Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 12
I need to say just a word or two about something I overlooked in chapter 11, verse 4. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. They’re also clothed in sackcloth at the end of chapter 3. I think the language comes right out of the Old Testament in every case.
To be clothed in sackcloth is a way of referring either to those who are repentant or to those who are prophets. For example, Zechariah, chapter 13, verse 4. Prophets wear the rough garb of their ancient predecessors. The sackcloth is a garment of mourning and penitence. Jeremiah 4:8: “Gird with sackcloth, lament and wail.” So these people are the penitent, and they wear the prophetic garb of the prophet (Zechariah 13:4).
The two olive trees and the two lampstands standing.… The background here is clearly Zechariah, chapter 4. That’s another book that would be worth taking some time in. The book of Revelation picks up from the Old Testament a great deal, but much of what it picks up is other apocalyptic literature, which has similar problems of interpretation.
It does pick up some, as we’ve seen, from Exodus, and it does pick up the odd bit from the Psalms, but it picks up a tremendous amount from Jeremiah and from Ezekiel (which is loaded for bear with apocalyptic writing), a great deal from Daniel, a great deal from Zechariah, all of which have these huge apocalyptic chunks in them.
What tends to happen is if you get one of those books basically right in a Christocentric gospel way, then everything else runs in the same track. If, on the other hand, you get one of those books and line it very strongly up with a kind of dispensational structure, then everything runs on that track. They hang together or they fall together.
All I’m arguing for is that not only is the interpretation I’m giving you consistent with these books and consistent with the gospel, consistent with other main streams in the New Testament, but at the end of the day, I’d also want to argue it’s the only way apocalyptic should be read, granted what kind of literature apocalyptic is in the first century.
In this case, the language comes right out of Zechariah, chapter 4. There, there’s a single golden lampstand, probably a symbol for Israel, with seven lamps, which are the eyes of the Lord (Zechariah 4:10), and then it is flanked by two olive trees. The two olive trees in that vision clearly are identified for us. They are, namely, Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the Jewish governor under the Persian king Darius.
They thus supply Israel, the golden lampstand (a fairly common Jewish symbol for Israel), with oil. That is, they are what keep Israel going: the priesthood and the Jewish governor under the Persian Empire. The interpretation of all of this given by the angel (notice it’s an angel giving an interpretation, typical of apocalyptic) in Zechariah, chapter 4, is a verse we quote often. Verse 6: “ ‘Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts.”
The point is that Israel is kept going not by political savvy or military prowess or brilliant educational clout but by the mediation of God through his two servants: Zerubbabel, the Jewish governor, and Joshua, the high priest, who are the two olive trees. That is, they are the olive trees because they provide the oil for the lampstand, which is Israel. That’s how Zechariah’s vision works in Zechariah, chapter 4.
So here, if they’re the two olive trees, what it’s saying is that by their ministry, God is pouring out his oil in such a way that the flame keeps burning. This is the way, in terms of Christian vision, gospel truth keeps going: through the witnesses and the preaching of these people. “The two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.” In Zechariah it’s only one lampstand. This is typical of the way John takes an Old Testament passage and then changes it a wee bit for his own purposes.
There, the lampstand clearly refers to Israel. That there are two here may be another way of saying the whole people of God drawn from the old covenant and from the new covenant. It may be as simple as that. Jews and Gentiles alike. If that is the case, then it’s one more reason for thinking that this city where our Savior dies is not simply Jerusalem. I think that’s the way to take it. Now let’s turn to chapter 12. As usual, the way to begin is by reading the text through.
“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.”
In this case, I want to begin by coming in from a tangent, as it were, from an angle. Let me begin with a comment. When my son was 3 (he is now in grade five, so he’s a little older than 3; he’s my caboose, the end of the line), I asked him where he got his wonderful deep blue eyes. Neither his mother nor I have blue eyes at all. I said, “Where on earth do you think you got yours?” Of course, because he was theologically trained, as it were, he said, “From God.”
Now if he had been 21 and a biology student, he might have replied, “I have them because both you and Mum, though neither of you has blue eyes, must carry the necessary recessive gene, which happily supported each other in the formation of my DNA.” Which description of reality is truer? Well, they’re both true. Which description is more fundamental? Let’s try another question.
