Signs in Heaven of Israel and Satan

Transcript

GR 2024
12/03/2017
Signs in Heaven of Israel and Satan
Revelation 12:1-4
Gil Rugh

We’re going to the Book of Revelation in your bibles. The Book of Revelation, is about the culmination of God’s purposes and plans in sending His Son to this earth to be the Savior, and see the ultimate victory that Christ accomplished when He was born at Bethlehem in such lowly circumstances, unrecognized by the world, ultimately rejected by even His own people, crucified, raised from the dead, ascended to heaven and coming again. The Book of Revelation is about events leading up to the return of Christ to this earth, when peace will reign. When Christ will be sovereign, ruling from Jerusalem, when the work of His redemption will become more fully evident and manifest throughout the world. How wonderful that will be!

We’re looking at the seven years leading up to that spectacular return of Christ to earth in chapter 19 of the Book of Revelation. Then in chapter 20, we’ll have the kingdom set up and established on the earth that was prophesied through Old Testament prophets. We’re in chapter 12 of Revelation. We are in the middle of that seven-year period that will conclude with the return of Christ to the earth.

If you have the chart on The Major Events of the Tribulation, if you’d put that up. We’ve looked at this chart before. The Book of Revelation from chapter six through 19 follow a sequential unfolding of a series of judgments. This seven-year period, as you have it on your chart there, is broken into seals and trumpets that will carry us through the first three and a half years of the Tribulation. First one after another so they’re sequential. Out of the seventh seal come the seven trumpets. That brings us to the middle of the seven-year period.

Then there will be a series of seven bowl judgments. Every time a bowl is overturned, God pours out a great judgment on the earth. That will carry us to the return of Christ in chapter 19. Now, there are other events going on that we need to know and understand if we are to have a grasp of what is taking place. So, in Revelation chapters 10 through 14, we have events that focus from the middle of the Tribulation through the last half. So when those bowl judgments are pouring out God’s wrath on the earth, there are other events of great importance taking place.

They are being revealed in chapters 11 to 14, so they’re not sequentially walking us through that last three and a half year period, but they are events that will be taking place during that time, so that we have a better understanding of what’s taking place, and the particular emphases on these events, will be the nation Israel. Remember, this seven-year period is the seventieth week of Daniel that God says is for Jerusalem and the Jewish people, and the last half of this seven-year period is really where the focus is, and we have the climax of the battle for Israel. God has chosen that nation for Himself and we’ll be introduced to the devil in chapter 12, whose intention is to do all he can to destroy the Jewish people, because if he could do that, he could prevent the kingdom promised to the nation Israel from being established. What we’ll have in chapter 12 is a clarifying of what is going on in the world, and that has implications for what is going on in the world today, as we’ll see. We’re not only introduced in a more specific way to the nation Israel, we saw them in chapter seven, in anticipation of what would take place, now we’re going to get the details.

We are introduced to that spirit being the devil, and he is behind all the empires of the world, working to try to prevent the purposes of God in establishing a kingdom for Israel from taking place. So if you keep in mind where we have the great tribulation and the seven bowls, within that period of time are the events of Revelation 11 to 14. They are events related to the last half of this seven-year period. The bowl judgments will be poured out on the world, but there will be specific things taking place particularly for the nation Israel that are of great importance.

All right, we’ll look into chapter 12 verse one. “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, 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.” So first, here a great sign. This is the first of seven references to signs in the Book of Revelation. A sign is an indicator of a supernatural event. It is something supernatural taking place. Now the interesting thing, this is the first of seven signs and we’ll just look at them quickly through the rest of Revelation. Sometimes coming from God, sometimes coming from the devil, and we are reminded that this period of time, particularly the last three and a half years, will be a time of great miracles, but not all of them will be genuine and from God. When I say not all will be genuine, they will be real miracles, not tricks of magic, but during this time the devil will have restraints removed, and he will do mighty things to bring a conviction on the people that they can follow him, ultimately.

