When we concluded Sunday's passage we saw the devil and his angels kicked out of heaven for good. They will no longer be granted any access to God to accuse believers of wrongdoing. When the inhabitants of heaven see the dragon and his angels hurled to the earth, rejoicing breaks out.
"Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: 'Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down." (Revelation 12:10) We don't know who the owner of this loud voice is, but it almost certainly has to be the voice of one who was redeemed by Christ, for it refers to other believers as "our brothers and sisters". It may not be a single voice but the combined voices of all the redeemed.
Those who are already in heaven are no longer suffering the indignity of having Satan accuse them before God, but their brothers and sisters who are still on the earth---those who came to faith in Christ during the Great Tribulation---are still in the heat of battle. They are still fighting against the flesh, fighting against the world, and fighting against the temptations Satan sends their way. Until now these new believers have had Satan whispering behind their backs, but now he's been cast down to the earth. The voice in heaven speaks of the steadfast faithfulness of the believers who are still in the world and who have resisted the devil. "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. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!" (Revelation 12:11-12a) People who come to Christ during the Great Tribulation are going to find themselves in a very precarious situation. They will refuse to bow to the image of the Antichrist and they will refuse to take his mark. They will share the gospel with others like the apostles did after the resurrection of Christ. The world is going to know who they are and their lives will be in danger. But just like the apostles who fearlessly preached the name of Christ in spite of the threat of death, these Tribulation saints will speak boldly in the name of their Redeemer.
Now that the devil and his angels have no access to the throne of God, the only place they can do any harm is on the earth, so the voice says, "But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short." (Revelation 12:12b)
What is the first thing that old serpent does? He tries to eliminate the nation of Israel. Earlier in our chapter John saw Israel represented as a woman with a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was with child and gave birth to the Messiah. Even though the dragon was waiting to devour her child, he was unsuccessful. He hates the nation the Messiah was born into and he wants to prevent the remaining prophecies regarding the Messiah from coming true. If there is no Israel, there is no throne of David, and if there is no throne of David, how can the Lord Jesus Christ return and rule the world from it? The dragon focuses now on wiping the Jewish people from the earth. "When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child." (Revelation 12:13) When the Lord Jesus spoke to His nation about the end times, He said that when they see the abomination spoken of by Daniel standing in the temple, they are to flee Jerusalem for their lives. (Matthew 24:15, Mark 13:14, Daniel 9:27) We've already discussed in our study the fact that the Antichrist will set up an image of himself in the third temple. This will be an abomination. It will make the temple "desolate" of true believers because the Jewish people will not be able to worship in a temple that has been desecrated. When they see this sign, they will remember the words of the prophet Daniel and of Jesus, and they will flee Jerusalem.
The Lord will protect them from the wrath of the dragon. "The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach." (Revelation 12:14) John may be speaking symbolically, literally, or both when he mentions the "two wings of a great eagle". There are three top theories about what this may mean and we will discuss them below.
First, in the Bible there are several references to God's picking up His people and carrying them on eagle's wings, so verse 14 may be a reference to His divine provision and protection. For example, when the Lord spoke of rescuing the Hebrew people from Egypt, He said, "I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to Myself." (Exodus 19:4) When He cared for the people in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt, He says that like an eagle He spread His wings and carried them. (Deuteronomy 32:10-11) The Lord promises to give us the strength we need if we trust in Him, and He says that He will renew our strength so that we soar on wings like eagles. (Isaiah 40:31)
The second theory proposed by many modern scholars is that in John's vision he witnessed the Jewish people of Jerusalem leaving Israel on airplanes. It could be that as soon as they learn the Antichrist is desecrating the temple, they head to the airport before they can be stopped. We don't know whether the Antichrist will shut down any of the airports in Israel, but if he does he hasn't done it in time to prevent the people he hates from escaping his clutches. John would have had no idea what an airplane is, and he would have had a limited ability to describe such a sight, and he describes it as a large eagle with two wings.
The third theory, and the one that is dearest to my heart, is that the "eagle" symbolizes the United States since our national emblem is the eagle. In the world today, the United States is the best friend Israel has. I like to think that the citizens of the United States who are still on the earth during the Great Tribulation will still be friends to Israel and will do their part in protecting her from the dragon (Satan). One of the main reasons we are her friend today is that the United States has such a large population of evangelical Christians. Those who will inhabit the United States during the Great Tribulation are people who were left behind at the rapture of the church because they had not accepted Christ as their Savior. But a vast number of them may come to faith in Christ during the end times. The people of the United States have been exposed to the preaching of the gospel and to the sight of churches and Bibles their whole lives. They will be in a good position to recognize what has happened when the rapture takes place. Religious programming may not still be on the air in those days if the Antichrist puts a stop to it, but millions of Bibles will still exist and I think that people will seek them out and read them. Compelled by their newfound faith, the believers of our nation may be the very ones who help Israel in her direst hour of need, and if so then the United States will be the "great eagle" John saw in his vision.
The Jewish people will be protected during the final 3.5 years of the Great Tribulation. When the dragon sees that they have escaped him, John says: "Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent." (Revelation 12:15) In the Bible we sometimes see an invading army referred to as a "flood". The Antichrist may send troops after the woman. But it could be a literal flood because in the book of Job we see that Satan does have some control over the weather when God allows it. In Job 1:18-19 the devil brings a tornado upon a house where all Job's children are gathered. So we see that the devil has some influence over the forces of nature from time to time.
Whatever this "flood" is, it fails to accomplish its purpose. "But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of its mouth." (Revelation 12:16) In the Old Testament the troops that Pharaoh sent after the Hebrew people were drowned---"swallowed up"----at the Red Sea. When the sons of Korah rebelled in the book of Numbers, the ground opened up and swallowed them. If the flood is literal then the opening of the ground is most likely literal. If the flood represents an army, then the opening of the ground may be literal (a natural disaster) or it may be a reference to being defeated by a stronger army. This stronger army could be human beings and believers in Christ who are guarding Israel in the wilderness or it could be the supernatural angelic army of God.
Infuriated by his inability to touch the people from Jerusalem whom God is protecting in the desert, the dragon roars in a rage and turns his wrath toward believers around the world. "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." (Revelation 12:17) The believers around the world are called the woman's "offspring" because they are trusting in the male child (Jesus) whom she bore. These believers are made up of both Jews and Gentiles living throughout the world who have come to faith during the Great Tribulation. Those who trust in Christ, whether Jew or Gentile, are all of the same family in the Lord's eyes, as Galatians 3:28 tells us: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus." These are all the sons and daughters of the living God, and Satan hates them because he hates God. But since he can't touch God, he will try to lay his hands on God's children.
Join us tomorrow when John takes a break from the forward action in Revelation to back up and explain to us how the Antichrist came onto the world scene and how he managed to deceive enough people to grab the reigns of power. It's going to take us several days to get through that portion of our study, but it's important that we get these details straight in our minds before the book proceeds on into what is called "the seven bowl judgments".
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