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§12 Flashback: The Genesis of the Current Crisis (Rev. 12:1–12)

With the exaltation of the slain Lamb, the heavenly temple has been opened and the promise of salvation has been fulfilled (11:19); a new age of salvation’s history has begun. According to the eschatology of the earliest church, Christ’s death and exaltation constitute the penultimate moment of salvation’s history and look ahead to the ultimate moment, the parousia of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the salvation of God’s people and the restoration of God’s creation will be completed in full. The church’s history is worked out between those two climactic moments of salvation’s history and constitutes the current moment of God’s salvation.

This period of time should not be understood in a linear, chronological sense (Boring, Revelation, p. 150). Rather, the word of exhortation or judgment which the Spirit conveys to the readers of John’s Revelation interprets their Christian existence within an anti-Christian world. The “Babylon” of this section of John’s vision is any and every place where a congregation of believers struggles to live for God. The evils found there are found everywhere and at any time before Christ’s return.

Beginning with chapter 12, John introduces new characters who challenge the reign of God and the objective value of Christ’s work for life on earth—the “red dragon” and the two “beasts.” He draws upon a new vocabulary which describes hostility to and warfare against God. The practical problem of theodicy is that people do not always experience the triumph of God over evil; more often than not, they experience suffering and injustice. In moving the venue of the visionary world from heaven to earth, John moves the reader into a world of real conflict between two kingdoms with the Lamb and his disciples on one side and the dragon, his agents and followers on the other. The venue of the cosmic and age old conflict is now planet Earth; and the community of the Lamb’s disciples is the current target of satanic oppression.

Krodel has pointed out the variety of literary, often chiastic, relationships that tie this central section of John’s vision to the visions of the Lamb’s exaltation (cf. 5:9–10 and 12:10–12) and parousia (cf. 12:7–9 and 20:1–10; Krodel, Revelation, pp. 235–36). The interplay of these two visions with this part of John’s vision provides an overarching perspective on the church’s current misery. While devotion to the risen and returning Christ does not exempt the disciple from suffering—for the dragon’s battle is now against the woman and her offspring—it does ensure the disciple of participation in God’s final triumph over the Evil One in the age to come.

We do not disagree with those who contend that John draws upon the oppressive Roman regime of his day to describe the anti-Christian kingdom in his visionary world; however, the evil reign against which the church struggles is not isolated to one point of human history but is cosmic in space and ongoing in time. The church’s constant challenge is to live for God for “as long as it is called Today,” and to resist the satanic powers “that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Heb. 3:13). This section of Revelation envisions any believing community, when the fundamental and ongoing crisis is its spiritual battle with all who resist the reign of God.

12:1–2 / The immediate purpose of this rehearsal of the Christ event (12:1–5), and the resulting sojourn of the church (12:6) and banishment of the Evil One to earth (12:7–12), is to summarize the precedent circumstances which caused the current moment and crisis of salvation’s history. In writing down his vision of heavenly signs and warfare, John utilizes the elements of a well-known myth, found in the folklore of many cultures (cf. Beasley-Murray, Revelation, pp. 191–97). Many citizens of John’s world assumed that the myth was literally fulfilled by the Caesar; thus, “John rewrites the old pagan myth deliberately to contradict its current political application” (Caird, Revelation, p. 148). That is, God’s salvation of the world is based upon Christ’s authority and not Caesar’s, who is but another pretender to the messianic throne.

The essential features of this mythic story are as follows: at the birth of a promised ruler, an evil pretender to his throne attempts to reverse the wishes of the gods by killing the ruler at birth. The infant ruler, however, escapes and eventually kills his persistent and life-long enemy, ending his reign of terror in accord with the interests of the gods. By re-presenting the essential features of Jesus’ messianic career as mythic, John allows the myth’s interpretation of life to re-interpret the Christ event of the Christian gospel: even though the promised Messiah was born into conflict, he eventually triumphed, thus securing God’s salvation for God’s people. In fact, by extending the traditional myth to include the triumphant child’s ascension into heaven (12:5b) and the Evil One’s subsequent banishment from heaven to fallen earth (12:7–9), John underscores the primary importance of Christ over the “Caesars” of any age.

