Revelation 13:11-18 – The Mark of the Beast: A Question of Loyalty

Now John adds to his vision, this time he sees

a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. ¹² It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. ¹³ And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 

We always need to remember that while God’s word is for us, it was not written to us. If we believe the latter, we will ignore the historical context in which it was written, and how the people to whom it was written would have understood it. Only by understanding that will we be able to understand its meaning for us. Revelation is easily misunderstood by those who fail to make this distinction, and chapter 13 is one of the most often misunderstood. The beauty of John’s words and vision is that when understood in its historical context, it means so much more to us today. We’ve seen there is no one anti-Christ, but many anti-Christs, and that Christians will not be spared suffering (as in a Rapture) if God has called them to it. Rather, through all of human history God’s people have been called to an eternal hope. We can never be defeated because those who trust in the Resurrection and the Life will never die!

We’re introduced to a second beast, this one coming out of the earth instead of the sea. We’ll notice the narrative previously was in the past tense, while this is present tense. Things happened with the first beast, with this beast they are happening now. John’s readers would know what he’s talking about because they are experiencing it. While the first beast references Roman imperial power, this beast references that power extended to rulers in Asia where John’s readers lived. This beast rules on the first’s behalf, extends its power, and forces emperor worship on the inhabitants. The cult of the emperor was an all pervasive threat to Christians in the Roman Empire prior to Constantine, as it is in our day but in non-religious forms. This beast seems like it could be harmless, like a lamb, but it is in fact deadly as a dragon. Also, having having been fatally wounded, now seemingly back from the dead appears indestructible; it is easy to imagine the Roman Empire certainly appeared that way at the time, as was and is the power of the state throughout history.

Whatever the great signs refer to, magic and demonic activity were not unknown in that ancient context; the contrast to God and his power is the point. The reference to fire coming down from heaven would have evoked images in the minds of John’s readers of the great battle of Elijah with the prophets of Baal, and we know how that ended. Whatever wonders and signs they perform, they are nothing compared to the power of Almighty God, but they do have deceptive power:

¹⁴ Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. ¹⁵ The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 

We see here yet again, the power, however it manifests itself then and throughout history, is a given power. The beasts of the earth that have come down through history only have power because they are given it. We may hate that, wonder at it, be angry with God about it, but the power is never absolute, so it cannot deceive God’s people. To John’s readers, this scene was all too horribly real. The first beast we read seemed dead (some think it refers to the Roman civil war after Nero’s death), but while it may have appeared that way, its power is very real, and deadly. Building statues of the emperors and forcing them to be worshiped was common, and anyone who refused could be killed. The image speaking is a metaphor for Roman power wielded locally, which had very real consequences, and not always so stark as life and death.

¹⁶ It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, ¹⁷ so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Now we’re getting into territory common to those who obsess over “end times.” This is a favorite passage of premillennial dispensationalists who interpret it as a specific period at the end of time when The Antichrist will appear, and this mark will be a part of his Satanic rule on earth. The tendency of those who read it this way is a kind of literalism where we read this as a literal mark on literal right hands and foreheads. But as we saw, the word antichrist is never used in Revelation, and only in I John. Revelation is also symbolic from beginning to end, so the “literal” reading isn’t plausible. I should add verse 18 to fill out the picture:

¹⁸ This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.

These three verses have lead to all kinds of wild speculation about who this man is, and how his universal control (all people) will be carried out. This can never be fruitful because such speculation has nothing to do with what John is communicating to his readers. Remember rule number one in biblical hermeneutics I mentioned above, context. John is not writing secret messages to people 2,000 years into the future; he’s writing to Christians enduring persecution living in the first century Roman Empire. So the proper question to ask is, what would this mean to them?

First, marks on or in the skin were common in the ancient world, and a way of showing who belonged where. The beast, as we saw, is symbolic of the power of the Roman Empire and the totalitarian control over those they ruled. It also references down through history those state powers who would claim the allegiance only God can demand. The question for John’s readers, and us, is loyalty, to whom do we belong, God or the state. John is making the contrast with those who have been sealed by God and a mark put on their foreheads (7:3). No doubt this also would have brought to mind in John’s readers Deuteronomy 11:18, and tying God’s word as a reminder on their hands and foreheads.

Regarding “the number of a man,” John is not playing games and trying to hide who this might be. Those who have wisdom and understanding get it, that 666 is the number of ultimate imperfection (7 is the symbolic biblical number for fullness and perfection), and the man would likely have brought to their minds Nero, the ultimate persecutor of the early church. He would also be a symbol of the persecution they were enduring and would have to endure off and on for another two hundred years. It references as well persecution Christians have endured throughout history and continue to endure into our day. Where does our loyalty lie? Which mark will we carry on our body? It is, as we say nowadays, a binary choice; nobody said it would be easy.

