Satan and his angels are a rebel army, but not an army that is beyond God’s control. This rebel army was created by God, (although they were not rebellious when first created). Paul wrote:

For by Him [Christ] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by Him and for Him (Col. 1:16, emphasis added).

Jesus created every angelic spirit of every rank, including Satan. Did He know that some would rebel? Of course He did. Then why did He create them? Because He would use those rebel spirits to help fulfill His plan. If He had no purpose for them, He would simply have incarcerated them, as we are told He has already done with some rebellious angels (see 2 Pet. 2:4) and as He will one day do with Satan (see Rev. 20:2).

God has reasons for allowing Satan and every evil spirit to operate upon the earth. If He didn’t, they would be completely out of commission. What are God’s reasons for allowing Satan to operate upon the earth? I don’t think anyone understands every reason, yet God has revealed some of the reasons in His Word.

First, God allows Satan to operate limitedly on the earth to fulfill His plan to test humans. Satan serves as the alternate choice for humanity’s allegiance. Whether they realize it or not, people are in subjection either to God or Satan. God permitted Satan to tempt Adam and Eve, two people who possessed God-given free wills, in order to test them. All those with free wills must be tested to reveal what is in their hearts, either obedience or disobedience.^[1]

Second, God allows Satan to operate limitedly on the earth as an agent of His wrath upon evildoers. I have already previously proved this by showing several specific instances in Scripture when God brought judgment upon deserving people through evil spirits. Just the fact that God has allowed Satan to rule over the unsaved people of the world is an indication of His wrath upon them. God judges groups of evil people by allowing wicked humans to rule over them, and also by allowing wicked spiritual beings to rule over them, making their lives all the more miserable.

Third, God allows Satan to operate limitedly on the earth to glorify Himself. “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Every time God destroys one of Satan’s works, it glorifies His power and wisdom.

^[1] This concept is discussed much more thoroughly in my book, God’s Tests, available to read in English on our website.

In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul explained precisely why non-Christians remain in unbelief:

This I say therefore, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding [perhaps a reference to Satan’s blinding], excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness (Eph. 4:17-19, emphasis added).

Paul said that the unsaved are excluded from the life of God because of “the ignorance that is in them.” But why are they ignorant? Why has their “understanding been darkened”? The answer is, “because of the hardness of their hearts.” They have become “callous.” That is the root and primary reason why people remain unsaved.^[1] They bear the blame themselves. Satan only supplies the lies they want to believe.

Jesus’ parable of the sower and the soils illustrates this concept perfectly:

The sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell beside the road; and it was trampled under foot, and the birds of the air ate it up….Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God. And those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they may not believe and be saved (Luke 8:5, 11-12).

Notice that the seed, which represents the gospel, fell beside the road and was trampled. It couldn’t penetrate the hard soil where people frequently walked. Thus it was easy for birds, which represent the devil, to steal the seeds.

The point of the entire parable is to compare the condition of people’s hearts (and their receptivity to God’s Word) with various types of soil. Jesus was explaining why some people believe and why others do not: It all depends upon them.

How does Satan figure into the picture? He is only able to steal the Word from those with hardened hearts. The birds in the parable were only a secondary cause as to why the seeds did not germinate. The primary problem was with the soil; in fact, it was the soil’s hardness that made it possible for the birds to get the seeds.

The same thing is true with the gospel. The real problem is with the hardened hearts of free moral agents. When people reject the gospel, they make a choice to remain blinded. They would prefer to believe lies rather than the truth. As Jesus put it, “The light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19, emphasis added).

The Bible does not lead us to believe that people are sincere, good-hearted folks, who would surely believe the gospel if Satan would only stop blinding them. On the contrary, the Bible paints a very dim picture of human character, and God will hold every individual responsible for his sinful choices. Sitting on His throne of judgment, God will not accept anyone’s excuse that “the devil made me do it.”

^[1] Paul’s description of unbelievers in Romans 1:18-32 also supports this same concept.

Knowing God’s Word is not enough to win in spiritual battle. The key is truly believing what God has said. This is true in resisting the devil and in casting out of demons. For example, consider again an example we have examined previously, when Jesus gave His twelve disciples “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out” (Matt. 10:1). We find them, seven chapters later, unable to cast a demon out of an epileptic boy.^[1] When Jesus learned of their failure, He lamented:

“O unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Matt. 17:17, emphasis added).

It was their unbelief that Jesus bemoaned. Moreover, when His disciples later questioned Him as to why they were unable to cast the demon out, Jesus responded, “Because of the littleness of your faith” (Matt. 17:20). Thus we see that their authority to cast out demons did not work apart from their faith.