John envisions the inauguration of the current period of salvation’s history as two celestial signs (cf. 12:1, 3); a third (15:1) will complete this period of conflict, the “third woe” (11:14). The first is great and wondrous, because it testifies to the salvation of God. While some have identified the woman clothed with the sun … and a crown of twelve stars on her head with astral imagery current in Greco-Roman mythology (Ford, Revelation, p. 197), it is best to understand her by the biblical symbols known to and used by John. For example, the number twelve symbolizes the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Rev. 7); thus, the twelve stars symbolize God’s people. The crown as well as the sun … and moon symbolize either God (cf. Isa. 60:1; Ps. 104:2; Rev. 21:22–23) or the cosmic significance of God’s people (cf. T. Naph. 5:1–8) in the outworking of God’s promised redemption through Christ. The point is that the vision is signaling a momentous event in God’s redemption of God’s people.

Most would agree that the woman in John’s vision is the antithesis of the “great prostitute” of Babylon, who is introduced later in Revelation (17:3). Most would contend that this woman refers to a community rather than to an individual person such as Mary. Her exact identity, whether a religious subgroup within ethnic Israel such as messianic Judaism (cf. Luke 2:36–38) or eschatological Israel (cf. Rev. 12:5b–6), remains debated. Perhaps it is best to understand the history of God’s people, where God’s salvation is worked out, as a continuum. The woman symbolizes the faithful people of God (cf. Rev. 12:17) from whom and for whom the Messiah is born. The woman, then, refers to a people identified by their distinctive spirituality rather than ethnicity. Further, the woman’s birth pains and cries to God anticipate the messianic era, its restoration of true Israel (cf. Isa. 26:18 LXX; Gal. 4:19), and its judgment of evil (cf. Matt. 24:4–8).

12:3–4 / The one who opposes God’s desired redemption is envisioned in another sign: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. While the dragon conjures up allusions to OT “dragons,” such as Leviathan (Ps. 74:14) or the Isaianic “sea-beasts” (cf. Isa. 27:1), or more significantly to Egypt’s Pharaoh (Ezek. 29:3), its real importance is again recovered within Revelation’s own symbol systems. By linking the dragon to the number seven, elsewhere symbolic of the ordained outworking of God’s salvation, and to the crown motif, elsewhere symbolic of God’s sovereignty, John points the reader to evil’s most fundamental idolatry: the promotion of secular power over what belongs to the creator God and God’s exalted Lamb. Thus, through chapter 13, John describes the principalities of the evil kingdom and its reign of terror in ironic parallel to God’s reign of justice and redemption.

John’s apocalyptic narrative is fashioned in terms of a dualistic understanding of history; all reality for John, whether personal or societal, is subdivided up into good and evil, for God and against God. The basic conflict, whether personal or societal, that inevitably issues from humankind’s quest for self-definition stems from the contested nature of historical meaning and humanity’s purpose. The rhetorical effect of this dualistic view of life helps the reader to focus more clearly on the ultimate concern of any spiritual quest: who is in charge of human existence? And Revelation draws the two possible outcomes of this spiritual quest in very precise lines. On the one hand, when the Evil One gains dominion over those who bear his mark (13:17–18) the result will be their death (13:11–16). On the other hand, when God is allowed to rule over those who bear the Lamb’s name (14:1) the result will be their eternal life (14:2–5).

Although the red dragon has real power, as indicated by his enormous size, its potential effect is limited: his tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky. As with several judgments announced by the angelic trumpets, John uses the fraction, a third, to signify a limited scope or effect. The dragon has limits placed around its powers. This is no more apparent than in the dragon’s relationship with the woman’s child, who is about to be born. In anticipation of his triumph over God’s promised Messiah, the dragon stood in front of the woman … so that he might devour her child the moment it was born (cf. Matt. 2:16). Yet, we find that his attempt is foiled by God: God will always prevail, and God’s plan calls for Messiah to deliver the true Israel from evil.

