We’re starting now on the last section of our Revelation series — with maybe the book’s obscurest chapter, ch12! But it gives an amazing panorama of cosmic spiritual history – and in fact it’s really practically helpful…
Revelation reveals. Behind the outward human events of war and persecution, we are shown demonic forces at work (9:14-16; 12:17; 13; 16:14). So too in these chapters. I don’t want to use up our space on the symbolism, so let me just offer, first, my sense that ch12 starts by sweeping sublimely back in v4 to prehistoric times and to Satan’s fall; then, it apparently takes in the time of the Incarnation (Matthew 2), with the ‘dragon’, the devil (v6), seeking to devour the Christ-child who will share the throne of God; then, it leaps ahead to the End with Satan being driven out of heaven (Hallelujah!), to unleash a brief period of unparalleled evil on earth (v12). (We’ll read about that in ch13.) The big drama right here is Child v Dragon; it’s the apparently weak seed of the woman who will eventually bruise the dragon’s head, just as Genesis 3:15 promised! But here’s the thing: at THIS stage – ch13 especially – everything will seem to point the other way, and we’re called to have faith. We read that Satan has indeed been defeated decisively and driven out of heaven; but after that, what he does is unleash a brief period of furious, unparalleled evil on earth (12:12). But have faith, God is saying – even if on earth the devil may seem to be victorious (13:7-8), it is our Christ who is really in control!
There are many fascinating things here which we don’t have space to go into. Some verses may not yield their secrets in our first or even fifth reading of Revelation. But we can set them aside for now; what is clear is that, whatever the details mean, this chapter teaches us how satanic onslaught is resisted by the ‘overcomers’, the victorious people of God. ‘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’ (v11, NIV as usual).
This central verse isn’t entirely easy. What does it mean to overcome? What can we learn?
First, and most fundamentally, victory comes to us because of `the blood of the Lamb`. It is that blood which guarantees us freedom from all Satan’s accusations (12:10, cf Rom 8:33-34); whatever Satan tells me I’ve done, I’ve probably done that and probably worse; but the blood has covered it all, nullifying all his accusations! Hallelujah! Further, God’s glory always turns out triumphant even when evil might really seem victorious (see the reference to death in v11, cf 11:7-10, 13:7). Just this is the pattern of the cross; and the `overcomers` participate in its victory because of ‘the blood of the Lamb’, the blood that reconciles us to God and so guarantees us victory; because God ensures that anything we who are so reconciled may experience of ‘becoming like Him in his death’ will lead to our `overcoming`, becoming like Him in His resurrection (cf Phil 3:10-11)! In both ways, then, the `blood of the Lamb` has the dramatic effect that Paul points to in Colossians 2:15: Christ’s death has liberated us, once and for all, from all that the power of darkness can do!
Then secondly, the ‘overcomers’ triumph ‘by the word of their testimony’. We know from Romans 10:9-10 that the benefits of the cross become particularly real for us through our own act of confession of Christ. And practically, does not the deliberate, insistent affirmation of Christ’s authority seem to have a powerful `overcoming` effect in times of fear, or temptation, or spiritual attack? Many evangelists would affirm that publicly proclaiming Christ (in street proclamation, Jesus marches, etc) not only serves as evangelism but shifts the supernatural atmosphere that affects our evangelism’s fruitfulness. Let me ask too: when we sense the presence of evil personally, does not affirming aloud Christ’s lordship somehow change the situation? And is all this why the ‘loud voice’ of 12:10 is all-important: ‘Now’ , the time when Satan’s power seems to be running rampant, is in fact the day of the ‘power and the kingdom of our God’? And of ‘the authority of his Christ’, because in the ‘blood of the Lamb’ plus the ‘testimony of Jesus’ there is an authority that the worst of the power of darkness can never overthrow; and this awareness needs stating `loudly`, because it is our saving anchor through the toughest of possible times?
And lastly, ‘They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death’: and that faith made them unconquerable. (Cf Roger Forster and Paul Marston on the `methods by which God works’: `The suffering and atoning death of Christ, and the suffering and death of the martyrs, will finally be too much for the forces of evil… The church is moving toward the “evil day” in the battle of the Lord. In this day we must withstand, and having done all must stand… Through this will come the final overthrow and exhaustion of Satan and his power, in which the knowledge of God will fill the universe as the waters cover the sea’!) Satan was left with little he could do. Such a mindset about our lives on earth gives both power and triumphant freedom (cf Matt 10:39); and obviously it grows from a deep, deliberately cultivated confidence in the heaven that has been the revelatory theme of earlier parts of Revelation (cf also Heb 10:34). This `hope of heaven` is our essential ‘anchor for the soul, firm and secure’ throughout all spiritual warfare, we’re told in Hebrews 6:19 and 1 Thess 5:8. Let’s seek that!
So let’s reread v11, and absorb it into our souls: ‘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…’
Lord, I worship You that at Calvary You showed Yourself both the Faithful One, and the ultimate, triumphant Overcomer! And Lord, You are the Almighty; please help me grow in my own faith in the blood of the Lamb; my expression of the testimony of Jesus; and my heart’s joyful liberation from this ‘world and its desires’ (1 John 2:17)…
PS We can and should read these sections as having application throughout history, teaching us how to be overcomers. But it seems too that God is focusing our attention on a final, very specific ‘short time’ of crisis (cf 12:12), described frequently in the three equivalent phrases of 1260 days, forty-two months, and three-and-a-half times (years) – when for a brief final period He allows humanity to experience the full consequences of its rebellion. Our attention is drawn to its brevity: mercifully, said Jesus, ‘those days will be shortened’ because of their horror `unequalled from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be equalled again. If those days had not been cut short, no-one would survive’ (Matt 24:21-22). There seems a repeated prioritisation of this brief, carefully numbered and terrible period (Rev 11:2,3; 12:6,14; 13:5; Dan 7:25; 9:27; 12:7,11); it is the consummate time of ‘revelation’ climaxing human history, when all things are revealed as they really are – the time of Satan’s ultimate challenge to God and His people, and indeed of God’s glory and triumph seen most in apparent defeat – which is the meaning of the cross.
In light of that, then, let me make some suggestions about the more puzzling parts of this chapter. To me it makes most sense to see the `man child who will rule all the nations` (v5) as Jesus (see 19:15 and Psalm 2:9). (If not, it’s really hard to see who the woman might be.) But if the `man child` is Christ, who then is this `woman` crowned with twelve stars? Since she apparently gives birth to Christ (v5, and cf Micah 5:2-3), it seems reasonable to see her as godly ethnic Israel. (Notice how this twelve, the `twelve tribes of Israel`, reappears in 21:12 – and indeed Matthew 19:28.) Then moving on, we have a clear distinction in v17 (rather like the two groups in chapter 7, the Jewish tribes and the multitude from every nation) between her and the ‘rest of her offspring . . . who . . . hold to the testimony of Jesus’, and whom the dragon now starts (12:17, 13:1) to persecute with a terrible and worldwide totalitarianism (13:2-7 – more about this next week). This makes complete sense as the distinction between Israel as God’s people and her Gentile offspring. But in that case we should again note the key place godly ethnic Israel has in this climactic end-time, 1260-day crisis (vv6,14), and how they are protected by fleeing to the desert (what meaning could we usefully give to that other than the literal?); just as Christ has forewarned them long ago in Matthew 24:15-16. (For more on this see https://petelowmanresources.com/our-future3-so-how-does-ethnic-israel-fit-in/ .)