Our success in casting out demons and resisting the devil is dependent on our faith in God’s Word. If we truly do believe what God has said, then we will talk like it and act like it. Dogs chase people who run from them, and it is the same with the devil. If you run, the devil will chase you. If you’ll stand firm in your faith, however, the devil will flee from you (see Jas. 4:7).

No doubt the apostles’ lack of faith would have been very evident to any observer, as they tried, but failed, to deliver that boy from a demon. If that demon put on the same show for the disciples as it performed in front of Jesus, throwing the boy into a “violent convulsion” (Luke 9:42) and causing him to foam at the mouth (see Mark 9:20), it is possible that the disciples’ faith turned to fear. They were perhaps paralyzed by what they witnessed.

One who has faith, however, is not moved by what he sees, but rather, is moved only by what God has said. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7, emphasis added). God cannot lie (see Tit. 1:2), and so even if our circumstances seemingly contradict what God has said, we should remain steadfast in faith.

Notice that Jesus delivered the boy in just a few seconds. He did it by faith. He did not waste His time conducting a “deliverance session.” Those who have faith in their God-given authority don’t need to spend hours casting out a demon.

Moreover, there is no record that Jesus screamed at the demon. Those who have faith don’t need to scream. Neither did Jesus repeatedly command the demon to come out. One command was sufficient. A second command would have been an admission of doubt.

^[1] We should be very cautious in assuming that all epilepsy is caused by an indwelling evil spirit.

This interpretation fits well within the immediate context as well as the wider context of the rest of the New Testament.

In regard to the immediate context, we note that directly after His statement about binding and loosing, Jesus said: “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 18:19; emphasis added).

There again is the theme of “what you do on earth will be supported in heaven.” We on earth are authorized and responsible to pray. When we do, heaven will respond. Jesus’ words, “Again I say…” seem to indicate He is expanding upon His prior statement about binding and loosing.

Jesus’ final statement in this passage, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst,” also supports the “heaven will back you up” theme. When believers gather in His name, He who lives in heaven shows up.

Even if you totally disagree with my interpretation of the passages in consideration, you are going to be hard pressed to present a sound, scriptural argument that Jesus was speaking about binding evil spirits over cities!

Three times in the Gospels we find Jesus making mention of “binding the strong man.” In none of those three cases, however, did He tell His followers that “binding the strong man” was something they should practice. Let’s examine exactly what Jesus did say, and let’s read what He said contextually:

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.” And He called them to Himself and began speaking to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished! But no one can enter the strong man’s house and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house. Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit” (Mark 3:23-30, emphasis added).

Notice that Jesus was not teaching His followers to bind any strong men. Rather, He was responding to the criticism of the Jerusalem scribes with unassailable logic and a clear metaphor.

They accused Him of casting out demons by using demonic power. He responded by saying that Satan would be insane to work against himself. No one can intelligently argue with that.

If it wasn’t Satan’s power that Jesus used to cast out demons, then whose power was He using? It had to be a power stronger than Satan’s. It had to be God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus Jesus spoke metaphorically of Satan, comparing him to a strong man guarding his possessions. The only one able to take the strong man’s possessions would be someone even stronger, namely, Himself. This was the true explanation as to how He cast out demons.

This passage that mentions the strong man, as well as the similar ones found in Matthew and Luke, cannot be used to justify our “binding strong men” over cities. Additionally, when we examine the rest of the New Testament, we do not find any examples of anyone “binding strong men” over cities, or any instruction for anyone to do so. We can thus safely conclude that it is unscriptural for any Christian to attempt to bind and render powerless some supposed “strong man-evil spirit” over a city or geographic area.

Let’s go back to the book of Genesis, where we are first introduced to the devil. In the first chapters there, Satan appears in the form of a serpent. If there is any doubt that this serpent is the devil, Revelation 20:2 removes it: “And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan” (emphasis added).

Genesis 3:1 tells us, “The serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” When you think about how crafty some of God’s creatures are as they compete to survive and stalk their prey, it makes you realize how cunning Satan must be. On the other hand, Satan is not all-knowing or all-wise as God is, and we should not assume that we are at a mental disadvantage in our struggle against him. Jesus instructed us to be as “shrewd as serpents” (Matt. 10:16, emphasis added). Paul claimed that he was not ignorant of Satan’s schemes (see 2 Cor. 2:11) and that we have the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

Satan launched his first-recorded fiery dart by questioning Eve about what God has said. Her response would reveal to him whether he had a chance of deceiving her into disobeying God. Satan has no avenue to deceive anyone who believes and obeys what God has said, which is why his entire strategy revolves around ideas that contradict God’s Word.

Satan asked her, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1.) It almost sounds like an innocent question from a casual inquirer, but Satan knew exactly what his goal was.

Eve responded, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die'” (Gen. 3:2-3).

