Revelation 12The Woman and the Dragon

“A great sign” echoes a Christmas prophecy, Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” This baby is Jesus, the Messiah. You’ll see that very clearly a little later in the text, so if you’re wondering who the baby is, that’s who the baby is.

And that tells us who she is. Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37 has “the sun and moon and eleven stars,” Joseph himself being the twelfth: the sun, the moon and twelve stars represent Israel. This woman is faithful Israel, from whom comes the Messiah and the church.

This strange imagery could throw you for a loop, and probably does most of the time. But she’s Israel. She gives birth to the Messiah, and her offspring, as we’ll see later, is the church, faithful believers.

Her crying in pain actually produces a baby, which is a good thing, as opposed to the same basic imagery in Isaiah 26:17–18: “We were with child, we writhed in labor, but we gave birth to wind. We have not brought salvation to the earth.” Isaiah was lamenting for the people of Israel, 600-plus years before Christ, that they hadn’t been the salvation of the world. John’s original audience would have had this contrast specifically in mind. Now the pregnancy is worth it: the Messiah is here, and this imagery shows the salvation in Jesus very clearly.

But Isaiah also declared a productive pregnancy for Israel in Isaiah 54:1, right after the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 53 that prophesied the cross: this is who we’ve been, but this is who we’re going to become.

Paul foreshadowed the same sentiment to the Roman believers: “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22). The present time with Jesus gives us relief from those pains of childbirth, and the joy of the salvation revealed in Jesus.

There are still further pains, because the culmination of all things hasn’t happened yet. But there is some relief.

The dragon is Satan. We learn that in verse 9; spoiler alert, so you understand what’s happening when you see this imagery right out of the gate. The stars could represent the angels that Satan took down with him. Sometimes prophetic imagery refers to multiple things all at once: the flinging down of the stars echoes Daniel 8:10, where a horn of the goat grows “until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth.” There it likely represents some of the tribes of Israel, and Satan’s attempts to destroy Israel. He believes both fallen angels and attempts to destroy Israel’s tribes are in mind here.

The Old Testament echoes include Daniel’s beast (Daniel 7:7–8), which also has ten horns at first (and then grows another one). The horns were rulers in Daniel’s vision. Here too, the heads, horns and crowns very likely represent earthly rulers that Satan controls in order to terrorize and destroy the earth: pawns in his attempt to destroy people. There are echoes too of Leviathan, the sea monster serpent of Isaiah 27:1, “the gliding serpent … the coiling serpent.” A number of images come together in what is described about Satan himself.

The woman, the baby and the dragon are the main characters in chapter 12. The church is more of a minor character here; it becomes a major character later.

The second half of verse 4 echoes Genesis 3:15, where enmity is prophesied between the serpent and the offspring of Eve. It could also echo Matthew 2:16, where Herod tries to destroy baby Jesus. Satan is just waiting to destroy this child, and of course it is unsuccessful.

Several women come to mind with this woman: Mary, Eve, Israel. Someone in the room added another attempt on a baby: Pharaoh trying to destroy baby Moses.

The quoted phrase is a paraphrase of a prophecy about the Messiah in Psalm 2:7–9: “You are my son; today I have become your father. Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance … You will break them with a rod of iron.” (John has “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”) With that language his readers would all know: this baby is Jesus, the Messiah.

Then Jesus is “snatched up to God and to his throne,” as happened at the Ascension (Luke 24; Acts 1). This is the Ascension of Jesus pictured in a prophetic way.

This parallels Moses’ preparation in the wilderness, Israel being taken care of by God in the wilderness, and Jesus being led into the wilderness to be tempted. Faithful Israel is being led into the wilderness again, for safety.

The woman again is Israel, and at this point in the vision it becomes clearer that she represents the faithful remnant of Israel, the remnant from which the Messiah came. The woman being protected here is faithful Israelis who embrace Jesus.

“British replacementism” (yikes!), the theory that the British replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people, or any other kind of replacementism, is eisegesis: reading into the text something neither the Holy Spirit nor the apostles could have intended. It has no correlation to John’s original intent to the original audience, and that is the basic rule of all Bible study. Those theories are foreign to the text and to the Holy Spirit’s intent, and must be rejected thoroughly in our understanding.

She’s taken care of for 1,260 days, three and a half years, likely representing the prophetic season in which faithful Israel can give witness to the rest of the world of the Messiah. A season that we might still be in.

It’s hard to say when that season began or ended. Seven years would be completion, so three and a half years is a season that’s not the final one: we’re stuck somewhere in the middle, before the completion.