Look down in verse three. You’ll see shortly and “then another sign appeared in heaven and this is the great red dragon.” Come over to chapter 13. Look at verse 13 now this is talking about the false prophet who’s going to be raised up, who’s going to direct the worship of the world to the devil’s false Christ and you’ll see what he does in verse 13. He performs great signs, so he’s going to do mighty miracles, demonstrations of supernatural power. We won’t turn there right now but in 2 Thessalonians chapter two, we are told that during this period of time God will send a strong delusion, so that the people would believe a lie, and these miracles will be testing miracles that the devil’s false Messiah should be worshiped. So here you see it is a demonic inspired and enabled person who’s performing great signs.

Chapter 13, verse 14, “he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given to him to perform.” That why I say ultimately God’s sovereign over it all but He has now removed the limitations on the devil, and he is enabled to do miracles that will delude people into following himself, him the devil. Come over to chapter 15 verse one. “Then I saw another great sign in heaven, great and marvelous.” Here’s a direct sign from God action of God, a display of supernatural power, and this will be the last seven bowls in judgment poured our during this time. Come over to chapter 16 verse 14 and here we see we go back now to demonic beings, performing great signs. “They are spirits of demons,” note this, “performing signs,” so here you have demonic power being manifested, but under the disguise of being the God who should be worshiped. It’s going to be a terrible time! It’s going to be a time of deception like the world has never seen!

One more reference, chapter 19 verse 20, “and the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet,” two individuals we will meet in chapter 13 of Revelation. There two key people in the last portion of the seven years. “The beast was seized, with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark and worshiped his image.” Now this is all part of a plan for the devil to direct the worship of the world to himself. Remember when he tempted Christ in Matthew chapter four and he said to Christ, “I‘ll give you all the kingdoms of the world, if you’ll fall down and worship me.” I think sometimes that the devil is an atheist. He is not. The devil is a very religious being and he is behind all the false worship going on, wherever in the world. He is an awesome being to be respected, not to be honored, not to be worshiped, but we must understand something of him.

But first come back to chapter 12. We have to sort out the first sign, “a great sign, which appeared in heaven” so this is shown to John in heaven and it is a preview of what is going to take place on the earth. It’s a miraculous sign. It’s “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars and she’s with child and she’s in childbirth.” We want to talk about the identity of this woman. There are a variety of views and I was going to share some of them with you but I thought if I put those out there that’ll get in your mind. We need to stay focused. One major view that is taken, for example, by the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestants is that the woman here is the virgin Mary. I don’t think that is correct for a number of reasons. One, the Scripture gives the identification of who this woman is and then other things in chapter 12 make clear who she represents.

Now remember this is a sign. A sign is using something to convey a truth for some material. Now you don’t have a sign being a sign of a sign because then you just get lost in all the symbolism and so on, so a sign has literal significance. I’ve made a list of why I think the woman here represents the nation Israel. The woman in Revelation 12 is Israel. The first and most basic, if this was all there was, I think it would be enough.

The Old Testament background for this sign is in the Book of Genesis, so come back to Genesis chapter 37. Remember where we look for help in understanding the Book of Revelation is in the Old Testament. There are literally hundreds of references and illusions to the Old Testament. Part of the problem people have in understanding the Book of Revelation is a lack of some familiarity with the Old Testament. I’m amazed, in my bible it doesn’t have notes but in the marginal references in Revelation chapter 12 verse one. In my bible in the marginal note, they don’t give Genesis 37, which is surprising, they’re usually pretty good.

Genesis 37 records Joseph. Joseph is one of the sons of Jacob. More than that, he is the favorite son of Jacob, so we’re told in verse two of Genesis 37 “Joseph was seventeen years of age, he’s pasturing the flock with his brothers and Joseph brought back a bad report.” He came and said, dad, I just have to tell you, my brothers haven’t been doing their job. They don’t work very hard and they didn’t take good care—whatever he said, I just filled that in.

