We took a good look at the Second Coming of Christ as found in Revelation 19. We have seen a lot of good things. We saw the names of Christ. We saw the victories of Christ. We saw the descriptions of Christ. We now have looked at two of the three great victories necessary before Christ sets up His Kingdom on earth which will be found starting in Revelation 20. The first enemy defeated was all the human armies of the world that had come out to oppose Him. Secondly, the antichrist and the false prophet who have led this rebellion in the Tribulation Period against Christ have now been defeated. There is one final enemy that is left standing that the Lord must defeat and have victory over before He sets up His Kingdom. That is the devil himself. The one who is behind all rebellion and deception against Christ.
We pick up there in Revelation 20:1, “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan,” so there is no question about who we are talking about here. This is the devil himself, Satan. It continues, “and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.” Satan has always opposed the Lord. All the way back to before the Garden of Eden, when Satan rebelled against Him in the heavenly places. Satan seemed to have been one of the greatest, if not the greatest, angelic being the Lord ever created. That wasn’t enough for Satan, so he rebelled against the Lord and took, as we see in the description in Revelation 12, a third of the angels with him in that rebellion. Those angels have been demonic creatures that have plagued the earth ever since. All of that is now over. Satan has been defeated by the Lord, and we find that the Lord Himself doesn’t imprison the devil, he sends an angel to do it. So, an angel is powerful enough to defeat the devil here. He takes him and puts him in the abyss . . .
