Series on Revelation
II The Viewpoint
C Cycle Three, Seven Symbolic Histories
2 The Personages
a The Serpent
Text: 12:7-12
Introduction
Satan contends with God. God’s finest creation at the beginning he is turned by pride into the worst of enemies. He desires to possess all God possesses, and be worshiped instead of his creator. The conundrum is that he keeps trying in a losing battle. The movies about the fictional Rocky Balboa were famous for betraying a prizefighter who would not give up regardless of how many times he was knocked down. To everyone’s delight Rocky always got up one last time and knocked out his opponents. The stumper with Satan is that He knows he will finally lose, but he just keeps getting up and getting knocked down. We shall see this portrayed in the vision of our text, but we should realize that the Devil has many falls and this is one stage in our text for today. Here we see not only the removal but the restriction and the rejoicing that results.
I The Removal
We read in verses 7-9, And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 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. John writes in I John 3:8, He that commits sin is of the devil; for the devil sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. In a sense this vision subsumes all the humiliations of the devil in one, because they are all due to Jesus Christ and His saving work. However we can look at the progress of the Devil’s humiliation through Scripture History. In verse 4 of this chapter we read of the dragon who attempted to devour the child born of the woman, His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. This describes an earlier fall of Satan when he with the demonic angels that followed him were exiled from heaven and cast down to earth. The Lord reminisces about that fall of the devil, also called Lucifer in Isaiah 14 when he is pronouncing judgment upon a follower of Satan, the king of Babylon, and we read in verses 12-14, How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” The demonic actions of earthly rulers were and are mere copies of spiritual wickedness in high places. Though he was cast down and his realm confined to earth, the Devil’s presence was still admitted to heaven. There he accused the brethren as we have recorded in the first chapter of Job verses 8-11, Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” Also on earth Satan still kept the Gentile nations in darkness while Israel, as a nation, was in the light. This ended with the coming of Christ. His kingdom power was already being exercised during His ministry as we read in Luke 10 when Jesus sent out 72 of His disciples to preach the kingdom and they returned and we read in verses 17 and 18, The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. This fall of Satan is also celebrated in Revelation 20: 2 and 3 where we read that an angel laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled. This begins the gospel era and the era of Christ’s reign when he sends out his disciples to evangelize the nations of the world. The final humiliation to Satan is also in Revelation 20 verse 10 where we read, And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. This is the final knockout punch.
II The Restriction
We have already mentioned that the Devil was accusing the brethren in the Old Testament times. Thus we read in verses 10 and 11, 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. 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. Satan is a liar, and he is still an accuser, but the sphere of his accusations has been restricted. When Jesus completed his mediatorial work, he ascended to heaven and took his seat at God’s right hand. This made it impossible for Satan to come before God to accuse the saints. Jesus assumed the role of the attorney-at-law, the advocate with the Father, “we have an advocate with the Father,” as 1 John 2:1 tells us. He paid the price to set his people free, and as a result Satan cannot bring slanderous accusations against God’s people as Paul tells us in Rom. 8:34. Thus, Satan and his hosts were denied a place in the presence of the Almighty. Yet as verse 7 tells us, far from accepting the reality of their overthrow, they faced Michael and his formidable hosts of angels, who drove them out of heaven and into a fierce battle. Now the casting out of Satan and the binding of Satan are always partial until the very end. Satan is bound now so that he can “deceive the nations no more,” and so he cannot accuse Christians before the throne of God in heaven, but that does not mean as we well know that all his activity has been totally curtailed. It has been limited as we find out from the loud voice in heaven in the concluding verse.
III The Rejoicing
As we read in verse 12 there is great rejoicing in heaven over Satan’s expulsion but that is not the end of the story. Along with the rejoicing there is a lament for those on earth, 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 anthem is full of praise in heaven but on earth there is a sour note, a sad footnote. The foolish persistence of the Devil in a losing battle is revealed again. We see here the dividing line between the triumphant church in heaven and the militant church on earth that resists sin and evil. Now that Satan has been defeated, he has a limited time here on earth, and that in the short period allotted to him he must unleash his fury. On both land and sea he seeks to deceive and destroy the saints. It is exceedingly difficult for us to understand this kind of thinking. If there is a legitimate phenomenon which we describe as “Misery Loves Company,” then the Devil is the prime example. In 1995 there was an actual TV comedy with that title and there is also a computer game called, “Misery Loves Company.” However according to psychologists the evidence seems to be that emotional contagion is short-lived. Still the Devil seems to be afflicted with it. It is more likely that it is the product of extreme rebellion against God. We see this sometimes even in human behavior. William Ernest Henley was a British poet who suffered from tuberculosis of the bone which resulted in the amputation of his left leg below the knee. Later his other leg had to be amputated. Frequent illness often kept him from school, and his father’s business failed. His work was often interrupted by long periods in hospital. He died at age 53. He had one daughter who was always sickly and preceded him in death. He wrote a famous poem, “Invictus,” that pretty much describes his bitter and vitriolic attitude toward God. It goes as follows, “Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.“ This then is Satan, bloody but unbowed. Just how pervasive this attitude is we cannot know but it is widespread in a world dominated by Satan where he is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. Timothy McVeigh, otherwise known as the Oklahoma City bomber, killed 168 people when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. Before his execution he recited this poem. The spirit of frustrated anger is alive and well on planet earth, so woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you.
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