Revelation 13:5-10 – The Beast’s War Against the Saints

In the previous verses in this chapter we saw the connection John is making to Daniel 7, and how the dragon and the beast here are being compared to the Ancient of Days and “one like a son of man,” or Jesus. He further cements that connection telling us this:

⁵ The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. ⁶ It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 

In Daniel there is a “little horn,” who had “a mouth that spoke boastfully,” and who spoke “boastful words.” We’ll remember there were four beasts in Daniel, and the fourth was unexplainable, and it had ten horns out of which came this “little horn.” Here the best has features of all four of Daniel’s beasts, so is multiplied in its ferocity, and it also seems to have a wound and recovers, whereas Daniel’s little horn is slain and doesn’t. So just as Daniel’s vision is looking forward to Roman power, John’s is too but looking beyond it, and as I suggested to all the powers throughout history since Christ that claim they too are unconquerable. Rome and all other powers who claim sovereign power put themselves in the place of God himself and all those who belong to him. The state throughout all of history in its various manifestations has always claimed the divine prerogative. Worship it or suffer. Jesus relativized all earthly power because it cannot have power over what is most important about us, our eternal souls. But this is not easy:

⁷ It was given power to wage war against the saints and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation.

This is real power, as we can see from every tyrannical regime in history and in the world today. The COVID scam (not the virus but the world’s response to it) has given us a real time glimpse into the state’s jealousy regarding it’s power and sovereignty. The tyranny and suffering it can inflict is very real, and what it hates most is the liberty of its people to govern themselves, which is one of the many reasons we can be so thankful for living in America. We notice something very important here as we lament the tyranny that confronts us to one degree or another: it is given, granted by God. None of the power any state wields, whether for good or evil, comes from itself. Each believes it will be the civilization to successfully build a tower of Babel, the one that will finally “reach the heavens,” until God pulls the plug.

Until then, they have the the power to make life miserable for God’s people, and at times they will even conquer or overcome them. This phrase referring to all the varied peoples of the earth is used a perfect seven times in Revelation, showing us the universality of both salvation and damnation; nobody escapes one or the other. As we also saw earlier in Revelation, and will see later, this battle is a two way street because God’s people have the power to overcome them too. The Greek word translated conquer, victorious, or overcome (also taken by a certain shoe company) for he beast against the saints, is the same used for the saints to overcome all the challenges life can throw at us as we learn in the letters sent to the seven churches in chapters two and three. Thankfully this has been limited in scope throughout history; while some pay for their faith with their lives, some don’t suffer any persecution at all. And we learn here the nature of the distinction between God’s people, and those who belong to the beast:

⁸ All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

This is a good example of when the word “all” in the New Testament doesn’t mean all, each and every. Here it means all of a certain class or kind of people, not every human being on earth because those whose names are written in the book of life are not included in all (the Greek word is only used one time in the sentence, but most English translations will add the implied all or everyone to whom the all doesn’t apply). Here that distinction is clear, and it is apropos to mention the instance many people bring up when we’re talking about just this topic, who is saved, and who is not. In I Timothy 2:4 Paul says of God our Savior, that he “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Many will read this and assume Paul means all, each and every human being. It clearly does not mean that because all people are not saved. If God wanted them saved, they would be saved. This is, of course, “controversial” because it implies that God does not give all, each and every person who ever lived, an opportunity to be saved, and that wouldn’t be fair. We forget that true fairness, and justice, would be if we paid the penalty for our own sin. Grace by definition isn’t fair.

And speaking of this topic in relationship to verse 8, there are two variant readings as you can see from the different translations. Some translate it as the names being written before creation, others, like the NIV here, that it was the Lamb slain from before creation. For me it’s the old six, one-half dozen of the other, a distinction without a difference. Those who read the I Timothy verse “all” as each and every human being, will prefer the reading that it was the Lamb that is the subject of the verse, that his being slain was accomplished from before creation. Those of us who prefer the targeted use of “all” as all those who who are saved, prefer it being the names. But the implication of both is exactly the same. Salvation was accomplished for some people before God even created the world, or any people, before he even created the world. Remember, unless we are universalists, we all believe some will be saved and some will be damned. The question is, who chooses which. I’m inclined to believe that when the angel gave Jesus his name in Matthew 1, he meant exactly what he said, the Jesus would “save his people from their sin,” not make salvation possible for all mankind, and that whoever chooses him would be saved. For me, knowing both of these readings are true brings great comfort; even I can’t mess this up!