12:5–6 / The summary of God’s triumph over the dragon in 12:5 must remind John’s readers of the gospel’s central teaching: God’s sovereign rule over and redemptive interests in creation have been reasserted through Christ Jesus in triumph over the Evil One. Against the deities of pagan mythology and the gnosticizing speculations of some Christians in his audience, John introduces Jesus into the flashback as a male child in agreement with the messianic expectations of OT prophecy. As Messiah, he is born to rule all the nations with an iron scepter (cf. Ps. 2:9). His authority, however, is not exercised in a tyrannical manner; here, rule (poimainein) means to shepherd the flock of God, even though firmly by an iron staff.

Some scholars find difficulty with John’s rehearsal of the Christ event since it seems to contend that Jesus ascends into heaven immediately after his birth. John’s vision, however, is not a complete narrative of Jesus’ life; it has simply telescoped the Christ event, omitting the Lord’s life, death, and resurrection, to focus more directly on Jesus’ exaltation and the eventual outcome of the Evil One’s efforts to derail the messianic mission at its birth (cf. Mark 1:13). In this sense, 12:5 interprets the significance of chapter 5: Jesus’ exaltation as the Paschal Lamb spells Satan’s defeat, the end of Satan’s heavenly rule. Jesus’ ascendency to God’s throne contrasts sharply with the dragon’s crown (12:3) and constitutes further testimony of God’s certain triumph over him.

The flight of the messianic community into the desert to a place prepared for her by God anticipates John’s subsequent vision of the dragon’s repression of God’s people (12:13–13:18). Actually the desert motif, as employed by biblical writers, envisions two contrasting experiences. On the one hand, it is the fallen and evil place where people experience the absence of God’s shalom; it is the place of tribulation and temptation. Even as this was true for the Israel of old, so too the life of the “true” Israel will be full of tribulation and temptation, when the rage of the Evil One is experienced for 1,260 days (cf. 13:5). On the other hand, it is the place where the resources of a good God are found, where a faithful people can experience a measure of God’s shalom this side of God’s final victory over the Evil One (cf. Mark 1:12–13). In fact, the verb, care (trephosin), is given in the subjunctive mood, indicating that the nurture (rather than the discouragement) of the messianic community is God’s real intent for their desert home.

12:7–9 / The exaltation of Christ into heaven, which begins the church’s sojourn in the wilderness (12:6), also concludes (contra Caird, Revelation, pp. 152–56) the ancient war in heaven between Michael, “champion and sponsor of the people of God” (Boring, Revelation, p. 154; cf. Dan. 10:13, 21; 12:1; Jude 9; T. Dan 6:2; T. Levi 5:7), and the dragon and his angels. The dragon was not strong enough, losing both the battle and his place in heaven, and so is hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

This summary of the war in heaven occupies a strategic place in John’s vision for several reasons. First, it reports Satan’s defeat as one result of Christ’s triumph. However strong and troublesome Satan might seem, he is nevertheless a defeated foe. Second, the Platonic cosmology of John’s hellenistic audience would lead it to assume that what has transpired in heaven will have its historical duplicate on earth. Thus, if the heavenly and invisible war between God and the Evil One has ended with God’s triumph through the exalted Lamb, then the Evil One will surely be defeated by God in an earthly and visible war (cf. Rev. 19:11–21). Third, the shift of venue is from a war in heaven … to the earth, where the defeated dragon continues the struggle against God and God’s people. This move of Satan from heaven to earth not only anticipates John’s subsequent vision of the great dragon’s hostile but failed take-over bid of the church (12:13–13:18), but it also explains why the church’s suffering has not ended. More negatively, it explains the disaffection of some believers, who are deceived by the secular notions of power and security advanced by Satan (cf. Rev. 2:9, 13, 24; 3:9), who leads the whole world astray (cf. Rev. 20:3, 8, 10). Fourth, even as Patmos is John’s penal colony, so earth is Satan’s penal colony—the place of his exile from heaven, which is the center of cosmic rule. On this basis, the reader also presumes the dragon’s ouster from heaven represents a demotion in his current influence over the course of human history. Finally, the Evil One’s dismissal from heaven foreshadows his banishment from earth when Christ returns (cf. Rev. 20:1–3).

