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Rage, Rage Against the Church

Revelation 12

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 12


One day when my son was about 3 I asked him where he got his huge wonderful deep blue eyes, and he replied, “From God.” Of course, he was right, but he might have answered, had he been 20 years older and a biology student, “I have them because both you and Mom, though neither of you has blue eyes, must carry the necessary recessive genes, which happily combined and supported each other in the formation of my DNA.” Which description of reality is truer? They’re both equally true. Which is more fundamental?

Another question. What caused the destruction of the southern kingdom in 586 BC? Well, of course, there was the rise of the Babylonian superpower, the decline and decay of the Davidic dynasty, the tragic pride of Hezekiah, the criminal stupidity of Zedekiah despite Jeremiah’s warnings, the sins of the people that attracted God’s judgment, or one could say, “God did it.” Which response would be truer? They’re both equally true. Which is more fundamental?

What made Job suffer? Well, there were the Sabean war parties, the Chaldeans and their bands of marauding riffs, the natural elements, the windstorm that blew down the house and killed all 10 of his children, bereavement, the sheer pain of loss of 10 children, the loss of his health, and on top of that, a nagging wife, or one could say, “Satan did it.” One could say, “God did it.” Which description is truer? It seems to me they’re all equally true. Which description is more fundamental?

Let’s come to our own age. What has caused the church her greatest difficulties and sufferings during the last few decades? Of course, the answers you give will vary somewhat with location. If you start with China, you might mention persecution, the unavailability of Bibles and other helps, repression under a totalitarian Marxist regime with a Chinese face, the loss of leadership as thousands and thousands of pastors have been incarcerated and many of them killed, the death of not fewer than 50 million people under Mao.

One could mention in parts of Central Africa a slightly different list, including tribalism with the endless regional wars, the imposition of colonial barriers and boundaries and forms of government on people who are still essentially tribal in outlook, the lack of trained leadership, astonishing pressures from the multiplication of AIDS, entire villages in Uganda and Tanzania and Southern Kenya where there’s just nobody alive between the ages of 16 and 65 anymore.

Not fewer than 20 million will die of AIDS, and they tend to be the middle classes on which the next level of economic advancement was depending. Drought in the Sahel, mass movements to Christ without any corresponding leadership training and the like. Let’s turn to the West, where there is material prosperity coupled with rising poverty in certain large cities, the rapid pace of life, rising secularization that squeezes religion to the periphery, empirical and philosophical pluralism that relativizes everything, moral indifferentism, prayerlessness, loneliness in our big cities.

Have you noticed that almost all of these categories for analyzing what is going on are sociological, historical, occasional, demographic, psychological, and performance related? Nothing about the Devil, and nothing about God. Now do not misunderstand me. I am certainly not saying there is nothing to be learned from, say, sociological analysis. It’s nice to know something about Baby Boomers and Baby Busters and their makeups and profiles. I too read that sort of thing.

But if all of our analyses are cast in such terms, not only will our analyses be superficial but our answers will be cast at the same level. You find out all about baby boomers and baby busters, you know all about their profiles, and then you try to shape your whole church and gospel to meet baby boomers and baby busters, as if there is no eternal element in the gospel that must change baby boomers and baby busters.

Now if I understand aright the passage before us, Revelation 12, God here gives us a deeper analysis of the difficulties and sufferings of the church. Chapter 12 marks a major division in the Apocalypse. It stands before the final display of the wrath of God in the seven plagues of chapter 16. In chapters 12–14 (chapter 15 is transitional), John traces out the underlying cause for the hostility and suffering that fall upon the church, and it turns out to be nothing less than the wrath of Satan. We’ll follow the line most easily if we observe what John does in three points.

1. John outlines the occasion for this satanic rage.

Verses 1–9. In John’s vision, the scene opens with a great and wondrous sign appearing in heaven. Sign here, as not infrequently in Apocalypse, is a great spectacle that points in some way to the consummation. The content of this spectacle is a woman, and what a woman. She is clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet (verse 1) and a crown of 12 stars on her head. She is pregnant, and she cries out in pain as she is about to give birth.