What caused the destruction of the southern kingdom in 586 BC? Well, you could mention the rise of the Babylonian superpower, the decline and decay of the Davidic dynasty, the tragic pride of Hezekiah. Do you recall how he showed the treasure hoards to the emissaries from Babylon? The criminal stupidity of Zedekiah despite Jeremiah’s warnings, the sins of the people, sins that attracted God’s judgment, or you could say, “God.” Which description is truer? They’re both true. They’re both biblical, in fact. Which description is more fundamental?
What made Job suffer? The Sabeans, a bunch of marauding thugs, running off the sheep and the cattle, the Chaldeans coming in, the natural elements, the windstorm that knocks down the house and crushes all 10 of Job’s children, bereavement, illness, loss of health, finally a nagging wife, or you could say, “Satan did it,” or you could say, “God did it.” Which description is truer? They’re all true. Which description is more fundamental?
Now then, what has caused the church her greatest difficulties and sufferings during the last few decades? Well, the answers you give will depend very much on the location. If you just look at it from a North American perspective, you get one slant, but look around the world a bit. China. Persecution, unavailability of Bibles until fairly recently, almost no other help and study guides at all, systematic extermination or imprisonment of most qualified leaders, totalitarian Marxism with a Chinese face.
Go to parts of Central Africa. Tribalism, war, the advance of the Sahel, famine, endless civil strife, lack of trained leadership, enormous pressures from AIDS, no proper democratic regime that is genuinely democratic in sub-Saharan black Africa for all kinds of reasons, the drawing of the old colonial lines that went across tribal grounds almost guaranteeing tribal strife, endless stupidity of colonial leaders as they left.
What about the West? Material prosperity combining with decay and poverty in many of our inner cities, the rapid pace of life, megalopolises that almost ensure loneliness, the impact of the mass media that shape the way people think, rising secularization, rising philosophical pluralism, rising moral indifferentism, rising prayerlessness, rising loneliness, now attacks by a society and media that are increasingly secular.
Have you noticed in these last cases, however, all of the categories I’ve mentioned have been sociological, historical, psychological, demographic, and phenomenological? I haven’t said anything about the Devil, and I haven’t said anything about God. Isn’t it the way we think? Now don’t misunderstand me. Before I get into this chapter, I’m trying to lay some groundwork that I think is extremely important, but I don’t want to be misunderstood.
Not for a moment am I saying that there is nothing to be learned from sociological analysis. It is helpful when you’re targeting certain people for evangelism to know whether you’re dealing with baby boomers or baby busters. It’s helpful to know whether you’re dealing primarily with African Americans or Caucasian Americans. You stick your foot in an awful lot if you don’t know.
A friend of mine pastoring a church in Boston recently asked a research company just to examine who are the 50,000 nearest neighbors to that church. It’s a good question. Eighty percent of them were under the age of 30. That’s worth knowing when you start targeting the kinds of evangelism you’re going to do. I don’t think you should reshape a whole church to suit a certain group. We’re not a faddish society.
On the other hand, if you’re going to evangelize intelligently, it’s important to know who’s out there. You want to know what kind of income they make, what level of education they’ve had. Knowing what kind of level of education they’ve had is going to affect how you go about certain things. The problem is, however, that if all of our analyses are demographic, sociological, and phenomenological, sooner or later we start to think that our solutions are also sociological, demographic, and phenomenological. That’s the problem.
So if you want to evangelize in a certain way, get your sociological profile right. Follow the Willow Creek model or follow the Coral Ridge model or follow the Park Street model. Follow whatever model it is, turn the crank, and out comes the right answer, as if God has no say in the matter. Who does the converting here? Is it just a question of getting all of the ducks lined up in a row?
Take one more example. In the antebellum period (that is, before the Civil War in the United States) you couldn’t do history in this country without referring to providence. In other words, if you did an advanced degree in history, part of the responsibility of doing history was to try to learn something moral from it. “What is God saying by this event in history?”
People struggled with these kinds of things (on both sides, incidentally) in the Civil War, and then in every other major event. “What is God saying by this? Is God speaking to us in the language of judgment?” Now, removed from that Judeo-Christian heritage in which God is in charge, the one thing you cannot possibly refer to in any doctoral dissertation in any history department anywhere in the country today is providence.