Eve almost had it right. Actually, God never forbade them to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but only forbade them to eat from it.

Eve certainly did know enough of the truth to recognize the lie of Satan’s response: “You surely shall not die!” (Gen. 3:4). That, of course, is a blatant contradiction of what God said, and it would be unlikely that Eve would believe it outright. So Satan then sugarcoated his lie with some truth, as he often does, making it much easier to swallow. He continued: “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).

Satan actually said three things that were true after he lied. We know that once Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened (see Gen. 3:7) as Satan had said. Additionally, God Himself later said that the man had become like God and that he had come to know good and evil (see Gen. 3:22). Take note: Satan often mixes truth with error in order to deceive people.

Notice also that Satan maligned God’s character. God didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit for their own wellbeing and happiness, but Satan made it sound as if God was withholding something from them that was good. The majority of Satan’s lies malign God’s character, will, and motives.

Unfortunately, Earth’s first couple rejected the truth to believe a lie, and they suffered the consequences. But notice all the elements of modern spiritual warfare in their story: Satan’s only weapon was a lie couched in truth. The humans were faced with a choice to believe what God had said or what Satan had said. Believing the truth could have been their “shield of faith,” but they never lifted it.

The plain fact is that neither Jesus nor any of the New Testament apostles practiced the kind of spiritual warfare that some are claiming is the missing key to effective evangelism today. We never find Jesus, Peter, John, Stephen, Philip, or Paul “pulling down strongholds” or “binding the strong men” over the cities in which they preached. Rather, we find that they followed the Holy Spirit in regard to where He wanted them to preach; we find them proclaiming the simple gospel—calling people to repentance and faith in Christ—and we find them enjoying marvelous results. And in those cases where they preached to unreceptive people who rejected the gospel, we don’t find them “doing spiritual warfare so that Satan wouldn’t be able to continue blinding their minds.” Rather, we find them “shaking the dust off their feet” as Jesus commanded and going to the next city (see Matt. 10:14; Acts 13:5).

It is amazing that anyone could claim that “pulling down strongholds” and “binding the strong men” is a prerequisite to successful evangelism when there are so many thousands of examples of great revivals in church history where such “spiritual warfare” was never practiced.

“But our techniques work!” someone will say. “Since we started doing this kind of spiritual warfare, more people have been getting saved than ever before.”

If that is true, I’ll tell you why. It is because there has been more scriptural prayer and evangelism done at the same time, or because a group of people has suddenly become more receptive to the gospel.

What would you say if an evangelist told you, “Tonight, before I preached at the revival service, I privately ate three bananas. And when I preached, sixteen people were saved! I’ve finally found the secret to effective evangelism! From now on, I’m going to make sure I eat three bananas before I preach!”?

Surely you would say to that evangelist, “Your eating three bananas had nothing to do with those sixteen people being saved. The key to your success is that you preached the gospel, and there were sixteen people listening who were receptive.”

God honors His Word. If God gives a promise, and someone meets the conditions to that particular promise, God will keep His promise, even if that person is doing other things that are unscriptural.

This is true with the present spiritual warfare practices. If you start passing out tracts and “binding the strong man” over your city, a certain percentage of people will be saved. And if you just start passing out tracts without binding the strong man, the same percentage of people will be saved.

Finally, after promising to give Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, Jesus made His statement about binding and loosing, His fifth figurative expression in the passage under consideration.

Within the context of the statements we’ve already examined, what did Jesus mean? How does Peter’s binding and loosing have application to Jesus building His church, to the saving of people from Hades, and to proclaiming the gospel?

There is really only one possibility. Jesus simply meant, “I’m authorizing you as heaven’s representative. Fulfill your responsibility on earth, and heaven will back you up.”

If an employer said to his salesman, “Whatever you do in Bangkok will be done in the home office,” how would that salesman interpret his boss’s words? He would take them to mean that he was authorized to represent his company in Bangkok. All that Jesus meant was that Peter, on earth, was authorized to represent God in heaven. This promise to Peter would be a buttress to his confidence when he began proclaiming God’s message in Jerusalem under the critical eye of the scribes and Pharisees—people who thought that they were God’s authorized representatives, and people whom Peter would have previously revered as such.

This particular interpretation of Jesus’ words harmonizes well with His second use of the same expression, found two chapters after the first passage in Matthew’s gospel:

And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer. Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst (Matt. 18:15-20, emphasis added).

In this second passage that mentions binding and loosing, there is absolutely nothing within the text that would lead us to believe that Jesus was speaking of binding evil spirits. Here Christ spoke of binding and loosing directly after speaking on the subject of church discipline.

