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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 end times from Revelation 12.


“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 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 woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

And 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.

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. For 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 and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

Therefore 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! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.’ When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.

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, out of the serpent’s reach. Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent.

But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And the dragon stood on the shore of the sea.”

May the Lord himself give us understanding of his Word. Let us pray.

Lord God, we earnestly ask that we would not make too much of the Devil and his works, for he is a defeated foe, and we ask that we would not make too little of his works, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers even in heavenly places. Protect us, therefore, we pray against his wretched attacks this evening as we try to understand his works in the light of the cross and learn afresh the ground of our victory and the promise of our triumph secured by the Lord Jesus. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

One day when my son was about 3, I asked him where he got his big, wonderful deep blue eyes. He answered with all the authority of a 3-year-old, “From God,” and, of course, he was right, but he might have answered, had he been a biology student and 15 years older, “I have them because both you and Mum, though neither of you has blue eyes, must carry the necessary recessive genes which happily supported each other in the formation of my DNA.” Which answer is truer? They’re both true. Which answer is more foundational?

A second question … What caused the destruction of the southern kingdom, the kingdom of Judah, in 586 BC? One might list the rise of the Babylonian superpower. One might chronicle the decline and decay of the Davidic dynasty. One might mention in passing the tragic pride of King Hezekiah several generations earlier in exposing the wealth of the kingdom to the Chaldean emissaries.

One would certainly have to reflect on the criminal stupidity of Zedekiah despite Jeremiah’s warnings. One would certainly have to mention the sins of the people, sins that attracted God’s judgment. Or one could simply say, “God did it.” Which answer is truer? They’re both true. Which answer is more foundational, more fundamental?

A third question … What made Job suffer? One could list the Sabeans, a band of marauding rifts, the Chaldeans again, the natural elements, the windstorm that blew down the house and killed all 10 of his children, bereavement, then the loss of his health, and at that point, a nagging wife. Or one could reply, “Satan did it.” One could even reply, “God did it, for Satan did not go one step beyond what God himself sanctioned.” Which answer is truer? As far as I can see, they’re all equivalently true. Which answer is more fundamental?

One more question … What has caused the church her greatest difficulties and sufferings during the last few decades? Of course, the answers you give will vary a great deal with location. If you think of China, inevitably your mind will turn to the unavailability of Bibles and other helps, repression, overt torture, Marxist totalitarianism with a Chinese face.

If you think of parts of central Africa, you will soon list tribalism and the endless petty wars that tribalism generates, sometimes breaking out in horrendous bloodbaths, the residue of the colonial period that drew boundaries to the convenience of the former colonial powers without regard to tribal affinities. In the church, you will mention the lack of trained leadership.

In urban areas in central Africa, it is a common saying these days that the pew is higher than the pulpit. What is meant by that is in the urban areas there is a whole new generation of young Africans who have university education and are well-trained, while most of the pastors have only received fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth grade and a little Bible institute on top of that. The pew is higher than the pulpit. A want of trained leadership.

One could mention the pressures of AIDS. Not fewer than 12 million Africans have the HIV virus. In some parts of Uganda and Tanzania, in the villages you can find whole populations between the ages of 15 and 65 wiped out. They’re just not there, killed by AIDS. They call it the skinny disease. Or you could mention drought, terrible conflict, persecution, violence, and tragic natural disasters, and on top of that, a church, which though great in numbers, is immensely weak in leadership, training, vision for the future.

Let us turn to the West. What shall we say here? Material prosperity has corroded many of us coupled with rising poverty in some of our inner cities, the rapid pace of life which squeezes important things to the periphery, the impact of the mass media that affects our thinking whether we like it or not, the pressures of secularization, which do not refer to the abolition of religion. Secularization does not abolish religion. What it does is squeeze religion to the periphery of discussion.

Just before the turn of the century while Spurgeon was still alive, until 1892 and for a little bit beyond, they cabled one of Spurgeon’s sermons to New York for the New York Times Monday morning edition. Every Sunday they cabled it because people wanted a whole Spurgeon sermon printed in the press on Monday morning for their breakfast. Can you imagine that today?

Even at the level of reading, there were literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small publishing houses that produced poetry books at the turn of the century. Hard to believe, isn’t it? People would sit down and read a volume of poetry then the way they might sit down and watch a program on TV today.

Secularization changes the agenda. Secularization does not mean you can’t be religious; it means you can be religious on Sunday and it doesn’t make a difference. The national discourse concerns economics. It concerns politics. It concerns sports. It concerns media stars themselves who have become powerful just because they’re on the media. It concerns international affairs when they’re of interest to us. It concerns rising into seas of this and falling into seas of that, but it does not concern truth, it does not concern integrity, and it does not concern God.

