Revelation 12 is another one of the passages that throws so many Christians through a loop pretty much regardless of how you interpret the book of Revelation. The question that we tend to walk into Revelation 12 with, which totally trips us up, is almost always, “Hold on a second, where does this fall on the timeline?”
And so before anything else, we need to understand that in Revelation 12, God is zooming out once again to tell the whole story of God’s people all in one really vivid, really powerful image. Revelation 12 is kind of like Revelation 6 and 7, where John lays down the seven seals, which tell the entire story of God’s people from the time of Jesus through the end of all things, and then Revelation 8 and 9, where he rewinds, changes to a different camera angle, and once again tells the entire story of God’s people from the time of Jesus all the way through to the end of all things.
Now, the same thing is happening once again in Revelation 12 through 14.
Another Sign in Heaven
John says, “I had another vision.” And here’s the vision. He says, “There was a great sign in the heavens.”
We talked earlier about two really important things. Number one is that the visions or the signs in Revelation are not necessarily in chronological order. Just because this vision happens after that vision does not mean that this vision is describing something that is taking place after that vision. The stuff in this vision might be before the stuff in that earlier vision, or it may be the same thing as the stuff in that earlier vision.
And number two, the visions in Revelation are not meant to be taken literally. This is apocalyptic literature. We have no frame of reference for apocalyptic literature today, but in the ancient Near East, they were extremely familiar with apocalyptic literature, and they would have known exactly what they were looking at the moment they received the book of Revelation at their churches.
We find this extremely strange and jarring, but they would have been extremely familiar with it. All of these things that are super complex to us would have been very simple to them. Not because we’re stupid and they were smart, but because they were familiar with this and we are not.
All of that is hanging in the background when John says, “I saw another sign in heaven.” He’s saying, here is another highly symbolic, highly metaphorical vision that is somehow related to God’s redeeming and restoring work in the world.
The War Between the True King and the Serpent King
So what happens in this vision? What happens is we rewind the clock once again, this time even further back than the vision of the seals and the vision of the trumpets. It does a kind of time jump and it tells the story of this great spiritual war between the true King, Yahweh, and the false usurper serpent king, the devil.
And over the course of these three chapters, he paints maybe the clearest picture in the entire book of the way that the persecutions that these seven churches are facing from Rome and the temptations they are facing from false teachers like the Nicolaitans and the Jezebelites and the Balaamites, who are pushing them to compromise with Rome to protect themselves, is not a new thing. It is the current form of that history-long war between the Lord of all creation and the devil and the forces of darkness.
So the vision rewinds all the way back to the coming of Jesus. All the way back to Genesis chapter 3.
The Serpent in Genesis 3
In Genesis chapter 3, we meet the serpent, which was two things at one time. The serpent or the dragon was a common ancient Near Eastern image both for the pagan gods of Egypt. Pharaoh himself was dressed to kind of resemble a serpent god. He was a sort of serpent god, serpent king in the Egyptian worldview at the time.
And at the same time, a lot of the Canaanite tribes and the other surrounding pagan nations that waged war on ancient Israel worshiped serpent gods. Some of them even actually had their battle armor and stuff like that designed to look like serpents, dragons.
And so the image that Genesis 3 uses for the devil is the image of this common ancient Near Eastern trope of serpents or dragons. Because not only did the serpent or the dragon represent the longtime enemies of ancient Israel, but at exactly the same time in the ancient Near Eastern cultures, the serpent or the dragon was a kind of shared image or metaphor for chaos and death and destruction and evil.
They associated serpents with chaos, death, destruction, and evil.
So in Genesis 3, we meet the serpent, which would immediately have made everyone in the ancient Near East who read it think of chaos and death and destruction and evil, and also of the gods of pagan nations like Egypt and several of the Canaanites. And this serpent fires a shot in his war against the true King.
How?
By baiting humanity into rebelling against the Lord.
And when humanity rebels against the Lord, it breaks everything. It breaks creation. So now the world is fallen and broken. It breaks humanity. So now we as humans are fallen and broken. And it separates us from God so that we cannot know Him, we can’t experience His presence, and we have to spend eternity apart from Him.