Whom or what does she represent? Many have argued that she represents Mary because her child, after all, is snatched up to God and to his throne and ultimately rules the nations with an iron scepter (verse 5). But that’s a mistake. This is not Mary. This is, rather, the messianic community, whether under the old covenant or the new.

Just as Zion under the old covenant is the mother of the people of God, thus addressing Zion in Isaiah 54, “Sing, O barren woman,” and so forth, so also Zion or Jerusalem or the heavenly Jerusalem or the New Jerusalem is the mother of the people of God under the new covenant. Thus, Galatians 4:26: “The Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.”

That that is what is at stake is made very clear from the end of the chapter. Verse 17: “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring …” That is, other than the one son that has already been mentioned. Who are the rest of her offspring? “… those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” So this is the messianic community.

The mother stands for the whole, as it were, and all of her children are believers, Christians. Because one of her children is the son, this must be the messianic community that stretches across the Testaments. It is, in other words, a fairly common biblical image that’s grounded in the Old Testament Scriptures and runs right through to the New.

She is clothed with the sun, utterly radiant. Feet on the moon, suggesting dominion. She does reign. The 12 stars on her head, a common enough number in apocalyptic literature, especially this Apocalypse. Both the 12 tribes on the one hand and the 12 apostles on the other. She represents both. She has connections with both. And she is pregnant (verse 2). Not only pregnant but in travail. Jews at the time often spoke of the birth pains of the Messiah. The expression is again rooted in the Old Testament, as is so much in this book.

For example, in Isaiah 26:17: “As a woman with child about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we in your presence, O Lord.” Out of such experience, out of such analogy, comes the expression, “the birth pains of the Messiah.” Before the Messiah actually comes forth, the people from which he comes forth go through the birth pains of the Messiah. Before Messiah appears, there is this period of travail, of suffering, of pain that the people of God go through.

Thus, before Jesus did come on the scene, the nation was destroyed. It went into captivity. Only a remnant came back. It was under one totalitarian regime after another: the Egyptians, then the Assyrians back and forth, and then under the Romans. The people of God were enduring the birth pains of the Messiah. Thus, what we have in this woman is the true Israel, if you like, in an agony of suffering and expectation as the Messiah comes to birth.

The second major sign in the pageant, in the spectacle, is an enormous red dragon. Verse 3: “Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.” This dragon is identified for us. We need not guess. Verse 9: “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”

Why is he called a dragon? This language too is drawn from the Old Testament. Dragon or Leviathan or monster of the deep are standard symbols for all that opposes God, associated with Egypt in Psalm 74, with Assyria and Babylon in Isaiah 27, and with Pharaoh in Ezekiel 29. What is going on here? How is this to be understood? It may help if we remind ourselves for a moment of the incident in the Gospels at Caesarea Philippi.

Do you recall what happens? Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” “Some say this, some say that.” Finally Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus turns to him and says, “You are blessed, Simon, son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven.”

From that point on, Jesus then speaks more explicitly about his impending death. Peter, feeling that he scored once, wants to score twice, and he says, “Far be that from you. Messiahs don’t die. Messiahs have power. Messiahs rule. Messiahs change the nation, but messiahs are not killed and crucified.” Jesus wheels on him and says, “Get behind me, Satan. You do not understand the things of God.”

Satan? Was Jesus suggesting that Peter was demon-possessed? No, of course not. Peter was giving his own opinion. It was a mistaken opinion. His theology was wrong. His attitude to Christ was wrong. He did not understand Scripture well enough. At the same time, in giving his opinion, he was, in fact, serving as the mouthpiece of the Devil himself.

