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Sinner-Saint -> RE: Revelation 12 (8/14/2008 4:26:33 PM)
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Interplay between Israel and Satan
Revelation chapter twelve
To dwell on this caricature of Satan are the twin parallel accounts in chapter twelve of Revelation. Again, it would be a mistake to miss the shift in both focus and scene from chapter eleven and try to read Revelation as a novel. Some commentators actually describe this chapter as the third Woe, yet no particular Wrath is described which would qualify as calamity of Biblical proportions which would suit the final stroke of the Scroll’s decrees for the end of the age. Indeed, the only end-time period referred to in the chapter is one half of the one ‘seven.’ The first parallel account of chapter twelve, centered on the woman, gives the figurative description of Israel:
REV 12:1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.
Here is a depiction that harkens back to how God views the nation of Israel.
EZE 16:6 " `Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" 7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.
EZE 16:8 " `Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine.
Thus, Scripture figuratively presents the nation of Israel as a woman. Furthermore in explaining the imagery of Revelation 12:1, in the historical account of Genesis, Joseph has a dream from God which includes the same symbology as in Revelation:
GE 37:9 Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. "Listen," he said, "I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me."
GE 37:10 When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, "What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?" 11 His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Here Israel, the person, or Jacob the patriarch of the twelve tribes, identifies himself as the sun, his wife as the moon, and his twelve sons as the stars. So when looking at the symbolic figure of the woman clothed in the sun, with the moon at her feet and twelve stars on her head in verse 1: this is the physical nation of Israel.
The child she bears in verse 2 is in fulfillment of the son of David given in 2Sa 7:11-16, and represents the shoot of Jesse in Isaiah 11:1. Jesus in the Gospel of John confirms that Salvation comes from the nation of Israel:
JN 4:22 “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.”
Poised in contrast to the depiction of the nation of Israel is the same serpent explained in the later section of Revelation by the Angel as shown above:
REV 12:3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.
REV 12:4b The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.
This action by the dragon describes a caricature of an agent of Satan. With the players described as Israel specifically in Mary birthing Jesus this passage places its time around 4-6 B.C. The description matches Herod’s attempt to end Jesus’ life and God reveals the animating force behind his motive. The relationship between the Dragon and the Woman goes back to the introduction of sin, and shows that God has had a plan from the beginning.
GE 3:15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
From the first parallel account, Satan is firmly ensconced in the Heavenly realm. Like from the time of Job, he has access to God. His power manifests itself in his ability to affect the Heavenly realm. (Casting stars should be considered figurative speech.) The two last verses complete the first account with birth of Christ, His ascension and eventual rule with the iron scepter, and a period of three and half years expressed in days.
REV 12:5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.
This verse encompasses all of Christ’s first advent and places the end of this verse up to around A.D. 33 with His going up in the clouds before the Pentecost as described and witnessed in Acts. The portion describing the iron scepter recalls the description of Christ, empowered as He goes to the final battle at the end of Revelation chapter 19. He will rule with an iron scepter during the Millennial Period, and His authority to rule falls in likewise fashion to the Saints of Thyatira who are able to overcome.
REV 12: 6 The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
This period describes one half of the seventieth ‘seven,’ 1260 days being three and a half years based on a 360 day year. This is the first instance showing a future state in the narrative. Figuratively, the first parallel account of chapter 12 describes a timeline going from the past starting at Jesus’ birth and extending until some time in the future. The large gap in time has the Church age bridging between Christ’s advents. Graphically depicted it would look like this:
Picture Rev 12:1-6
The second twin parallel account starts off with a battle where Satan is ejected from the Heavenly realm. Notice the obvious change in focus from the woman, Israel, to the beast, the devil. Also, there is a scene change from the earthly realm to the heavenly, and if that were not enough, an assignment of a time in the past is associated with this, while the previous verse was in the future.
REV 12:7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Placing a time on this verse means having to tie it in with the Gospel account when Jesus sends his disciples out into the world empowered against Satan. Jesus is the ‘strong man’ and has invaded Satan’s realm. If it were not Satan’s then he could not have offered it up to Jesus after His fast with the last temptation. (Satan is very much a legalist.) But because Jesus has bound Satan, He can cast out demons. As Jesus does everything in accordance with His Father, doing what He does, so too can Jesus confer that authority onto His disciples. In Luke, Jesus describes this same heavenly battle whereby Satan is cast out.
LK 10:18 He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven…”
The verb fall is in the aorist tense signifying a summary occurrence, while Jesus’ sight in the verb saw is in the imperfect tense. “The imperfect tense shows continuous or linear type of action just like the present tense. It always indicates an action continually or repeatedly happening in past time.”—Corey Keating It is important to note that Satan’s fall is a summary occurrence, while to Jesus with His unique perspective, Satan’s fall is a continual event: he was doomed to fall from the very first, which recalls Genesis 3:15.
Many commentaries put Revelation 12:7 much closer to the end-times. However, just on the basis of Satan knowing his time was short, does not necessarily mean having to place the timing of this verse close to the one ‘seven.’ Since Satan is a spiritual being on par with the angels, he may have been in existence since the beginning of this world. This would put his age at billions of years. Thus, if he were thrown down from the Heavenly realm during Christ’s first Advent, 2000 years would be very short in relative terms.
