satan, and cast him into the lake of fire, where he is to be tormented day and night for ever and ever. In this way the first prophecy of Scripture will have its fulfilment. Satan will be bruised for ever under the feet of the Lord Jesus, and, blessed be His name, under our feet too.

In the next chapter he is said to give power to the beast, or Roman Empire to be resuscitated in that day (ver. 12); and in the nineteenth he leads on the Empire and the false prophet, or "man of sin," in Jerusalem, to make war against Him that sat on the horse. These two powers — political and religious — are overcome by the King of kings and Lord of lords, and are both cast alive (they do not die) into the lake of fire. After this Satan himself is bound for a thousand years in the abyss, and at the close of the millennial reign of Christ is loosed out of his prison. He goes forth to deceive and gather the unconverted nations to battle. It is his last desperate, but futile, effort against the authority of God, and his deception of men. The nations go up on the breadth of thy: earth. They compass the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city, but not a sword is drawn nor a gun fired. God acts in His own sovereign rights as God, and fire comes down from heaven and devours them. This is Satan's third battle with God — first, at Calvary's cross, then in the second heaven, and finally at the beloved city Jerusalem; but all in vain. And in this last scene we see his power utterly crushed and broken. His final doom is now irrevocably fixed. "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

SATAN CAST INTO THE LAKE OF FIRE.‎

Rev. 20:10. — What of the proud boast of the perfectibility of human nature in light of the closing scene in the drama of history! For the first time in the history of the race ‎(from Gen. 3 to Rev. 20) we have an earth without a sinner upon its surface. Satan has now to be dealt with. He is allowed to see the end of all his heartless machinations.‎ He is foiled and defeated. His doom was fixed seven thousand years before its execution (Gen. 3:15). His head‎ is bruised by the woman’s seed. There yet remains the one final act of everlasting judgment. “And the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where (are) both the Beast and the False Prophet, and they shall be tormented day and night for the ages of ages.”‎

The dragon was first cast out of Heaven, then shut up in the abyss, now cast into the lake of fire. As the dragon he is shut up, as Satan he is loosed, and as the devil he is cast into the lake of fire.* In this last war the dragon is not named. Satan, signifying adversary, is the open and declared enemy and adversary of God, of Christ, of the saints, of Israel, and in that character he stands out apart from human agents as the leader of the hosts who gather against the camp and city. But as the devil, the deceiver and tempter of men, he is cast into everlasting torment.‎

The last six verses of our chapter give us the results of God's last judgments; not the material side of them but the moral and spiritual. The fountain-head of all evil is first dealt with. In all the wide universe, that the Scriptures reveal to us, Satan was the original rebel. Into this world he introduced sin by way of deceit. His name, devil, means accuser, calumniator, and by his calumnies against God and His word he deceived Eve, as Genesis 3 bears witness. As a mighty spiritual being, possessing powers of intelligence vastly beyond anything human, he has no difficulty in deceiving fallen men. He is doing it today, and will do it to the end. But the limit determined by Omnipotence is now reached, and he is cast into that "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," of which the Lord spoke in Matthew 25:41. Here the fire is spoken of as a lake, which gives the idea of a place circumscribed and confined. Into it the beast and the false prophet were cast as the millennial age began, and now at the end of that age we read that there they still "are," and not that they were. The fire had not destroyed them.

We are well acquainted with fire and its effects in material objects; but, as far as we know, it has no effects on spiritual beings. We judge therefore the phrase to be symbolic, as so much else in this book, but it stands as the symbol of the hot displeasure, the scorching judgment of God, which even for the devil will mean that he "shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

Satan, who had been thrust out of heavenly places in the 12th chapter, and who had come down and given his mighty energy to the beast and false prophet, is now chained and imprisoned in the abyss for a thousand years. (Rev. 20:1-2.) An angel is the instrument used. John says, "I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and 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 for a little season." Satan will be then under restraint for a time, and what an immense difference this will make to the world. Now he is mighty in power. He is called the Dragon, because of his terrible power: Satan, because he is man's adversary: Devil, because he is the great accuser: and old Serpent, because he had been the seducer from the beginning. His power is very great, so that he is called the prince of this world, and is said to be going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He is called the god of this world, and as such blinds the eyes of the children of men, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of God should shine unto them. He sows tares where the Lord's good seed springs up, and thus makes false professors. He is the accuser of the brethren, and deceiver of the whole world, the father of lies — a liar and murderer from the beginning. He tempts the children of God, seeks to hinder their communion with the Father and the Son, and with one another, and endeavours to seduce from the simplicity of Christ; and to accomplish his purposes, transforms himself and his servants into angels of light. He is still the prince of the power of the air, has access into heavenly places, tries to hinder believers from coming to the mercy-seat by the blood of Jesus, and works in the children of disobedience.