We come to Revelation 12. Revelation 12. If you don't have a lot of skill finding books of the Bible yet, which is normal, you might want to find Daniel chapter 7 and put a marker, your bulletin, your finger, because we're going to go there. And just for the interest of saving some time, Daniel 7 as well will be worth Just quickly looking up as I introduce our text We come to a very strange sounding passage Even for the book of Revelation. It's it's a strange one and so I'm going to read all of chapter 12 and I think you will understand why I call it strange sounding and then we will begin to look into it Hear now the word of the Lord. And a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And she was with child and she cried out being in labor and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns on its heads, were seven diadems, or crowns. And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God so that there she might be nourished for 1,260 days. And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, and the serpent of old, who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the lamb and because of the word of their testimony. And they did not love their life even to death. For this reason, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time. And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. And the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman. in order that she might fly into the wilderness to her place where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time from the presence of the serpent. And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. And the earth helped the woman and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river with which the dragon poured out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. May the Lord bless his word. Now I told you a few weeks ago that we've entered into a time in the flow of events of Revelation that we call a pause or an interlude. It's just a time where Everything stops for a moment and additional information is being given and then we'll pick back up in chapter 15 and 16 with the flow of events. The seventh trumpet, if you'll recall, was blown. And in it, it was called also the third woe, the third horrible event that would occur. And after that, what we will find after this interlude is that it will bring into being what are known as the bowl. judgments. There will be these large bowls in heaven, if you will, and they will pour out, each one of them, in quick succession, additional judgments upon humanity and this earth, and it will then all head to the culmination of the judgment of God against all people. So we're heading back into those moments, but right now we're in this pause, this interlude, and we're looking at various information and things that we need to understand, and they're helpful for us to see here so that we understand what's going on even right now in our life. So in our passage right now, we are going to be looking at the hidden forces that are behind all of these events. Everything that we've been watching happening in Revelation and the things we'll see take place later on in Revelation, all of them, there's something else bigger going on, something behind all of that. In fact, it's been going on since the beginning of time, and you have to understand that, I have to understand that, or we won't understand how to interpret life. We won't understand why things happen and how things are happening and what really is going on during both good times and bad. And so it's a very powerful section of the Bible because it pulls away, if you will, the curtain of life. And it allows you to see that other half of life or reality that you and I, on our own, simply cannot see. And we oftentimes forget about it simply because we're caught up in just day-to-day things, just making life happen. Now, there's several points in this section. I just want to draw them out. When you come to strange passages like this, it's usually helpful for you to write down or jot in your mind, at least, the key players and the key events. And that helps you kind of organize. You see in this section, there's this woman. And we need to learn who this woman is. We see this child, a dragon. We see Michael, who is the archangel. These are your key players. But then you also have many events that flow through here. We see that attempt to kill the boy that was born. We see this woman and her hiding. We see a great war that takes place in heaven between angels and demons. We have Satan being cast out of heaven. We see this massively huge hatred of the dragon toward the woman and her offspring. And finally you see God caring for this woman and her offspring. So these are the events, these are the players, and in all of this you have a lot of symbolism, if you haven't figured that out. And so I want to remind you real quickly again, when we come to symbolic language in the Bible, and Revelation is one of the books where a lot of that occurs, you'll see it also happen a lot in the book of Ezekiel and the book of Daniel. So it's important for you to learn how to deal with symbolism. Symbolism is not hiding something. It's just a different way of writing. And you want to remember four things. If you want to write these down, and if you tend to forget these types of things, maybe at the top of your Bible you might want to write these four points right here in chapter 12 since there's so much symbolic language going on. First rule when you deal with symbolism is that the symbol always is pointing to a real thing. Now for those of you who like theological terms and fancier ways of saying it, you could write it this way, the symbol always has a literal referent. In other words, the symbol is not pointing to a nothing, and it's not pointing to another