In Friday's study John saw what he called "a great sign in heaven". This sign was the sight of a woman who represented the nation of Israel. We were told that she was about to give birth and we discussed the fact that the "male child" she was giving birth to was the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. We briefly mentioned the red dragon whom we are going to meet today, because John said the red dragon was waiting to devour the woman's son, and we talked about how Satan tried everything he could to prevent the birth of the Messiah but was unsuccessful. After the Messiah was born, Satan tried to have Him killed both as a child and then later on as an adult, but until the appointed time he couldn't lay a finger on Jesus until the day came when the Lord Jesus willingly submitted to death on the cross. Even after His death, that old serpent the devil couldn't hold Him in the grave, for He rose in victory on the third day and is alive forever.
We are going to take a more in-depth look at the red dragon and at the woman of Chapter 12 today and tomorrow. We are going to see how angry the dragon is that all his plots against Jesus have failed. He's going to take his rage out on the inhabitants of the earth during the Great Tribulation, and in particular he's going to despise the people of Israel because they are the nation into which the Lord was born. But true to His promise, God is going to protect the people of Israel from the devil's wrath. This is why John saw God's copy of the ark of the covenant in heaven in Chapter 11, because God is reminding Israel that He is a covenant-keeping God.
Just after John sees the sign of the woman who represents Israel (she wears a crown with twelve stars, symbolizing Israel's twelve tribes) and just after he tells us she is about to give birth, he sees another sign in heaven. "Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads." (Revelation 12:3) Keep in mind that the dragon's appearance is symbolic, just as the woman's appearance is symbolic. I don't think there will be a literal enormous red dragon roaming the earth in the end times with a bizarre number of heads on his body. Everything about the dragon's appearance stands for something.
The prophet Daniel had a vision of this same creature, but instead of calling it a dragon he called it a beast. Daniel described four great world kingdoms. One of these is the kingdom of the Antichrist during the Great Tribulation. Daniel said of this beast (the Antichrist) and its kingdom, "It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot what was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns." (Daniel 7:7b) Both John and Daniel saw a powerful ruler of the end times who will have ten horns. As we get further into our study of Revelation and learn more about the Antichrist, John will say that ten "kings" will make an alliance with the Antichrist in the last days. John will call them kings because in his day that's what a nation's ruler was called. But they may be presidents, dictators, and monarchs from ten nations of the world who band together to give their support to the Antichrist. In the Scriptures a "horn" stands for power and strength or for a ruler's right to reign. When John and Daniel see the creature with ten horns on his head, they know that the horns represent what they called kings in their day. These men would not have known what a president is, so they simply call them kings, and we don't want to get hung up on the terminology they use.
The dragon has seven heads because in Chapter 17 we will be told that the dragon's seven heads stand for five kings who have already fallen, one king who presently exists, and one king who has not yet come. We will be told that the seven heads also represent seven hills, and when we get to Chapter 17 we are going to look at the most popular theory about these seven hills. But we don't need to concern ourselves with these things while we are in Chapter 12. The Lord placed the visions of Revelation in a particular order because they have to be studied in a particular order or else they won't make any sense to us. For now all we need to know is that the seven heads of the dragon stand for something, and that we are going to be told in Chapter 17 what they stand for.
In today's passage the dragon does something quite dramatic. "Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth." (Revelation 12:4a) The most widely accepted theory about the first half of verse 4 is that it's a reference to Satan's rebellion and to the rebellion of a number of other angels. Earlier in our study of Revelation we found fallen angels being called "stars". So it is generally believed that when the dragon sweeps a third of the stars from the sky, the Bible is saying that when Satan rebelled against God, a third of the angels joined him. We don't know how many angels God created. In John's visions he's seen more angels assembled in heaven than it's possible for him to count, so they may number in the millions or billions. Or there may be so many of them that our minds can't fathom their number. It's a sobering thought when we realize that a third of the original number of angels turned away from the Lord and gave their allegiance to Satan.
When we find the Lord Jesus casting demons out of people in the New Testament, what He's casting out are fallen angels. We don't how how or why these people became afflicted by possession, but more than likely it was because they engaged in pagan occult practices. This is probably why we only find Jesus encountering demon-possessed people outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of worship for the Jewish people. Blatant idolatry was not on display there except that which was done by the Roman occupiers. Even though not all the Jewish people of Jesus' day were still actively practicing their religion, I doubt they were bowing down to idols. Some of them had drifted away from their relationship with the Lord, and we know this because of the things the Lord Jesus said when preaching to them, but that doesn't mean they took up the practices of the Gentiles around them. We know that a lot of the chief priests and scribes had fallen from their closeness to the Lord because their hypocrisy was the main thing for which the Lord Jesus took them to task. But I don't think the chief priests and scribes were secretly practicing the occult. By and large, the majority of the people of Jerusalem were not doing anything that would create an opening for possession to occur, so we find the Lord Jesus encountering the demon-possessed outside of the city of Jerusalem and in territories with large Gentile populations.
We don't want to spend too much time talking about fallen angels, but it was important to establish who they are since John is going to speak later in our chapter about "the dragon and his angels". We needed to know that these angels are not the angels who remained faithful to their Creator. It's not healthy to concentrate on the powers of darkness or to develop a fear of what's going on in the unseen spiritual realm. As believers in Christ and as the children of the living God, we aren't meant to go through life with our minds fixed on such things. Spending too much time pondering the spirit world does nothing beneficial for us but instead takes up space in our minds that should be reserved for Christ. As the Bible instructs us, we are to fix our thoughts on Jesus. (Hebrews 3:1) We don't need to be afraid of anyone or anything because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4)
Tomorrow we are going to see the archangel Michael and the angels of heaven throwing the dragon and his angels out of heaven. We are going to use an Old Testament passage from the book of Job to explain this battle. Then we are going to see the devil taking his anger out on the people of the earth and we will find him pursuing the woman (Israel). She will flee into the wilderness to be protected by God. The action is going to become fast and fierce now, and we are going to be utterly amazed at how the world events of the end times fit perfectly into our modern times. John does the best he can to describe what he sees, and he can't fully understand everything he sees, but when we compare his visions with the technology we currently have and with the technology that is presently being developed, we will become aware that there's nothing that occurs in Revelation which couldn't occur in our own lifetime.
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