Revelation 20:1-3 “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.”

Does it ever seem to you like the devil is winning? We know that God is supposed to be the most powerful being of all. We know that Jesus is supposed to have everything under control. But it doesn’t always look like that. In America, Christianity is shrinking. Among evangelical Christians in their twenties, 700 leave the faith every day. The rates of decline are worse for many other Christian groups.

We could cite other indications the devil is winning: laws that reject biblical morality, less and less tolerance for Christians to practice their beliefs, a society that seems to be unraveling on many levels. You see the news.

For the people to whom John wrote these words, it was active government persecution against Christians. John himself was writing in exile on a barren little Mediterranean island. Other church leaders were being executed. The church at that time wasn’t really shrinking, but it was in a battle for its life.

John’s vision lets us see behind the realities that trouble our faith. What he sees isn’t the future. It’s actually the past and present. It is a picture of what began with Jesus’ earthly ministry. Jesus is the angel in the picture. He is often referred to as the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. He isn’t a created angel, but God’s “messenger” (the literal meaning of “angel”), the bringer of God’s word.

The devil is a spirit. He is not literally a dragon or serpent. That’s a picture to teach us he is dangerous. He has no physical body or form. As a spirit he can’t be bound by literal chains. Forge the biggest, thickest chain you can make, like the chains that attach anchors to ocean liners. Make it out of the hardest titanium alloy. It makes no difference to the devil. He is a spirit and can’t be bound by chain or rope.

So what does this “chaining” mean? We have a clue in the purpose John gives, “to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore…” Until Jesus came, practically the entire world rejected the true God. They preferred gods they spun out of their own imaginations, gods they could manipulate and control. Only one tiny nation on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea followed the real God, and even the Jews didn’t like their God that much. They were constantly dabbling in the idols and religions of their neighbors.

Then Jesus came, and people heard and saw God’s love like never before. He came with power no man had ever shown–not Moses, not Elijah, not any of the other prophets. He loved rich and poor alike. He invited them all to follow him. He broke bread with public sinners and hypocritical holy men. He helped and healed until he had gone days without food or sleep and his own family thought he had lost his mind.

Then he did the unthinkable. He gave his life as a ransom–those were his words. He let his enemies arrest him, torture him, and nail him to a cross to die. He let his heavenly Father abandon him and leave him on that cross with no help, no love, and no hope. He suffered the hell sinners deserve as their substitute, so that they would not have to. Three days later he took his life back again as evidence that death itself had been emptied of its power to keep people in its grasp. “This is love,” the Apostle John wrote 70 years later, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

This message was unleashed on the world, and suddenly Satan was all tied up. The devil had no answer for this gospel, this story of incomparable love and hope. He could tempt people into thinking they wanted some sin or another. He still does. But he had nothing better to offer than the love that gave everything and died on a cross to save us. People embraced it by the thousands, and then by the millions, and then by the billions. Satan was chained, and faith in Jesus grew.

It still does. The people who first read about John’s visions in this book of Revelation needed the reminder that they may be persecuted, but they weren’t losing. Their faith was spreading even as their leaders were being assassinated. We need the reminder that America is not the whole world. We may or may not lose thousands or millions of members in the years to come. But each year the gospel reaches millions more in places like communist China, Latin America, or Sub-Saharan Africa. Jesus still delivers people from Satan’s deceptions.