symbol. The symbol is always pointing to something that really does exist, and so though we have the woman, and we have the child, and we have this dragon, and these things are done in symbolic language, you see also that they are pointing to something that actually occurs. So our job just simply is to figure that out. Second, in symbolism, often the meaning is explained in the text. Over and over again, in Revelation especially, but in Daniel as well, you will see a very symbolic vision, and then shortly afterward you'll see it explained. So you don't have to figure out what it means. The Bible already does it for you. We saw that in Revelation 1, remember, where he talked about Jesus was among the lampstands. And you're like, what's with these lampstands? And then it tells us these lampstands are the churches. Oh, now we know. The third thing you should know about symbolism is if the meaning isn't explained immediately in the context, then the context itself in which it's written usually will give you the meaning. In other words, if you just keep on reading and listening to what's being said and what's taking place, normally you'll be able to discern with quite a bit of ease the meaning of the symbol. And then finally, if anything else is lacking, very often it is the Old Testament that will help you. In other words, if you know your Old Testament, you will find that over and over and over again, these symbolic images are pointing back to an event or situation in the Old Testament. So by the time you do all four of those, most of the time, 99% of the time, you will have no problem with symbolic language. And you're going to see me do that right in front of your eyes as we go through this section. Now when we look at this passage, we see it basically breaking into three main chunks. We have the woman who gives birth in 1-6, we have the heavenly war in 7-12, and the hatred of the dragon against God's people in 13-17. And that's going to be our outline. Now, one of the most important things to keep in mind as we go through the passage, though, is that we are going to be covering massive amounts of time, sometimes within the same single sentence. So keep that in mind, and it will make this a lot easier. I've entitled this sermon, The Invisible War, because that's exactly what you have. You are having a description of a war that you don't even get to see. The only way you get to see it is because God in His grace has shown it through chapter 12. And where He pulls back the curtain and allows us to see what we on our own would never even know is happening. And so the first point that we want to look at is verses 1 through 6 of this woman who is giving birth. We see in verse 1 and in verse 3 this word, assign. These are signs in heaven. Now what's happening, remember back in chapter 11 we had the seventh trumpet blown and then we had these great words stated that the kingdom of the world has now become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ and He will reign forever and ever. Remember, and so last week I spent all that time talking about the importance of the kingdom of God. And at the end of that, in verse 19, it says that the temple, or the sanctuary of God, which is in heaven, was opened and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple, and there were these flashes of lightning, sounds and peals of thunder, earthquake, hailstorm. So we have this heavenly storm. with the pronouncement of the advent of the kingdom of God. And now we see the Ark of the Covenant. I didn't mention it then, but just the fact of the Ark of the Covenant is a reminder that God is always faithful to His promises. And that now is the unveiling of the fullness of those promises. So here we have this great hailstorm, thunderous earthquake kind of event in heaven. And in all of that, these two signs are shown. So that's the context. So it's not like he's just wandering around and two signs showed up. In the midst of all of this cacophony in heaven, these two signs appear. The fact that their signs tell us that what each of the signs describe are going to be symbolic, but also that they are very significant and great care should be taken. In fact, the first sign is even described not just as a sign, but as a great sign. So the first question we have to ask is, who is this woman? We have a woman clothed with the sign, the moon under her feet and on her head, the crown of 12 stars. Well, there's all kinds of views, and many of them are rather crazy. If you know anything about the Christian science movement, they've kind of fallen away nowadays, but they were really big in the 70s. It's a cult, and they believe that the woman there was their founder, strangely enough, Mary Baker Eddy. Others will say, well, no, this is just simply symbolizing Eve as a mother of all humanity and she is about ready to give birth to... humanity, especially, and ultimately, Jesus Christ. One of the most prevalent ones that you'll see is the Roman Catholic Church, who will argue that this is seen as Mary. In fact, if you look, you'll see that much of the symbolism in a lot of their icons of Mary will have this very, very picture of the stars and whatnot, because she's seen as the queen in heaven. And this is tempting because you can see that she's giving birth to a son and that son is obviously Jesus Christ. If you look at verse five, it's obvious. So who gave birth to Jesus Christ? Well, Mary did. And so they take that and they see this as simply speaking of her. The problem with that is it doesn't fit the context, especially when you go into verse 17 where she has all these other children that are being persecuted as well, which the Roman Catholic Church would deny because she was a perpetual virgin. So what is this? Who is this woman? Well, the woman is really, quite