Thus, quite differently from 100 years ago, where you could not discuss any period at the national level or any item at the national agenda without bringing up questions of providence and what God was doing in history, today to even raise those things in public makes you sound vaguely irrelevant.

Pluralism. The Judeo-Christian heritage has been so diluted that today we are taught the only view that is wrong is the view that says any view is wrong. That’s the only heresy. The only heresy is that there is a heresy. Moral indifference, prayerlessness in many of our churches, the sheer loneliness that comes from large urban areas, and much more.

Have you noticed the way I’ve described these things? The categories are sociological, historical, occasional, demographic, psychological, performance related. Nothing about the Devil and nothing about God. Do not misunderstand me. I am certainly not saying there is nothing to be learned from sociological analysis.

It is helpful to understand what Baby Boomers think or what Baby Busters think, it is helpful to understand what’s going on in the minds of university undergraduates before you start evangelizing them, but if all of our analyses are cast in such terms, not only are we too superficial but our answers will be merely sociological as well. If all of our analyses are cast in occasional and demographic categories, our responses will be occasional and demographic as well.

If I understand the passage before us aright, God here gives us a deeper analysis of the difficulties and sufferings of the church. Chapter 12 marks a major division in the Apocalypse. Chapters 12, 13, 14 and 15 constitute a kind of hiatus before the display of wrath in the seven plagues of chapter 16.

John traces in these chapters the underlying cause for the hostility and suffering that fall upon the church. That cause is nothing less than the rage of Satan. Rage, rage against the church. First, John outlines the occasion for this satanic rage. Then he also offers us the reasons for this satanic rage. Finally, he tells us how Christians may overcome this satanic rage.

1. 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 sometimes elsewhere in the book of Revelation, means a great spectacle that points in some way to the consummation. He sees a great spectacle in the heavens.

The content of this spectacle is a woman, and what a woman! Verses 1 and 2. Who is she? We are told, “She is clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She is pregnant and about to give birth.” Verse 5: “She gives birth to a son, a male child who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” A clear reference to Jesus.

Does that make her Mary? No. She is identified for us a little later in the chapter. Not infrequently in apocalyptic literature you get some symbol introduced which is then unpacked a little farther on, and so it is here. It becomes very clear from verse 17 this woman is the messianic community as a whole, whether under the old covenant or the new.

Just as Zion is the mother of the people of God in the Old Testament, just as Israel as a whole can be referred to as a woman as, for example, in Isaiah 54:1 (“Sing, O barren woman”), so under the new covenant the heavenly Jerusalem is our mother. Galatians 4:26: “The Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.”

Messiah, thus, comes out of the messianic community. Thus, the messianic community (the woman here) is in pain. She is in anguish as she comes to give birth. This language generated what came to be called the birth pains of the Messiah. The language is drawn from passages like Isaiah 26:17. “As a woman with child and about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain, so were we in your presence, O God.”

Thus, it was understood before the Messiah came the people of God (the woman here) would go through the birth pains of the Messiah. She is in travail, pregnant, waiting for the coming of the Messiah. She is clothed with the sun. That is, utterly radiant. Her feet are on the moon. That is, she has dominion. She has 12 stars on her head, whether the 12 tribes of the old covenant or the 12 apostles of the new, which are in some ways linked by Jesus himself in Matthew 19.

What we have, then, is true Israel, the old covenant community as it gives birth to the Messiah, but still in connection with the new covenant community judging by verse 17. There we are told, “The dragon goes off to make war against the rest of her offspring.” That is, her children other than the one Son that has been mentioned, the Lord Jesus.

Her offspring are identified for us. “… those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” That is, they’re Christians. They are believers. What we have, then, is true Israel in an agony of suffering and expectation as the Messiah comes to birth. That’s the first sign, the first spectacle.

There is a second sign in the pageant, a second spectacle: an enormous red dragon. Once again, there is little doubt as to what this dragon represents, for he is identified for us in verse 9. “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”

Now dragon, Leviathan, monster of the deep … These are standard symbols for all that oppose God. Sometimes they emerge in historic entities. Thus, the dragon is associated with Egypt in Psalm 74 in connection with the exodus, with Assyria and Babylon in Isaiah 27, with Pharaoh in Ezekiel 29, and dare I say it, with Peter in Matthew 16 and parallels. Do you recall the account?

“Who do men say that I am?” Jesus asks. Peter, prompted by God himself, replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responds, “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, he then speaks more clearly of his impending death and resurrection.

But that’s too much for Peter. A crucified Messiah is a contradiction in terms by his lights. Having scored once, he tried to score again. “Far be it from you, Jesus. No Messiah is going to die.” Jesus wheels on him and says, “Get behind me, Satan.” It is very important to think through what is going on there. Jesus is certainly not saying Peter’s mind has clicked off and he has been taken over by Satan himself, that he is demon possessed. He’s not saying that.