If you have a ravaging war or attack of AIDS, it’s not God speaking. That’s so primitive, isn’t it? That’s yesterday’s primitive mentality. After all, I know somebody who got AIDS because they were a hemophiliac and were afflicted by the blood supply, which was contaminated. This proves it has nothing to do with sin, doesn’t it?
Does it? War is seen in Scripture as God’s weapon of judgment again and again and again, and a lot of innocent people get knocked down in war. Sins are not just individual. This is part of an individualistic outlook, typical of North American society. Sins have social consequences. You sin, and it will affect a lot of people. It may affect your family. It may affect your children. You sin in the political arena, and it may mean war.
There could eventually be millions that are affected. How many people did Hitler’s sins affect? Since when does God only provide individualistic zot-for-zot judgment in this life? The books will all be balanced at the end, but meanwhile, judgments are often painted on the picture with a broad brush, and not to see these things from any biblical perspective is somehow to see only one side of the picture.
It’s like all of these things I’ve mentioned. You’re looking at things only at a historical level, only at a sociological level, only at a horizontal level, only at a mechanical level, and you’re not seeing God anywhere. I don’t think it’s possible for Christians even to begin to overcome that kind of bias in our society, in our culture, in our churches, unless they reread and reread and reread and reread and reread Scripture so that they learn to think in a whole different mode. I think that’s extremely important.
Now if I understand the passage before us aright, God here gives us a deeper analysis of the difficulties and sufferings of the church. At a certain level, you could say that the sufferings of the church at the end of the first century come about because of Roman persecution. You can identify the emperor involved. You can analyze emperor worship. You can talk about the synagogue collapse of support of Christians and so on.
At the end of the day, what this chapter does is give us a profound theological/spiritual analysis of what is going on in this kind of suffering. Chapter 12 marks a major division in the Apocalypse. Before the final display of the wrath of God in the seven plagues of chapter 16, you have here, traced in these chapters, the underlying cause for the hostility and suffering that fall upon the church and, correspondingly, the judgments that fall upon those who fall in judgment on the church.
In other words, there is suffering here for the church. There is suffering for those here who fall upon the church too. What is going on here that the church must suffer is nothing other than the rage of Satan. We may break it up into three parts. First, John outlines the occasion for this satanic rage (verses 1–9), then I’m going to skip the central bit and turn to the reasons for the satanic rage (verses 12–13), and then how Christians overcome the satanic rage.
1. The occasion for the satanic rage.
In John’s vision, the scene opens with a great and wondrous sign appearing in the heavens. A sign here, as sometimes elsewhere in Revelation, is a great spectacle that points in some way to the consummation. It is not a sign like a stop sign or a miracle. It is a spectacle, a not uncommon use of sign in apocalyptic literature. A great spectacle.
The content of this spectacle is, we’re told, a woman. And what a woman (verses 1–2). She’s clothed with the sun, she has the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head, and, according to verse 2, she’s pregnant and about to give birth. Who is this woman? What does she represent? Not Mary. You might infer that from the fact that the one to whom she gives birth (verse 5) is a male child who will rule all of the nations with an iron scepter.
If you only had verse 5, you might rightly infer that this is Mary, but it can’t be, not when you read the whole chapter. By the time you get down to verse 17.… “The dragon is enraged at the woman and goes off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” Oh no, this is Mother Church, if you like, and all the offspring are all of the believers.
The mother turns out to be the entire messianic community, whether from the old covenant or from the new. The messianic community is often figured as a woman in the old covenant, just as Zion is the mother of the people of God (so in Isaiah 54:1, “Sing, O barren woman,” and so forth), 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 comes, then, out of this messianic community. Thus, if she’s clothed with the sun, she’s utterly radiant. Her feet on the moon suggest dominion. The 12 stars on her head will call to mind both the 12 tribes of the old covenant and the 12 apostles summarizing the new. Then she’s pregnant and brings forth Messiah (verse 2). She is in travail.
