In May 1943, during World War Two, the United States was in a desperate situation. The Japanese were an almost unstoppable force in the Pacific, decimating Allied fleets; they were busy planning a decisive final attack. However, the real battle at the time was not actually between battleships and fighter planes; it was behind the scenes between an eccentric linguist, Joseph Rockefort, and the encryption of Japanese naval signals. Rockefort had partially cracked the Japanese encryption code, and they were now snooping on communications, putting together the pieces of the enemy's next move. All of this enabled a remarkable US victory over the Japanese in what is called the Battle of Midway.

You see, friends, sometimes the decisive contest in any given sphere occurs not in public view, but behind the scenes. In chapter twelve of Revelation, we are at a hinge point in the book. Chapters one to eleven make up the first half and chapters twelve to twenty-two the second.

With the second half, John opens the window to the real war raging behind the scenes, sometimes out of view, the source of the church's suffering and trials in this age. It is principalities and powers; it is the church's chief adversary, Satan, waging war against Christ and the saints. He is the fallen angel, Lucifer, the devil, who stands behind all and any attack on Christ's kingdom. Jesus described him as the prince of the power of the air.

As Martin Luther wrote in his hymn: "Our ancient foe who does seek to work us woe; his craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate; on earth is not his equal." The book of Revelation is a message of encouragement to what we call the church militant. That is a term meaning the church of Christ in its historical struggle against the powers of darkness and satanic domain.

It is a book to remind Christians that despite suffering, toil, tribulations, and anguish, all is not lost, and the victory, though at times seemingly faint, is sure, for the Lamb shall conquer and subdue every opposing force in the end. For though Satan pulls his strings to coordinate the destruction of the church, his power is curtailed and short-lived. God will shelter his church under his wings and bring her safe to Canaan's side. And that is our hope. Revelation 17:14 captures this:

"These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them because he is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and those who are with him are called and chosen and faithful." 

So this morning, we want to see how the vision God gave to the apostle John describes the source of the church's trials and tribulations. We will see that behind the historic struggle of the church is cosmic warfare waged through Satan's Christmas assault. Yet despite the adversary's attacks, he will never succeed or hinder the advance of the true king, one born to rule, Christ, and his victory are secure.

Context

Now, in a moment, we will move into the text, but first, context Like kids in the back seat on a family road trip, you might be asking: Where are we? The book of Revelation, as I understand it, is structured in seven parallel or recapitulating cycles.

Each of these seven cycles focuses on describing, with symbolic visions and images, different realities occurring between the first and second coming of Jesus Christ. I might explain it this way: fast forward a couple of weeks from now, less than that even, and many of you will be seated around your grandchildren and your children, watching them open presents. Now imagine that all the adults there are watching your kids open presents with their phones out, each beginning to record the action.

Each adult is standing at a different angle, a different height, a different distance from the action; if we were to review all the footage, it would show the same event and time from different perspectives. Revelation is a little like that: in seven parallel cycles, it shows realities of this present age and a glimpse into the future at the return of Jesus. By the end of the book, we even have a glimpse into the eternal state.

Throughout, John's message is to encourage the persecuted church; that Jesus Christ who died and rose again is with them in their trials. He is the one standing among the golden lampstands in the early chapters. He shall come to judge the world and renew all things, to inaugurate the new heavens and new earth. I will demonstrate this pattern very briefly for you in this fourth cycle, which begins in chapter twelve. Look at Revelation 12:1–2:

"A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun..." and down to verse two, "She was with child, and she cried out, being in labour and in pain to give birth." Here we are at the start of a new cycle, which begins at the first coming of Jesus Christ. It describes the birth of the Messiah and Satan's Christmas assault. Then, as with all of the cycles, they progress to a point where we have the second coming of Christ and divine judgement.

In every cycle, you can identify this great scene of cataclysmic judgement describing what occurs at the second coming. The end of the fourth cycle is Revelation 14:14–15ff:

"Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud was one like a son of man, having a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. And another angel came out of the temple, crying out with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, 'Put in your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.'"

