Revelation 20:1-3

Revelation 20:1: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
3 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 a little season.”

Notice that the being who comes down from Heaven and binds Satan is not Jesus Christ or Michael the Archangel, but is just “an angel”! Satan has been so thoroughly defeated that an ordinary angel can bind him.

People who are amillennial try to claim that the millennium is going on now and that the binding of Satan refers to Christ’s death on the cross. The problem with this theory is that Rev 20:1 doesn’t say that Christ bound Satan; it says that an angel did. Besides, are we really supposed to believe that for the past two thousand years Satan and all of his demonic forces have been bound and unable to cause any sort of harm or temptation? What about all those verses that say that Satan goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour? Those were written after Christ died! The truth is that these verses have not yet been fulfilled. Satan hasn’t been bound yet, but he will be.

There are some people who argue against a literal interpretation of this passage by saying that there is no way anyone could bind Satan with a chain. I think that’s a silly argument: if God says that Satan is going to be bound with a chain then who are you to say otherwise? I know of no passages in the Bible that say that Satan can’t be bound with a chain. I suspect that God knows exactly what is necessary to bind Satan.

After Jesus Christ defeats the antichrist and his armies, Satan will be bound and locked away in the bottomless pit, where he will be unable to cause any more trouble. There he will be imprisoned for a thousand years. During those thousand years Satan will no longer go around as a roaring lion. Instead he will be unable to deceive or harm anyone.

However, as we will see later in the chapter, the devil’s career is not entirely over. After the thousand years are over he will be set free for one final act of deception.