In apocalyptic literature, Jews spoke not uncommonly of the birth pains of the Messiah … that is, that period of time when the people of God go through anguish like that of a woman about to give birth … just before the Messiah comes. Just as a woman before she gives birth has birth pains (at least most women do), in the same way, the people of God go through a certain kind of anguish before the Messiah comes. That was true at his first coming, and there is a sense in which it is true at his second.
So she’s going through anguish here before the Messiah comes, and then she’s going through anguish in chapter 17. At least her children are, to change the metaphor a little bit, her other children. The language comes out, for example, in 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 Lord.” Waiting for the coming of relief.
What we have in verses 1–2, then, is a picture of true Israel, the messianic community, in an agony of suffering and expectation as the Messiah comes to birth. That’s the first sign in this pageant, this spectacle. Clear so far? The second sign in the pageant, we’re told, is an enormous red dragon.
In this case, there need not be any doubt whatsoever about his identification. Look at verse 9. “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.” Why is he called a dragon? His identification is clear. Why this particular symbolism?
Well, a dragon or a great monster (leviathan is not uncommon in the Old Testament) is fairly standard symbolism for all that opposes God. Leviathan is identified with Egypt in Psalm 74 because of the slavery period, with Assyria and Babylon in Isaiah 27 because of the exilic period, and with Pharaoh in Ezekiel 29:3, but behind them all is Satan himself. Let me give an explanation.
Do you remember what takes place in Matthew 16 and parallels? Jesus says, “Who do men say I am?” Then the disciples reply, “Well, some say this, some say that.” Jesus says, “Whom do you say that I am?” Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16) Jesus says, “Blessed are you, 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 begins to talk about his impending sufferings. Peter, thinking he scored once and will score theologically again, says, “Oh, far be it from you. The Messiah does not suffer. That’s just not on the Lord.” Jesus rounds on him and says, “Get behind me, Satan. You do not understand the things of God.”
It’s not that Jesus has made an identity mistake. It’s not that he thinks either that Peter has been demon-possessed by Satan, so that, “Poor Peter. It’s not his fault, at this point. He has been overcome. He has been overtaken. Now it’s just Satan talking, not Peter.” Oh no. Peter meant what he meant. He just said what he meant. But Jesus perceives that behind Peter’s utterance is the blinding, tragic, seductive work of Satan himself, just as the Old Testament writers see that behind Egypt, behind Assyria and Babylon, behind Pharaoh, is Leviathan.
He’s a red dragon. That probably means he’s murderous. Do you recall what Jesus says in John 8:44? He was a murderer from the beginning, because by his lies and deceit he brought death to the race. Seven heads, like Leviathan in Psalm 74:14. That is, universality of his power. Ten horns, recalling the fourth beast of Daniel 7. Awesome power, kingly authority. I’ll say more about that one in chapter 13, verse 1, with the first beast out of the sea.
The crowns here are not victory wreaths but crowns of arrogated authority; that is, authority usurped from him who is described later in the book as Lord of Lords and King of Kings (chapter 19, verse 16), the one who will rule the nations with an iron scepter (chapter 12, verse 5). Here you have two tiers. You have something being played out in the heavens and something being played out on the earth.
First the earth (verses 4–6). Clearly what he is doing here is incredibly awful. At the one level, again, you have typical Hebrew poetry language. His tail sweeps a third of the stars out of the sky and they fall on the earth. It’s not literal. It’s a way of saying that everything he does is of cataclysmic significance. And what is it that he does? It’s grotesque. There is this woman about to give birth, and there is this beast standing between her open legs. As the baby comes out, he’s waiting to catch the baby in order to eat it. That’s what the text says. It’s grotesque.
What it means, of course, is that it is Satan’s determinate principle to destroy Messiah. He puts the woman through it before Messiah comes. Then he puts the woman’s other offspring through it in the rest of the chapter, and now his whole purpose is to destroy Messiah, the one whose destiny it is to rule all the nations with an iron scepter. That can’t be anybody other than Christ.
“But her child was snatched away to God and to his throne.” Clearly, the intention of the author here is not to unpack a whole lot of other things. I mean, there’s nothing here about his ministry or his boyhood. There’s nothing here about his preaching or his miracles or his parables. There’s nothing here about the cross. There’s nothing here about his resurrection from the dead. You have his birth, his ascension, and he’s snatched away.
