Quora has an excellent answer to this question:
In Matthew 4:9, Satan says "All these I shall give to you". When did Satan get power over all the kingdoms of the Earth?
https://www.quora.com/In-Matthew-4-9-Satan-says-All-these-I-shall-give-to-you-When-did-Satan-get-power-over-all-the-kingdoms-of-the-Earth
The very excellent answer is by James Hough:
- Answer requested by
- Andrew Martin
- James Hough
- Catholic who teaches Catechism, RCIA, and Prayer classes.
- Answered 50m ago
- In Matthew 4:9, Satan says "All these I shall give to you". When did Satan get power over all the kingdoms of the Earth?
+JMJ+
Originally, Adam was given rulership (dominion) over all the earth:
Genesis 1:26 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
26 And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
In sinning, Adam abrogated his dominion, and handed it over to Satan. Thus Satan received dominion over the entire earth at the beginning shortly after creation, and Our Blessed Lord takes it back from Satan with His Crucifixion.
I would say, most Protestants would obviously say James is right about when Satan became the ruler of this world. The question they would pose is just, isn't he remaining that to Harmageddon or sth like that?
One of the things they would tend to use as prooftexts would be II Cor 4:4.
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.
Now, here is a Catholic comment on the verse:
Ver. 4. In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers.[1] Thus the words are placed, both in the Latin and Greek text, so that the true God seems to be called the God of this world, as he is elsewhere called the God of heaven, the God of Abraham. God, says S. Chrys. blinded, that is, permitted them to be blinded.
Others translate, in whom God hat blinded the minds of the infidels of this world; so that this world may be joined with unbelievers, and not with God: and by the God of this world, some understand the devil, called sometimes the prince of this world, that is, of the wicked. Wi.
Now, "prince of this world" is used 3 times in the New Testament, each time by John (12:31, 14:30, 16:11) citing Our Lord Jesus speaking before He was Crucified. THe last of these time (16:11) He says:
And of judgment: because the prince of this world is already judged.
Hmmm ... is already judged - wouldn't that seem to imply an effective loss of power at Crucifixion?
However, Ephesians 2:2 has a somewhat parallel:
Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief:
No longer (St. Paul is writing after the Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension) is Satan called directly "prince of this world" but "prince of the power of this air" and "spirit who now worketh on the children of unbelief".
You recall the children's hymn "He's got the whole world / in His hand"? Well, it is not speaking of Satan. Nor should it. Ephesians 2:2 is describing what power remains to him after he already lost dominion - "power in the air" (but he or they can be chased by church bells or gregorian chant and in a room or house, by exorcism and holy water) and "working on the children of unbelief".
Is there any direct proof text against the idea of Satan remaining prince of this world?
Yes, Matthew 28:16-20 includes the phrase:
And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
What Jesus didn't receive from Satan's generosity, He took from Satan by conquest.
This means, Christian kingdoms and empires and duchies and republics and grand duchies really can have been for the most of the last 2000 years glorifying Christ. Indeed, if Christianity is true, arguably they have, at least on and off and sufficiently to make Satan see he can no longer do like he wants with men.
Now, there is a little problem for these days, even so.
And when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go forth, and seduce the nations, which are over the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, and shall gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Apocalypse 20:7.
If this is happening, and I think it is, basically most of the century 1917 to 2017 has shown it, Satan is getting some of his old powers back.
Christ's conquest is described earlier in Apocalypse 20, verse 2, 3:
And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished. And after that, he must be loosed a little time.
On this Challoner comments:
[2] "Bound him": The power of Satan has been very much limited by the passion of Christ: for a thousand years; that is, for the whole time of the New Testament; but especially from the time of the destruction of Babylon or pagan Rome, till the new efforts of Gog and Magog against the church, towards the end of the world. During which time the souls of the martyrs and saints live and reign with Christ in heaven, in the first resurrection, which is that of the soul to the life of glory; as the second resurrection will be that of the body, at the day of the general judgment.
Get it?
especially from the time of the destruction of Babylon or pagan Rome, till the new efforts of Gog and Magog against the church, towards the end of the world
So, while the misunderstanding, as I think it is, of II Cor 4:4, is not the truth, it is now coinciding closer with the truth than it used to back when Francis Joseph was ruling in Hofburg prior to the shot in Sarajevo.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Quadragesima Sunday
1.III.2020
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