simply, Israel. Israel is the one who is in view here. And as we go through the rest of the chapter, I think it will be more and more obvious. But it is worth mentioning that in the Old Testament, very, very common is Israel described as a woman. And a female, she is described as the wife, if you will, of God even. Notice also that we have imagery of the sun and the moon and the stars. Now, if you have read through your Old Testament a few times, or even if you haven't, even if you're like a lot of people, and I mean no meanness by this, every time the new year starts, you start with the new Bible reading program, and you're going to get through the Bible in a year, right? And then you die somewhere in numbers. And you mean well, but you don't make it. But you do make it through Genesis. Everyone makes it through Genesis. Okay? And in Genesis, you should remember a story that sounds very similar to the vision that you have here. There's a guy named Joseph. Remember this? And Joseph is minding his own business and he gets a vision. And this vision is of a sun, the moon, and eleven stars. And they're all bowing down to him. And so he goes back to his dad and tells him about it. And Jacob is his father. Jacob's other name is what? Israel. And he tells them about it. He gets offended. His mother gets offended. His eleven brothers get offended. And the next thing you know, he's being sold into slavery into Egypt. And one thing leads to another. And ultimately, he is the one that brings the very basic beginnings of this nation called Israel into Egypt to be kept safe until at such time that Egypt has to be abandoned and Israel goes to the promised land, which is in the Exodus event. What you have there is 11 of the 12 stars. Here we have 12 stars because the 12th one was, in fact, Joseph. And so this is just borrowing from that Old Testament imagery and telling you this is the people and the nation of Israel, this woman who is pregnant. She is about ready to give birth of a son. And so we see her condition. She's in this great pain. Again, a lot of imagery in the Old Testament pictures Israel this way. In fact, most of it's in the book of Isaiah, but you'll see it over and over again where Israel is pictured as a woman and that she is in travail or in pain and agony, especially in birth-giving type of pain. And it's all about the oppression and the difficulties and all of the issues that are related to her relationship to both God and also to the nations around her. So, again, we're picking up imagery that, if you know your Old Testament, you're very comfortable with for the people of Israel. And what we have is an image of Israel just prior to the coming of Jesus. It's a nation in travail. The imagery is powerful because we see her in her great pain. Why? Well, remember, this is not a literal woman, so this is not literal what? It's not literal pain. So why is she in this great pain? What's the imagery going on? Well, the next series of verses will bring out one aspect of that pain, but there is the idea of how all of human history has been moving toward this moment. I don't want to be too graphic, but if you want, in the imagery and the story of the Old Testament, you can almost say this, that the insemination of Israel occurred at the life and times of Abraham, where he is given this covenant, that through him all the nations would become blessed, and that he himself would become a great nation, and that great nation was Israel. And then you can track that through his son. So you have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And each one of them given that same promise until it comes into its fruition with Jacob as they go off into Egypt. Now all of that then from the rest of the Old Testament is moving with this promise of this one who will come to save us from our sin and who will defeat this evil enemy of ours that we cannot fight and beat, Satan himself. Go back, just think about the whole picture of what the Old Testament is doing. You'll see, that's all it is. And so this, if you will, picturing the insemination basically at that point, then Israel is slowly becoming, if she was given the image as a woman, she's slowly increasing in her progress in her pregnancy. And it's all heading to a moment where everything in history is pointing to, and that is the coming of the Savior. So when you leave off with Malachi, you see, if you can have it in your mind, this image of a woman who was fully pregnant and ready to give birth, and now we're just waiting. And then you pick it up in the New Testament, and now the time has come. And that's what's going on. This is the image that's taking place. And in all of this is the onslaught of the pain that is involved in it. And so as history moves forward, the pregnancy, as it were, develops until we see Christ's birth. Now in verses 3 through 6, you have an incredibly gruesome image and I'm going to describe it for you and I mean there's no easy way to describe it and I'll leave your minds to go as far as they want to go with what's actually being said here. So we pick up now a second sign. The first great sign is Israel pregnant and ready to give birth to this child. Now a second sign is this dragon. So another sign appeared in heaven, so this is still going on up there. And behold, a great red dragon, and it's got seven heads, ten horns, on the heads are the seven crowns, and his tail swept away the stars of heaven. But the key part is in verse four, and the dragon stood before the woman who was about ready to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child. What you have here is an image of Satan, and we'll explain why, and how great his hatred was for God, and how great his hatred was for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and how great his hatred was