The reason you have all of that is because the focus here is what happens to the woman and her offspring. The focus here is what happens to the people of God. The text, after all, the book as a whole, has already explained what the Lamb has done. That’s what chapter 5 was already about. We know all of that. Now we’re simply asking, “What happens to the people of God when this messianic figure goes back to heaven?”
Well, the woman is left exposed to the wrath of Satan. “The woman flees into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.” I think this comes clear pretty quickly. It is clear that Satan’s desire was to destroy the baby. Isn’t that what the slaughter of the innocents is all about in Matthew, chapter 2? Isn’t that what the temptations were about in Matthew, chapter 4? Isn’t that what Gethsemane was about? Isn’t that what the cross was about from Satan’s perspective? But he’s saved.
What happens to the woman? She has to be taken care of for 1,260 days. If what I have said about 1,260 days is correct (that is, the basic symbolism comes out of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Maccabean Revolt), then it’s a period of suffering that is eventually cut short before it goes on too long, a period of suffering for the people of God.
How long does the woman suffer? For 1,260 days, for a period of time that is extensive that is cut short before it goes on too long, which is, I think, in line with a number of other New Testament passages where tribulation is what characterizes the entire period between Christ’s first coming and his second coming. Isn’t that how long the woman suffers? In the context, can it really mean anything else? I don’t think so. Not easily.
That she’s called out to the desert is important. Again, what you have to think of is the kind of associations of a people. For many Americans, less so for most recent immigrants who have come in from high-tech countries on the Pacific Rim or who have come more recently from Germany since World War II or something like that.… They don’t resonate with this, but for Americans whose roots are here for 150 or 200 years, there’s a whole mythology about the West.
There’s less of that now. We have California to put up with, but for many people there’s a kind of mythology about the West, a sort of frontier community and moving on to new frontiers. There’s a mythology connected with it because there’s a history behind it. So also for the Jews the desert, precisely because there was a history to it, became a kind of symbol for a number of important things.
On the one hand, it was a period of hardness before entrance into the Promised Land. Yes, you’ve escaped from Egypt, but then you have all this time in the desert before you enter into the Promised Land. On the other hand, there was something romantic about that period. It was where God worked his miracles so that their shoes didn’t dry out and they were provided with water and manna.
When the people of God are astray in the time of Hosea, long after the people have landed in the land, when the people become apostate and move away, what does God say to his people? “I will allure her again. I will bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” Do you see what’s being said?
He’s not saying he’s literally going to take her back out of the land and leave it to be overtaken by the Canaanites and meanwhile he’s going to take her back to the desert. What it means is, “I will draw her with all the immediacy of the blessings and the protection I gave to the people of God when they first came out of captivity.” That’s Hosea 2:14.
Thus, on the one hand, the desert is a hard place before you enter into the Promised Land, and on the other hand, the desert is the place of spiritual refuge, of an immediate sense of God’s presence, before you enter the Promised Land. It’s the place where God looks after you. Isn’t that a wonderful way of looking at what the people of God go through now?
The woman goes to the desert. Hey, we are going to be in the minority. Christians around the world cannot expect this to be the land of Canaan. Not yet. The Promised Land is still to come, people. But it’s also the place where God looks after his own people. He looks after her the whole 1,260 days. That’s the symbolism, it seems to me, at a straightforward reading.
At the upper level, in heaven, there’s war in heaven too. Heaven here does not mean the sky but in the presence of God. If I’m not mistaken, this is the heavenly counterpart to Christ’s triumph on the cross. Satan is making an all-out bid to have God’s rights. But that ancient serpent called the Devil is thrown out. He’s hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Do you remember what Jesus says as the kingdom is advancing through the ministry of the disciples? Luke, chapter 10, verses 20 and following: “I saw Satan fall from heaven.” It’s bound up with the dawning of the kingdom, with the coming of Christ, with the triumph of the cross. Satan is cast out.
Now this at the same time is a turning point in redemptive history. Do you remember how in the Old Testament you get pictures of Satan approaching God? Think of the book of Job, for example. The time comes for the sons of God to be called into his presence, and Satan is also among them. Here it’s as if the climactic fight has already been fought and Satan is banished. No more appeal to God. No more access to God. Nothing. He is banished. He’s out of there.