When Pharaoh makes his decisions about slaves and the mighty rising superpower of Babylon sweeps through the Middle East, it’s not that they’re demon-possessed. They’re acting out of their own political interests and economic interests and military interests, and they’re also the instruments of Satan himself. Jesus sees that behind these events and powers and personalities in history, even one of his own disciples, Satan may be exercising his power.

So now this beast, this dragon, this Leviathan, this monster, Satan himself, approaches the woman. He’s a red dragon, probably a sign of murderousness, recalling Jesus’ words in John 8:44: “He was a murderer from the beginning.” After all, he has introduced death to our entire race. It reminds us of the red horse in Revelation 6, bound up again with slaughter.

The seven heads, like Leviathan in Psalm 74:14. Seven suggesting a universality of power. In apocalyptic literature, numbers are regularly symbolic. Ten horns. Horn in this kind of literature regularly signifies either kingdom or the king himself, king dominion, rule, and the 10 horns recalls the fourth beast of Daniel 7, with awesome power and kingly authority. I won’t try to unpack him at the moment.

Then with crowns. These are not victory wreaths but wreaths of arrogated authority against him who is described in this book as the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, the one who will rule the nations with an iron scepter. He has a perfection of these crowns, a totality of them. He has some kind of right to rule, however arrogated it is. Those are the two spectacles in this pageant. Now the drama unfolds in verses 4–6.

“His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.”

The stars, first of all. So often in Hebrew poetry, nature is depicted as joining in. So when things are going well, the trees dance for joy and the hills clap their hands, and when things are going badly, then the stars are falling from heaven. It’s not because the ancient writers were so stupid they thought stars were little things that could land on the earth. That’s not the point.

Here, with the tail of this beast sweeping a third of the stars out of the sky, what it means is the whole universe is shuddering with the catastrophe about to unfold. That’s what’s at stake here. There’s a great pageant being worked out in the heavens, full of awesome symbol-laden significance. What is it? What is it that brings about such a cosmic catastrophe? It’s grotesque. It is so grotesque you almost hesitate to picture it in polite company.

There is this woman with her feet in the stirrups about to give birth, and there is the dragon standing between her legs, ready to catch her son to eat it. That’s what the text says. As Christians start reflecting on the history of redemption, they remember that the first thing that happened to Jesus after he was born is that Herod went after him. They remember that when the parents brought him back, they had to go north to Nazareth and not stay in Bethlehem, the City of David.

They remember the temptations Jesus faced, the attempts to execute him, the mob violence. They remember the cross. Satan, absolutely committed to eating the offspring of the messianic community. In this passage, at this juncture, there is no emphasis on Jesus in the days of his ministry and the cross, and the reason for that is because that has been unpacked for us earlier in the Apocalypse.

That is what Revelation 4 and 5 are about, so that is presupposed by the reader. You get through now his childhood, ministry, death, and resurrection, all the way to his ascension, in one swoop. He is designated as the one who will rule all of the nations, but now her child is snatched up to God and to his throne. What you have left, then, is the woman. The messianic community is still here.

The child has gone back to heaven. Meanwhile, the woman is left. That’s the church, the messianic community, the people of God. “The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.” What are we to make of that? There are two elements we must understand.

First, the desert in the Old Testament is regularly a twofold symbol by the end of the canonical Hebrew Bible. On one hand, the desert was the place of trial and preparation before the people of God entered into the Promised Land, yet it was also a time when God met with his people, cared for them, ensured that their sandals didn’t wear out, provided quail, provided manna.

It was a time of gentleness and immediate proximity. It was abnormal in some ways. So later on, in the time of Hosea, for example, when the people are turning apostate and whoring after other gods, God, the lover, says (Hoses 2:14), “I will allure her,” referring to his people, “and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.”

Thus, the wilderness is simultaneously, at the end of the day, still a wilderness, a place of testing, a place where you’re under trial, where you’re facing pressure, but it’s also the place where God is wooing you, tenderly winning you, showing his power and grace and succoring strength, providing for your needs until you enter into the Promised Land. So now this woman flees to the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where we’ll see at the end of the chapter she is attacked again and again by the Devil, yet this is also the place where God engages in his protecting work.