The Promise of Genesis 3:15
But in Genesis 3, as all of this takes place, God makes a promise. He is speaking in an ancient Near Eastern poetic form, so it sounds again really strange to us, but His meaning is actually very simple.
Genesis 3:15 says:
“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” — Genesis 3:15, WEB
What is God saying when He kind of jumps into this weird slam poetry session in Genesis 3:15?
What He’s saying is that a descendant of the woman, Eve, is going to crush the head of the devil. In other words, remember, the serpent, the devil, is kind of representative of chaos and evil and death and destruction. A descendant of a woman is going to destroy all evil, destroy all wickedness, destroy all grief, all crying, all pain.
Everything that is fallen and broken about the world will one day be destroyed. And everything will be restored and made perfect again, and humanity will be redeemed so that we can enjoy this restored world for all of eternity with the Lord.
But it basically lays down this kind of template for the rest of the story that the Bible is going to tell. It gives us these two really important images: the image of the serpent or the dragon, who is the devil, and the image of the woman and her offspring, who is going to redeem humanity and restore all things.
So all the way from the beginning of the story, from Genesis all the way through Revelation, the story that the Bible tells is the story of this great spiritual war between the false usurper serpent king versus the offspring of the woman.
Hold that image in your head.
The Serpent King and the Exodus
And at the same time, fast forward to Exodus, because in Exodus, we see this great spiritual war playing out once again. We see God’s next move in the chess match. We see God rescuing His people from this human serpent-like king, Pharaoh.
Exodus 19:4 says:
“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself.” — Exodus 19:4, WEB
And He leads the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness to safety. And He will eventually lead them into the Promised Land.
It says essentially this spiritual war between the true King and the serpent king began in Genesis 3. We see an example of it playing out in Exodus. And now today, Revelation 12, we see another example of it playing out in Rome.
The serpent king is waging war on the true King and His people, His kingdom citizens, through the persecutions of the current beast, the current Babylon, the current Pharaoh, the current Egypt called Rome. But he says that just like the first Exodus, we will experience a truer and greater Exodus. We will be rescued on eagles’ wings and protected the same way that the ancient Israelites were.
The Dragon Is the Ancient Serpent
I love the way that John puts this. Revelation 12:9 says:
“The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” — Revelation 12:9, WEB
And then he goes on to describe the serpent, the dragon, in a really specific and important way.
It’s important to understand that these seven churches living in the Roman Empire live under the thumb of a government that treats itself as a god. You cannot understand Revelation if you don’t recognize that that is the fundamental piece of context that everything else hinges on.
They live under the thumb of a government that treats itself as a god, an emperor who treats himself as a god, and they live in cities that are absolutely littered with paganism. All of these things are rolled together as a matter of loyalty to the nation, patriotism to Rome.
Each of their cities has a false god. Each of their cities has its own way of worshiping the Roman emperor and the Roman Empire. They called this the imperial cult.
If you refused to worship the emperor and worship the gods of Rome, they treated you as if you were disloyal, unpatriotic, treasonous. Not worshiping Caesar was considered betraying Rome. You were a traitor if you refused to worship Caesar as God.
In really famous cases like with Emperor Nero and Emperor Domitian and stuff like that, Christians were viciously persecuted and tortured and ultimately killed for refusing to worship Nero as a god, to worship Domitian as a god.
Seven Heads, Seven Crowns, and Ten Horns
That is part of the background for the way that John describes the devil here because he describes the devil as having seven heads, seven crowns, and ten horns. We’re going to see that same image again in Revelation 13 and 17.
Revelation 12:3 says:
“Another sign was seen in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns.” — Revelation 12:3, WEB
Now, why does that matter?
It matters because there are two things happening.
Number one, let’s talk about the seven heads. We’ve talked about the fact that they associate that number seven with completeness. He has seven heads, seven crowns. So he has all these different heads. He expresses himself in all these different ways in the world.
There’s only one devil. And yet somehow he is the influence and the power behind all the complete number of the beastly empires and rulers throughout history. He has this world-dominating power from one generation to another.
