The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.

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The apostle John writes: “So the great dragon was thrown out ​— ​the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth, and his angels with him” (Rev. 12:9).

Finally, we see the scope of Satan’s work as deceiver. John watches the cosmic battle between Michael the archangel and the great dragon. Michael prevails, and the dragon and his angels are cast down to earth (Rev. 12:7-12). We addressed this passage in greater detail in Chapter 2. For our purposes now, however, we focus on Satan’s role as chief executive of a sinister global enterprise. John writes that the evil one “deceives the whole world.” But what does the apostle mean by this?

As we explore in future posts, the Greek word often translated “world” (kosmos) may be interpreted in a number of ways, from the planet Earth to the world system under Satan’s control. But John uses a different Greek word here: oikoumene, which occurs fifteen times in the New Testament and, for the most part, refers to the entire inhabited earth.

In this sense, the gospel is to be proclaimed to all the world (Matt. 24:14; Rom. 10:18). Christ is to judge the world at the end of time (Acts 17:31). Other general references to the world as the inhabited earth include: Luke 2:1 (Caesar’s whole empire); Luke 4:5 (kingdoms of the world Satan shows Jesus); Acts 19:27 (the world that worships the goddess Artemis); Hebrews 1:6 (the inhabited world into which Christ is born); and Revelation 3:10 (the whole world that faces a time of testing). 

So, John sees the great dragon as one seeking to deceive the entire human race. As William Barclay puts it, “Satan … stands for the sleepless vigilance of evil against good.” The same serpent who accuses the saints in heaven also deceives the nations on earth. His global enterprise pursues an ambitious vision: to convince everyone he is the rightful ruler of the created order. There is much subterfuge in the way the evil one and his minions carry out this plan. Direct opposition to God is futile and counter-productive. Satan cannot play by God’s rules and win. So, he cheats in a variety of ways. For example:

He stalks. Peter likens him to a prowling lion, selectively picking off stragglers. That’s why the apostle urges his readers to be sober-minded and alert, resisting the evil one as we endure his attacks (1 Pet. 5:8-9). 

He dilutes. Satan is the inspiration behind every spiritual thought in opposition to God. Countless world religions promote the common ideas of a deity (or deities), a universal human problem, and a divine solution. For the sake of harmony, we’re told there are many paths to God – all of them equally valid. We’re encouraged to believe we all worship the same God, although we may see him differently. We’re urged to find our own truth, which may be different than someone else’s truth. But in the end, it really doesn’t matter, and the apparently vast doctrinal differences are mere trifles. 

This is why Paul writes about demolishing arguments “and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God,” as he exhorts us to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). 

He divides. The adversary persecutes Christ’s sheep in an effort to scatter the flock. He goads prideful people to start their own forms of counterfeit Christianity, or their own highly exclusive sects, from hyper-Calvinism to the prosperity gospel. He incites bitter debates on secondary and tertiary doctrines, while the non-negotiables of the Christian faith – such as the authority of Scripture, the Trinity, and justification by faith – suffer neglect. 

With thirty-three thousand distinct Christian denominations in two hundred thirty-eight countries,²⁷ the professing church is so fractured that the gospel is unappealing or irrelevant to many people. That’s why Jude tells followers of Jesus to “contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all” (Jude 3). 

He opposes. One of Satan’s strategies is to lie about the church. Warren Wiersbe writes:

He deceives the nations into thinking that the people of God are dangerous, deluded, even destructive. It is through Satan’s deception that the leaders of the nations band together against Christ and His people (Ps. 2; Acts 4:23-30). God’s people in every age must expect the world’s opposition, but the church can always defeat the enemy by being faithful to Christ.

The Bible Exposition Commentary

The evil one plies many other tactics in his pursuit of global domination. It’s clear that his ultimate goals are chaos, not order; confusion, not clarity; and damnation, not redemption. In stark contrast to God, who loves the entire human race (John 3:16), the evil one foments a global hatred for all mankind. While he loathes all beings created in the image of God, he has particular avarice for God’s people – from the Israelites to the church. 

As the apostle John notes, Satan successfully cons unbelievers worldwide. As the great deceiver, he has successfully infiltrated every nation, every culture, and every human institution. Some nations officially sanction a counterfeit God. Others settle for a watered-down version of state Christianity that bears little distinction from humanism. Still others promote attractive but spiritually fatal philosophies. 

The great experiment with the Israelites, in which they joyfully declare their loyalty to the one true God – “We will do all that the LORD has spoken” (Exod. 19:8) – falls quickly into spiritual adultery and then rank idolatry. God’s new covenant with the church has fared no better. Counterfeit forms of Christianity emerged as early as the first century and have blossomed into global apostate organizations that embrace a counterfeit Jesus and a forged gospel (2 Cor. 11:4). 

God sends prophets to the Israelites under the Old Covenant to warn them against false prophets who wrongly foretell future events (Deut. 18:21-22), perform lying signs and wonders to lead the people astray (Deut. 13:1-4), and lull them into a false sense of security when they descend into deep and dangerous sin (Jer. 23:16-17, 31-32; Ezek. 13:21-22; 2 Tim. 4:3-4). 

Jesus and the New Testament writers consistently warn Christians about false teachers, false prophets, and false messiahs. All of this makes it clear that the evil one has sowed tares in God’s wheat fields from the very beginning. Satan’s global enterprise, in opposition to God’s kingdom, often looks the same, just as tares resemble wheat as they grow together. But the Lord ultimately reaps the harvest, gathering those who are his into his barns and burning the tares in the fires of hell. Satan’s enterprise is indeed global, but it’s a house of cards.

Next: The most evil