for, in fact, Israel, who is the one who is to bring forth that one. The heads and the horns and the crowns, you're like, what's up with that? Well, these are very common symbolism, and we will deal with them in detail in chapter 17, so I don't want to take the precious time I have to go into it. But notice, back in Daniel 7, Daniel 7, verse 7 and 8, the similarities to what's going on in Daniel 7. In fact, Daniel and Revelation oftentimes should be best read together because there's so much overlap and explanation between the two of what's going on. But in Daniel chapter 7, 7 and 8, it says, and after this I kept looking in the night vision. So we're talking about a vision here with Daniel. And behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong. And it had large iron teeth and it devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet. And it was different from all the beasts that were before it and had 10 horns. And while I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them. And three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it. And behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth uttering great boasts." So once again, you've got weird language, right? Symbolism. But very similar with the horns here. Now go over to chapter 7, verse 19. And then, I desire to know the exact meaning of the fourth beast. Well, there you go. Remember all of that stuff I told you about symbolism? Here we're going to get some explanation. And then I desired to know the exact meaning of the fourth beast, which was different from all the others, exceedingly dreadful with its teeth of iron, its claws of bronze, which devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet. And the meaning of the ten horns that were on its head, and the horn which came up before which three of them fell, namely, that horn which had eyes and mouth, uttering great boasts, and which was larger in appearance than its associates. I kept looking and that horn was waging war with the saints and overpowering them until the ancient of days came and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the highest one and their time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom. And then he said the fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth. So now we know. The fourth beast is also a kingdom, which will be different from all the other kingdoms. And it will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it. And as for the ten horns out of this kingdom, ten kings will arise. and another will arise after them, and he will be different from the previous ones, and will subdue three of the kings." So there's the explanation, and we get a sense then of what's going on. The beast is his kingdom, and the horns are also these other kingdoms and kings. All I want you to look at there is how similar that passage is to what we see here, and the reason is because they're speaking of the same situation. Now back to Revelation 12. These horns and these diadems, they're speaking of seven consecutive kingdoms in history. The last If it is actually talking about what Daniel is speaking of, and I believe it is, that last head that's on this dragon is actually the final kingdom. And it's the one that will have the ten horns on it. It's weird. Again, it's symbolism, so don't freak out. So you got all these heads, but it's the final head that will have all those horns that Daniel was talking about. Again, all of this is because it's symbolic language. There's no problem with mixing metaphors and making weird things like eyeballs and mouths on a horn. In fact, it tends to heighten the meaning by doing so. But what you want to know and understand are these kingdoms that are on the head of this dragon are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The final kingdom is a yet future king or kingdom that belongs to the beast that we just read about in Daniel. So what he is describing is, here is this dragon that we'll see is Satan himself, and on his head are these great kingdoms. And these are huge kingdoms. It's worth noting that the enemies of Israel in the Old Testament were often described as being a dragon. Specifically, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon are all described as being a dragon, or the Leviathan, if you have that in your translation. Now, what's going on? Here's the point. In fact, if you take away one thing from this sermon, I want you to take away this. Each one of these were massive kingdoms. I mean, these were world forces. These were massive. In fact, they were so massive and so influential that our existence right now in America are still affected by these kingdoms. the thought process, the arguments, the philosophy, systems of logic, philosophy, mathematics, all of that. You will find all of those things found as a result of these massive worldwide kingdoms that you and I seldom give much thought to. And yet, as massive as they were, according to chapter 12, they are all were under the power of whom? the dragon. Beneath and behind and pushing all of these kingdoms forward is this dragon. And this is when the curtain becomes pulled back for us to see. Here we see a bit more starkly what Paul then says in Ephesians chapter 6 when he says, we do not wrestle with flesh and blood, but we wrestle with the spiritual forces of darkness. And you know what? If I gave you all a test and every one of you who have been here at this church for any length of time came to that and say, is it true that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against spiritual forces of darkness? True or false? You would all mark true. I know it. But how many of you really believe it? That's the question I want. How many of you really are cognizant right now in the events taking place right now in all of human