The second element of the symbolism here is this 1,260 days. I know many people have had clever explanations, but if I may simply give you the conclusion without running through all of the argumentation, as far as I can see, 1,260 days is a pretty straightforward symbol. On an idealized 30-day month, 1,260 days is the same thing as 42 months or three and a half years or time (one year), times (two more), and half a time. Three and a half years.

They all have the same symbolic value, and they’re all found in these three chapters: 12, 13, and 14. They’re repeated, they recur, and they all have exactly the same symbolic value. What is it? I think the period was so stereotyped in the Jewish mind at the time of writing that everybody would have picked it up. It comes from a brutal period of intertestamental history, foreseen by Daniel, lived out almost two centuries before Christ.

At the end of the Old Testament, you find the Jews mostly scattered abroad, primarily in Babylon, some in Assyria, and a small remnant back in Israel, but they’re still under the Persian power. What we are not told, because the Old Testament doesn’t run on long enough, is that it wasn’t too long before Philip of Macedon came to power in Greece and his son Alexander the Great took over so much of the then-known world.

His band of marauding riffs got all the way to India, and then he died at 33, allegedly because he felt there were no more worlds to conquer. Silly goose. He should have gone on to China. He would have found some more worlds to conquer, but that’s another matter. When the empire broke up, it went to four of his generals, and two of them began dynasties right around Israel. In the north, what is now Syria, the Seleucid dynasty, and in the south in Egypt the Ptolemaic dynasty. The war zone between them was Israel.

So these troops went back and forth and back and forth and every time slaughtered more Jews. Every time, when one party took over Israel, they expected utter allegiance. Then the other party would take over, and they would expect utter allegiance. The most brutal period of all of this occurred between 167 and 164 BC, when in the north the controlling power, the Seleucid dynasty, was in the hands of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Antiochus became a conventional symbol for evil. He insisted that Judaism be stamped out. Hellenistic religion would prevail.

It became a capital offense to own any part of the Hebrew Bible. It became a capital offense to observe any Jewish rite, to go up to the temple for Passover. It became a capital offense to go and study in the fledgling synagogues that were developing. It became a capital offense to seek the advice of a priest. It became a capital offense to be a priest. In he came with his troops and slaughtered and slaughtered. Then he slaughtered pigs in the temple to desecrate the temple and then turned it into a pagan temple.

Out of the horrible suffering and bloodshed of those days, an old man, a priest, Mattathias by name, resisted one of the emissaries in a little village in the hill country, and his sons stood with him, Judas and Joseph. Judas killed the emissary and started the first recorded instance of guerrilla warfare in the history of the race. If you study at West Point, which is the premier army officer training center in America, they say you still must read Josephus’ description of that guerrilla warfare, precisely because it is the first recorded instance of guerrilla warfare.

Judas became known as Judas the Hammer, Judas Maccabeus. That’s what Maccabeus means. Hence, the Maccabean Revolt. He gathered together more and more men, who went and hid in the hills and engaged in raiding parties and gathered more men and ran and hit and fled and ran and hit and fled. They hid in the hillside of Judea, and they killed and killed and they ran and they fled. They took on smaller units, and then larger units, and eventually there were pitched battles.

Eventually, the Syrians were kicked out and the temple was rededicated, but for that three-and-a-half-year period, there was endless slaughter and death, mayhem, rape, pillage, cruelty, desecration, profanation, and blasphemy. That three-and-a-half-year period became a conventional symbol for a limited period of time during which evil has remarkably free course but which God brings to an end.