Now we started out in verse one, Jacob lived in the land, but remember God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, and that’s where the name Israel comes from.
That’s why sometimes in the bible you will have the nation Israel referred to just by the name Jacob, because the line of God’s chosen people goes from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to the twelve sons of Jacob that comprised the heads of the twelve tribes of Jacob. So the last person, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who you could use in the singular just one person to refer to the whole nation would be Jacob, and he was given the name Israel. When you refer to one of Jacob’s twelve sons, you’re only referring to one of the twelve tribes, the tribe of Judah but Jacob refers to the nation, so Israel, Jacob “loved Joseph more than all his sons” and verse four says “his brothers hate him.” We don’t need to get in to all of that.

Verse 5, “Joseph had a dream when he had told it to his brothers they hated him even more. He said to them, ‘Please listen to this dream which I have had; for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, lo, my sheaf rose up and also stood erect; and your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf.’” Now you might think Joseph doesn’t have good discernment. Why would you tell your brothers this dream but they understand. “Then his brothers said to him, ‘Are you actually going to reign over us? Are you going to rule over us?’” So they hate him even more, so they understand what is represented by these twelve sheaves of grain, the eleven brothers and Joseph, and the eleven brothers will bow down and honor Joseph.

Well he had another dream, verse nine. Now this is what pertains to Revelation 12:1, “then he had another dream and related it to his brothers and said, ‘Lo, I have had still another dream; behold the sun and the moon and the eleven stars were bowing down to me.’” Now there we have the ingredients for Revelation 12:1. The sun, the moon and the stars. They’ll be twelve stars in Revelation 12:1 because Joseph here distinguishes himself from his brothers so there are eleven, the sun, the moon the eleven starts were bowing down to him. He related it to his father and his brothers. They all recognize the significance of it. “His father rebuked him and said, ‘What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother . . .’” so the sun and the moon represent the father as the sun and the mother as the moon and the brothers are the stars. It represents the nation Israel at this point and they’re bowing down to Joseph.

Now come back to Revelation chapter 12 in verse one. The “great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet,” so what did this woman represent? Represents the nation Israel. It’s at its early stages with the parents, Jacob and his wife that will produce the children, the twelve sons. There you have the nation at its very early stage being represented. Here “on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Well we saw eleven back there because Joseph was the twelfth and he talked about the eleven. Everybody recognized his parents and his brothers. You’re talking about us and who is us? Well it’s Jacob, his twelve sons, it’s the nation Israel, so I think very simply the first reason I think this is the nation Israel being represented is that’s the way it’s presented in the Old Testament.

The second reason why I think this woman is the nation Israel is she gives birth to the Messiah. Look at verse two. “She was with child; cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth.” Down to verse five, “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 heaven to the throne of God.” Obviously, we’re talking about Christ, the Messiah. We’ll talk more about it as we move into this.

Thirdly, she has other children besides the Messiah. Verse 17, “the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children,” so she has multiple children.

Fourthly, she is nourished by God during the last half of the Tribulation. Verse six, “the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God. There she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days,” the last half of the Tribulation, so you see no indication like the virgin Mary fled into the wilderness and had three and a half years of – were obviously talking about the nation, the last half of the coming seventieth week of Daniel. Down in verse 14 of chapter 12. “The two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time, times and a half time, three and a half years.”

And fifthly, she’s persecuted by Satan during the last half of the Tribulation and that’s in verses 13 to 17, those verses we’ll be looking at, so we’re obviously carried into the future dealing with a specific period of time, so you have the summary here, verses one and two. Identified as Israel going back to Genesis 37 at that very foundational time when you have Jacob and his twelve sons represented. The father and the mother with the sun and the moon and then the twelve stars. We have the nation Israel and these other things support that identification. I don’t think it fits anyone else.

Once you start to move away from just taking it in its simple literal form—like I said I didn’t want to bring up, I was going to bring you some things to share with you about different interpretations given to this because people think Revelations is difficult to understand. I don’t know how you make any significance when you can read into it whatever you want, so this is Israel.