More subtly and quite apart from anything John may wish to say about Satan’s diminished powers during the present age, the seer may also wish to contrast the status of the exalted Lamb over Michael. This detail of his vision may be included as part of an anti-synagogue polemic, especially if some readers are encountering keen anti-Christian opposition from the influential synagogues in southwest Asia. John no doubt recognized Michael’s participation in this vision in terms of rabbinical speculation that gave him elevated importance in mediating God’s covenant with religious Israel. In this way, Michael had come to symbolize for many religious Jews a triumphant Judaism. Such a role, however, has been given to the exalted Christ (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5), who alone champions a true Israel—made up of Christ’s disciples—before God’s throne.

12:10–12 / The circumstances of the church’s current crisis have now been established: the exaltation of Messiah, the wilderness sojourn of the messianic community, and the banishment of the enormous red dragon from heaven to earth where the messianic community now dwells. In a concluding hymn, the loud voice in heaven draws from two pools of themes, first to summarize the redemption that has been realized through the blood of the Lamb and the testimony of remnant Israel (12:10–11), and then to anticipate the church’s conflict with a furious devil during the present period of salvation’s history (12:12).

The first stanza begins yet another “sudden outburst of praise” which is characteristic of Revelation (Mounce, Revelation, p. 242). Its theme is the kingdom of our God, to which both salvation from evil and authority over the Evil One belong. Its tense is present, since God’s reign is a present and eternal reality, as Satan’s most recent defeat clearly manifests. What is of greater importance to John is that the final disposition of the heavenly war also marks the end of the satanic case for the prosecution, which had accused our brothers … before … God day and night (cf. Job 1:6–22; Zech. 3:1–2). The brothers are not angels but faithful saints of pre-messianic Israel, like Job and Zechariah, who have prepared the world for the Messiah’s promised advent (cf. Heb. 11:1–12:2; contra Morris, Revelation, p. 157). Further, the forensic overtones of this stanza are consistent with Johannine Christianity, where the exaltation of Christ marks a fundamental shift in the weight of evidence during the heavenly trial of God’s people, from Satan’s accusation (cf. John 12:31; 14:30) to the Paraclete’s witness (cf. John 14:16–17; 25–27; 15:26; 16:7–8; Caird, Revelation, pp. 153–57).

Thus, Satan’s case is thrown out of court because of two kinds of evidences: because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the testimony of those Jews martyred who refused to abandon the promises of God’s prophetic word. While John perhaps intends to encourage Christians on the verge of martyrdom to “overcome” (nikaō; cf. Rev. 2–3), he is not speaking here about the testimony of Christian martyrs. John does not view the history of God’s people as divided into discrete dispensations; rather, the faithful remnant of Israel and now of the church form an unbroken testimony to God’s reign from creation to consummation. In this sense, the saints of old bear collective witness to a pattern of life which ultimately overcomes the evils of a fallen world (cf. Heb. 11).

John sounds a realistic, perhaps even an ominous note in the final stanza. While the heavens (and the eschatological community!) are now rid of their satanic accuser and can rejoice because he has been replaced there by the exalted advocate, it is cause for woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you. This woe is not the “third woe,” mentioned earlier in Revelation 11:14. While the “third woe” refers implicitly to the suffering of believers, its purview is the entire current age and is ultimately concentrated on the destruction of the anti-Christian kingdom at the end of the age when Christ returns. This immediate woe is more limited, and refers to the very beginning of the church’s suffering at the hands of the Evil One, who is filled with fury toward God’s people.

The final phrase, he knows that his time is short, provides two meanings to these “last days” of salvation’s history. On the one hand, it suggests the kairos of the church’s tribulation is limited, its end imminent; on the other hand, it implies that hostilities toward believers will increase because the beast has been wounded and beaten. The first meaning generates hope, while the second meaning explains the existential experience of powerlessness. Is not this the very nature of the church’s crisis this side of Christ’s return?