Foreseen already by Daniel, picked up already in an allusive way by the Lord Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, “those days are cut short” (it’s not seven years; it’s only three and a half years), and becomes in the Apocalypse a standard symbol for this period between the coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ, when the Devil has remarkably free course. There will be a lot of evil, there will be suffering, and there will be persecution, but God in due course shuts it down, cuts it off.

During this period, the woman flees to the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she will be taken care of for 1,260 days. I think Jews and Jewish Christians would pick up on the symbolism of that, all right. It’s like certain standard symbolism that you pick up in almost any culture. Anyone in America, for example, knows the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s famous speech at the battlefields of Gettysburg, in which he drops in the time since that period and the founding of the nation.

That phraseology is so well embedded in the American mind that despite the fact that Americans are not the best historians on God’s green earth, 90 percent of historians, if they hear that figure, immediately think of the Gettysburg Address. So Jews, Jewish Christians, they hear three and a half years, three and a half years of suffering, and they think the Maccabean Revolt. To this day, Jews sing songs about the Maccabean Revolt and talk about the Maccabean martyrs, Hanukkah.

In verses 7–9, if I understand it aright, you have the heavenly analogue of what is going on on the earth. “There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

What is going on here? Well, at one level, clearly, this paragraph is the key to everything else that happens in the chapter, because it is now the fact that Satan is hurled out of heaven and is restricted to the earth that opens up his furious rage. For example, he is filled with fury in verse 10 because he knows his time is short, because the Devil has gone down to the earth and the sea and he’s no longer in the heavens in verse 12.

All of his rage turns on this massive war action in heaven. You contemplate this and you ask, “How does Scripture speak to this?” So much of the Apocalypse builds out of Old Testament texts allusively. What is going on here? I think it is clear. Do you remember, for example, how Satan approaches God with the other sons of God in the book of Job, an often common vision in apocalyptic?

Then suddenly you find in the Gospels Jesus sending out the 70. When they return, they have been casting out demons and preaching the gospel to the poor. They come back full of joy at their power, and Jesus says in Luke 10, “I saw Satan fall from heaven. Nevertheless, as for you, do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you in my name but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

With the advance of the gospel through Jesus’ ministry and through the ministry of those whom he sends, all predicated in the gospel narrative finally on the cross, through the advance of their ministry, Satan is cast out. He has no access to God, as it were. He is no longer the accuser of the brothers. Isn’t that what he does in Job? “Oh, you think that Job loves you, do you? Take away his money and see how he loves you. Take away his family and see how he loves you. Take away his health and see how he loves you.”

He’s cast out. He’s no longer the accuser of the brothers. This is not because of our great power, as the disciples had to learn, but because of the gospel. Rejoice, instead, that your names are written in heaven. In other words, the heavenly counterpart to the principial destruction of Satan through the gospel is Satan has been cast out. He’s no longer the successful accuser of the brothers. There is war in heaven, and he is cast out. He is hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Thus, John has outlined the occasion for this satanic rage, and in the verses that follow, that rage is unpacked. The occasion for this satanic rage is Satan’s principial defeat at the hands of God through the archangel Michael and his furious rage that he has not been able to kill the Messiah who has come to birth out of the messianic community.

2. John identifies reasons for this satanic rage.

Look at them.

First, his time is short. Verse 12b: “He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” He is vituperative. He is nasty. He knows that he is already a foe defeated in principle. Those of you with longer memories or who have had parents who served in the Second World War will remember what happened after the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy.

The Russians were pressing with great power on the eastern front. The Allies had cleaned out North Africa. They had landed in Sicily, crossed over to the boot of Italy, and were moving up Italy. Eventually, on the beaches of Normandy, in three days the Allies landed 1.1 million men and tons and tons of war materiel, a fantastic operation. Now the Germans were squeezed. They had at last their two-front war.

Anybody with half a brain in his head could see that the war was over. It was the logistics. It was the numbers. It was the production. The war was already done. It was gone. After all, at this point, the Allies were producing seven times more steel than the Japanese and the Germans together. They had vast reserves of oil. The Germans were, at this point, busy trying to get oil out of coal. There was no way the Germans were going to win.