The last two verses of this passage are a gut punch. John wants to make something very clear to his readers using a phrase he used to each of the seven churches, and Jesus himself used: “If anyone has an ear let him hear.” They will suffer, and they will not be able to do anything about it, so it requires patient endurance on the part of the saints, God’s people. As we look throughout history, even in the Roman Empire, persecution was and always is limited, both in duration and intensity. God’s people must at time endure persecution and suffering, they do not inflict it on others. We can endure because we understand, they may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul, which terrifies those who think they hold total, totalitarian power; they do not. John’s beastly vision will continue.

Revelation 13:1-4 – The Dragon and the Beast Out of the Sea

The first read through of Revelation 13 can be daunting. The images to us make no sense; everything is symbolic, but as you dig into the meaning John is conveying it all makes sense in the larger message of Revelation. I used the phrase in the last chapter, the already and the not yet, the period in which God’s people live from Christ’s ascension to his second coming and the establishing of his kingdom forever. John is letting his readers know the world they are living in, and all they are going through, can be explained and understood, by faith (i.e., trust in God) in God’s ultimate, sovereign control of all things. I often add when I say something similar, for our good (both here and eternally), and his glory. Before we get into any details, it is important to familiarize ourselves with Daniel 7 because much of the imagery in this chapter comes directly from there. That tells us the focus of the message here is the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, and specifically the Roman Empire John’s readers must endure.

We were introduced to the dragon in the last chapter, Satan himself, and after he’s hurled with his angels down to earth out of heaven he’s ticked off. John said he “leads the whole world astray,” and we see ever the implications of that every day. Now on earth, John tells us:

The dragon stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. ² The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.

The sea in biblical imagery stands for chaos, evil, and rebellion against God, and is associated with the abyss John spoke of earlier (11:7) out of which the beast came. So here, the beast coming out of the sea is coming out of the abyss, the place where Satan and evil reign. As the dragon straddles the sea and the land, we understand this does not bode well for the earth. In Daniel 7, Daniel has a vision of four different beasts who also come out of the sea looking like a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a fourth one so terrifying there is nothing to compare it to. The four are kingdoms to come, the fourth so powerful and destructive it can’t be explained; that would be Rome. But here John is explaining something bigger, though those to whom John was writing could not conceive of anything more massive and powerful than the Roman Empire. This beast has features of the three in Daniel, but the power and authority (horns and crowns) is multiplied beyond anything Daniel’s beasts could demonstrate.

Familiarity with Daniel 7 will make John’s description more powerful to us. In the middle of his vision we’re introduced to “the Ancient of Days,” a picture of Almighty God, and then in his vision he sees “one like a son of man”:

¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel was seeing a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ, and John is tying Daniel’s vision of rising and falling kingdoms and the sovereignty of God through Christ. Paul says in Ephesian 1 that God exerted his mighty power when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him in heaven with authority over all things. That is the ultimate context of everything John sees, and we must never forget it. Nothing can happen apart from God’s rule through Christ. And if you read that Ephesians passage, Christ rules over everything for the church, for you and me! Even with all that power and authority (horns and heads and crowns), we know the beast is nothing more than a puppet, a very destructive one whom God allows great latitude to inflict damage in his fury, but there are always strings attached. But there is even more going on in this passage as we read next:

 ³ One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. ⁴ People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”

In one of the books I’m reading to help me decipher Revelation, he likens what John is doing here as a parody of Daniel’s vision, in a sense mocking the pretensions of the power of earthly kingdoms. In the first century context that was the seemingly ubiquitous power of Rome. In verse two realize the dragon and the beast, who is given a throne and power and authority, is being compared by John to the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7 and the “one like a son of man” who is also given power an authority. But that authority is sovereign and eternal, while the beasts most certainly is not.

The parody continues when the beast, or one of his heads, seems to suffer a fatal wound, but it was healed. In this parody understanding of the passage, which seems plausible to me, there is a connection in the Greek with 5:6, which says in the NIV about the Lamb, “looking as if it had been slain.” Here the same Greek phrase is translated as, “seemed to have a fatal wound,” and John is clearly connecting the two. The beast seems to have been slain, whereas Christ has actually been slain, and beast is healed, and God raised Christ from the dead. Many commentators think John is referring to Nero, who committed suicide in 68, and disappeared, and rumors started that he’d come back to life (emperors were gods, after all) and invade the Empire with the dreaded Parthians from the east. There was a civil war after Nero, and it looked like Rome could come to an end, but it came “back to life” to by the time John was writing.

Further connection to Daniel 7 is when we see the dragon being worshipped because he gave authority to the beast, just as the Ancient of Days is worshiped because he’s given authority to “one like a son of man.” Worshiping the beast is likely a reference to the imperial cult because the emperors must be worshiped on pain of death. The beast seems indestructible, as did not only Rome until it weakened and dissolved some 300 plus years later, but as do all human empires (see Nazi Germany and the USSR). Many who are into biblical prophecy and end times believe the beast is the antichrist, but it is not. The word antichrist is only used in I John, and the four times he uses it, not once is it to a specific end of times ruler. This beast is the spirit of antichrist, and beasts have arisen throughout history, and all of their pomp and power and boasts prove to be futile. We’ll see as the chapter continues how John’s vision plays out in the already but not yet world God’s people inhabit.