He sets up these wicked empires and rulers from one generation to another who oppose the Lord and oppress His people.
And at exactly the same time, the language that he’s using here is identical to the language that he uses in Daniel 7. The beasts that Daniel describes have seven heads and ten horns.
Daniel describes a series of beasts one after another. A beast comes up in the form of Babylon and it opposes the Lord and attacks His people. Another beast rises up in the form of Persia and it opposes the Lord and attacks His people. Another beast rises up in the form of Greece. It opposes the Lord and attacks His people.
And now another beast has risen up in the form of Rome.
Behind all of it, John says, is this great red dragon, the serpent.
Every one of the beasts, every one of the Babylons, every one of the man of lawlessness figures that has opposed the Lord and attacked His people throughout history has been driven and influenced by the serpent.
The Decisive Victory Has Already Been Won
But in the middle of all this, John paints a really interesting picture because his vision says that the decisive victory in this history-long war between the Lamb and the serpent, between the people of God and the beast, was won a very long time ago.
He says, “The cross and resurrection was the decisive blow that cemented the serpent’s defeat.”
Revelation 12:10 says:
“I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation, the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ has come; for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.’” — Revelation 12:10, WEB
The climax of this history-long war is that Satan is stripped of his power and his authority. He’s revoked of his ability to stand in the courtroom of God and accuse God’s people. His doom is forever sealed.
Why?
Because of what happened on the cross.
The Dragon Is Thrown Down
The image that it uses here in Revelation and throughout the rest of Scripture is that the devil is thrown down. He is cast out of the heavenly places in some sense.
Revelation 12:7–9 says:
“There was war in the sky. Michael and his angels made war on the dragon. The dragon and his angels made war. They didn’t prevail, neither was a place found for him any more in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” — Revelation 12:7–9, WEB
This is a really rich and multilayered image because it’s weaving a whole bunch of things together. It’s weaving together so many Old Testament images that it’s easy for us to miss.
The most important thing for us to grasp is that the war that this vision is describing is won not primarily through brute force.
It’s won through the blood of the Lamb.
Revelation 12:11 says:
“They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death.” — Revelation 12:11, WEB
In other words, the true King defeats the serpent king not by killing him, but by dying.
The Lamb wins the war by dying for us.
By dying for us, the Lamb takes away the serpent’s ability to be our accuser. He takes away the serpent’s ability to steal us away from God’s kingdom. He takes away the serpent’s ability to doom us to destruction along with him.
So now the serpent has nothing.
Satan the Accuser in Zechariah 3
This is pulling from an image that we get in Zechariah 3.
Zechariah 3:1–4 says:
“He showed me Joshua the high priest standing before Yahweh’s angel, and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary. Yahweh said to Satan, ‘Yahweh rebuke you, Satan! Yes, Yahweh who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Isn’t this a burning stick plucked out of the fire?’ Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the angel. He answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, ‘Take the filthy garments off him.’ To him he said, ‘Behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from you, and I will clothe you with rich clothing.’” — Zechariah 3:1–4, WEB
What’s happening in this image?
What’s happening is that Satan is trying to condemn Joshua because of his sin and his brokenness. And yet the Lord says, “I do not condemn Joshua.”
He says, “I will take away his sin. I will make him holy and pure.”
And in the same way, God has done that for us.
Whether Zechariah or Joshua or you or me, our condemnation has been taken away by the blood of the Lamb. It answers every charge that the devil levies against us, every accusation, and therefore there is no condemnation left for us. There is no wrath left for us.
And so through the cross, Satan has been robbed of his ability to condemn us for our sin. And the vision that John is relating here uses the image that because he’s been stripped of his ability to be our accuser, he was cast out of the heavenly places.
The Devil Knows His Time Is Short
Revelation 12:12 says:
“Therefore rejoice, heavens, and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and to the sea, because the devil has gone down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has but a short time.” — Revelation 12:12, WEB
The idea here is that the devil has been cast out of the heavenly throne room and his fate has been sealed. His destruction has been destined. He has already lost the war, and now all he can do is wander the earth and wreak havoc during the short time that is left before his eventual destruction.
