Depending on God

I like listening to people's views on Biblical things. I learn a lot, and often I head to Scripture to compare what I have heard with what the Bible says. This is the third time I have commented on a related discussion about the binding of Satan. Can Satan and his minions (demons) be bound under the authority of God by believers? My position has not changed on this. The answer is a resounding 'no'.To me this gets back to our total dependence on God.

It seems to me that when folks go about 'binding' the devil, they are proceeding from a flawed hermeneutic. Just the other night, I listened to a discussion between two professed believers in disagreement over weather Satan was in fact, or could be "bound". The person who insisted that Satan is currently bound was quite adamant. I have never found any Biblical support for this. The Bible does speak about Satan being bound for 1,000 years, but that clearly takes place at the beginning of the stated millennial reign of Christ at His second coming.

Some folks don't mind picking and choosing Scripture that is more sensationalistic in nature to build a doctrine from, even though it tends to render a lot of their theology senseless. Some of the same folks who claim Satan is bound claim to be dispensational and believe in a pretribulational rapture. I am not terribly fond of the word dispensational as I don't think it technically applies to me, but it comes close I guess, and I do believe in a pretribulational rapture. From that eschatological position, a person has to be premillennial too, and if one is premillennial, one has to believe the Satan will not be bound until King Jesus establishes His kingdom here on earth. Two things come to mind. A) Satan is not bound now and B) Jesus alone will dispatch an angel to bind Satan for those one-thousand years.

Another thing; God is our almighty sovereign Lord and King. He is all-powerful. He may choose to act through us, but believing that we have any power to bind Satan for any length of time speaks of an anthropocentric view of God. It is as if to say that for all of His power, we are still the ones in control of certain things. To me, this runs contrary to the Word. We make choices, true, but even at that any growth in holiness that we have comes from Him and from His goodness manifested in our lives. Clearly the Biblical mandate is to submit to God-- resist Satan, and in so doing he will flee from us. (James 4:7)

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.