Peter is speaking what Peter thinks. This is Peter’s utterance and Peter’s folly, but behind Peter is still the blinding, deceiving, and destroying work of Satan himself, such that Peter’s judgment is fundamentally false when it should have been right. It was Satan’s work, as it was Satan’s work behind Pharaoh, as it was Satan’s work behind Egypt, as it was Satan’s work behind Babylon, and as it is Satan’s work today.

He is a red dragon, almost certainly a symbol for his murderousness. You recall Jesus insists in John 8:44 that he was a murderer from the beginning. Of course, by his work the entire race died. He has seven heads, like Leviathan in Psalm 74. That is, there is a universality to his power. He leads the whole world astray in verse 9.

Ten horns, recalling the fourth beast of Daniel 7. Awesome power, kingly authority. We’ll come to that one a little more tomorrow night. He has crowns on his head. Not here victory wreaths, but crowns of arrogated authority against him who is described in this book as the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, who is described in this chapter as the one who will rule the nations with an iron scepter (verse 5). Those, then, are the two signs, the two spectacles.

Once they have been introduced, the drama begins (verses 4 to 6). It plays out on earth in these verses, and it plays out in heaven in verses 7 to 9. On earth, this is what takes place. Verse 4: “His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.” This is not some sort of mistaken ancient cosmology in which they didn’t really know stars were bigger and brighter and larger than the earth. You couldn’t fling them to the earth.

No, no, no. This is, again, part of apocalyptic metaphor that derives from Hebrew poetry. You will recall in Hebrew poetry all of nature gets involved in everything. The hills dance, the trees clap their hands, and the stars fall from the skies, depending on whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

What is going on here, then, is Satan is about to attempt something that is utterly catastrophic, so his tail swings around and a third of the universe collapses, as it were. What is he trying to do? The picture is hideous. It is grotesque. There is this woman in childbirth, her feet in the stirrups, pushing to give birth, in an agony of pain, and there is this serpent waiting there. “Come on. Give me the child. Give me the child. I’m going to eat him. I’m going to eat him.” That’s the picture. It is grotesque.

“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.” It is meant to be grotesque, for what this reflects is the implacable rage of Satan against the arriving Messiah. Do we not know how this works out in historical terms? The first bloodbath takes place in the little village of Bethlehem in what is now called the slaughter of the innocents.

Jesus, saved by Joseph, warned by God in a dream, flees to Egypt. Herod, in a rage, kills all the children 2 years and under. We find Satan still after Jesus in the temptation. We find Satan after Jesus in every temptation, whether Peter’s, at the very moment of confessing Jesus as the Messiah, or in Gethsemane. Does not Jesus say in John 12, “Now is the hour of the power of darkness”?

Satan is after Jesus. He wants to destroy him by any means possible. The text does not then go on to talk about Jesus’ triumph here. That has been introduced already in the book. We saw that last night in chapter 5, and it is a theme that recurs again and again. Here we move from Jesus’ birth to his ascension, because what John here wants to focus on is not at this point quite the triumph of Christ. That comes back in a moment.

What he wants to focus on is what happens to the woman. That’s the focus in this chapter. So Jesus in this chapter is taken out of the way. You move from his birth to his ascension. Thus, the male child is introduced (verse 5) “… who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.”

What, then, about the woman? “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.” There are two elements of great importance here. First, the significance of the wilderness, and secondly, the significance of the 1,260 days. Don’t forget now. This is the messianic community. Now that the messianic community has given birth to the Messiah and the Messiah has gone to glory, the messianic community flies to the wilderness.

What would that mean to any first-century Christian reader who was steeped in the Old Testament? Two things, inevitably. First, the desert was the place through which the messianic community passed on the way to the Promised Land. As such, it was a time of testing, of difficulty, of temptation, and of judgment. It was not yet the Promised Land. It was the desert.

At the same time, it was the place where God had so miraculously provided for his people that later prophets could look back on it as a time of intimacy, a time of wooing, a time of winning. There God performed wonderful miracles: water from a rock, the quail. He guaranteed their shoes would not wear out. It was a time when God taught them wonderful lessons more immediately in spectacular miracles.

Thus, for example, in the time of Hosea, when the people are wandering away from God and committing spiritual adultery, God says, “I will allure her. I will bring her in to the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” Do you see? Though the wilderness is a time of judgment, it’s also a time when God is winning his people, wooing his people, training his people, and loving his people in preparation for the Promised Land.