However many hundreds or thousands or millions of years may be left before the eventual return of Christ, which we don’t know, he will wreak as much havoc as he can in whatever ways that he can to drag down as many people as he can through temptation and discouragement and demoralization.
But no matter what, his fate is sealed and the war has already been won.
The Child Who Will Rule the Nations
But the vision combines that image with another very shocking image.
Revelation 12:5 says:
“She gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.” — Revelation 12:5, WEB
The vision paints this picture that says the serpent is defeated by the very child it was trying to destroy.
This is very important because a lot of people ask, okay, what do all these things represent? What does the woman represent? What does the serpent represent? What does the child represent?
And the answer is actually fairly simple once we wrap our heads around the language that this vision is using.
Who does the child represent here?
The vision tells us exactly who this child represents because this vision is using exactly the language of Psalm 2. It is literally quoting Psalm 2:9:
“You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” — Psalm 2:9, WEB
What is Psalm 2 talking about when he says that?
It’s talking about the coming Messiah. It is talking about the way that the coming Messiah is going to rule over all of creation as the eternal King. And as the eternal King, the coming Messiah is going to destroy the forces of darkness and bring goodness and peace and glory forevermore.
Revelation uses the language of this messianic psalm to describe this child.
So the child who is being born that the serpent is trying to destroy is the Messiah.
The child that is being born is Jesus.
The child the dragon wants to devour is Jesus.
The Dragon Tries to Devour the Messiah
And over the course of Revelation 12, the vision tells the entire story of the earthly life of Jesus: His birth, His death, His resurrection, ascending back into heaven. And then it continues on and tells the story of how He continues to work in the world through His church all the way until the day He returns in the end to finish the job.
It says this woman is giving birth to this promised royal messianic Son. But the serpent wants to devour Him just like he has always wanted to.
But rather than being devoured, He is exalted.
He is caught up to God and His throne.
I love the way verses 4 and 5 put it:
“The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Her child was caught up to God, and to his throne.” — Revelation 12:4–5, WEB
Now, when it says that He was caught up, it is talking about a couple of things. It’s talking about His crucifixion and it’s talking about His resurrection and ultimately it’s talking about His ascension back into heaven. These things are all wrapped up together in the language of being caught up to the throne.
The dragon is waiting as this woman gives birth, eagerly preparing to destroy the child who is coming to defeat him. But instead, the child defeats the dragon through the dragon’s own attempts to destroy Him.
The dragon tries to devour this child, but the very act of trying to devour the Messiah child causes Him to be caught up to God’s throne, exalted and enthroned.
And now this child is going to destroy the dragon once and for all.
The Cross Turns the Dragon’s Attack Into His Defeat
In exactly the same way, the devil stirred up the Roman government, the Sanhedrin, Judas, rebellious humanity as a whole to reject and oppose Jesus and ultimately crucify Him. And yet that crucifixion that the devil himself stirred up as a way of trying to defeat Jesus was the thing that brought about His victory.
When He was crucified, we were saved. When He rose from the grave, He claimed His kingship. When He ascended to heaven, He took up God’s throne.
And when He returns in the end, He will finish the work of destroying the devil and the forces of darkness and restoring all things.
Who Is the Woman?
So the child being born is Jesus.
Does that mean that the woman in this vision is Mary?
Actually, probably not.
Why do I say that?
It’s because the language that this vision uses is not the type of language you would typically use to describe Mary herself. It’s the language you would use to describe the people of God.
What am I talking about?
Here’s what I’m talking about.
Revelation 12:1 says:
“A great sign was seen in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” — Revelation 12:1, WEB
Now, what’s going on with this language?
What’s going on is that this is exactly pretty much word for word the language that we see in Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37.
Joseph’s Dream and the Twelve Stars
Genesis 37:9–10 says:
“He dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, ‘Behold, I have dreamed yet another dream: and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.’ He told it to his father and to his brothers. His father rebuked him, and said to him, ‘What is this dream that you have dreamed? Will I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves down to you to the earth?’” — Genesis 37:9–10, WEB
What’s going on here?