This is an amazing, powerful vision. The timing of it is the wildest and most wonderful part, and we’ll need the prophetic telescope for that …

Let me start with: this is awesome! Jesus won through His death and resurrection, and the host of heaven won, through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Now the timeline. In the prophetic telescope, the events are layered: the prehistoric fall of Satan and his angels; the start of history in Genesis 3, the serpent in the Garden of Eden; and the death and resurrection of Jesus around AD 33. Collapse the telescope, and they are folded onto each other, all seen together as one moment in the spiritual realm. We exist in time. They don’t. For us this battle happens over at least 2,000 years, more with the fall of Satan; in the spiritual realm it happens in an instant. The defeat of Satan is actualized fully only in the death and resurrection of Jesus, so here Satan’s fall, the Garden and his defeat at the cross and the empty tomb are all one moment of heavenly warfare.

“War broke out in heaven”: this is the second heaven. The first heaven is the sky. The second is the place where spiritual warfare happens. The third heaven is God’s domain, God’s throne, the place He’s preparing for us, what we usually think of as heaven. This kind of war is described in Daniel 10 as well. So heaven is rejoicing over Satan’s defeat, but earth is still feeling the fury, because he gets flung to the earth.

The tables discussed: Have you ever felt spiritual warfare? What made you think that? What did you do?

Michael the archangel is named here, and also in Daniel 10, Daniel 12:1, 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Jude 9. From everything we can tell from scripture, he seems to be the head archangel, while Gabriel seems to be the head messenger angel. We’re not 100% certain; these realities are slightly different from our understanding. But it feels like there’s a functional reality there in the heavenly realm.

The dragon’s fall from heaven parallels Isaiah 14:12, “How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!”, which talks about the fall of the king of Babylon, and many think it also refers to Satan. So does Ezekiel 28:17, on the fall of the king of Tyre: “So I threw you to the earth.”

In both passages the prophet is talking about a human king, and then at a certain point the language shifts into something otherworldly, beyond what is applied to any human.

It also parallels Jesus’ statement “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18), after the seventy-two returned from doing miracles and casting out demons in Jesus’ name. And Jesus’ prophecy in John 12:31: “now the prince of this world will be driven out.” That’s a prophetic certainty: we’re not going to have to deal with this guy forever.

“That ancient serpent” points back to Genesis 3. We make the connection easily in our heads: the serpent is the devil. But this is the place in scripture where that connection is made. In Genesis 3 he’s never specifically identified; it never calls him the devil or Satan. This is how we’re sure the devil is the serpent in the Garden. It wasn’t just any old talking serpent. Ha!

“A loud voice” is megale phone in Greek (a mega-phone!). We’ve seen these declarations from angels, from the throne and from believers throughout Revelation (1:10; 5:2, 12; 6:10; 7:2, 10; 8:13; 10:3; 11:12, 15). This time we don’t know who’s talking. We’ll see more loud voices in the rest of the book, from angels, the temple and the throne again (14:9, 15, 18; 16:1, 17; 19:17; 21:3). The loud voice carries authority, respect, attention, seriousness and importance.

So: can God get your attention? Or more specifically, how can God get your attention? From the room: through events, coincidences that only God could line up, pointing you to Him; through weather; through a verse you’ve read many times that suddenly hits you; through other people, a word, a prayer, simple encouragement, even your kids imitating your emotional rhythms; through worship music; through opposition, closed doors and open doors. And through donkeys! Don’t be a Jonah.

“The salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah”: this is further fulfillment of what happened at the cross, as declared in Colossians 2:15: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” See also Hebrews 2:14 and 1 John 3:8. The connection: through the salvation offered in Jesus’ blood, now we have power, and God’s kingdom and authority are being established on the earth, in spite of the fury of the enemy.

He can’t stop it. He’s going to fuss and fret and throw a fit and try to put his worry on everyone else in the world, but he cannot stop the move of God through the Holy Spirit and God’s church, because of the salvation of Jesus.

In other words, Satan’s ultimate defeat is as certain in the spiritual realm as if it’s already happened in the natural. This points again to the already, but not yet reality of the kingdom: Jesus says the kingdom of God is here, and He also says it’s coming. The kingdom is here, we are establishing and enforcing it more and more on the earth, and there’s still a fullness coming. Someone in the room added Luke 11:20: “if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” When you kick out the old king, the new king has come. And another: he’s been kicked out, and yet we’re still kicking him out. Already, but not yet.

“The accuser”: he’s hurled to earth, but his accusations still come up into God’s presence. Wild! Accusation is one of Satan’s primary tools against believers. He reminds them of their past. This echoes Zechariah 3:1–2, where Satan stands at Joshua’s right side “to accuse him”; this isn’t the first time scripture has mentioned it.

He doesn’t have a whole lot of tools against believers, to be honest. He has more authority against nonbelievers. Against believers he has a couple of little tools that he throws out, and accusation is one of them.

The victory is reminding him of his future, and seeing your past how God does: covered in the blood of Jesus. Here’s the truth, Romans 8:33–34: “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” The accuser can just shut it!

