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). 

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