Okay, now we’re going to take a jump and then we’ll come back to Israel in verse five when she gave birth to that son that she was in pain with. I take it the labor for Israel there refers to all that Israel has suffered in anticipation as they look for their Messiah. She’s just a nation that’s gone through what? The northern ten tribes carried off by the Assyrians and the southern two tribes carried off by the Babylonians. Even now as John writes this, they were under the power of the Romans as they were when Christ was born. The nation being headed by a minor king, Herod who was not even a Jew himself, so the nation had been struggling. It had been a difficulty, that’s the picture of the woman with child and all the suffering that Israel had gone through as they anticipated the coming of their Messiah down through its history.

Now we have to take another break, and we get another sign appearing in heaven and what we’re going to be introduced to here, now in a specific way is the enemy of Israel, the one who is behind all that is going on, but particularly here with the nation Israel and the opposition to Christ. Another sign appeared in heaven: and “behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems.” This is why people read the Book of Revelation and say, see it’s a fanciful book. You’ve got dragons and he’s got a head, he’s got a tail, he’s got seven heads, he’s got crowns on his seven heads, this looks like something you see in the fanciful world that’s created, but it has solid concrete significance.

It’s a great red dragon. Now again what would a dragon represent, what is it, who is it? Well we don’t even have to work very hard if we just read a few more verses, verse 9, “and the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world;” so we know who the dragon is, he’s the serpent of old. If you’re not familiar with the account of Genesis 3, he’s the devil, he’s Satan, so we’re pretty clear.

Come over to chapter 20, of Revelation, verse two and here you have an angel going to bind Satan. He laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, the devil, Satan, so there’s no question here. The dragon is representative of a literal person, a spirit person, a spirit being the devil. He’s a dragon, it denotes something of his fierce bloody character and that’s what’s in view with the picture, he’s a destroyer. We’ll see some of his names in a future study.

Come back to John 8, John’s gospel chapter 8. The apostle John who wrote, under the direction of the Holy Spirit the Book of Revelation also wrote this gospel. John chapter 8 and Jesus speaks to explain the problem the religious people of His day were having, Jewish people, Jewish religious leaders and he tells them, verse 43. “Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word.’ Now they could hear the sounds but they couldn’t understand. Why? ‘You are of your father the devil; you want to do the desires of your father.’” They’re not being pushed into something they don’t want to do, they desire to do, what the devil wants them to do, so in that sense they work in harmony with the devil, like people following a leader, by their own volition or choice, they want to.

“He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. So because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.” Verse 47, “He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason . . .” you don’t hear them, because you don’t belong to God. There clarifies, in a simple concise way, the whole issue in the world. The devil’s happy to have people be religious as they can be as long as they don’t submit to the truth of God. Because every religion but the true worship of God through Jesus Christ and His finished work, is a worship of the devil, and he’s a murderer and he was from the beginning. The followers of the devil have no friend in the devil. The devil is a destructive being so when you call him a red dragon, I take it that fits and it’s further clarified.

You come back to Revelation 12. This red dragon “has seven heads, ten horns and on his horns were seven diadems.” You understand, behind all, we’ll fill in the details, all the empires of the world, right down to our day; the devil has been the motivating force. Now we talked about God sovereignly rules overall, but He has given, because of the fall, authority and power to the devil.

Remember as I alluded to earlier in Matthew chapter 4 when the devil, tempted Christ, he took Him up to a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. That tells you something of the supernatural power of the devil, to take Him up and is able to display for Him, the kingdoms of the world and their glory. What did he say? “All this has been given to me and I will give it to you if you fall down and worship me,” so he has sovereign power in the world and in the kingdoms of the world. Ultimately, God has authority, but that authority now has been given to the devil. That’s why he’s called the god of this world, small g, as we’ve talked about at other times. He is a great red dragon, he has seven heads, ten horns and on his heads were seven diadems, crowns, the seven diadems, crowns of a ruler.

We’re going to go back to the book of Daniel chapter 2. This is review for most of you. We’re going to see this again and again, in the Book of Revelation so I want to be clear, and Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king was ruler at that time, and Babylonia was the empire of the world. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. Daniel interprets the dream for him. Again, the dream has symbols in it but they symbolize concrete realities. He saw the empires of the world in Daniel chapter 2; we’ll walk through picking up with verse 36. This was the dream now you need an interpretation. “You are the king of kings,” Daniel 2:37, “to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, the glory,” and verse 38 toward the end, “He has given them into your hand, caused you to rule over them.”

