Revelation 12 brings in great symbolism of the struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness dating way back to the fall of Satan and his angels in Heaven and occurring all the way up to what will transpire in the end times. Join us as Steve Gallagher discusses this profound chapter of Scripture and encourages us as believers on how we can walk victorious through whatever the forces of darkness may throw at us in the last days.

Host: Steve, we want to continue our discussions in the wonderful book of Revelation. We're in Revelation chapter 12 today. A very symbolic chapter. Talk to us about what the basic theme of this chapter is.

Steve: You know, if you get it right down to the nutshell, it's really showing the great struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Most of the things mentioned are going to unfold in the last days, but also, it really goes all the way back to primordial times. So, it covers the whole history of God's dealing with man and with angels.

Host: Yeah, I thought it was very interesting that as I was reading along, all of a sudden I realized what you just said. I thought to myself, “Wow, this is giving us insight into what happened in the very beginning.”

Steve: It's an amazing thing when you sit and consider what happened in Heaven thousands of years ago.

Host: Yeah. It's an amazing drama that far surpasses what comes out of Hollywood today, because this stuff is all real. It really happened.

Steve: It is real. Most people don't really think through the reality that there really was an insurrection in Heaven. Imagine what that was like. There's this vast domain with millions, maybe billions of angelic beings. They all have different personalities. They all have different occupations. Let’s think of what it would look like for this to be the United States. You have San Francisco over on the West Coast. You have Boston up in the Northeast. You have mayors of cities. You have governors over regions.
      The president, of course, in Heaven would be Jesus Christ. And then there is His inner council. And there is a council of the holy ones of God spoken of in the Old Testament. And in one of those members of His elite council, something emerges in their heart. It's rebellion against authority. At that point, the angels were still in a probationary state, so they had the choice whether they were going to remain true to God and loyal to Him, or whether they were going to go their own way. And Lucifer was perfect. He was as innocent as a child. It's hard to imagine, but it's true. He was righteous. He was humble, lowly, full of God's love and he was innocent. And Scripture also says that he was glorious. But at some point, he started noticing his own glory and took his eyes off God's glory. And something dark began to grow within his heart. Once that happened, then he went out and started recruiting other angelic beings and managed to pull in one-third of the angelic population.

Host: Yeah. It's astonishing to imagine these things happening. There are verses in this chapter that talk about Satan being thrown down to earth and you've referred already to the insurrection that happened in Heaven. But you've brought out that there's actually more than one fall of Satan, and that was a surprise to me. I didn't know about those. Tell us a little bit about the other falls that are coming for him.

Steve: Actually, Scripture tells us of four separate falls of Satan. The first one is that insurrection in Heaven we already talked about. The second one is the one you're referring to here, when in the very end of time, he's going to be thrown out of the earth's atmosphere, down to the physical earth. Paul called Satan the prince of the power of the air. That doesn't mean oxygen. That means the atmosphere area around the earth. And that apparently is where these principalities and powers that he referred to in Ephesians 6 have set up their kingdoms. So, my belief is that at this point in the tribulation period, Michael and his angels cast Satan out of the earth's atmosphere down to actual earth. And then of course, we still have two other falls that'll come later when they are all thrown into the bottomless pit for 1,000 years and then come out for a period of time to lead mankind into another insurrection. Then they're cast into the lake of fire in the end.

Host: One of the symbols in this chapter talks about the great red dragon having 7 heads and 10 horns. Who is this dragon and what do the heads and the horns represent?

Steve: Well, this is interesting because I just said that at one point Lucifer was this innocent angel and now you see thousands of years later what he has become. A red dragon. The red represents blood. He's a murderer and has been a murderer from the beginning, Jesus said. This symbolism here is very enlightening. The 7 heads represent the great world powers down through the history of mankind that have opposed God's people. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and then the last one will be the Antichrist system. So that's what the 7 heads represent. The 10 horns are found in Daniel 7 and Revelation 17. Both passages tell us that those will be 10 political leaders who will align themselves with the Antichrist in the last days.

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Host: Steve, in verse 11 of this chapter, there's a statement that we've probably all heard preachers preach about, and I want you to 1st read the statement and explain the statement in light of the context of Revelation.

Steve: This statement is referring to the saints of God. It says, “They overcame him,” meaning Satan, “Because of the blood of the lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” (Revelation 12:11, NASB 1995) The key word here is martyria in the Greek, and that's the word from which we get martyr. One of the important themes throughout the Book of Revelation is that of martyrdom. But what I mean by martyrdom isn't just that Christians are killed, it's that they are maintaining a vibrant testimony, even in the face of terrible persecution. Something has happened to God's people that has empowered them like never before to go through these dark days with a powerful testimony.

Host: Man, that really speaks to the need for us to be prepared spiritually for what's coming in these last days. Or I could say it this way, that we allow God to continue to purge our hearts of anything that would get in the way of what He wants to do in and through us. You think about that, what a tremendous privilege we have to be in these last days. Just to think that, man, God wants to use us in the midst of this battle.

Steve: Yeah, and it's hard for most Christians, beleaguered, beaten down by the world, surrounded by temptations and the constant pull of the world to imagine that kind of victorious living. But I'm telling you, at least for sincere believers, that day is coming.

Host: Yeah. Also in this chapter, there's a woman mentioned. It says that she will be provided a place in the wilderness by God. What do you make of that?

Steve: This is definitely talking about the people of God. It depends on your perspective. Dispensationalists tend to see everything in literal terms in the Book of Revelation. So, they see the people of God being taken out to the desert somewhere like Petra and being somehow miraculously protected from the forces of the Antichrist. Historical premillennialists, like myself, tend to see this as a little more symbolic.
      And when you look through Scripture, the wilderness represents something. You see it over and over in the lives of the great men of God who have been taken out into the wilderness to get alone with God and to be taught about the deep things of God and to receive their spiritual nourishment directly from the Lord. And I believe that's what's going to happen. It's representing the people of God in a connection with the Lord that we have never had before. When I talk to sincere believers, so many people seem to be going through the same types of processes with the Lord. And you know the Lord is doing a deep work in people, preparing them for something ahead that's going to be very dramatic and very exciting.