At this point, just the sheer numbers told the story. If you kill one German for every Ally, the Allies win. If you kill only one German for every 10 Allies, the Allies still win. Anybody with half a brain in his head could see that the war was over. Does that mean Hitler rolled over and said, “Okay, I give up; you guys win”? What comes next is the breakout in the Ardennes, which we now call the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler almost made it to the coast again.

What happened in the Gulf War? Regardless of what you think about the whole enterprise, once the Allies had landed with a quarter of a million troops and extraordinarily sophisticated arms, did Iraq at that point really have a chance? Anybody with half a brain could see how that one was going to turn out. It turned out even faster than people thought, but there was no doubt who was going to win. Does that mean Saddam Hussein quit?

The psychology here is exactly right. Satan knows he’s a defeated foe, but does that mean he quits? He’s all the more enraged. He is filled with fury, precisely because he knows his time is short. So the troubles of the persecuted righteous arise not because Satan is too strong but because he’s beaten and he’s mad.

Second, he is angry because his sphere is restricted. “Therefore rejoice, you heavens [because Satan has been cast out of heaven].” “Rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!” Verse 13: “When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.” It’s precisely that he recognizes not only that his time is short but that his sphere is restricted that he’s all the angrier with the woman.

Then also he’s angry because his success is limited. That’s the point of verses 14–17. There is a lot of exodus typology here. “The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time …” There it is again. For this period of opposition, of persecution, of bloodshed, where there’s ongoing suffering and attack and struggle back and forth. “… out of the serpent’s reach.” This place in the desert where she should be spared.

The wings of an eagle. One remembers the exodus typology of Exodus 19:4: “You have seen how I’ve borne you on eagles’ wings.” Then from his mouth the serpent spews water to sweep away this woman. One remembers the Red Sea. One remembers the crossing of the Jordan. Then instead, the Lord opens up the ground to swallow that which is evil. One remembers the sons of Korah. There’s a whole exodus typology beginning to work out here.

The dragon is still enraged at the woman. He goes off to make war against the rest of her offspring, those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. Then in the next chapter, Satan has two cohorts. He’s restricted to the sphere of the earth and the sea, and he brings forth one beast out of the sea and one beast out of the earth. As the book unfolds, you discover one is what we call Antichrist and the other is the False Prophet, and together they make up an unholy triumvirate that apes the Trinity himself. That’s the way the structure of these next chapters works.

In the history of the church, there have been many debates as to whether or not the earth is getting better or worse. Very devout and godly Christians have disagreed on that point. At the time of the Puritans in England, the overwhelming majority were postmillennialists. They believed the world would get better by the preaching of the gospel. They weren’t the kind of liberal optimists you had at the turn of the century here. “The world is getting better, the world is getting better, the world is getting better, amen.”

No, they believed in depravity, but they believed that the gospel was so strong that as the gospel advanced, the world would get better and bring in a millennial reign. With the exception of only two or three of their leading theologians, who happened to be premillennialists, the rest of the Puritan leaders were postmillennialists. They believed that by the preaching of the gospel, the world would get better.

On the other hand, there have been other periods of the history of the church in which the vast majority of Christian thinkers have been quite convinced that the world would get worse. “Evil men and seducers shall get worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived,” they cite, forgetting that in the context, where Paul tells Timothy precisely that point, what he means is that in every generation between the first coming and the second coming, that is what happens.

You head off through the gospel to increasing holiness or you head off in rebellion to increasing sin and destruction. People do get worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. So what’s the answer? Will the world get better or will the world get worse? The answer is, “Both.” Isn’t that what Jesus teaches? Consider, for example, his parable of the wheat and the tares. The good seed is planted. Then the servants discover that there are weeds coming up amongst the wheat.