What’s going on is that in his dream, Joseph sees the entire rest of God’s people at that time, which is the entire family and clans and so forth under his father Jacob. He sees all the rest of God’s people bowing down to him.
His dream is that he will be served by the entire rest of his family nation, the rest of the people of God. In this dream, Joseph is essentially kind of the ruler over God’s people. And he is the representative of God’s people.
And here in Revelation 12, that is exactly the language that this woman is described with. She is described as a kind of representative of God’s people the same way that Joseph was.
Because the big difference between this woman clothed in the sun, surrounded by all these same images as Joseph, and the rest of the people of God is that rather than 11 stars, there are 12 stars.
In other words, Joseph is there too.
She is like Joseph, but better than Joseph, more complete than Joseph because Joseph is bowing down to her alongside the rest of the sons of Jacob.
And so just like Joseph was a representative of God’s people, now this woman clothed with the sun is a representative of the rest of God’s people.
Joseph represented Israel as a whole.
This woman clothed in the sun represents the people of God as a whole.
The People of God From Israel to the Church
So in the old covenant, God’s people took the form of a nation called Israel. And now in the new covenant, because of the coming of Jesus, because of the cross that has broken down the wall between us and God, that has gathered both Jew and Gentile together into God’s people, His covenant, His kingdom, His family, God’s people no longer takes shape as a nation called Israel.
It takes shape as the church.
Everyone who follows Him from every tribe and tongue and nation.
It’s not that the church replaced Israel.
It’s that Israel was a prototype of the church.
Where are we going with all this?
Here’s where we’re going.
Jesus was an Israelite. Jesus was born out of Israel. Jesus was born out of the people of God in its old covenant form. He was born out of the line of Abraham, from the tribe of Judah, in the town of Bethlehem.
The God of the people quite literally became one of the people of God.
And so He was born out of the people of God. He was born out of the nation of the people of God. He was born out of the culture of the people of God. He is raised by a family who are among the people of God.
The Promise to Abraham
This is exactly what God promised to Abraham in Genesis 12.
He said, “I’m going to make you into a great nation.” Not so that I can just arbitrarily favor your nation above all the other ones, but so that out of the great nation I form from your bloodline will come one descendant, one offspring, one seed who will bless all the peoples, all the families, all the nations of the earth.
The woman clothed in the sun represents the people of God out of whom the Messiah was born just like God promised. She represents the people of God all the way back to ancient times in the form of the faithful Israelites and all the way into the present and the future in the form of the church.
Every Jew and Gentile, slave and free, man and woman who follows the Lord in faith and repentance is gathered into this people of God.
And this woman clothed in the sun represents that.
So to be clear, the woman clothed in the sun represents you.
The Dragon Turns Against the Woman
And in this vision, she gives birth to the Messiah. The Messiah defeats the dragon. But then in the dragon’s rage at having been defeated by the Messiah, he tries to destroy the woman.
The dragon could not destroy the Messiah.
So he goes after the Messiah’s people.
And so it says she was chased into the wilderness.
This is really important. Like always, there are a lot of different interpretations of this, but when we take everything together, I think it’s actually pretty clear what this is talking about.
This wilderness period that the woman experiences here is talking about the entire history of the church under attack by the serpent through the people under his influence.
I know that was a mouthful, but bear with me.
The Woman in the Wilderness
Revelation 12:6 says:
“The woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that there they may nourish her one thousand two hundred sixty days.” — Revelation 12:6, WEB
There’s a lot to break down there, but the place that we need to start is by talking about what the wilderness typically represents when it comes up throughout God’s Word.
Because from Genesis to Revelation, we repeatedly see the wilderness as an example of a number of things. But more often than anything, we see examples of God’s people being driven out to the wilderness.
And every time it happens, it is for a specific purpose.
Israel wanders the wilderness for 40 years. And throughout that time, they’re not just being punished. They are being prepared. The Lord protects them. He preserves them. He provides for them.
And He prepares them to enter the Promised Land.
Elijah is driven out into the wilderness by his generation’s version of the beast, Ahab and Jezebel, the wicked rulers who take over Israel and Judah. But the Lord protects and provides for him in the wilderness and prepares him to return to the kingdom to be the tool that He will use to take it back and restore it to faithfulness.