“After you there will be another kingdom,” verse 39 carries the two, “inferior to you, then a third kingdom of bronze.” Why don’t you put up the empires seen by Daniel if you would, put up that slide and then they’ll be the fourth, so you see numbered there on the left hand column: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, the empires that you walk through and they are deteriorating in quality but they are strengthening in power. In other words, the last one, Rome will be the most powerful, but Rome if you smash gold with iron you’re going to have greater strength, but you’ve lost something of the purity of the empire, not holy purity but as a ruling power.

Those are the four empires depicted. Now while you’re here in Daniel 2, you come down to the feet and the toes in verse 41. We’re told “the fourth kingdom will be as strong as iron.” Verse 41, “the feet and the toes,” well this is an image of a man, and as you go through, he has a head, and chest, and arms and belly, and legs and feet and toes. You’ll come down, the toes, assume, he doesn’t say ten but we assume since everything else is a normal image of a man there would be ten toes, and that, verse 42. “The toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom,” so as you come down to this form of the kingdom. It’s iron, but as it comes down to its latter form, “it will have the strength of iron but the brittleness of clay, and in the days,” verse 44, “of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed. It will endure forever,” so we’re carried to the end of human empires.

Now you’re familiar in the Book of Daniel there is a break. The period of time in which we live is not revealed in the Old Testament, but we know there’ll be an earthly empire to replace all earthly empires, set up in the days of these ten toes that make a kingdom. Come over to chapter 7, and in the chart we have here in Daniel chapter 2, we have listed the very parts of the image with the metals, so you just have that, we didn’t take time to get into the details. In Daniel chapter 7, Daniel is given a dream and it is the same content with different symbols, so when Nebuchadnezzar saw the images of the world he saw this mighty, attractive statue of a man. He sees it from man’s perspective.

When Daniel sees these empires of the world, he sees them more from God’s perspective, ravenous wild animals bringing destruction and so verse three. “In his night vision, he saw four great beasts coming up from the sea, different from one another,” so the first is like “a lion,” then the second resembles “a bear,” and we’re not going into the details, we’ve done that on other occasions, we’ll be talking more about these kingdoms. Then you have “a leopard,” and afterwards you have a “fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying, and extremely strong and it had large iron teeth,” so you can see we have the same four empires, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.

You had the toes in chapter 2, now here in chapter seven, verse eight, this empire at the end of verse seven, it had ten horns, well that will compare with the ten toes, so it’s on this fourth beast, so the connection with the Roman empire is important. That’s why we talk about a revived Roman Empire, and remember in chapter 2, the toes were partly of iron, which was the metal that represented Rome in chapter 2, and here we have ten horns, and they are on the fourth beast, so that’s connected to Rome again. So we have a coming kingdom that will be comprised, if you will, of ten kingdoms or nations and then you get additional information here. “While I was contemplating the horns,” in verse eight, “behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them, three of the first were pulled out by the roots, and behold, this horn possessed the eyes of a man and a mouth uttering great boasts.”

You know where we come to now, the kingdom, and verse nine; you come down to verses 13 and 14, Christ comes before the Father and receives an eternal kingdom, so you have the same order and the same pattern. A little more detail because you have a little horn that also is going to come out of the ten, so we’re counting. We have one, two, three, four, the ten horns can be a fifth, and then the little horn can be a sixth, so we’re going to see the bible is very accurate.

While you’re in Daniel 7 look at verse 17. It’s interpreted for us so we don’t make it up, just like chapter 2; chapter 7 says in verse 17, “these great beasts, which are four in number, are four kings who will arise from the earth;” and a king and a kingdom are used interchangeably. We still do that today, a king and a kingdom used interchangeably, the president and the United States often used interchangeably, the president representing the United States and so on. “The saints of the Highest One will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever,” so there’s the summary; the beasts represent kingdoms and those kingdoms, will be replaced by the Highest One and His kingdom.