“Let’s go and pull them up right away.” Jesus says, “No, you wait until the end. Let both grow until the end.” The fact of the matter is that the last 150 years have seen the greatest expansion of the gospel of Christ around the world ever seen in 2,000 years … more people converted, more churches founded. It has also seen more Christian martyrs than in the previous 1,800 years combined. “Let both grow to the end.”

Now I’m neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. If the Lord tarries much longer, we are going to see outbreaks of revival and growth and missionary planting and evangelism and people turning to Christ bigger than we have seen yet, and we’re going to see more people martyred and killed and opposed and persecuted and more deaths. That’s what’s going to happen. Jesus said so. “Let both grow until the end.”

You can work out that theme in the Scriptures again and again and again. So we can quibble all we like about the date of the tribulation and the nature of the millennium, but at the end of the day, that is what is going to happen. Here it’ll be a little better, here it’ll be a little worse, but both will grow until the end. In other words, we are in a period of conflict between God and the advancing kingdom.

We are in a period between D-Day and V-E Day, when the most vicious fighting takes place, even though the whole thing is already in principle won, and Satan is enraged. Unless we understand that that is the nature of our opposition, that that is the nature of the church’s struggles, that that is the nature of a fallen world between D-Day and V-E Day, between the cross and the parousia, we will not understand the nature of our warfare.

3. John specifies how Christians overcome this satanic rage.

The setting of verse 10 is of paramount importance. “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ.’ ” These are gospel dimensions.

That’s what has happened with the defeat of Satan. That’s what has been bound up with his eviction from heaven. Now the kingdom has dawned, the authority of God and of his Christ. In terms of the whole book, that’s bound up with Christ as the lion and the lamb back in chapter 5. It is a gospel announcement. So how then do Christians in this setting overcome satanic rage?

First, on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. “The accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” The preposition and its case mean on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. The idea is not that they treat the blood of the Lamb as a means they deploy; it is the ground of their defense.

In other words, the great redemptive act that loosed them from their sins (chapter 1, verse 5) and established their right to reign (chapter 5, verse 9) now is also that great redemptive act by which they stand against Satan and all of his accusations.

In the great cosmic judicial sphere, Satan says, as it were, “Do you see that chap? He preaches, but he’s not very consistent. He makes mistakes with his children. He doesn’t always pray as he ought. He sometimes thinks bad thoughts. Do you see that woman? She parades herself so nicely and she has nicely combed hair and she’s nice to look at, but inside she’s a seething mass of bitterness.

And you think she is a Christian? Do you accept her? Where’s her holiness? You’re compromised, God. There’s nothing in it. You’ve tainted your own glory. You’ve brought your own self to shame by accepting sinners like that. Holy my foot!” But Satan is silenced because Christ died for sinners. If God accepts the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ, where does that leave Satan?

How do we come to Christ day by day? Do we come to Christ on the basis of how good a day we’ve had? We tried a little harder today, so we’ll pray a little longer. Or do we come to God through Christ, pleading the merits of Jesus, nothing more, nothing less? Isn’t that what we mean at the end of our prayers when we say, “In Jesus’ name, amen”? Do you really think God accepts you because you’ve had a good day?

So when Satan comes to us and attacks our consciences and tells us we ought to be defeated … We’re so foul and inconsistent. “You really ought to resign the ministry, you know. You preach to others, but you know sometimes you succumb to lust or ministerial jealousy. Sometimes you succumb to laziness. Sometimes you really do hate that deacon. Of course, you wouldn’t kill him; you just wish he’d be transferred to Timbuktu. Yet you get up the next Sunday and you dare to preach that Christians should love one another.”

Satan has a wee chat with you on Monday and says, “You filthy hypocrite.” What are you going to say? You’re certainly not going to say, “But I did try.” You will overcome him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. “God himself accepts me for Jesus’ sake, so shut your mouth.” If God be for us, who can be against us? Life or death or heaven or hell? The fact of the matter is that all blessings that come to believers in this life and the next come out of the cross, and we will overcome Satan only on the ground of the blood of the Lamb.