history that behind all of that is something far bigger than a madman in North Korea or a crazed gunman in Las Vegas or merely nations flexing their muscles like Britain when they got out of the European Union, or whatever else you might be thinking about right now within world events. How many of you really are cognizant that all day long, every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every second, what is really going on in this world is something you don't even see? that there is really an invisible war. I mean this not as a rebuke, I'm just telling you that when you get yourself so bent out of shape and when you get so angry and you feel like we've got to do something and you start to sell your standards down the road because you think maybe this will change it, maybe this will fix it. Beloved, we live in a nation that is under the control of Satan. That is our nation. We are not special. We are no different than Assyria or any of the others. All of the nations of this world are under the control of this dragon. These seven are pulled out. because they are key to the history of Egypt and the coming of the Messiah. But all of them are there. So you think back just in the recent human history, and you think about Stalin and Pol Pot and Hitler and Mayo, and you think about just with them alone, somewhere close to 100 million, if not more, people murdered. And you say, how does that happen? It happens because behind all of that is Satan who abhors humanity. In fact, do you know what's happening every time you see all of these humans being murdered senselessly? Do you really know what's going on? Do you understand what really is the horror of abortion, where we are slaughtering babies right and left in this nation? Do you really understand the issue? Every time this is happening, behind it is the forces of Satan destroying image bearers. He hates people. He hates them. Because they carry with them the image of God, and he hates God. Do you grasp that battle? If you don't, it causes you to become very weak and prone to be knocked over here and here and here because you get caught up in only what you see and you forget that there's something far bigger and far worse at work. So when you go home tonight, My only hope is if you can remember one thing is that when you turn on the television, you go to your favorite website, whatever starts coming across your screen or into your ears and you hear people telling you about this or that, realize that's not the issue. There's something far bigger going on. And here we have this image of this dragon with these kingdoms behind which he is driving them, and all of it is that they are opposed to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. We also have this imagery in verse 4 of his tail sweeping away a third of the stars of heaven. Well, the stars are a common designation for angels or spiritual beings. And that's all he's talking about. It's not literal stars. It's talking about the taking of a third of these spiritual beings, angels, now they're called fallen angels, out of heaven. This speaks of a time in the past when Satan is cast from heaven and he takes his fallen angels with him. And the question always becomes, when? When does that happen? And we have several mentionings. Depending on how you understand certain passages, There are several times where we'll have mentionings of Satan falling from heaven. You'll see them in Isaiah 14, in Ezekiel 28. I don't think those are actually talking about Satan. Many people do. And if you hold to that, then those would be two areas. But you also have it in Luke 10, 18, where Jesus had sent out 70 men to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God. And they were shocked because they were finding out that demons were being cast out when they called out upon the name of Jesus Christ. And Jesus said that as they were doing that, he was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. So we have that event. And so some people say, well, that's when it happened. Well, it's not. It's only a part of it. Because in John chapter 12 verse 31, Jesus talks about this being something that is still future. When Jesus is talking about it in John 12, it had not yet happened. He said that it would be connected to his death on the cross. So in one way, Satan fell out of heaven in Luke 8 Luke 10, but it was not a full falling out if you will And I would argue that each of these was not a complete casting out of heaven We're gonna see the complete casting out later on in this chapter if you will It's a blow each one is his death blow to to his kingdom and each one is knocking this kingdom down one more notch What do I mean by that? Forgive me if you are offended by this choice. I don't know your positions on it. But I'm going to use Harry Potter as my example. If you know anything with the Harry Potter stories, you've got the Horcrux. If you don't know what a Horcrux is, then just kind of veg out. Remember, the Horcrux contained part of the soul, right, of Voldemort. And so as you destroyed each one of them, what was happening to Voldemort? He was slowly dying, right? And that's what's happening, and that's kind of the image of what you see in these stories and these events where Satan is coming and falling from heaven. As each event happens, his strength and his power and his presence, each one is becoming weakened and weakened and weakened, all leading up to the key event that is laid later on in chapter 12. Here in chapter 12, verse 4, this falling out of heaven is connected to the birth of Jesus, where Satan gathers these angels who will follow him. So you have his death involving the casting out of Satan, the birth of Jesus involving the casting out of Satan. The casting out demons by his followers is a casting out of Satan. And in