Satan’s other main tool against believers is terror. He’s a terrorist. He has no real authority over a fully committed follower of Jesus. He can flex more power in a nonbeliever’s life, but he will accuse believers and try to keep them immobilized by fear. But “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7, NKJV). That fear is not from the Lord.

From the room: those are mutually exclusive. If you’re in a spirit of fear, you can’t have power, love and a sound mind, so don’t make decisions in a spirit of fear. The enemy uses external things to try to destroy Christians, but internally his weapons are accusation, fear and terror. If we know how to beat those, we’re in pretty good shape. And here’s the strategy, in verse 11 …

“They triumphed”: conquering is not represented here, or in the rest of the Bible, as something only some Christians are called to. All Christians are promised to be conquerors, as Romans 8:37 details: “we are more than conquerors.” Fast forward to Revelation 21:7–8: we either conquer, or we experience the second death. So as Christians, we get to and have to be conquerors.

You are destined to be a conqueror. Your inheritance in the Lord is as a conqueror.

From the room: what Bible verse are you standing on for your victory? If you’ve got something to stand on, Satan’s defeated. And you don’t get a testimony without a test!

See also Ephesians 6 for other weapons to defeat Satan: the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and praying in the Spirit. That makes four offensive weapons against the enemy: the blood of the Lamb, the word of your testimony, the sword of the Spirit and praying in the Spirit. As we see later, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10, KJV).

Praying in the Spirit, right after the armor of God (Ephesians 6:18), includes praying in English, prayers led by the Spirit, and praying in a supernatural language. If God has given you one, use it; if He hasn’t yet, we’d love to pray for you for one. According to Romans 8, when you pray in the Spirit you can know you’re praying in accordance with God’s will. Many times I don’t know how to pray for things, but when the Spirit prays through me, He’s always praying in accordance with God’s will.

One attitude to defeat Satan: death can’t win. Death can’t defeat me, because I have an eternal soul with God, and God will always be victorious through me. Paul said, whether I live or die, God’s going to get glory (Philippians 1:20). Jesus didn’t shrink from death, so we don’t have to either (Isaiah 53:7; Philippians 2:5–7). We give witness to and model the death of Jesus by our own sacrifice.

The tables discussed: Have you ever experienced the accusations of the enemy? (Almost the whole room raised a hand.) What are ways to move forward and conquer them? From the room: stand on what you know, Romans 8:1–2, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Not today, Satan! Put your full trust in Jesus. Understand the enemy’s strategy: he accuses you to put the focus on yourself, so do something he doesn’t expect and give thanks (1 Thessalonians 5:18); he’s not getting the result he wants. And in a hard time, simply: “I trust you, Jesus.”

Satan’s fury is shown by Peter when he describes the devil prowling around “like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), and by John: “the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). Those describe this reality.

“His time is short” comes from the Greek oligos (ὀλίγος), better translated here as “limited.” Nineteen centuries later it doesn’t feel “short” to us, but in heaven’s timeline it’s a couple of days, a blink. Limited is the actual force of the Greek here. Satan knows he has an expiration date, so he fusses and furies, full of his own worry, fear and hate, to put that on others.

This flight into the wilderness parallels Jesus’ parents’ trip to Egypt to escape Herod in Matthew 2:13. The wings echo Isaiah 40:31: “those who hope in the Lord … will soar on wings like eagles.” This also calls to mind Genesis 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.” So Satan is pursuing to try to destroy faithful Israel. But he will be unsuccessful.

“A time, times and half a time” is another way to say three and a half years again: this time of care and safety for faithful Israel. Three and a half years is a number representing a season of time that is incomplete to the whole of the drama, seven years being completion.

From the room, on Genesis 3: it is not the man or the woman who is cursed there. Only the serpent is cursed, and the ground; no human being is. So if you’re hearing curses, that’s not God’s voice. “We get hard work!”

The river here parallels the salvation of God’s people through the Red Sea. In other words, the same miraculous power at work in the Exodus from Egypt, in the remarkable parting of the sea, is also at work in the rescue of faithful Israel. Even the earth itself gets in on the rescue! This echoes Daniel 9:26, where “The end will come like a flood.”

Psalm 46 enumerates what our attitude should be as the waters rage at us: “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

For the tables (he ran out of time and left it for after): Have you ever felt like the enemy or life is raging at you? What helps you to change your attitude?

“Her offspring”: the offspring of the woman (faithful Israel) is all faithful believers, the church. The church consists of those who “keep God’s commands” and “hold fast their testimony about Jesus”: obedience, and testimony, confession and glory to Jesus.

So the warning to the church from John here is obvious. Satan did not succeed in destroying faithful Israel, so now Satan is coming after the rest of the church.

The church, faithful believers, are being told that their present suffering at the hands of the beast and the dragon is not a surprise. They can prepare themselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually for persecution as believers, and trust that God will win in spite of it.

The next chapters will continue playing out the drama of Satan’s war against believers, and what to do in the face of that onslaught. It’s going to be a lot of fun.