They overcome him also on the ground of the word of their testimony. This means more than that they testified or that they shared their testimony. It means on the ground of this gospel word that they bear witness to. In other words, this is not testimony time in the evening service. It means, rather, that on the ground of their constant public proclamation of the word to which they testify, they defeat Satan.

After all, what else do we have? Are we going to round up a few rebel people controlled by Satan and bump them off? Have another crusade? At the end of the day, what means do we have in this world? What is our one offensive weapon according to Ephesians, chapter 6? It is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. We have at the end of the day, “Preach the Word.” That’s it.

The bold proclamation of the gospel in any and every circumstance, gossiping the gospel to our neighbors, praying about the gospel, talking about the gospel, sharing the gospel, witnessing to the gospel, living out the gospel … That is our offensive weapon. That’s it. By it, men and women are converted. By it, Satan is destroyed. By it, the kingdom advances, and in that framework we will suffer and be attacked.

In the third place, they overcome by their simple willingness to die. “They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” When Paul says, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain …” “For me to live is Christ” in the context of Philippians 1 means Christian ministry, more service. “For me to live is Christ.” More ministry, more service, more of Christ. “… and to die is gain.” What are you going to do with him? Kill him? How do you stop people like that?

In other words, this is simply following the way of the cross. The language is literally “… so much as to shrink from death.” They did not love their lives even to the point of death. This is not a question of martyrdom or nothing. It’s they did not love their lives even all the way to the point where they would accept martyrdom.

In other words, they are Christians who have picked up the principle of death to self-interest, picking up their cross daily and dying, all the way to the point that it could lead to martyrdom, but it is not a question of living selfishly normally and then, “Oops! Here comes some persecution. Now we’ll have to have a few martyrs.” That’s not the idea. Rather, they did not love their lives as a general principle.

They had already died to self-interest. They had taken up the cross. They had followed the Master who had died on the cross. They can’t live any other way. That’s the whole nature of Christian repentance. That’s what it means to confess Jesus as Lord. If you have people who are not living for their own self-interest, who are living for eternity, who do not love their lives even to the point of death, what are you going to do to stop them?

Paul even makes a big joke about that, doesn’t he? “I may be in jail, but this is borne out for the advance of the gospel,” he says. The gospel has gotten into Caesar’s household now. He’s busy converting the troops. The whole Praetorian Guard is infected with the gospel. Paul thinks it’s a bit funny. So he writes to the Philippians and says, “Everybody here in Rome greets you, especially those of Caesar’s household.”

So with us today, brothers and sisters in Christ, the kingdom will advance, and we will defeat Satan. In this ongoing struggle between D-Day and V-E Day, in this wretched world of three and a half years of opposition before the parousia ends it all, we will defeat Satan on the ground of the blood of the Lamb, on the ground of the word of the gospel to which we bear witness, and by simple willingness to die. To the extent that we do not deploy these weapons, we will be defeated. It is as simple as that.

I conclude with two points of overwhelming importance. First, we must analyze our situation biblically and theologically, not simply sociologically and psychologically. Again, do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting for a moment there is nothing to be learned about the culture to which we bear witness, but at the end of the day, if all of our focus, all of our study, and all of our reading is tied up to sociological analysis, we will start to think that the solutions are sociological. Luther understood in his day.

And though this world, with devils filled,

Should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for thou hast willed

Thy truth to triumph through us:

The Prince of Darkness grim,

We tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure,

For lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

Second, it follows that we must recognize and use the only true weapons we have, the only effective weapons we have: all that are based on Christ’s atoning death, all the authority based in proclaiming the word of the gospel, all the courage and integrity that emerge because death cannot frighten those who follow the Prince of Life. That is our arsenal. Brothers and sisters in Christ, fight the good fight of faith, and God be with us, every one.