That is what is going on here in verse 6 and then a little later on in the chapter, as we’ll see in a moment. “The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God.” She’s in flight. She’s trying to get away from the Devil. It is the desert, after all, which is scarcely hospitable, but at the same time, it’s prepared for her by God. God is nurturing his own people in the desert afresh in preparation for the consummation.

There she remains for 1,260 days. What does that mean? There have been endless speculations, as you doubtless know, and some very dogmatic insistences on this or that interpretation. As far as I can see, 1,260 days, which on the basis of an idealized month of 30 days, is the same thing as 42 months, which is the same thing as three and a half years, which is the same thing as time (one year), times (2 more years) and half a time (three and a half years). All of these expressions, I say, mean the same thing. I think they come from one thing, and they all have exactly the same significance.

They are introduced to us by Daniel, and the first referent to them is to something that takes place in the intertestamental period. Daniel looks forward to a time of immense suffering of 42 months, three and a half years, 1,260 days, and the referent, as I understand it, is to the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

After the people of God began to return after the exile to the Promised Land, eventually the old Persian Empire broke up. A Greek Empire was established, and then it broke up. As it broke up, there was a dynasty in the south in Egypt, the Ptolemaic dynasty. In the north in what is now Syria, there was a Seleucid dynasty, and those two powers, headed initially by two generals from the ancient Greek Empire, fought back and forth. Where was no man’s land? Israel.

Israel was, thus, forced to be aligned with this power and then with that power, then with this power and then with that power, then with this power and then with that power. It went back and forth and back and forth in endless bloody warfare, but the climax came in 167 BC. At that point, Israel was under the Seleucid power in the north, and the reigning monarch was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and he was a cruel and bloody man.

He made it a capital offense to own any part of Scripture. He made it a capital offense to read it. He made it a capital offense to observe any Jewish rite. He made it a capital offense to keep the Sabbath. He sacrificed a pig in the new temple in Jerusalem. He was determined to crush all forms of Jewish worship and establish Hellenistic religions throughout the land.

At that time, he sent his emissaries and killed many people. The priests were to all be eliminated, and the soldiers went through to kill an old man in a small village, a man by the name of Mattathias. Mattathias had several sons. One of them was named Judas. Judas invented, so far as we know, guerrilla warfare.

If in the United States you study at West Point, the premier Army academy for training officers, you still today have to read Josephus, the Jewish historian, on this man Judas, because he invented guerrilla warfare. Pages and pages of text telling how he did it, what he did, hiding in the hills, hit-and-run attacks, hiding in the hills, hit-and-run attacks. He came to be known as Judas the Hammer. That is what Maccabaeus means. Judas Maccabaeus, and we speak today of the Maccabean revolt. After three and a half bloody years, the Syrians were turfed out.

This, I insist, Daniel had foreseen centuries earlier. It was the period of three and a half years from 167 to 164 BC. That’s how long it lasted before the guerrilla warfare won and Antiochus IV Epiphanes was kicked out. Because that was such a burning memory in the Jews’ minds, from that point on, and they understood the connection with Daniel, they thought of three and a half years as a time of severe testing, as a time of severe tribulation before God himself gave his people rest again. That’s the way they thought of it.

If I mistake not, that is what is being said here. The church, this woman, flees into the desert and faces a time of testing, of opposition, of tribulation, for a constrained period of time before God himself comes and gives them final release. “If those days were not cut short,” Jesus had said, “then would all flesh perish.” That is the occasion for the satanic rage.

Meanwhile, in heaven we see something going on that mirrors what is going on on earth. We read, “There was war in heaven. Michael and the 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.”

There are two things that must be said about this passage. First, this, I take it, is equivalent to what Jesus says in Luke, chapter 10. “I saw Satan fall from heaven.” With the onset of the messianic ministry, Satan is deposed. That’s a major theme in Scripture. Do you recall how in the book of Job Satan appears with the sons of God before God? It is almost as if Satan has a kind of access to God at this point precisely because the redeeming work of Christ is not yet done.

He is presented before us as the accuser of the brothers a couple of verses on. It is as if he has an access to God which says, “You see, God, this Job … he only likes you because you’ve nurtured him around. He’s actually a rotter. In his heart he’ll curse you to your face if you just take away some of the protections.”

He is quite prepared to say, “Do you see that chap David and all of his sins? You say he’s a man after your own heart and he goes and shacks up with Bathsheba. That’s a man after your own heart? And you’re going to forgive him? You claim you’re holy, and you’re going to forgive him?”

Now Satan is cast out of heaven. The accuser of the brothers is gone. Why? There has been war in heaven, and he has been cast out, and we shall see the reason is he is cast out is precisely because of the triumph of Christ. Satan has no basis for such accusations anymore. Why? Because a Redeemer has arisen who has borne David’s sin and my sin and Job’s, and that becomes the basis for the next turn in the argument in the chapter.