And so the wilderness represents danger. It represents suffering.
But it also represents refinement.
It represents preparation and represents God protecting and providing for His people as He prepares and equips and empowers His people for the next step in His redemptive mission.
The Wilderness Period Is Temporary
And so in this vision, the people of God are driven out to the wilderness just like Elijah was driven out to the wilderness. And just like always in this vision, it says that this wilderness period is going to be a temporary period.
It uses that same image once again: the 1,260 days, or the 42 months, or the three and a half years.
We’ve already talked about the fact that this is consistently used as an image throughout God’s Word that essentially describes a period of extremely intense persecution or suffering or oppression for God’s people, but that it is always temporary.
It comes up again and again and again between Daniel 7 and Daniel 12. Daniel talks about the different forms that the beast has taken throughout history, the different forms that Babylon has taken throughout history.
It’s a stock apocalyptic image that essentially means a limited time of extreme tribulation, often forced on God’s people by the beast, by Babylon.
The Entire Age of the Church as Wilderness
In other words, this is talking about the entire age of the church. The entire 2,000 or so years that we have been here so far has been a wilderness period.
This has been a tribulation period.
Remember, we talked about this, but John says right there in chapter 1 of Revelation that we are already living in the tribulation. He says, “I am your companion in the great tribulation.”
And you can see an example of that in the fact that I am exiled to the island of Patmos.
He says, “I’m living through the great tribulation and you seven churches are living through the great tribulation.”
And the same thing is true for us.
We have been in the tribulation for 2,000 years.
It is not a seven-year period at the end of all things. It is the entire history of the church from the time of Jesus up to now, stretching on for however many years are left before His return.
All of history up to this point from Jesus to now has been a wilderness period. And all of history until Jesus returns will be a wilderness period.
And so in this vision, God’s people are pursued by the serpent out into the wilderness. He is trying to destroy them. But God protects us and preserves us, and He prepares us for our role in His redemptive mission.
There Is No Non-Combatant Christianity
The point is this:
The wilderness experience is inevitable.
There is no way to avoid being attacked by the serpent.
The dragon wages war on everyone who genuinely follows Jesus.
We see that in Revelation 12:17:
“The dragon grew angry with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep God’s commandments and hold Jesus’ testimony.” — Revelation 12:17, WEB
In other words, if you are obedient to the Lord, the serpent is going to attack you. If you are loyal to the Lord, he is going to attack you. If you are publicly faithful to the Lord, testify to the truth, openly claim and declare the truth about Jesus, the serpent is going to wage war on you.
Faithfulness to the Lord paints a target on your back.
There is no such thing as non-combatant Christianity that is not under attack by the serpent in some form.
You are part of this great spiritual war between the Lamb and the serpent. You may not have consciously enlisted, but you were drafted into it when you answered Jesus’s call to come and follow Him and become a fisher of men.
The Wilderness of the Seven Churches
And so every generation of the church is going to experience this wilderness experience in some way.
In the first century, the seven churches were experiencing the wilderness in the form of persecution, especially the churches in Smyrna and Pergamum. They were under vicious attack by their local governments.
They were experiencing the wilderness through cultural exile. They were rejected by the people around them, mocked by the people around them, hated by the people around them because they wouldn’t worship the gods of Rome and they wouldn’t worship the emperor of Rome and they wouldn’t worship the empire of Rome.
They wouldn’t worship the beast in its current form at the time.
And they experienced the wilderness in the form of extreme marginalization.
They were kicked out of the trade guilds. So they could not do business on any meaningful level. They could not make any meaningful amount of money. They couldn’t buy or sell, so to speak.
They were severely penalized in their economic life. They were essentially forced into poverty if they wouldn’t follow after the idolatry and wickedness and injustice of pagan Rome.
Today, we experience the wilderness in different ways. But every generation of the church, every generation of God’s people is going to be pursued by the serpent, attacked by the serpent, and he will influence rebellious humanity to reject us and oppose us.
The Lord Protects His People
And yet the vision says something glorious.