Where does he go? The accuser of our brothers, we’re told, has been cast out of heaven. Verse 12: “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!” So the Devil has been cast out of heaven, hurled down. Verse 9: “He’s hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”
In other words, Satan is defeated in principle. He is no longer in heaven. He is now on earth. That’s the structure of thought here it seems to me. That is to say, what you really have here is John outlines the occasion for the satanic rage: his principled defeat. He hasn’t gotten the Messiah. He has been hurled out of heaven. That’s the occasion. He’s defeated in principle, and he’s hurled to the earth.
2. The reasons for the satanic rage.
First, his time is short. Verse 12b: “He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” A few of you are old enough to remember the Battle of the Bulge. For World War II buffs, whether you were there or not (I was born just at the end), the Battle of the Bulge was the last outbreak of Hitler’s wrath.
For anybody with half a brain in his head, once you saw the fantastic might of the Russian hoards coming from the east.… The Allies have cleaned out North Africa. They have won fantastic naval battles in the Pacific. Close calls, but they won. Now they’re marching up Italy. They land on the beaches of Normandy, and in three days, 1.1 million men with tons and tons of materiel are all on the beaches. The war is over.
Even just in terms of raw production, who’s producing most steel? Who’s producing most energy? There is no way the Japanese and the Germans, no matter how militarily wonderful they are, are going to win at that point. The only way they could have won was if they had gotten the atom bomb first, but by all perceptions, there’s no way at that point they could win. None. The logistics are all against them.
Anyone with half a brain in his head you’d think would lay down their arms and say, “Okay, I give up,” and get the best deals you can get. Wouldn’t you think so? Instead, there’s the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler tries again, sends in the Panzer tanks to break through the Argonne Forest again and try to push all the way to the coast. They’re stopped, but it’s the bloodiest battle of the European campaign. Thousands and thousands more die, tens of thousands.
Or just think of the Gulf War. Regardless of what you think of the rights and wrongs of it, once you have a quarter of a million Allied troops with all of their technology … you know, laser-guided Tau missiles and things like that, who’s going to win? Was there any doubt in anybody’s mind? Oh, people doubted about how long it would take, how bloody it would be, but there was no doubt in anybody’s mind, once you got all of those troops there with all that stuff, who was going to win.
Does that mean Saddam Hussein packed his bags and said, “Okay, I was wrong. Sorry”? No, no, no. There’s a kind of fury because you know your time is short. That’s what Satan is doing. He knows he has lost, and he wreaks his fury because he knows his time is short. So the attacks on the woman, the attacks on the church, emerge from the fact that he knows his time is short.
In the second place, because he knows his sphere is restricted. Verse 12a: “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.”
He has been beaten in principle. He has been banished from the presence of God. His time is short, and he’s angry because of that. He goes after the woman because his sphere is restricted. In addition (verses 14–17), his success is limited. There’s a lot of Exodus typology here. “The woman was given two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she might be taken care of for a time, times and half a time.”
A time (one year), two times (two more years), and half a time. Three and a half years, 42 months, 1,260 days, all the same thing: a period of intensive tribulation. God is taking care of her on one hand; it’s a period of wilderness distress on the other. The same things are going on at the same time. She’s given the great wings of an eagle. That’s language drawn right from Exodus 19. “You have seen how I have borne you up on eagle’s wings.”
God is still caring for his people as he cared for his people in the first desert. That’s what is meant. “Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent.” Do you remember what happens? The torrent of the Red Sea and the torrent later of Jordan could come down and simply wipe out the bad guys.
Satan wants to do that again, but, in fact, the chasm is opened up. The water is moved out of the way. “The dragon is enraged and goes off to make war against the rest of her offspring …” That is, the offspring that are not the Messiah, everybody else, Christians. In case we didn’t get it, they’re identified for us. “… those who obey God’s commands and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” [Audio cuts off]
With respect to the future, Christians have traditionally divided into two groups. One group thinks that by the preaching of the gospel the world will eventually get better and better and better. The other group says that things are going to get worse and worse and worse. Instead, I argue from Matthew 13:29–30 and other passages that, according to the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus says, “Let both grow together.”