verse 7 we will see the final war with Michael, where the final and total banishment from heaven will occur. And that's a time yet future. So, with that, the scene moves fast forward to the time of Christ's birth. And the scene, as I said, is grotesque. Essentially what you have is a woman, Israel, in the birthing bed with her feet in the stirrups ready to give birth. And crouched between her legs with his mouth gaping open waiting for the baby's head to crown is Satan. So that when the baby is born, the moment the baby is expelled out of the womb, he will clamp his jaws down and destroy this baby. That's the imagery. Very, very graphic. Very, very disgusting. And it exemplifies the hatred of Satan against the Messiah. And again, we just don't get how much Satan hates humanity, and most definitely how much he hates Satan. We forget that we really are all human, as human beings, image bearers, and that we are recipients of God's care and His grace. We go all the way back into the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind, and in chapter 3, verse 15, the serpent, the dragon, was told by God that there would be one who was the seed of the woman, and he would destroy him. And from that moment forward, we can trace that promise all the way to the birth, the death, the resurrection, and the return of Jesus Christ. It starts in Cain and Abel, where we see, right away, murder coming from the hearts of mankind. We see Satan attempting to corrupt the human race in Genesis 6, where women are lying with fallen angels, demons, and giving birth to these monstrosities. It's an attempt to corrupt the human race. And you can trace this all the way through the Old Testament, and it will culminate in Egypt, where all of those male children, remember? Moses was one of them that was supposed to get killed. It's still Satan doing his evil work, trying to erase the males, because out of Israel would come this one man who would destroy. Many people think that Satan thought he won when Christ was crucified. Beloved, that's not correct. When he saw Christ crucified, he knew he lost. What Satan was trying to do was prevent the crucifixion. He was trying to prevent the birth of the Son. He didn't want him because he knew that in Jesus Christ was his doom. And so throughout human history, he is constantly afflicting and pursuing these male children, trying to find the one to destroy. You see it with Haman in the book of Esther, where he thinks that he finally figured out a way to have all of the Israelites murdered, absolute genocide, and yet they are rescued. You can see it in Matthew 2.16 when Herod orders the killing of all of the male children in that area from the age two down, all in an attempt to have the son killed, and yet he escapes. Satan knows a prophecy. He knows that through Israel, the seed of the woman, his destruction would come. And here we see that event. In verse 5, she gives birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And so his plans are frustrated. They're always frustrated. That's why we're ultimately called not to fear him, because he is not the one who is the victor. But what's interesting is verse 5 literally skips over the life of Christ, the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ. You have Jesus born, and He's in heaven. And everything else is just kind of ignored. Notice also the verb tense, though, regarding the child in this. John sees it as in the future, indicating that though Christ was enthroned in heaven, that was not the final aspect of his rule, that there would come a time where he would rule on the earth with a rod of iron. So even though he's in heaven reigning now, there is a time yet future that he would rule the nations, and that is his kingdom on earth that we are waiting for. So if Christ is snatched away into heaven, what is left for the dragon to destroy? And the answer is Israel. And again you have this other allusion to the Old Testament with Israel fleeing from the dragon, Egypt, by going into the wilderness. So remember, Egypt was pictured like a dragon. And what did Israel do when they left? They fled into the wilderness and then there they were cared for. And that's the same imagery going on here. That the woman flees into the wilderness. Israel flees into this wilderness where she had a place prepared by God so that there she might be nourished and cared for for 1,260 days. Now between verses five and six, a large amount of time has occurred, massive amount. It starts at the Christ's return to heaven, and it ends sometime in the yet future during this final seven years, which is known as the Great Tribulation. And that has not yet occurred. So verse 6 now moves ahead in time to a time of the tribulation and we'll pick that point up again in verse 13. But notice again that time frame given, 1260 days. And remember what we saw in chapter 11, those same numbers were showing up with the nations trampling the holy city of Jerusalem and those two witnesses sent by God who are prophesying and proclaiming and bringing judgment. All of this is happening at the same time. At the same time, Israel, God is taking His remnant, the faithful ones, and He is rescuing them. Now, from there we break back and we go to a different scene. And we go to this war in heaven in verses 7 through 12. Here we see a future and final heavenly battle in heaven, and that would be cool to watch. Notice who's missing, though. In verses 7 through 12, you'll have no mention of God because God is not involved actively. In fact, when God gets involved in the fight, there's no fight. He just wins. And we'll see that in several chapters from now. But what we have here is Satan rising up in heaven. Michael, the very powerful, known as the archangel, he takes his army of angels and there's this mighty battle