Now you note what kind of kingdoms we’re talking about here. These are all earthly kingdoms because some say, “well, the kingdom established was the kingdom established when Christ came at His first coming, it’s a spiritual kingdom and He rules in the hearts of men.” That’s not what the bible is talking about, it’s talking as Daniel chapter two said, “an earthly kingdom that smashes all other earthly kingdoms,” the kingdoms set up on the earth. Then Daniel wanted to know about the fourth beast, because it was so terrible and he wanted to know in verse 20, about the ten horns on its head and then on the, other horn that came up and replaced three of them and then they continued until verses 21 and 22. God intervened and set up His own kingdom, so verse 23 he starts the explanation.

Verse 24, “as for the ten horns, out of this kingdom, the fourth beast ten kings will arise; and another will arise after them, and he’ll be different from the previous ones and he will subdue three kings and he will have power.” He’s going to be opposed to the Jews, “the saints of the Highest One” in verse 25. “They will be given into his hands for a time, two times, and a half time.” There’s our three and a half periods, which is forty-two months or twelve hundred and sixty days, as we have seen, but we have the intervention; the sovereignty these nations had has been replaced by the kingdom that will be established. This is what the Jews were looking for the coming of their Messiah. That’s why John the Baptist was expecting that Christ would set up a kingdom and the Romans would be destroyed. This is what the Jews were looking for, but they rejected their king, so this is the picture.

All right now come over to the Book of Revelation chapter 17. We’re going to get back to 12 but we’ll jump ahead to chapter 17 because chapter 17 is where you get the most detail. You see as Scripture progressively unfolds you get more detail, more clarification. It doesn’t change any of the prior revelation, but it can put it in a more clear order and add information so in Revelation chapter 17—and you can put up that Major Empires in Biblical History as I’ve titled it here because these are complete.

The bible is only concerned about earthly empires that intersect and impact Israel. You say well, why don’t we have whatever other empires that might have existed? Because they’re not of significance in the plan of God. There’s one nation on earth that God has chosen for Himself, the nation Israel so that’s the center of the earth, that’s “the pupil of His eye” the scripture talks about so these are the nations that have intersect with Israel, but that’s before we go in a little more there. We come down to verse eight of Revelation chapter 17. “The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to come out of the abyss and go into destruction. Those who dwell on the earth” and so on, this will be the beast, we’re going to meet him, at the beginning of chapter 13, of Revelation, so you can see we’re going to get more clarification.

Chapter 13 will tell us much, and then here we come to chapter 17 giving details. “Here’s the mind, which has wisdom,” verse nine. “The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.” Now, this is not the woman of chapter 12, this woman is the woman of Revelation 17 that starts chapter 17. We’ll talk about her when we get here. The seven heads are seven mountains and they are seven kings; seven heads, seven mountains, seven kings, all refer to the same thing. Some people pick out of this, Oh the seven mountains this must be Rome because we’ve seen the seven hills or seven mountains of Rome which it supposedly sits on but that’s not what is says.

It says the seven heads are seven mountains, are seven kings. The heads, the mountains, the horns, they all refer to kings or kingdoms here. “Then after these when he comes he must remain a little while. The beast which was and is not, is himself the eighth and one of the seven,” so you see, what happens with John and this is why we came to chapter 17 and then we’ll see it when we go back, to chapter 12. Daniel started from where he was. The empire in existence when Daniel wrote was Babylon, so he started his first empire was Babylon because that’s where God revealed to him and came down through Rome. Then you see the ten nations and the Antichrist or the little horn, as he was called in Daniel chapter seven, but when you get to Revelation, John is going back to the beginning of Israel’s history, and he picks up the two nations or empires that preceded Babylon.

Where did Israel start as a nation? Well they went down into Egypt under Joseph. Jacob also living but he went down with the family, a large family into Egypt and ended up for 400 years with slavery, so Egypt is the first empire that is of significance for Israel. Then Assyria asserts its power in the area and is the nation that takes the northern ten tribes into captivity in 722 B.C, then Babylon takes the southern two kingdoms and that’s significant, because Jerusalem is in Judea.