So, in my interpretation of these words in Revelation chapter twelve, I am working on the presumption that what John writes here is not something far off in the future, but realities and truths purposed to explain and to encourage John's first readers in their trials and suffering for Christ.

The Woman, the Dragon, and the Child

Let us look at the woman, the dragon, and the child. We need to identify these different figures here in John's vision to understand the message of the sign he relates.

It is, of course, obvious that the child, the male child, this one born to rule with a rod of iron, refers to the birth of Jesus Christ. We hear echoes of that messianic psalm in Psalm two:

"Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware." 

Now this one who comes to rule for God is born. Also obvious here is identifying the dragon.

The dragon symbolises our great adversary, Satan himself; that he wears seven crowns symbolises his world dominion and power.

In his epistle, John writes in 1 John 5:19: "The whole world lies in the power of the evil one." Satan, the Bible teaches, is the "god of this world", lowercase 'g', and has his grip on the hearts of unsaved men and women. It is Satan, according to 2 Corinthians 4:4, who has "blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Fallen humanity belongs in the domain of spiritual darkness, the domain of Satan. Paul says in Ephesians 2:2 that he is "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience."

That is, the lost. These are without hope in the world, destined one day, without Christ's saving intervention, doomed to a lost eternity when Satan, his angels, and the lost are cast into the outer darkness of hell forever.

John also says here in the vision that he has ten horns, which denotes his immense, murderous power. Satan is not to be trifled with, friends; it is only by the indwelling of Christ that the believer can resist his temptations and attempts to lure us from Christ.

He appeals to men as a messenger of light, but as our Lord Jesus said in John 8:44, "He is the liar and deceiver from the beginning." Satan's sole aim, while he has limited time before his imminent destruction, is to oppose the works of God. So, John says here in Revelation 12: "The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she gave birth, he might devour her child."

This refers to Satan's attempts to destroy Jesus when he was born; we know how this worked out, do we not? His attempts were played out through King Herod's murderous plot to find and kill the newborn king. So Satan stood as the master of puppets in the background, behind the scenes, seeking to end humanity's hope and crush the Messiah. We read of this in Matthew 2:13:

"Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, 'Get up! Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.'"

And then in Herod's rage, he sent men to Bethlehem to kill all newborn babies, hoping to get Christ that way. In Matthew 2:16:

"Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the Magi." 

How evil, how wretched is Satan's maligned heart and works to oppose all that God is for. Isaiah 14 describes his fall. Isaiah 14:12 says:

"How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations."

He has kept the nations in darkness, and he will oppose Christ at his Christmas advent. You see, friends, what John reveals here is that the entire story of the Bible is the story of this great cosmic conflict. Though we may be unaware of it, it rages on.

It is the conflict between the seed of the woman, Christ and his church, and the seed of the serpent, Satan and unbelievers. Now, of course, even the devil was, as Luther said, God's devil. In fact, Christ has now disarmed Satan of his ability to deceive the nations as he once had freedom to do. Jesus says that he has bound the strong man in Matthew 12:29:

"How can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house." 

In other words, because Jesus has come, Satan's foothold on this world is now loosened, and he is bound with respect to deceiving the nations. The spread of the gospel into the world following the resurrection and ascension of Christ is a testament to this. In Revelation 20:3, the beginning of the seventh cycle in Revelation, it says:

"And he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer." 

As one commentator says: "in regions where the devil had been allowed to exercise almost unlimited authority during Old Testament times, he is now compelled to see the servants of Christ gaining territory little by little."

So, we have identified the child as Christ and the dragon as Satan. But who is this woman? John says:

"A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet; and on her head, a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and cried out, being in labour and in pain to give birth."

As one commentator said in their introduction to Revelation, the key to unlocking the secrets of Revelation is not found in the surface soil of the book, but in the subterranean soil. Revelation is a book in which its symbols are saturated in Old Testament allusions. When we look at the subterranean soil here, we find that this woman is not a singular woman of history, but symbolically represents the people of God, and especially the messianic line through whom God brought Jesus into the world. She represents the bride of Christ, with whom this child is associated.