The whole point of the next verses cast in poetic form is the accuser of our brothers (verse 10) has been hurled down. Verse 12: “Rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!” That is, he has been cast out of you. “But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you.” The occasion of the satanic rage, then, is the coming and triumph of Christ which has thrown him out of heaven and spelled his end.

2. The reasons for the satanic rage

Let us spell them out.

A) His sphere is now restricted.

Verses 12: “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.”

Do you see the point? Satan as it were, though doubtless he has been operating on the earth since the beginning of the creation, now that he is restricted to us, now that he does not have this access to God which enables him to accuse us before God so directly, turns all of his rage and vengeance upon the woman. That means upon us, the messianic community. That’s what the text says.

“When he saw he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.” In other words, it is precisely the Devil’s restriction in authority that is the fundamental reason here for his rage in this restricted sphere. He’s not only wicked; he’s frustrated and angry.

B) He knows his time is short.

Have you seen that? Verse 12: “He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” He’s vituperative and nasty because he knows in principle he is already a defeated foe. There is a sense in which we can understand that. In the Gulf War, once the allies went in with a quarter of a million troops and tons and tons and tons of materiel, sophisticated weapons Saddam Hussein could not possibly match, anyone with half a brain in his head knew it was over.

How bloody it would be was uncertain. What setbacks there might be? In war, who can pronounce an advance? But it was over. Does that mean Saddam quit? He was vituperative and nasty. He ordered his troops to fight. They were killed and captured by the thousands, and then they fired all the oil wells in Kuwait on their way out. In other words, he did the nastiest things when it was clear he was already beaten. It’s not rational. It is typically wicked.

Isn’t that also what Hitler did? In the Second World War, the Germans fought on the Eastern front. The Allied forces eventually beat Rommel in North Africa, came into Sicily, started moving up Italy, and eventually on the beaches of Normandy, they pumped in 1.2 million troops in three days in a fantastic armada that opened up the Western front.

Even before that but certainly at that point, again, anybody with an ounce of historical knowledge knew Hitler was finished. It was a matter of who was winning this battle or the other battle. The point is, now that there were so many troops on the Allied side and such a vast reservoir of men from which to draw, and in terms of production schedules, at that point Japan could turn out about 7 million tons of steel a year and Germany was being bombed flat. It wasn’t going to produce more than 13 or 14 tons. America alone was producing 50 to 60 tons.

The figures were all on the Allied side. Just give it time. Hitler was finished. Does that mean he quit? That’s what his generals wanted him to do. No. After that came the Battle of the Bulge, and the panzer divisions came through again and almost broke through Montgomery’s lines. Why? He was filled with rage because he knew his time was short.

That’s the nature of the opposition we face. Satan’s sphere is restricted, Satan’s time is short, and he’s angry, and he aims to do as much damage as he possibly can to the woman. That is, to you and me. That’s his aim.

C) His success is limited.

Verses 14 to 17: “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 …” This is probably picking up language from Exodus, chapter 19. There are many allusions to Exodus in these next few verses. “You have seen how I have borne you up with eagles’ wings.”

The woman is borne along by God himself to the desert place, this desert that was introduced to us back in verse 6, this place of preparation for the end, this place of suffering, this place of trial, and this place where God himself is wooing and looking after his people. “There she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time …” There it is again. This period of testing before the final release. “… out of the serpent’s reach.”

Does that mean she really is out of the Serpent’s reach and there’s no more trouble to worry about? No. The Serpent is busy chasing her. “He spews water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent.” Almost certainly a reference to Exodus 1 and 2 where, again, Satan, using Pharaoh, tried to sweep away the entire promised line. What did he ordain? He ordained that every male child would be drowned in the Nile.

So again, Satan wants the church destroyed, but God is not finished. No. “The earth helps the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.” Does that mean the Devil quits? No. He’s further enraged. “He was enraged at the woman and goes off to make war against the rest of her offspring.” That is, everyone except Jesus who is now safely in heaven.

“… those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” Then what we discover in chapter 13 is he has two important cohorts who we’ll look at tomorrow night, the Antichrist and the False Prophet. The reasons for the satanic rage become clear. His sphere is restricted, his time is short, his success is limited, and he’s just angry.

Throughout the history of the Christian church, there have been various theories about whether the world is getting better or worse. They are tied with large schemes of eschatology, the doctrine of last things. In the Puritan period, the majority of the Puritan pastors were postmillennialists. That is, they believed eventually a time of millennial splendor and glory before the Lord’s final return would be introduced by the preaching of the gospel.

There were a few of these men who were premillennialists. Amillennialism was not popular; postmillennialism was. They really believed they were entering into a golden age of such magnificent earth-transforming power as the gospel was heralded afresh in renewed vigor that, in effect, Christ would rule through his Word through the church and introduce an age of great missionary outreach and glory that could only be called millennial in splendor. It didn’t work out that way.