It says, “The Lord providentially protects us.”
It says, “The Lord enables us to endure the attacks of the serpent.”
I love the way it puts this in Revelation 12:15:
“The serpent spewed water out of his mouth after the woman like a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the stream.” — Revelation 12:15, WEB
And that’s a weird image. Got a snake vomiting or something, right?
But to understand what’s happening here, we have to understand that once again, this is a common ancient Jewish apocalyptic image. They would have been very used to images like this one in the apocalyptic writings they would have grown up hearing.
They commonly use the image of a character spewing something out of their mouth as a metaphor for their words. A lot of times it’s a metaphor for a ruler issuing some kind of royal decree, or it’s an image of a teacher who is spewing out teaching that is either helpful or harmful, usually harmful.
The River From the Dragon’s Mouth
And it takes that exact image here in this vision in Revelation 12 and it says the serpent spewed waters like a river from its mouth.
So the apocalyptic imagery that it’s drawing on here essentially compares the words of the serpent, the teachings that are influenced by the serpent like the Nicolaitans or the Jezebelites or the Balaamites, as well as the royal or kingly or governmental decrees like the ones passed by Nero or Domitian or the Roman Empire overall, that flow out from the serpent’s manipulation and so forth, from the beastly empires and the Babylonian-style empires to oppose the Lord and oppress His people.
So essentially the waters like a river that spew out from the mouth of the serpent are lies, slander, propaganda, decrees that are meant to make life unbearable and impossible for God’s people to the point that we eventually just give up.
And yet, this is the beautiful part.
The Lord does not allow that plan to work.
The Earth Swallows the River
Revelation 12:16 says:
“The earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river which the dragon spewed out of his mouth.” — Revelation 12:16, WEB
Essentially, God providentially sabotages the lies and slander and propaganda and wicked decrees that were meant to lay waste to God’s people.
We see this happen all the time. There is a hostile governor who targets the people of God, but eventually the Lord takes them out. There is a violent mob that is going to stone one of God’s prophets, but the Lord providentially causes that mob to disperse instead of following through.
There’s a hostile rumor about one of God’s people meant to defame their character, and God eventually causes the truth to come out so that it dissipates, and so on and so forth.
The serpent keeps pouring out wave after wave of persecution and attack onto the people of God. And yet the Lord protects and preserves His church through all of it.
There’s this great quote by the old Catholic philosopher, a guy named Hilaire Belloc, that says that God’s church is a constantly defeated thing that always somehow outlives its attacker.
That is exactly what we are seeing happen here.
God uses ordinary events, ordinary circumstances, seemingly random things to blunt the attacks of the serpent. It is as if the earth itself, the most ordinary thing of all time, is opening up and swallowing the waters of lies and slander and persecution that the serpent is vomiting out to sweep us away.
The Church Does More Than Endure
But the vision says that He does even more than that.
It says that God doesn’t just protect and preserve us.
It says that He empowers us.
It says that by the power of the Spirit, God’s people ultimately overcome the dragon.
I love Revelation 12:11:
“They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death.” — Revelation 12:11, WEB
I think that is absolutely beautiful.
It says, “We overcome the dragon.”
Not just endure him.
Not just outlast him.
We defeat him.
We Overcome by the Blood of the Lamb
How do we defeat the dragon?
It says, one, we defeat the dragon by the blood of the Lamb.
The sacrificial death of Jesus has won the victory for us. We don’t defeat the dragon by our own power. We defeat the dragon by the blood of Jesus that has taken away our condemnation and made us absolutely bulletproof against his accusations and condemnation.
But at exactly the same time, we defeat the dragon, number two, through the word of our testimony.
When we proclaim the truth about Jesus, we are shots against the walls of Hades.
We are sieging the kingdom of the serpent.
We Overcome Through Faithfulness Unto Death
And number three, it says they did not love their life even unto death.
When we proclaim the truth, testify to the Lord, and we continue to persist in doing that even as people oppose us, even as they harm us, even as they threaten to kill us, even when continuing to proclaim the truth costs us everything, the serpent is rendered powerless.