The last time Satan is seen in the Heavenly realm is after Jesus is resurrected from the tomb. In a prophetic passage in Zechariah 3:1-8, which is the only Old Testament reference which actually names Jesus (Yeshua, which is translated into English as Joshua), Satan stands ready to accuse Jesus. God rebukes Satan. This rebuke stands in contrast to the time Satan accused Job and God entertained his accusations and put Job to the test. The account in Zechariah stands in contrast because Satan is accusing Jesus of sin, and Jesus was not guilty; He is, however, covered with sin as is shown in Zechariah 3:4, which explains why His clothes are “filthy” from the previous verse.
The fact that Jesus is covered with sin and God removes it by the changing of Jesus’ clothes places the time of this trial to being after Jesus’ time on the cross. In that crucial moment, perhaps when Jesus cried out for God, our sin was placed upon Him. After the Resurrection, the residual sin Jesus still carried from the nether world of the grave may have been reason enough for Jesus to tell Mary not to hold onto Him. If He bore our sin in a literal but spiritual sense, Mary would have been contaminated by it. Moreover, since Jesus had not yet returned to the Father as He says to Mary in John 20:17, He could not have her “tamper” with the evidence He provided bodily by the clothes He wore. Jesus was after all, providing evidence with His self in God’s Court that He had taken sin away from us, however, only God could remove it and thus excuse us
Another interesting aspect of this passage in Zechariah is the mention of “associates” seated with Jesus. As Paul asserts in Ephesians, these men with Jesus are captives Jesus lead in His train. They may then translate into the people John later sees as the Elders in the third Heaven.
Going back to what happens after His Resurrection when Jesus returns to the Father, Satan, being rebuked twice by God, may be considered also of being disbarred from making accusations in God’s Court. This means we are without an accuser before God and only our intercessor, Jesus, remains to present our defense. It also puts the time of Satan’s exit during Christ’s first advent, albeit nearly at the end of it. Outside of God’s Court, but still in the realm of Heaven would be where John describes the battle of Revelation 12:7 – the timing of which would be very close to the first parallel account of Revelation 12:1-6 as to its starting time.
Now both twin accounts have a beginning that can be tied to historical events: Jesus’ birth and His Resurrection. Going back to the first twin account with the woman, the nation Israel, confirmation for the timeline puts it before Christ’s birth. The second account of the beast, or devil, puts it past Christ’s birth with the assessment that it comes during Jesus’ ministry before He rises from the Mount of Olives as chronicled in Acts 1:11. The supposition here is that Satan is evicted from not only God’s Court with God’s rebuke, but from Heaven as well before the beginning of the Church age.
The next series of verses are contained in poetic fashion describe a hymn, or alternately, they are meant to be verbatim of a voice speaking in this fashion. At either rate, the series starts with Jesus’ triumph over the world by the aspect of salvation. While in power, this kingdom of our Lord is not complete as those that believe in Christ can overcome the devil, as James said in his epistle; “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”—James 4:7b. But they are still subject to a physical death, and indeed the devil is going to enact his designs upon the earth so the physical death results in salvation and this parallels what James has to say about God being able to save the believer, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”—James 4:10.
REV 12:10 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 Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
REV 12:11 They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
REV 12:12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
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."
The key verse that will tie in later in this parallel account centered on the devil remains verse 11. This marries what will be expounded upon later that Jesus spoke of in choosing to save your life and losing it, or losing it and saving it. The dichotomy is resolved with the differentiation between this age, and the age to come, and the junction between the two for each person is only as far away as that person’s physical death.
REV 12:13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring--those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.
His first action is to pursue the woman and history notes the persecution of the Jews under Roman domination from the time of Christ, specifically starting with the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, and finally the Diaspora where the Romans attempt to destroy Israel as a nation. Pursuant to that, anti-Semitism becomes the norm, practiced throughout Europe and the Western world and matched only by the animosity of open warfare on the renewed nation of Israel since A.D. 1948. After the persecution of Israel proper, that is the Jewish nation, there is a time of protection by God during half of the seventieth ‘seven.’ The time, times and half a time of Rev 12:14 should be read as a year, two years and half a year. This has an identical time frame to the 1260 days in Rev 12:6 with the same protection from the twin account of the woman in Rev 12:6. The second parallel account of chapter 12 is remarkably similar to the first, both starting about the same time with Christ’s first advent, and describing a future time associated with the half the seventieth ‘seven.’ The assignment of which half that protection occurs within will have to wait until chapter 9 though.
Revelation chapter 12’s second parallel account centers on Satan and gives additional information that confirms the nature of the heavenly realm with Satan’s fall. It places Christ in power in heaven unopposed by the accuser of those in the Book of Life. And finally it describes a short time, now at nearly two thousand years for the devil to bring his designs into fruition. This describes a time of oppression against the Jewish people, and conflict with the Saints as well. Graphically, it is similar to the first with the noted distinctions:
Picture Rev 12:7-17
These two parallel accounts, one concentrating on Israel and the other with her nemesis, Satan, with their similar and overlapping time frames can be compressed into a whole model:
Timeline depiction of Rev 12's parallel accounts
The question of which half of the seventieth ‘seven’ the period described here should be assigned cannot be done in isolation because of the lack of specific and unique events surrounding the latter three and a half year period. At this point, not enough information is known to be able to assess an assignment to either half. The only thing that lines up between the two accounts is the protection of Israel the woman, which would represent the Nation of Israel: the Jews.
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