At other times in the history of the church, people have noticed how everything is in declension, how everything is decaying, and we’re in one of those periods today in the Western world. Not in every part of the world, but in our part of the world the culture seems to be declining, the standards are decaying. It is a time of gloom, a time for the naysayer, so now we hear another set of texts.

Now we do not hear, “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” We say, “That’s for the new heaven and the new earth.” Now we have another text. Now we have, “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” You see, it’s going to get worse. I told you so.

Although the context of that verse shows what is in Paul’s mind is not that each generation will be worse than the preceding generation but that evil men in any generation get worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. You cannot prove the case by such verses. What then is the truth of the matter? Is the world getting better or is it getting worse? I want to argue on biblical grounds that it is getting both. Do you remember Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 13 regarding the wheat and the tares?

Jesus says, “A man went out to sow wheat, good seed in his field. But at night while his servants were sleeping, an enemy came and planted tares [weeds] among the wheat. When the two kinds of plants began to spring up, the servants of the good man said, ‘Let us go out to the field and pick up all the weeds.’ The man said, ‘No. That should not be because you might pick up some of the wheat along with the weeds. Let both grow until the end.’ ” He acknowledges the enemy’s work. He says, “An enemy has done this, but let both grow until the end.”

Do you realize in the last 150 years there has been greater international missionary work done than in the previous 1,800 years combined? It’s the truth. The gospel has gone to more people in more places than it has ever gone to before. Do you realize in the last 150 years there have been more Christian martyrs than in the previous 1,800 years combined? That’s the truth. “Let both grow till the end.”

I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. If the Lord doesn’t come back first, there will be in the Lord’s good timing and in the Lord good’s providence at the Lord’s good pace sowing of seed, outbreaks of revival and blessing here and there, times of sowing and harvesting, still an ingathering from millions and millions of people.

Moreover, the race is multiplying. By the year 2020, it is said the race will be approaching the 10 billion mark. There will be a great ingathering, and there will be more persecution than we’ve ever faced before. Not all at once, not at the same place, and not necessarily all at the same time, but let both grow till the end. Let both grow till the end.

Our eschatological visions are too often constrained by our own narrow place in history. We do not take the broader view. We do not take adequately the worldwide view. We do not, it seems to me, sufficiently submit to the biblical view. Let both grow to the end. These, then, are the reasons for satanic rage.

3. How Christians overcome this satanic rage

The setting is important. Let me remind you of it. Verse 10: “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. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.’ ”

It is the triumph of Christ, the onset of his reign that is coincidental with the destruction of Satan, his being hurled out of heaven. That is the whole point, but now as these children, these offspring of the woman, are being pursued, how do they cope with this satanic rage? Three ways.

A) They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb (Verse 11).

Do you understand what that means? The great redemptive act that loosed them from their sins (chapter 1, verse 5) and established their right to reign (chapter 5, verse 9) is also that which gives them authority over Satan. What does Satan do?

He accuses them. He accuses them day and night. He’ll work on your conscience and make you feel as dirty and as guilty and as defeated and as destroyed and as weak and as ugly as he possibly can. What shall you say? “I’m not that bad”? You’ll never beat him that way. Never. No. What you say is, “Satan, I’m even worse than you think, but God loves me anyway. He has accepted me because of the blood of the Lamb.”

The preposition in the original here is very important. It is not by in some instrumental sense. What is meant is they overcame him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb is the ground of their victory not simply the means in some mechanical sense. Moreover, from a Christian perspective from the perspective of the Apocalypse, all the blessings that are ours, all the resources that are ours in Christ come from the blood of the Lamb.

Do you find yourself accepted before this Holy God? It is because of the blood of the Lamb. Have you received the blessed Holy Spirit? He has been poured out because of the blood of the Lamb. Do you have the prospect of consummated eternal life in glory? It was secured by the blood of the Lamb. Are you in the fellowship of saints, brothers and sisters who love Christ, a new body, the body of Christ on earth? Bought, secured, and constituted by Christ and his death, won by the blood of the Lamb.

All of the arsenal at our disposal? The ground is the blood of the Lamb. May we go to God in prayer? Do we find our wills strengthened by the Spirit? Secured by the blood of the Lamb. Our basis on every front as we wrestle with the principalities and powers of this dark age … Our basis on every front for victory is the blood of the Lamb.

Picture two Jews with the remarkable names of Smith and Jones. They live in the land of Goshen almost a millennium and a half before Christ. They’re right toward the end now of the 10 plagues. Mr. Smith says to Mr. Jones, “Mr. Jones, have you daubed the two doorposts and lintel with the blood of the lamb tonight?”

