Luke 10:18

The context

The seventy have returned from their mission and report with delight that even the demons submit to them in his name. Jesus answers with a statement introduced as something he saw, using the image of lightning from the sky. He then reframes their joy, telling them to rejoice in something else entirely.

What it establishes

It establishes that Jesus treats the authority over demons as evidence of a defeat already under way, and that he claims to have witnessed it. The image is of a fall, sudden and visible.

What it does not establish

It does not give a chronology. Nothing here says when this fall occurred, whether it is the same event as other passages about a fallen figure, or what the vision's mode was. Systems built on the verse as a date read into a single image.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• If your Biblical Yahweh God is so ALL-good-fantastic, how could Satan fall if he was with God and had the chance to witness his existence? God made Satan too, right? Seems God shares a bit of the blame for MAKING Satan prideful, yes?

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.