in heaven. And this is something the Bible talks much of. And what's going on here is that ultimately Satan loses and he is banished from heaven. Notice that in verse 8, it makes it clear that it is the final banishment, if you will. And there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, and now we find out who he is. The serpent of old, who is called the devil, and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. So that was the great final battle, yet future. So no longer does Satan have it. Incrementally he's moving toward that destruction. But even this is not his final destruction. You're going to find that now he's on the earth and he's going to wage war against humanity just because he hates everybody. But then we're going to find him get locked up in the abyss. And then we're going to find him released from the abyss, and ultimately he will be cast into the lake of fire. So we're still seeing slowly the power and the presence of Satan fading from our sight. We're looking to the final end when he is cast into hell itself, and that is still not yet happening. Now to get a sense of how evil he is, just think of the names and the titles given to him in verse 9. Remember, there is no name for Satan. He does not have a name in the Bible. And Lucifer is not his name. Don't think that. It's just not. It's repeated so often that we think it's true, but it's not. Nowhere does he ever get a name. And the reason is a name confers honor and respect, and there is nothing respectable about this being. All of the terms that we call him are all titles or descriptors. He is the devil. All the devil means is he is the slanderer and the accuser. In other words, he's never on your side. He will tell you he's on your side, but he's never on your side. The word Satan is not a name. It means adversary, for that is what he is and that's what he always will be. He is our enemy. Notice what his reaction is. He's filled with this great, great wrath. He knows He only has a little bit of time now, because we're now at the back end of the seven years of tribulation. And after that, things are going to happen very quick for Him. And so in verse 12, it says, Rejoice, O heavens, and you dwell in them. Woe though to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time. In verses 10 through 12, we see this powerful proclamation again of the kingdom of God, don't we? Here he is thrown down and immediately the voice from heaven loudly proclaims, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ has come. Why? For the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. No longer will he be allowed in heaven. No longer does he have a place in heaven. He's no longer allowed to do what he loves to do, and that is accuse the brethren. Heaven is done with them. Heaven is done with his evil. God is finished using him in heaven for his purposes. And in verse 11, what was the answer for overcoming those constant, incessant accusations against the brethren? Meaning, what I mean by that is this, guys, when you wake up and you feel that overwhelming sense of guilt, where you feel that sense of anxiety where you failed yet again, or maybe you would say, you know, I don't even feel like I'm saved. where the oppression comes maybe upon you so deep, and maybe you hide it, but you feel those things, where all you can think about is, how can I be able to call myself a Christian? How can I? I am such a fool. I've done it again, I've done it again, I've done it again. And you beat yourself up, and you're just, you're under this incredible accusation, which is the work of Satan. What's the answer in verse 11? How do we overcome it? Well, we overcome it because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony and that they did not love their life even to death. That's how you overcome it. You don't overcome your guilt and your failures and those accusations that go on in your mind because you think about your good works, because you'll never be good enough. It'll never be because of your faithfulness. It'll never be because of your diligence. Ultimately, three things. The first thing is that Jesus died for me and He took my wrath. Second, I believe that and I trust in that. That's what He says there. That I trust that He did die for me and took my wrath. And third, the hope of what is to come rather than what is. that I love, how does he say, that they did not love their life even to death. What does he mean by that? That they are even content to die because they know beyond that is eternal life. They don't try to cling to the life. The false Christian is the one who will ultimately deny God when having to choose between life and death. But the one who has been truly converted is the one who loves God more than his life because in God is a life. So how do you how do you fight against these accusations. You remember who Christ is and what he did. You remember that you believe that and you remember that even if you die you live. It's that simple. From there we move to the hatred of the dragon. So now having seen the fall of Satan and his great hatred, now we move to that against God's people in verses 13 to 17. So now we're picking back up what was going on in verse 6. Now I don't have time, but in your community groups you can look up these two passages in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 because it speaks of this time. But when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. So he begins to persecute Israel. And God enables Israel to flee from his presence and to a place where he cannot get to. Where that is, we don't know. It doesn't say, so we should not wonder. All we know is that God prepares a place for the people of Israel, the faithful of Israel here, to flee to so that they are not destroyed. Now remember, not every