Mr. Jones replies, “Yes, I certainly have. You heard what Moses said. The angel of death is passing through the land. Some of the plagues have just afflicted the Egyptians, but some of them have been over the whole land, and Moses said this plague was going to go throughout the entire land, the land of Goshen entirely, as well as the rest of Egypt, and the firstborn of people and of cattle are going to be killed.”

Mr. Jones talks a lot. Mr. Jones rabbits on and he says, “I’m really excited about this. This means our redemption draws nigh. So, of course, I have the lamb. It’s slaughtered. My friends and relatives are all here. We’re ready to go. I’ve daubed the blood of the lamb on the two doorposts and on the lintel. How about you, Mr. Smith?”

Mr. Smith replies, “Of course, I’ve done it. Boy, am I worried. Have you seen the things that have gone on around here the last few months? Frogs and lice and hail and death. Now Moses is talking about every firstborn. I only have one son. You have three. I only have one son, and I love my Charlie, and I don’t want to lose him. I’m scared witless. There’s not going to be any sleep for me tonight, you know.”

Mr. Jones says, “What are you worried about? God himself has promised through his servant Moses if you put the blood on the two doorposts and on the lintel you are saved. Your child will be saved. Charlie will be here tomorrow morning. You’ve already put the blood on the two doorposts and on the lintel.”

Mr. Smith replies, “Well, you’ve got that right. I’ve certainly done that, but I’m scared witless just the same.” That night the angel of death passed through the land. Who lost his son? Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones? The answer, of course, is neither, because the promise was not based on the intensity of their faith or on the joy of their obedience but on whether or not they hid under the blood of the lamb.

So now you wake up some morning, and it’s a cold, wet, ugly day. You scramble for a clean, fresh pair of socks. You can’t find two that match. You stub your toe on that nail sticking out of the wall you knew you should have fixed about three years ago. You cut yourself while you’re shaving. You stumble down to breakfast, and that day your wife is going out for a special meeting with her friends and hasn’t done anything.

You arrive late at work because your car wouldn’t start. You knew you should have had the battery checked, but it was deader than a dodo. Eventually, you get to work and your boss says to you, “Have you finished that report yet? You’re staying late tonight if you haven’t.” The whole day unfolds in one endless set of mini-irritants.

You come home in the evening, and your wife has cooked this disgusting stew your children like and you detest. You can’t be civil to her, and she can’t be civil to you. She wants you to do jobs, and you want to watch football. Eventually, it’s time for bed, and your prayer runs something like, “Dear God, this has been a rotten day. I’m not very proud of myself. I’m ashamed, but I don’t really have anything to say. I’m sorry. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

A few days later you wake up, and the birds are singing, and the sun is shining, and the fresh air is wafting through the open curtains. Bacon! Your clothes are on so fast, and you wash, and you’re whistling in the bathroom. You enjoy a hearty breakfast. You go to the garage, put in the key, and the car takes off. You get to work early, and your boss says, “Wonderful to see you today! Did I tell you you’re going to get a raise? You did such a great job on that contract.”

You go home that evening, and you have intimate conversation with your wife while you do the dishes together. Eventually, you get down on your knees to pray, and your prayer goes like, “We bless you, matchless God, that in your great grace you afford favor upon us.” Then you start thanking God for all the things of the day, and then you pray for the missionaries and everybody in the church. You go on and on and on!

Am I the only one who has fallen into traps like that? Isn’t it pathetic? The only thing I can’t figure out is which one is more pathetic. They’re approximately equally pathetic. For us to think we dare approach the mercy seat of God on the basis of what sort of a day we had … No wonder we can’t beat the Devil.

Christians learn we overcome the accuser of our brothers, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, and we overcome our pettiness under the blood of the Lamb. We dare to approach a holy God and we dare to come before him in prayer in Jesus’ name, appealing to the blood of the Lamb.

I need no other argument,

I need no other plea,

It is enough that Jesus died,

And that he died for me.

B) They overcame him by the word of their testimony.

The second ground, and it is a ground, is the word of their testimony. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” What does this mean? God, in the opening chapter of the Bible, speaks and worlds leap into being. He sends forth his word, and it accomplishes whatever he sends it out to do.

His supreme message is the Word incarnate. Servants in the church rule through the Word. In the world at large, the only offensive weapon we have according to the symbolism of Ephesians 6 is the Word of God. What do Christians do when they try to overcome the Devil and all of his tricks in this wicked world?

The Devil, who is working through politics, who is working through corruption, who is working through the media, who is working through the state, who is working through declining morals, who is working through secularism, who is working through pluralism, who is working through educational systems? How do Christians fight back? Do they form a political party? Do they picket the White House? Do they send a lot of letters to the prime minister? Can you imagine Paul setting up a whole circuit of letters sent off to Caesar?