Even when continuing to introduce the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling to the God who wants to redeem and restore them moves people to arrest us or torture us or even kill us to stop our testimony, his attacks cannot stop us.
And one by one, when we persist instead of giving up, what happens is that person after person begins to see the truth because of our testimony unto death. They begin to see the truth through our willingness to die for the truth. They begin to see that the truth is even more precious to us than our own lives.
One after another, people who have been under the spell of the serpent, the beast, Babylon start to break away from its death grip and instead come find healing and freedom and peace and redemption through the Lamb.
Revelation’s Definition of Victory
And so, just like the rest of Revelation, it describes God’s people with a specific word.
It describes the people of God as victors.
But in a very specific way, because it describes the people of God who have been killed for their faith as victors.
Not just people who have achieved success in this life, but people our world has taught us to think of as failures.
Because we’ve been taught to think of people who are killed as they carry out their mission as having lost.
If you’re in a war and you get killed by an enemy soldier, then you lost, right? If your military garrison gets wiped out by your opponent, then you lost. If there are two potential kings fighting over a throne and you get assassinated by the other candidate for kingship, then you lost.
And yet, that is not how it goes with the kingdom of God.
King Jesus defeats the serpent not by crucifying the serpent, but by being crucified by the serpent and its people.
The Church Conquers the Way the Lamb Conquers
And now the people of God overcome the serpent not by picking up weapons and fighting back against the rebellious humans in this fallen and broken world who have been deceived by the serpent.
Instead, we overcome the serpent by being killed by the serpent’s deceived people, by being persecuted by the serpent’s deceived people even unto death, but continuing to invite them to the grace of God in love and kindness and patience despite all of it.
The word that Revelation 12 gives to that is victory.
We win this great spiritual war that we’ve been drafted into by clinging to the blood of the Lamb that has brought us forgiveness rather than clinging to our self-righteousness the way that the church in Ephesus has stumbled into.
We win this great spiritual war by continuing to proclaim the testimony of Jesus rather than hiding away in cowardice so we won’t be persecuted like the church in Sardis and others.
We win this great spiritual war by treasuring the mission of Jesus to proclaim the truth and invite rebellious humanity to repentance, to find healing and love in and faithfulness to Jesus, more than we treasure our own lives or comfort, rather than trying to protect our lives and our comfort by compromising with idolatry and wickedness and injustice to protect ourselves like Pergamum and so forth.
What This Means for the Suffering Churches
And what this means is that if you are like the church in Smyrna or Philadelphia and you have been suffering immensely under the attacks of the serpent throughout the wilderness of our life in this fallen and broken world, then your suffering is part of the story.
And it is part of the victory that Jesus will win for us and through us.
It means that if your faithfulness costs you everything you have like the church in Smyrna, you can still be at peace because you know that losing everything is actually part of your victory.
It means that if you are like Antipas from Pergamum and you are literally killed for the sake of Jesus, that is not actually a victory for the serpent.
That is a victory for you.
Your death causes the serpent to lose ground, not gain ground.
What This Means for the Compromising Churches
And it means that if you are like the church in Thyatira or Laodicea or Pergamum or Sardis and you’ve been gradually allowing yourself to drift out of faithfulness to King Jesus and into compromise, you take up the mindsets of the world so they won’t think you’re weird.
You take up the falsehoods of the world so they won’t think you’re outdated. You follow along with the injustice of the world because you’re just so tired of constantly being outside of the mainstream when you stand for what God has said is good and true and right.
He says all these things, they’re not really compromises.
These things are not you watering down the faith.
These things are you switching sides.
Tolerating false teaching is essentially giving the serpent a pulpit in your church, in your household, in your heart.
He says drifting into the lukewarmness of the church of Sardis is refusing to show up for service when you get your draft notice.
The War We Win Through Faithfulness
He says that as the people of God, this life in this fallen and broken world is a war that we win through patient faithfulness, patient sacrifice, patient love for the lost.
And everything else about our life hinges on whether or not we start acting like it.
But if we do, we will see beautiful things happen.
And as John moves into Revelation 13 and 14, he is going to show us a glorious image of what all of those beautiful things look like.
Leave a comment