Feb 12, 2024
Is Satan bound? Or is he the ruler of this world?
Video is from the YouTube site, Ligonier Ministries
Video-page link: https://www.youtube.com/@ligonier/videos
Narrative and link from YouTube [highlights below video]:
From one of our live events, Derek Thomas, W. Robert Godfrey, and Sinclair Ferguson discuss how the coming of Christ has affected the dominion of the evil one.
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Highlights [bracketed statements, emboldening and underscoring are mine]:
- Pastor Derek Thomas: Initially, the gospel was confined to the Jews; after the disciples began to spread the gospel, Satan’s control of this world was affected by their ministry, Calvary, the resurrection and Pentecost
- Satan still referred to as prince of the power of the air
- He hasn’t yet been cast into the bottomless pit
- CS Lewis noted that we should not make too much or too little of Satan
- Pastor Robert Godfrey: Jesus is King of kings now
- Satan is finite and cannot be everywhere at once; his minions serve him [making it appear as though he is bigger than he is]
- We seem often to talk of Satan as though he is the evil god, in comparison with the Holy God
- He has been defeated and will be destroyed
- Our calling is to NOT let him destroy us before he is destroyed
- Pastor Sinclair Ferguson: In reference to the above, in light of Matthew 28:18-20:
- Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age”
- Jesus has won back the dominion over the earth that Adam lost by overcoming the Tempter
- When He spoke the scriptures above, those words were not in terms of His being the Son of God; but in relation to the fall and His work as the second Adam
- The context of the ‘binding’ of Satan is until the resurrection of Christ; the sending of the Holy Spirit; the giving; the coming of the last days
- Satan was deceiving ‘all the nations’ except the one nation that God was ‘undeceiving’ [with his truth, laws, guidance…]
- The crowd that was gathered at the day of Pentecost is analogous to that crowd that was gathered at the tower of Babel
- God deceived the nations after Babel; He is ‘undeceiving’ those who believe the gospel now
- The ‘undeceiving’ via the gospel going out, will occur until Jesus returns