Revelation 12:13-17 – Satan’s Futile Rage Against God’s People

The dragon, Satan himself, has been hurled down to earth, and he is furious because he knows his time is short. This time God gave him to reek havoc on earth is the third woe, and encompasses the time from Christ’s ascension to heaven and his second coming. Satan knows he can’t ultimately win, and he doesn’t like that one bit. In these verses we get more detail about what happened in verse 6 when the woman, God’s people, fled into the desert to be taken care of by God.

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.

The Messiah has given birth to the church, and Satan doesn’t take a leisurely stroll to follow the woman, he hunts her down. The the Greek verb is an active pursuing with all haste, chasing after, earnestly desiring to overtake. This brings to mind Peter’s warning, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” He’s licking his chops, and he will not be satisfied until he gets his pound of spiritual flesh. And that is the point of this passage, as we’ll see. Mere physical death doesn’t really satisfy him much because he knows God’s people are spiritually protected forever. Yes, death, destruction, and misery are his meat and potatoes, but he most wants to inflict spiritual damage in the souls of God’s people. God, however, is not about to let that happen:

¹⁴ The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly to the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time out of the serpent’s reach.

The image here is of the Exodus. We read from 19:4,” You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” Or the beautiful words of Isaiah 40:31, “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Even as life’s struggles, the thorns and thistles as I call them, often grind us down, we are never alone. God knows of our struggles, and Jesus predicted that in this world we will have tribulation, but he has figuratively given us a place where we can be spiritually nourished during this time of the devil’s rage. We live in the already and the not yet. Our spiritual inheritance is secure, and we are nourished in the Word and prayer, in worship and fellowship with God’s people, and participating in the sacraments. The not yet, well, we live in it every day. Think about what John is saying, though: we are out of the devil’s reach! He no longer has any power over us; we are free! it is messy, of course, but we never, ever have to doubt God’s love for us, and acceptance of us. The battle continues:

¹⁵ Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. ¹⁶ But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 

In Revelation what comes from the mouth symbolizes words and their power. Since the serpent can’t physically harm the church in any way that matters (to live is Christ, and to die is gain), he’ll try to deceive. From one of the books I’m readying, “Here the floodwaters from the dragon’s mouth symbolize deceptive teaching that would, if believed, drown the church’s faith, destroying it’s life.” Warnings against falling for this are all throughout the New Testament letters, but unfortunately the devil has been very successful with portions of the church. I’m reading a wonderfully painful book now by George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. I say wonderful because Marsden is an incredible historian and writer, and I learn so much from him, and painful because I’m watching in real historical time the serpent spew his lies, and conservative Christianity get swallowed up in the tsunami of Christian liberalism. How do we explain this? Why was conservatism, or biblically orthodox Protestant Christianity, so helpless in the face of this centuries long assault? That for us is a mystery, in the modern sense, of the spiritual war we know so little about. What we do know is what John tells us:

They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

The wheat and the tares grow together, but God’s truly redeemed will never fall for Satan’s lies. We can’t be swept away! The Lord promises us through Isaiah, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.” And in hindsight, we can see what happened to liberal “Christianity.” It’s a shell of it’s former self, and those who proclaim the Christ of God’s inerrant holy word go from strength to strength all over the world; The gates of hell shall not prevail against God’s true church! Even the earth which had swallowed up those in rebellion against God in the past, now swallows up Satan’s pretentious lies to protect us. Finally,

 ¹⁷ Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

Realizing he has no power over those who keep and hold fast, Satan is, and please pardon the semi-vulgarity, pissed! There is something delightful watching the futility of evil in those who think they are all powerful. Totalitarian dictators and despots come to mind. I think of Hitler’s rage as the war starts going badly for him, and he has temper tantrums worthy of the most selfish toddler. That’s what Satan is doing, having a temper tantrum. So, knowing he can’t deceive the true church like he did Adam and Eve (because the second Adam pulled it off!), he goes after more of her, literally, seed (from which we get our sperm). The word reminds us of God’s covenant promise to Adam, then Noah, and Abraham, fulfilled in Christ. So even here as Satan symbolically changes his tactics, it is futile. But we’re just getting started.

Revelation 12:10-12 The Salvation of Our God is Our Triumph Over the Accuser

We read of the woman, God’s people, and the dragon, Satan, and how he lost the cosmic spiritual battle because of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. All of that is in verse 5, and after the war in heaven the devil and his angels are cast down to earth. Now we learn what it all means. There have been several references prior to this explaining the nature of the dynamic we experience on earth as God’s redeemed people. John again hears a loud voice in heaven saying:

“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.

