“and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.” – Rev 20:3
I came across some helpful points on Revelation 20:3 by someone named Matthew Waymeyer, who is premill but not prewrath; nevertheless, he had some good responses to an amillennial interpretation of this verse that asserts that it “limits the binding of Satan during the New Covenant reign of Christ (i.e. Church era) to his inability to effectually deceive the nations.” Here are some selections of Waymeyer’s response here:
I do indeed take the purpose clause in verse 3 seriously. I wholeheartedly believe that Satan will be unable to deceive the nations during the thousand-year period when he is locked in the abyss, and I wholeheartedly believe that preventing this deception is the primary purpose of Satan’s incarceration. Neither of these presents any problem whatsoever for my premillennial eschatology.
In contrast, the purpose clause in verse 3 presents a significant difficulty for amillennialism. Because the amillennialist believes the thousand-year period of Revelation 20 is taking place now in the present age, he is forced to say that Satan is currently unable to deceive unbelievers (Rev 20:3) even though the NT says that he is currently active in doing just that [2 Cor 4:4, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.“]
Some amillennialists try to escape this dilemma by saying that the incarceration of Satan in Revelation 20 makes Satan less effective at deceiving the nations in the present age than he was prior to the first coming of Christ….
This same approach is taken by William Hendriksen who says that the binding of Satan is simply a matter of degree: “If during the present N.T. era the devil ‘blinds the minds of unbelievers,’ II Cor. 4:4, that was true even more emphatically during the old dispensation.” The difficulty with this explanation is that Revelation 20:2-3 teaches not that Satan’s ability to deceive was limited, but rather that it was eliminated. In other words, the text does not say that Satan will deceive the nations less effectively than he did in the past–it says that he will deceive the nations “no longer.”
The second clarification concerns my hermeneutical approach to Revelation 20…. [P]art of the grammatical historical method involves determining the meaning of key words in the passage you are studying. This is often referred to as lexical analysis. One of the most important words in this passage is the word “abyss,” because this is the location where Satan is incarcerated during the thousand-year period. If I’m going to understand what it means that Satan is imprisoned in the abyss, I need to know what the abyss is and what it means to be imprisoned there.
Part of lexical analysis involves consulting how the word in question is used elsewhere in Scripture. The “many other passages other than Revelation 20” which I referred to were those verses which also use the word “abyss,” and I consulted these verses not as a way to “deviate from the clear and normal meaning of the text” (as you said), but as a way to help me understand the clear and normal meaning of a key word in the text–the word “abyss.” In consulting these other passages, I discovered that the word translated “abyss” has two possible nuances of meaning. It can refer either to the realm of the dead (as it does in Romans 10:7) or a spirit prison (as it does in Luke 8:31; Rev 9:1-2, 11, 11:7; and 17:8). The context of Revelation 20:1-3–along with the reference to “his prison” in Revelation 20:7–confirms that the word “abyss” has this second meaning in Revelation 20.
In continuing my lexical analysis, I then look more closely at those passages where it refers to a prison for evil spirits, and I come to a significant conclusion: Confinement in the abyss in these other passages (especially see Luke 8:31 and Rev 9) means to be totally cut off from any activity or influence upon the earth. Therefore, when Satan is bound and incarcerated in the abyss during the thousand years according to Revelation 20:1-3, this means he will be totally cut off from any activity or influence upon the earth. In other words, his activity and influence will be eliminated, not merely limited as the amillennialist says. Since the clear and consistent testimony of the NT indicates that Satan is extremely active during the present age (Matt 13:19; Luke 8:12; 22:3, 31; John 8:44; 13:27; Acts 5:3; 26:18; 1 Cor 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11; 4:4; 11:3, 14; 12:7; Eph 2:2; 6:11-12; 1 Thess 2:18; 2 Tim 2:26; 1 Pet 5:8; 1 John 3:8-10; 5:19), this means the thousand years in Revelation 20 must be future.
According to some amillennialists, because Revelation 20 says that Satan is bound in one respect and one respect only–“so that he should not deceive the nations any longer” (v. 3)–he must therefore be free to partake in other activities here on earth. For this reason, according to the amillennialist, the list of Scripture references detailing Satan’s activity in the present age is largely irrelevant….
The use of a purpose clause, however, does not preclude the possibility of other purposes or results of the action of the verb. To illustrate, ‘if a warden says that he is putting a prisoner in solitary confinement in order that he will no longer kill any more prisoners, this does not mean the prisoner is free to steal and do other such activities’ (Powell 2001: 3). In the case of the binding of Satan in Revelation 20, then, the degree of Satan’s restriction is determined not by the purpose clause but by the language of the text itself, which–as demonstrated above–indicates absolute confinement.
As you can see from the greater context of what I wrote, the words “as demonstrated above” refer to my lexical analysis of the word “abyss” and the implications it has for a right understanding of Revelation 20:1-3, not to some kind of Scripture-interprets-Scripture hermeneutic which I abused to import my theology into Revelation 20:1-3. The language of the text itself (“he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him”) indicates that Satan’s activity on earth will be completely eliminated during this time, and the purpose clause (“so that he should not deceive the nations any longer”) indicates the primary purpose of this incarceration. But as I wrote above, this does not preclude the possibility of other purposes or results of the action of the verb. You can fight this on theological grounds (i.e., this doesn’t fit with your amillennialism), but not on grammatical grounds.