That’s what you’re also getting here. There’s a sense in which the church is growing, the church is protected by God, the church is out in the desert being looked after by God, but it’s still the desert. The Devil is still pursuing her. There’s still war against her offspring. Our enemy may be a defeated foe; the Allied troops in Normandy and Britain may know they’re on the winning side, but that doesn’t mean there’s no struggle left, no battle left, no victory left, no death left.
3. How Christians overcome the satanic rage.
The setup is 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.’ ” In other words, that authority has already dawned. Satan has been cleaned out. Christ has already begun to rule. How then do these believers win? “The accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.”
One of Satan’s greatest attacks from the point of view of the whole Bible has been to say, in effect, “Hey, God, you think that you’re so holy, but you tolerate these creeps?” Isn’t that what went on with Job? “Oh yes, you say that Job is a righteous man, but you put a guard around him. What do you expect? He just knows what side his bread is buttered on. That’s all that’s going on there. Take away the fence, and you’ll see what happens. He’ll turn and curse you to your face.”
Satan is accusing us before God, and one of the ways in which we are to view the cross is it is a way of saying that now guilty, vile sinners, rebels, whom God in his holiness ought to punish else he sullies his own reputation for holiness, are now admitted to his presence because God himself has provided an atonement for them. Thus, the one who brings about God’s purposes in redemption and judgment in chapter 5 is the Lamb, the slaughtered Lamb. He alone can do it. A great gospel passage. So now also here.
The first reason why these people overcome is because of the blood of the Lamb. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” By here does not mean by means of the blood of the Lamb, as if the blood of the Lamb is a means to an end. It’s the ground of the blood of the Lamb, the great redemptive act that loosed them from their sins (chapter 1, verse 5) and established their right to reign (chapter 5, verse 10). The accuser of our brethren, who accuses us before God. God is not going to listen anymore. Do you recall the hymn by Wesley?
Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers;
They strongly plead for me.
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!
My Father hears him pray,
His own beloved Son;
He will not turn away
The triumph of the Lamb.
Then he accuses us to our face too, making us feel guilty, making us feel defeated again and again. How are you going to approach God? With confidence. Are you going to approach God with confidence because you try harder, because you’ve turned over a new leaf, because you’ve come to Jesus?
Is it not that you overcome by the blood of the Lamb? Isn’t that what we mean when we pray, “In Jesus’ name, amen”? It’s not just a formula. Isn’t it a way of reminding ourselves and God that we dare to enter his presence on the basis of what Christ has done? We come in Jesus’ name.
So they overcome not in the sense that they’re always victorious, not in the sense that they never suffer. They’re out in the desert. They’re still being attacked by Satan, who’s full of fury, but they overcome in the sense that they persevere. They remain faithful to God. They’re exonerated before God, even though they’re accused in his presence, on the ground of the blood of the Lamb. There is a profound sense in which all blessings come to us on this ground.
Do you have the Holy Spirit? Wasn’t the Spirit given on the ground of the blood of the Lamb? Will you have life to come in the new heaven and the new earth? Is that not your prospect on the ground of the blood of the Lamb? Is there encouragement amongst the family of believers? Is that not yours on the ground of the blood of the Lamb? What have you that is worth anything apart from that which is secured by the blood of the Lamb? “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.”
Secondly, they overcame him by the word of their testimony. What does that mean? Again, it’s not just the means. It’s not quite the ground; it’s the cause. God’s means of ruling, of reigning, regularly is through his word. Thus, in the Old Testament, the very first thing God does in Genesis, chapter 1, is speak. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” He sends forth his word, and the nations perish or someone is healed. God rules through his word. He reigns through his word. He reveals himself through his word.
There is a profound way in which Christians continue and triumph precisely through their word, the word of their testimony. This does not simply mean they give testimonies. It includes that, but it means more than that. The word of their testimony means the word of their witness as to whom Jesus is, to what the gospel is, to what the Bible means. It’s gospel proclamation. It is preaching, teaching, as well as their personal testimony. That’s what this word of their testimony means.