We saw that the name Satan means the accuser, and his job, his raisons d’être, is to slander and accuse God’s people in heaven before god. The entirety of redemptive history is God in Christ ultimately taking away Satan’s ability and right to accuse us before God. He simply can no longer do it, so when we accuse ourselves, beat ourselves up, feel guilt after we’ve repented and confessed our sins, we are giving Satan a power over us he in reality no longer has. As I said in my last post discussing his name, Satan’s accusations now fall on deaf ears because there is now therefore “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” You’ll remember these words from Romans 8 come, believe it or not, after Romans 7, where Paul shares his struggle with sin. He cries out in frustration in the last verse something all we who know Christ can relate to:

 ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The reason for this deliverance, and that we are truly free from the guilt, power, and ultimate consequences of sin, is because Jesus took all the accusation of all his people of all time that Satan could justifiable bring against them, and brought those against Christ on a Roman cross. There, the wrath of God was fully poured out and fully satisfied in him for us. We no longer stand before God with Satan having the ability to condemn us. This is why in John 1:9, we’re told that:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Faithful and just. God’s character isn’t compromised in forgiving our sin because it isn’t arbitrary, as if he’s just a nice old God who doesn’t want to be harsh, so, you know, he’ll overlook a little rebellion here and there. No! He loved us, so he had to die for us; there was no other way to be reconciled to him, for the alienation of our sin and and his holiness to be transcended. The accuser is now powerless against us because now this salvation, power, and kingdom of our God have come, and the authority of his Christ. In this authority of our Savior, which he rightly earned, Satan has to shut his mouth! This is all why Paul says in I Corinthians 1:30, “It is because of [God] that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, sanctification and redemption.” Oh what freedom! And this freedom from guilt and condemnation not only allows us to love God (because he first loved us on the cross in Christ), but to love others. If we fully buy this, fully embrace it, fully revel in it, we will be so aware of our unworthiness to earn it, that we will be compelled to forgive others, to have mercy and grace toward them, to live out I Corinthians 13 love. I never said it would be easy! But in Christ it can be done. Then, we learn how this happened, and the impact it has on us:

¹¹ They triumphed over 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.

Because we’ve now been reconciled to God, we are in fact victorious over the accuser (because he can no longer rightfully accuse us!), as Paul says in Colossians 1:

¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The gospel! The very best news ever! The reason we have overcome our enemy, the accuser, is two-fold. First is the cross. We’re told by the writer to the Hebrews there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood, and the blood of the Lamb of God effectively cleansed us from every sin we’ve ever committed or will commit. Our consciences are forever clean, not because of anything we have done or can do, but because of what Christ did for us. Basic Christian stuff, right? But it’s entirely too easy to fall into Satan’s trap and think it’s our performance, it’s what we do or don’t do, that makes us a bit more acceptable to God. It doesn’t!. Christ is our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, period! The second reason we have this amazing victory is “the word of their testimony.” Whose testimony? Ours! As Paul says in Romans 10:9:

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

If our Christian faith isn’t declared, spoken, announced, proclaimed, it is nothing. As I like to say, we should at least be a little annoying for Jesus. Christians also declare something more precious than life itself, which is this testimony of their dying and risen Lord. We may remember the word testimony or witness in Greek gives us our English martyr. Not all Christians are called to give their lives for their testimony, but all Christians must be willing to. And just as important, is the realization that we are aliens, strangers on this earth; it is not our home! We do not find any kind of ultimate fulfillment or hope here, or in anything here, but only in Christ, and in him forever. Then a segue back to that place we don’t belong:

¹² Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

We’ll remember John declared the third woe was coming, and arguably that woe is now, the time of trial for the earth from Jesus’ ascension to his second coming. The devil is ticked off, and God has given him latitude to reek havoc on earth. I don’t know why either, but I’ve learned to not question God when I don’t understand, and trust him. Two thousand years and counting doesn’t seem short to us, but the point is that Satan knows he can’t win, and he’s desperate to spread as much of his evil as he can. We’ll see how this symbolically plays out in the coming verses.

Revelation 12:7-9 – The Accuser Thrown Out of Heaven

After we read the entire scope of redemptive history in the first six verses we read this:

⁷ And war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. ⁸ But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 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.

This is the backdrop to what we just read, and to our everyday experience in a fallen and dark world. Secularized people, of course, do not believe this because they’ve been programmed to see the material world and all that is in it as “natural,” as mere matter in motion. Few actually believe this, but most live like it; we call them practical atheists because they live their daily lives as if God doesn’t exist. This is not only a problem (a problem because it’s not true) for our purely secular neighbors, but for Christians as well; we too often live and think like practical atheists. We ought not do that.