The tribe of Judah along with the small tribe of Benjamin, and what happens, we have on the chart that Egypt and Assyria are before the times of the Gentiles. Why don’t you turn back to Luke, Luke chapter 21 as you have it on there? This is where the expression comes from, and the meaning, and here Jesus is talking about what is going to happen and we get into that seven-year period we’re talking about in this context, down to verse 24. “They will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”

So really, Assyria didn’t conquer Jerusalem, so even though they carried away the ten captives, remember, God intervened and while the Assyrian army was sleeping for the night before they attacked Jerusalem, when they woke up in the morning, a hundred and eighty thousand Assyrian soldiers didn’t wake up. No problem for God when dealing with an army, so they don’t conquer Jerusalem, so with Babylon, Jerusalem is conquered, destroyed, the temple destroyed and so on and from that time to the end, one way or another Jerusalem is under domination. Jerusalem never does truly exist as an independent power, as it did for example under David, under Solomon, and even under subsequent kings that ruled. That is over so that’s why we have here the times of the Gentiles are the times when Jerusalem is trodden under foot and when that is fulfilled, which will be after the Antichrist, but the Antichrist, he’s the last of the Gentile rulers that dominate Jerusalem. Christ comes in and that’s where we’ll be in chapter 19.

Just a word, the times of the Gentiles are not the same as the fullness of the Gentiles of Revelation 11. The church age is the fullness of the Gentiles in Romans 11. Romans 11 talks about the fullness of the Gentiles, that’s not the same thing as the times of the Gentiles. The times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled; the fullness of the Gentiles will be fulfilled in that sense, so that we live in the time of the fullness of the Gentiles when God is focusing His work of salvation among the Gentiles, which is the church age. The times of the Gentiles is Jerusalem trodden under foot.

All right, we have to get back to Revelation chapter 12. Now we went through all this, because verse three says what? “Another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon having seven heads.” Well we know the seven heads. We start with Egypt and go to Assyria and we just work through them. Here he talks about the seventh head because he’s not going to talk about the eighth, empire until chapter 17. I mean he’s going to talk about it but identifying it in that way. It is different enough he’ll say in chapter 17, even though it is of the seventh empire, it can be called an eighth, because it is distinct enough. That’s how precise the bible is.

Some people say none of the numbers, in Revelation are to be taken literally. Well, no wonder Revelation doesn’t make any sense, they make it say whatever they want it to say. It is exactly precise, the empires can be laid out, and it’s consistent with the Old Testament revelation, although there’s additional revelation, so that’s what’s in view. The ten horns in verse three we saw that the ten toes, the ten horns, chapter two, and chapter seven of Daniel and on the heads were seven diadems because these are earthly empires. The diadem is the crown of a ruler. There are two kinds of crowns. You remember in Greek, a stephanos is the crown you got if you won an Olympic event for example. You won a race or you were a victor, it’s the victors’ crown. The diadem is the rulers’ crown. Christ will wear both, because He is both the Ruler and the Victor, but the distinction here is it indicates these seven heads are kings or kingdoms, that’s what’s pictured by having diadems.

“His tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.” Now we didn’t talk about the devil and his arrival on the scene. We’ll pick him up the next time. How did he get to be the devil, where did he come from? We’ll talk about that. “His tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.” Who are the stars of heaven? What I think we’re talking about here are angels. Back in chapter 8 verse one, there was an angel that came down from heaven and he was called a star. I think here those heavenly beings who joined Lucifer in his rebellion. There’s an indication of that down in verse nine. “We saw the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who’s called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth,” and note this, “his angels were thrown down with him,” so the stars that fell with Satan are fellow angels.

Now a third of angels…how many angels are there? We could take some guesses. I saw some estimates in some commentaries I read. It got into the billions. Well remember there are innumerable hosts. When we saw the heavenly scene of heavenly angels, there were ten thousand times ten thousand and myriads of myriads. You just could not count them. Think about it. The devil is a created being and we will talk more about that in a future study. He can only be in one place at one time, but he has a whole host of angelic beings who fell with him called demons who are organized under him, and so I would expect there could be billions of demons, because there are what? Seven billion people in the world and he is at work everywhere. I mean, where is evil not being carried out?