How then do Christians triumph? Do they triumph because they become a Christian state? Do they triumph because they get political power? When they’ve tried that, as in the Massachusetts Colony, they win for a few years, and then there’s a nasty reaction. You cannot organize saintliness, because you have to have constant regeneration, and you can’t control that.
How then shall we win? How shall we win in this society? Shall we win simply by political agitation? Oh, there may be responsible things for Christians to do, but is that how we’ll win? You win by the word of your testimony. What other weapon do we have? What do we have except the declaration of the gospel? At the end of the day, if we do not preach the gospel and see enough people converted, we lose. That’s the way it is.
It’s not that there are no political actions to take. It’s not that there are no strategies for trying to see righteousness prevail in Congress and the state legislatures, but at the end of the day, if you do all of those things and do not see enough people converted by the word of the cross, by the word of gospel witness, by the word of our testimony.… If the society becomes more and more pagan, more and more secular, more and more pluralistic, at the end of the day, you lose.
Even our winning when we go to the stake, when we really are persecuted, like the Anabaptists, like Christians in Iran today.… Do you realize there have been more people who have become Christians in Iran in the last 20 years than in the previous 1,000? It’s marvelous. But at the same time, there have been any number of Christian martyrs in Iran today.
How do they win? Appeal to the polls? Ask for a bill of rights? No, they just keep preaching and getting martyred. The blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church, and they keep winning. When missionaries were kicked out of China in 1950, there were not more than a million Christians of all descriptions, a very generous use of Christian. Now the conservative estimates are 60 million in 40 years. That’s astonishing. How do they win? Certainly not through political clout, but by the word of their testimony.
In the third place, by a simple willingness to die. “They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” What do you do with a Paul who says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain”? What are you going to do? Kill him? You’ve just done him a favor. If you really live with eternity’s values in view, there’s a certain kind of holy boldness that lives above what people think of you.
If your whole passion in life is to be respected by a secular society, you’re hamstrung, but if you really don’t give a rip what people think, except what Christ thinks, and then because of the love of Christ you care what people think in terms of being winsome and godly, but you don’t care if evil people are going to malign you or tell lies about you or think that you’re a creep or think that you’re right wing or whatever … you don’t really care, because at the end of the day, God is the one whose reputation means more to you than yours … then you win. You may go to the grave in shame, but you still win.
In the great Down-Grade Controversy at the end of the last century in Britain.… It was a great struggle of incipient modernism and liberalism coming into the churches. One of the few heroes of the faith who really saw what was going on.… Forty years later everybody saw it, but by then it was too late; it was everywhere. One of the few who saw it right in the early stages was Spurgeon, a great Baptist preacher at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
He was pilloried in the press. Just pilloried. The pressures that man was put under, because he was saying that what some people were preaching was a diluted form of the gospel, they were turning away from biblical authority, there were entailments for what they were doing, and this was going to destroy the church, and so on. He was pilloried in the press. Having been lionized earlier, now he was being pilloried.
He pens in his autobiography that he is willing to be eaten by dogs for the next 50 years but that later history will exonerate him because the gospel must prevail. Fifty years later, almost to the date, they started reprinting the sermons of the Metropolitan pulpit. Today liberalism is dying. It’s turning into postmodernism, a new form of evil.
Spurgeon’s message, Spurgeon’s books, Spurgeon’s sermons, Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, Spurgeon’s All Round Ministry, Spurgeon on the Psalms, are all reprinted and circulated, published in the millions and millions. Spurgeon, though dead, still speaks. At the end of the day, he didn’t really care all that much what people thought. However much it hurt, he didn’t love his life so much as to shrink from death.
The thing to see here is that the way of triumphing is not triumphing so that you triumph in the world’s terms. You’re not triumphing so that everything is hunky-dory and happy. This is not promising you psychological comfort. It’s not promising you a life of perfect peace and ease. It doesn’t say anything about being so profoundly above things that, you know, the lesser mortals work down there; you walk on mountains and crush devils under your feet.
Spurgeon went through bouts of enormous depression, wanting to curl up in a little ball and die. He suffered tremendous physical ailments, but at the end of the day, he prevailed over the Devil, over the rage of Satan, by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of his testimony, and because he did not love his life so much as to shrink from death. There can be no greater epitaph than that.