Although this spiritual war has been going on since Eve trusted Satan and took the bite, here John is in effect saying once Jesus ascended to his throne in heaven, and the woman, the church, had to flee into the wilderness where God would take care of her, then “war broke out in heaven.” Michael, in addition to being a great name if I may say so myself, is mentioned five times in the Bible, and is one of the big hitters in the world of angels. Notice it isn’t God himself who fights against the dragon and his angels, but the battle is delegated to God’s messengers. In Daniel he is called “one of the chief princes,” “your prince,” and “the great prince who protects your people.” Here it is assumed the hearers and readers know of Michael’s esteemed angelic status, and his power to fight the devil himself. This is not a war of equals; the dragon and his angels don’t have a chance. Like in the early days of WWII when the Japanese inflicted numerous defeats on the Americans, it looked dire. Many thought in the end the Japs could actually defeat the sleeping giant, but it awoke and fought back, basically saving the entire world from tyranny. With 20/20 they never had a chance. That’s the way the spiritual war often appears to us on this side of eternity, but God is telling us no matter what it looks like now, the devil is not strong enough, never has been and never will be.

Losing their place in heaven is a reflection of the victory of Christ for his people in his life of obedience unto death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of the Father. This should not be seen as the final victory when the devil and his angels are thrown into the lake of fire, but rather that the dragon no longer has a place before God where he can accuse god’s people, which brings us to his name. In the Garden the serpent is never referred to as Satan or the devil, but by the first century it was commonly accepted that it was. The word devil is descriptive of Satan’s roll in the cosmic spiritual war between good and evil, light and darkness, between God and his most glorious created angel who committed the first treason. Devil, or diabolos-διάβολος, properly, a slanderer; a false accuser; unjustly criticizing to hurt (malign) and condemn to sever a relationship, is the essence of his being. Satan means adversary, so everything about him is against everything and anything God. We could reference many other passages and verses that show how he works to try to bring God’s people down, but accuser captures his number one job.

Two Old Testament passages give us a picture of his MO. The first in Job 1 where Satan comes before the Lord and slanders Job. The other is Zechariah 3, where Satan stands beside Joshua the high priest “to accuse him.” The picture of redemption in this passage is powerful. Joshua it dressed in “filthy garments,” as most English versions translate it, but they are garments basically covered with human excrement, disgusting and smelly, just like our sin. So Satan is in a sense justified in accusing him, but the Lord had an angel take off those filthy garments, and he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.” Being thrown down in this passage of Revelation happens specifically because Christ, the “male child” of verse 5, was “snatched up to God and his throne.” Once Christ accomplished redemption, Satan lost his heavenly place where he could justifiably accuse God’s people who until Christ where clothed in “filthy garments.” God showed us all that no matter what Israel did throughout her 1,500 year history, God alone could take away those garments, and dress us in garments of white, those we saw in chapters 6 and 7.

When Satan is thrown down to earth it is at the same time the coming of God’s Kingdom and Christ’s authority (which he earned in our place) to rule and build his church. The battle, the spiritual war, is in effect no longer in heaven where Satan’s accusations would now fall on deaf ears (Rom. 8:1), but on earth where his rule seems all powerful. Remember the basic message of Revelation: are you going to believe God (in Christ) or your lyin’ eyes? The spiritual victory over the devil (his head crushed) in God reconciling the world to himself in Christ has been accomplished, and all the pain and suffering and sorrow of this life must be seen in that light. We live by faith, not by sight, as difficult as that often is. The phrase that he and his angels are “thrown down” is a wonderful picture of the ultimate futility of his project. Remember, Jesus rose from the dead for our justification, making available “the righteousness of God” available through faith, by simple trust in Jesus. Oh, how this infuriates Satan because his name now means nothing!

I love how this is put in one of the books I’m reading, the devil is “now deprived of authority to indict believers and aware that is days are numbered, venting his frustration by wreaking havoc on earth.” We’ll see this contrast played out more in the coming verses.