Israelite is here. It is those who are believing Israel, those who trust in Jesus as their true Savior and Messiah. That's what's in mind here, and that God keeps His own safe. And then we have this imagery of Satan trying to drown them, right? And so the serpent pours water like a river out of his mouth so he could overwhelm these people. Now you have two choices in this. You can take this as a literal thing that somehow he raises up a massive flood to destroy them, or you could see it as symbolic. I think it's symbolic. If you want to take it the other way, it really doesn't change anything. But in these two passages in my notes, if you have them, in Jeremiah, it talks about the enemies rising up like a flood trying to destroy Israel. I think that that's what he's doing. What he's doing is he's just stirring up the nations to go against these people and to seek to destroy them. And you'll see it happen over and over again till we get to the end of the book of Revelation. In other words, Satan is seeking to overwhelm Israel by a flood of enemies, but God continues to keep them safe. He just absorbs all of that and enables his people to stay safe. And then verse 17 then, because he can't kill them, he turns to make war with more people. So I want you to just ask yourself, who are these others? It says, the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring. Well, if the ones who are being kept safe is believing Israel, then who are these people? They're her offspring, so they are some way, shape, or form part of Israel. It's not just people. So who is it? And I think that the only way that we can understand this, and we'll see it later on, but it's best to see these as, remember those 144,000? Remember they're all male Jews? And that they were set aside for a special purpose? Well, I think that those are her offspring here in verse 17. We'll see that later. I don't have time to develop that right now. So that's the chapter. It's a strange chapter. It's a very, very incredible interlude that we'll pick up in the Lord Willing next week when we look in chapter 13. And in chapter 13, you're going to discover what's known as the unholy trinity. You're going to see these two beasts. So we got Satan. And now we're going to, next week, have these two beasts revealed. And who are they? And how do they function? And we're going to continue to see this invisible war and this incredible hatred for the people of God and for Christ. And frankly, in chapters 12 through 14, very little of this is pleasant. The pace is very rapid, but I want you to understand what you saw. Now listen, you know I'm at the end, if you have my notes, you know I'm at the end of my sermon, so you start putting your Bible away, you start thinking about what's for lunch, and I don't want you to. Just listen for just a couple more minutes. I want you to, again, understand what you saw. You saw an invisible war. Behind everything in this world of ours is the presence and the power of Satan. You must learn that. You must. All the machinations of mankind are simply pawns in his hand. So you say, what's going on with North Korea? Satan is what's going on with North Korea. What's going on with ISIS? Satan is what's going on with ISIS. But what's going on with the Democratic Party? Satan. What's going on with the Republican Party? Satan. What's going on behind our presidency and every president we've ever had? Satan. Satan is working and working and working to bring woe and destruction and damnation to humanity. It is his number one goal. He cannot destroy Christ, and he knows that, but he can work his woe on humanity. And in your community groups, that's what I want you to think about. I want you to think about how this affects you. I want you to think about it the next time you and your wife are fighting like cats and dogs. What's driving that? I've got two men here who are police officers. What are you looking at when you show up at a scene of just horror or nastiness? What is it? Do we just need a new law? Do we need this? How are you interpreting it that's different? than the other men and women on the police forces. How do you interpret those murders, those rapes, those thefts, those beatings? How do we see it? God in his grace in this chapter pulls back the curtain and he says, look, there's something far bigger going on than that hostile takeover with your company where you're going to lose your job. There's something much bigger going on. And you better get your heads around it. What we have here is a glimpse into the work of Satan since his fall to destroy humanity and wage war against heaven. And we see the literal fury in his heart. So I'm going to make an appeal. It breaks my heart when I watch moms and dads then seemingly not take that into consideration when they make certain choices in their homes for them and their children as to what they shall absorb and the activities that they will be involved in, how they will go about learning and seeing and understanding this world. You have to understand everything in this world in itself is opposed to you and God. All of it is under the power of Satan. There's not some little glimmer of good in any nation that you see. What you also have to understand, the good news is that God uses him. God uses him so as to accomplish his will and his purposes. If you will, God has Satan on a chain. He's a junkyard dog. He's vicious. He's evil. He's vile. But he is still under the control of God. And in the end, God will deal with him when it's time. But you, beloved, don't be foolish into thinking there's something neutral in your life. There's nothing. Everything is either displaying the glory of God or the presence of Satan. And you should be thinking about how that affects you, your family, and how you function in this society.