This would seem to indicate that in reference to binding and loosing in this passage, Jesus meant something like, “I’m giving you responsibility to determine who should be in the church and who should not. It is your job. As you fulfill your responsibilities, heaven will back you up.”

In a broader application, Jesus was simply saying, “You are authorized on earth as heaven’s representatives. You have responsibilities, and as you fulfill your responsibilities on earth, heaven will always support you.”

We live in a world that is cursed by God, a world that is experiencing the wrath of God all the time. Paul wrote, “the wrath of God is revealed [not “going to be revealed”] from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. 1:18). As those who are living among an evil, God-cursed world, we cannot completely escape the effects of God’s wrath upon it, even though that wrath is not aimed specifically at us.

Knowing this, what should we do? First, we should trust God. Jeremiah wrote:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit (Jer. 17:7-8).

Notice Jeremiah did not say that the man who trusts in the Lord will never be faced with a drought. No, when the heat and the famine come, the man who trusts in the Lord is like a tree that extends its roots by a stream. He has another source of supply, even while the world languishes around him. The story of Elisha being fed by ravens during the famine in Israel comes to mind as an example (see 1 Kings 17:1-6). David wrote of the righteous, “In the days of famine they will have abundance” (Ps. 37:19).

But aren’t famines caused by the devil? No, not according to Scripture. God always takes the responsibility, and famine is often spoken of as a consequence of His wrath upon deserving people. For example:

Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, I am about to punish them! The young men will die by the sword, their sons and daughters will die by famine” (Jer. 11:22, emphasis added).

Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, I am sending upon them the sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like split-open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness” (Jer. 29:17).

“Son of man, if a country sins against Me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out My hand against it, destroy its supply of bread, send famine against it, and cut off from it both man and beast…” (Ezek. 14:13, emphasis added).

“You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away. Why?” declares the Lord of hosts, “Because of My house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own house. Therefore, because of you the sky has withheld its dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on men, on cattle, and on all the labor of your hands” (Hag. 1:9-11, emphasis added).

In the fourth example above, we read that the Israelites were given the blame for the drought because of their sin, but still, God claimed responsibility for sending it.^[1]

If God sends a famine upon evil people, and we happen to live among those evil people, then we should trust that He will provide for our needs. Paul affirmed that famine cannot separate us from the love of Christ!: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35, emphasis added). Notice Paul did not say that Christians will never be faced with a famine, but rather implied that they might, even though he as a student of the Scriptures, knew that famines can be sent by God to judge the wicked.

^[1] For additional references to God causing famine, see Deut. 32:23-24; 2 Sam. 21:1; 24:12-13; 2 Kin. 8:1; Ps. 105:16; Is. 14:30; Jer. 14:12,15-16; 16:3-4; 24:10; 27:8; 34:17; 42:17; 44:12-13; Ezek. 5:12,16-17; 6:12; 12:16; 14:21; 36:29; Rev. 6:8; 18:8). Jesus Himself said that God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). God controls the rain.

But what about Satan’s claim that the authority of those kingdoms had been “handed over” to him?

Again, there is the very real possibility that Satan was lying. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was telling the truth.

Notice Satan did not say that Adam had handed it over to him. As we have already seen, Adam couldn’t have handed it over to Satan because Adam never had it to give. Adam ruled fish, birds, and cattle, not kingdoms. (There were, in fact, no kingdoms of people to rule when Adam fell.) Additionally, if Satan was offering Jesus rule over the kingdom of darkness, which consisted of all evil spirits and unsaved people, then there is absolutely no way that Adam could have handed that jurisdiction over to Satan. Satan was ruling over fallen angels before Adam was created.

Satan may have meant that all the people of the world had handed him authority over them, as they were not submitted to God and thus were, knowingly or unknowingly, submitted to him.

An even better possibility is that God handed it over to him. It is very possible, in the light of Scripture, that God said to Satan, “You and your evil spirits have My permission to rule over everyone who is not submitted to Me.” That may seem hard for you to swallow now, but you will later see that is probably the best explanation of Satan’s claim. If God truly is “ruler over the realm of mankind” (Dan. 4:25), then any authority Satan has over mankind must have been granted by God.

Satan is only ruling the kingdom of darkness, which could also be called the “kingdom of rebellion.” He was ruling over that kingdom since the day he was expelled from heaven, which was prior to Adam’s fall. Up until Adam’s fall, the kingdom of darkness consisted only of angelic rebels. But when Adam sinned, he joined the kingdom of rebellion, and Satan’s kingdom ever since then has included not just rebellious angels, but rebellious humans.

Satan had rule over his dark domain before Adam was even created, and so let us not think that when Adam fell, Satan gained something that Adam previously possessed. No, when Adam sinned, he joined a kingdom of rebellion that had existed for some time, a kingdom ruled by Satan.