Amillennialists are fond of asserting that Satan is bound in this present age only in the sense of preventing nations from being deceived from accepting the Gospel. Satan, we are told, is not bound to prevent individuals from being deceived, only nations.
A glaring flaw in this thinking is the obvious fact that the Gospel-hating nations are in fact deceived. So the amillennial trope that the depiction of Satan being bound in Revelation 20:1–3 refers to the present age of preventing nations of being deceived is devoid of any meaningful consequence.
If they object by saying that there are other ways for nations to become deceived other than the agency of Satan, then the obvious question must be asked: What then was the point in the first place for binding Satan?
It is much more coherent to view the binding of Satan as the result of the eschatological battle-victory in Revelation 19 within Jesus’s second coming, rather than being influenced by an artificial chapter break at Rev 20:1 or by pre-commitments to a theological tradition. There is no basis to break up the unified, coherent discourse between Rev 19 and 20 by retrojecting the activity of the binding of Satan back into a first century context.
