p. 7 | The Kingdom of Satan by H. A. St. John

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 7, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 10.

The Kingdom of Satan

By H. A. St. John

II. Second Phase of Satan's Kingdom

WE have now seen that the first phase of Satan's kingdom covers the period of human probation, a period of about six thousand years, a mixed state of good and evil; and that it will terminate when Jesus comes, divides the spoils of the long controversy with Satan, leaving Satan's portion all locked in the embrace of death. Jesus opens the prison-house of Satan, the grave, and delivers therefrom all His own subjects, and takes them to the place He has prepared for them. When the Saviour departs with His own, and by the seven last plagues the earth is left utterly emptied, and spoiled by the curse, all the cities thereof are broken down. There is no man. The whole earth is again broken and void. Darkness and discord will hold high revel.

Here, in this region of awful gloom, where there is nothing beautiful or good, Satan, with his myriad of fallen angels, will reign a thousand years. His human subjects, a mighty host like the sands of the sea, are all quiet, in the prison-house of death. Satan has the power of death (Heb. 2:14), but he can not give life. He has no key wherewith to open the graves of his subjects, even tho he might desire so to do. He has the power of death, for he brought sin and death into the world; so he and his millions of demons must be content to reign over desolation, darkness, and death for a thousand years.

Satan is the prince and power of darkness. For the perpetration of evil, he, together with all his subjects, chooses darkness rather than light. How fitting it is that Satan should be given one thousand years to reign in this world with no opposing element of loving loyalty to God. He has long tried to exterminate all good from the earth; hence when that second phase of his kingdom shall come, all good will be completely eliminated, and it would seem that he ought to be contented with the results of his conflict, a world left to his own sour will, for a thousand years. And what a never-to-be-forgotten lesson to all the universe of God, will be revealed by this second chapter of rebellion against God's government, this second period and phase of Satan's kingdom.

H. A. ST. JOHN.