Revelation 12:1-6 – The Woman, the Dragon, and Us

Now it’s back to the (apparent) craziness, but when we break through the inscrutability, we find God communicating profound and comforting truths about the nature of his sovereign rule over all things for our eternal good and his glory. Chapter 7 ended with the seventh trumpet and we saw the glorious end of the story, now we go back into history and what is the great pivot point in the book. John doesn’t see or hear what happens next, but just says two signs appeared “in heaven,” which implies he’s changed locations and is back on earth. It also implies he’s not the only one who sees it:

A great 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. ² She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 

This sign is mega, large, great in the widest sense. The first question we ask is, who is this woman? We won’t be surprised over the history of the church there have been many different interpretations, but to me the most plausible in the context of revelation and Old Testament symbolism is that it’s not a literal woman (as some Catholics think it’s Mary), but symbolic of something very important, thus the sun, moon, and stars. John is meaning for us to think of Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37, where the sun (Jacob), the moon (Rachel), and the stars (his brothers) bow down to him, and thus the woman is symbolic of God’s people. The woman, literally “to have a child in the belly” and in pain, is a reference to God’s people like we read of in Isaiah 26:17, but there they gave birth to nothing. But in Micah 5:3, the labor pains lead to the birth of a son, and here too as we’ll see in the coming verses. The big symbolic picture leads us back to the origin of the cosmic battle in Genesis 3, as we see in the next sign:

 ³ Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. ⁴ Its 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 it might devour her child the moment he was born. 

If we read carefully we’ll see a distinction in the signs. In the the first one mega is applied to the sign itself, whereas here the mega applies to the dragon not the sign. In other words, the dragon is not a “great sign,” but only a sign. To me, this points to the disparity in the reality behind the signs, the woman is in fact, in reality, the greater power, but by appearance the dragon seems to be greater. Isn’t that life lived in a fallen world among fallen people in fallen bodies! We see this throughout Revelation, and it may be the message of the entire book; do not trust you’re lyin’ eyes! The Devil and his angels will not win! No matter what it looks like at the moment. In one of the books I’m reading, the author says the symbols for the dragon show his cunning wisdom (seven heads), great power (ten horns—horns symbolized power in the ancient world), and authority to influence others (seven diadems or royal crowns); a perfect picture of the devil and his rule in this dark and fallen world. His power while indeed great (sweeping stars out of the sky) is limited; it is only a third, as we saw in the first four trumpets in chapter 8. He is allowed to have incredible and destructive power, but it is strictly limited. It often doesn’t feel, or look like it, but with the Psalmist in our frustration we trust our God despite what it may look like:

¹⁶ When I tried to understand all this,
    it troubled me deeply
¹⁷ till I entered the sanctuary of God;
    then I understood their final destiny.

We cannot understand God’s ways, but we can trust his character. As we enter the presence of God (sanctuary) through his word and prayer, worship with God’s people and the sacraments, we can know justice will be done. Revelation is a vivid picture of that destiny.

The second sentence of verse 4, and the rest of the chapter, is a snapshot of all redemptive history. Our tendency is to read our sense of time into the text, as if the dragon is standing in front of a very pregnant woman and waiting for her birth is hours or minutes; it is not. What the signs are symbolizing is the moment of the fall in Genesis 3 to the birth of Christ and the church. From the beginning Satan knew he needed to destroy God’s son, Israel, because he knew something of what the seed would do to him. When the child was born, through Herod he tried to kill the child, but God was a step ahead. Then:

⁵ 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. 

Here we read of the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus in two sentences. The reference to the iron scepter, or rod of iron in the Greek, comes from the Messianic Psalm 2, specifically verse 9. Jesus, as we read in 3:21, overcame and sat down with his Father on his throne, there to rule all things. From there 50 days later he sent the Holy Spirit to apply redemption to his people and build his church, and during this time before his second coming we read:

 ⁶ The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

That number of days, like all references to time in apocalyptic literature is symbolic of periods of time, not to be taken literally. We saw the same number applied to the two witnesses in 11:2-3, who also represented God’s people, the church. That symbolic story led to the seventh trumpet and God’s victory over all things through Christ, and the ultimate vindication of God’s people. Here we see during the period of their earthly pilgrimage he will care for them. There are too many Old Testament references we can read into these words (what a wonderful study that would be), so I’ll very briefly pick one in the life of the Prophet Elijah. He just experienced a mighty victory over the prophets of Baal, but the evil queen wants him dead so he flees into the wilderness, just as the woman here flees. The story of Elijah is so precious and so typical of our confusing lives in a fallen world. I encourage you to read it because it is a beautiful picture of the church’s ongoing experience of trial, suffering, and frustration of the desert experience of so much of life, and yet the nurturing and protection and hope of God through it all.

We’ll next see the cosmic backdrop to the mortal battle playing itself out on earth.

Revelation 11:15-19 – The Kingdom of the World Belongs to Our Triune God!

Now John takes a sharp turn from visionary craziness (to us) to the culmination of all his visions, but right in the middle of the story. It’s a little glimpse of where everything is heading before we actually get there, and then the craziness continues. It starts with the seventh angel sounding his trumpet. We’ll remember at the beginning of chapter 8 John saw “seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.” The first six announced horrific judgments of God on the earth and peoples of the earth. Then we got the story of the two witnesses who represent the church, are killed and mocked for a short time (which to us is a very long time), but they are brought back to life and taken up to heaven while their enemies look on, a picture of the vindication of God’s people in the final resurrection of the dead. Then God’s final judgment in an earthquake kills those who deserve death, and those left alive finally acknowledge God in great fear. Now with the blowing of the final trumpet, John hears voices in heaven declare:

“The kingdom of the world has become
    the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,
    and he will reign for ever and ever.”