He showed Christ the empires of the world and he said he rules over them all. You know we under estimate the devil. We talk about running a company, running a nation, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what the devil runs, if I can put it that way, as a created being. I mean his demons are organized, there’s just not chaos in his realm, there is structure, there is order, and there is hierarchy. He is as we saw in Daniel when we studied it, has a demon, ultimately over charge of each nation and under that demon then can be the demons who carry—people make fun of the devil, mock the devil. That’s why I said when we started he is a being to be respected. Even Michael the archangel, as we saw in the Book of Jude, shows him respect.

The only reason we have victory in dealing with the devil is because the One who dwells in us, the Holy Spirit Himself, is greater than the one in the world. The unbeliever is a pawn of the devil. They always do what he wants and that’s what they desire because they’re both fallen creatures. One inhabiting the spirit world, one inhabiting the physical world, but they’re both fallen beings but awesome to think a third of the angels joined him. He stands before the woman ready to devour the child when the child is born and that ties what happened when Christ was born. Herod, that little puny ruler, called king of the Jews but nothing in the overall scope of the Roman Empire, except that Jerusalem is the focal point of the world always.

He tried to kill every baby in Bethlehem within a certain time period. Why? You’ve to get this baby killed that was the devil’s motivation, because if he could kill the Messiah, game over! I win and there’s no redemption. Now later it will be God’s plan for the Messiah to die. It happens on God’s schedule for God’s purposes so that’s what the picture is the devil here ready to kill Christ.

We’ll pick up on the preservation of Israel so then we established in verses one and two, the nation Israel, then the great spiritual enemy of Israel in verses three and four, then we can come back to verses five and six to talk about the connection of the two. The devil picked it up at the end of verse four with his trying to kill the child, then his opposition to Israel, and then we’ll go back to heaven to deal with the devil again. Then we’ll come back and deal with the devil dealing with Israel again, so you see how we’re moving. We’re filling in what’s going on during this last three and a half years to bring us to the coming of Christ and awesome to be reminded.

This is the same battle going on in the world today, the devil and his demons at work. Make no mistake there are demons in this room as well as unfallen angels. You know why, we’re told the devil blinds the minds of the unbeliever lest the light of the glory of the gospel should shine in. He’s here to close the ears of the unbeliever, to keep them from seeing the truth; he doesn’t want you to believe the gospel. It’s a spiritual war going on. You think, oh man, this is just long, I’m done, I’m out of here and I don’t know about all this stuff about dragons and crowns and that’s what the devil’s whispering in your ear, isn’t this foolishness?

You have better things to think about, it’s a spiritual battle going on all the time. It becomes more openly manifest as we get down near the second coming of Christ but it’s just as real today and believer, don’t ever lose sight of the fact, you are in the devil’s sight. He is the opposer of Israel, because Israel was chosen by God, and you are part of the church, the bride of Christ and you are the archenemy of the devil. You think his demons aren’t looking for every opportunity. “Be on guard your adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.” He hasn’t lost sight of you. You’re not hiding in the crowd. His demons have you picked out. That’s the spiritual war going on, we “don’t do battle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenlies.” We must not ever forget the seriousness of the situation.

Let’s pray together: Thank You Lord for the riches of Your word and Lord we are in awe that You, the omnipotent, omniscient God has chosen to speak to us, to make Yourself known, to do it with the intention that we be able to understand. Thank You Lord for Your grace in sending Christ and providing the Holy Spirit, so that as we seriously give attention to Your word, and the ministry of Your Spirit, we understand. Pray for any who are here who are still blinded by their sin and the work of Satan that there might be a day when their eyes are opened, and Lord for those of us who have experienced Your saving grace, may we be careful and alert, clothed with the full armor you’ve provided that we might stand firm in the days of the devil’s attack, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.