Do not misunderstand me. We live in a democracy. That’s a different form of government, and Christian responsibility in this kind of context may mean you do have to take active thought about how to be salt and light in a corrupt and corroding society. You do not withdraw into a little holy huddle but you recognize with every ounce of your being that that which finally transforms society is the gospel.

There are responsibilities to legislate correctly. There are responsibilities to pass law. God loves justice. God holds every nation to account for justice. Promote the well-being of the city. Of course, we’re responsible to look after the poor, but at the end of the day what transforms the society is still the gospel. How does that advance? By the word of our testimony. There is no other way. You can’t see people converted by holding a sword to their throat. You can’t transform a society by anything else other than by gossiping the gospel. You cannot.

What you need is the promulgation, the promotion, of the gospel. Yet, some of us here have not shared the gospel with a single person in the last year. Even some of us for five years. Even (dare I say it?) pastors fall into that trap as they retreat into a narrow little world and only talk to other Christians. They have never made friends outside. They have no one with whom they can share the gospel full-orbedly, honestly, generously. They do not gossip the gospel in the barbershop. They’re afraid.

We never overcome anybody that way. No. We overcome Satan on the ground of the blood of the cross, and we overcome him also on the ground of this promulgated Word, of this preached Word. God has ordained that by the foolishness of the proclaimed message men and women will be saved.

C) They overcame him simply because they were willing to die.

They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Death is probably the last taboo subject in our society. I can go into the most conservative church in most parts of North America and talk about AIDS and make distinctions between vaginal and anal intercourse, and nobody will bat an eye.

Have a few people around for supper and say, “I’d like to tell you how my dad died,” and there’s an appalling embarrassed hush, but death is the one thing more certain than taxes. “It is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.” Christians used to be known as those who knew how to die well. Now we use the same euphemisms as everybody else.

Christians used to write books on how to die well. Their great prayer was, in their declining hours when their minds were going and when they were no longer in control, amongst Christians who loved self-discipline, that they would not say anything that would bring shame on the cross. Do you ever hear Christians pray like that today? Their prayer today is, “Give me another shot of morphine so I don’t have to suffer.”

No. These Christians did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. What are you going to do with the Paul who says, “For me to live is Christ”? That is, it’s promoting the gospel, it’s gossiping the gospel, it’s promoting Christ. “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” What are you going to do with him? Kill him?

Very few of us are called upon in the Western culture to suffer like that. When I grew up in the province of Quebec, there was a little more persecution than that. Baptist ministers spent eight years in jail between ‘50 and ‘52 in the province of Quebec because of the opposition of the Catholic Church. Those of us who were children, like myself, at that time used to get beaten up from time to time as maudits Protestants, damned Protestants.

But it’s pretty slight. In Mexico they’ve killed a few. In Latin America a little farther south, a few more. But in parts of the world it’s barbaric. In Iran in the last five weeks, they’ve killed four pastors that we know of. There have been untold thousands of Christian leaders killed in the last few years in China.

No. We’re not called upon yet to suffer quite like that here. Not yet. It may come around again, but the real principle, you see, is dying daily anyway. We’re to take up our cross and follow Christ, which means by a conscious act of the will strengthened by the Spirit, we choose to die to self-interest daily and promote Christ’s interest daily. They did not love their lives even unto death. There are two applications of overwhelming importance.

First, we must analyze our situation biblically and theologically. In every generation, we must analyze our situation biblically and theologically, not simply sociologically or psychologically. Do not misunderstand me. I’m not saying there is nothing to be learned about our society from the surrounding disciplines, but Luther understood the nature of his foe. Did he not? Yes, he could be, too, human, but he understood behind the Roman church was an archenemy, and he wrote:

And though this world, with devils filled,

Should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed

His 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.

Secondly, brothers and sisters in Christ, we must recognize and use our weapons, the only effective weapons we have. All that are based on Christ’s atoning death; all the authority based on incessantly, in every venue, proclaiming his Word, all the courage and integrity that emerged because death cannot frighten those who follow the Prince of Life. Let us pray.

Again, Lord God, we earnestly ask that we may not think too much of the Devil, for he is, in principle, a defeated foe regardless of how vicious and how full of rage and how cruel, so we thank you for the triumphs of the Lamb. But we would not think either too little of him and, thus, leave ourselves unguarded.

Protect our minds, increase our self-discipline, enlarge our ability to discern the fundamental issues in any local church are not party politics (who’s up and who’s down or who’s popular and who’s not or what color the carpet is or whether someone’s nose is out of joint), but the Devil himself is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, deceiving if it were possible the very elect. So lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the Evil One, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.