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray what we call The Lord’s Prayer he said, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is the literal fulfillment of that prayer his saints have prayed since Jesus said it, and we’ll see how it is fulfilled in more detail later in the book. The point of the prayer and Revelation is to remind us that we cannot do this; only God has the power and the right to transform a fallen world where sin and death reign, into his kingdom of holiness and life. It is important to keep in mind that the purpose of God’s judgment, which to us terrifying in its destruction, is not to destroy, but bring restoration of all things; its purpose is to transform. That’s why the seventh (seven is the biblical number for perfection and fulfillment) and final trumpet reveals that the fallen kingdom has become a new kingdom; it’s been transformed, not replaced. It now belongs to our Lord and his Christ. This is God the Father and God the Son reigning on earth as one. We’ve seen this coming in chapter 5 and 7, and now it’s here (or will be). And this God who is distinguished as these two beings, is referred to as “he,” as one.

Then the twenty-four elders we were introduced to in chapter 4, seated on their thrones before God, fall on their faces and worship God with thanksgiving:

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
    the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
    and have begun to reign.

Both God the Lord and his Christ are referred to as Lord God Almighty, and since he now reigns he is no longer the One who is, was, and is to come; he is here! He has fulfilled everything promised in those concise words in Genesis 3, that the woman’s seed would crush the serpent’s head, and the serpent would strike his heel. He isn’t given the power he now has over the kingdom of the world, he has taken it and rules all as it was always intended to be until the fall ruined everything. We’re next told:

¹⁸ The nations were angry,
    and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
    and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
    both great and small—
and to destroy those who are destroying the earth.”

The words translated angry and wrath come from the same Greek word, orgé-ὀργή, which does not primarily mean emotional venting, but settled, ongoing, fixed opposition. In this case, man to God, and God to sin, against man in rebellion to God. For sinful human beings, their anger often turns to emotional venting, but the settled opposition is mostly displayed in wanting to be our own gods a la Satan’s temptation to Eve. God’s orgé-ὀργή, on the other hand, is driven by his holiness and displayed in ultimate justice. God’s wrath is not a common theme in most churches, and in many sadly never mentioned at all, but without it all of life would be the chaos, confusion, and destruction of hell. I’ve quoted Moses words in Deuteronomy 32 before, but they cannot be declared enough when we are confronted with God’s wrath and judgment so vividly displayed in Revelation:

³ I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
    Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
⁴ He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
    and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
    upright and just is he.

We also see that God’s justice includes rewarding those who fear (in the Greek) his name. I think understanding the nuance of the Greek, misthos-μισθός, is also helpful here: a reward (recompense) that appropriately compensates a particular decision (action). We are, all good Protestants would agree, saved by grace alone, and that same grace somehow enables all that we do in God’s sanctifying process in us in Christ. So in a real way we can take credit for absolutely nothing, but also in a real way we have agency. That means our freedom to act, to choose, is not an illusion, and God’s sovereignty doesn’t negate our responsibility to act, to obey, to seek him, to reject evil and pursue the good, to grow in knowledge and holiness, and most importantly, to love others. And the consequences will live into eternity; we will be appropriately compensated. We’re also told in Scripture that, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” We only begin to understand reality as it actually is when we understand that he is God and we are not, and respond appropriately.

The time will also come for recompense, a word not much used nowadays, but it basically means to pay back. God’s enemies have destroyed, and the Greek for destroy, diaphtheiró-διαφθείρω, is also illuminating: properly, thoroughly corrupt, totally degenerate (disintegrate); waste away by the decaying influence of moral (spiritual) impurity; “utterly corrupt”; becoming thoroughly disabled (morally depraved), “all the way through” (“utterly decayed”). The verb form used indicates they are currently doing this or repeatedly doing it, and thus God will return to them what they have been doing to his creation since the fall. It’s only fair, something every Christian will be eternally grateful God most certainly is not, and that is fair, or we too would be destroyed.

Before we get back to the apocalyptic narrative, John tells us why we can trust what we see in this chapter:

⁹ Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm.

God’s presence, represented by the temple, is the ultimate end game. No more sin to separate us from him, us from each other, and us from ourselves. What was in the ark of the covenant on earth is here a symbol of God’s covenant faithfulness; he has made good on his promise to Abram in the Genesis 15 ceremony to fulfill both sides of the covenant. The opening of his presence is accompanied by these phenomena in nature that make it very clear to even the most hard hearted: he is God and we are not!