She cannot only represent Israel, as some interpret it, because some of the imagery predates Israel. Again, some of the imagery points to the woman representing the present New Testament church era, as I will show you soon. At first, in this woman and the allusions John gives, we see an echo of Genesis 3:15–16. There is the first promise of the messianic seed.

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." 

And to the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth; in pain you will bring forth children." 

This is the first Christmas announcement, the first proclamation of the Messiah's coming, the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head and works. John says that this woman cries out in pain; why is she crying in pain? Why? Because at last, the promise made to Eve in the beginning, with all the toil and pain and suffering through which the Messiah's line has been subjected, has come to pass.

John is retelling here the story of the Messiah's arrival: through much tribulation in the world and the assaults of Satan, Christ has come into the world. Of course, Old Testament Israel has a special part to play in this story. We notice that this woman has a crown of twelve stars, likely representing the twelve tribes of Israel. There is also an allusion, it seems, to Joseph's dream in Genesis 37 with reference to the sun and the moon. The woman represents, as Paul said in Romans 9:4, "Israelites... from whom is the Christ according to the flesh."

Yet, as Joel Beeke says in his commentary, the number twelve does not only represent Israel; the number twelve represents the New Testament church as well. He says it:

"represents not only the twelve tribes of Israel but also the twelve apostles of the Lord. She is not only the church of the Old Testament, waiting to give birth to the Messiah; for after the child is born, the woman flees into the wilderness in an effort to escape the devil. But Satan, having been frustrated in his efforts to devour the child, persecutes her. In other words, he refocuses on the destruction of the New Testament church."

The woman thus broadly represents the church as the people of God as a whole, Old Testament and New Testament era, all those peoples across time associated with Christ, the spiritual descendants of Abraham.

Now that we have assembled these parts, let us draw out the implications and application of this passage.

The Nature Of Our Struggle

First of all, I want us to consider the nature of our struggle.

The real background to all church persecution, and individual believers' persecution, the reason why Christians to this day are still under attack, is because of this great cosmic warfare Satan wages against the bride of Christ. Since the beginning, Satan has sought the termination of the messianic line; he has stood as the accuser of the brethren. He came against that man of God named Job. He stood up to accuse, in David's time, Israel. He came against the high priest Joshua in Zechariah 3. Still today, he stands against the church to accuse.

Do you now perhaps understand why Christianity is really the only truly persecuted religion in the world? Wherever the gospel spreads, wherever it is proclaimed, Satan bares his teeth.

Does this not contextualise for you the spread of Islam and its anti-Christian doctrine especially? Do you not see that Satan has a hold on the ideologies and beliefs of man to poison the world, to suppress the truth of Christ? He comes, as Jesus says in the parable of the sower, to steal the sowing seed and deceive the world if he may. Paul says in Ephesians 6:12: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood..." It is not truly against man, but "against the rulers, against powers, against world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."

That is the true source of all in the world that is antichrist, it is the devil behind, baring his teeth. Christian, understand the source and nature of our struggle. In ages past, as the woman cried out, he attacked; at the time of Christ's birth, he attacked. As the woman, as John says, flees into the wilderness, she delivers the child and now she flees, Satan will then try to persecute her again. To this day, Satan unleashes upon the church, though he is bound and hamstrung in his ability; he attacks to this day. 

2 Corinthians 2:11 says: "So that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes."

Understand what you are even now in the midst of. Does all this not explain how we watch people recoil at the name of Christ? How quickly the world will flee into further and further darkness to get away from the light, because they belong to Satan's domain.

The Surety Of Our Victory

But I want you to also consider here the surety of our victory.

Satan does not have the final say, though he is a cruel and merciless opponent. Revelation, as a book, holds out to the persecuted church in John's day the reality of suffering for Christ, but assures that though they suffer, they shall overcome. The martyr's blood, as it runs into the soil, as that pastor from Pakistan, whom we considered in prayer earlier, the martyr's blood becomes the seedbed of only more churches and more testament to the power of Christ and his shed blood to save the soul.

Revelation 21:7 states: "He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son." You see, our victory is sure. The suffering church, the church militant, is paradoxically in a state of grace and triumph, though the enemy cuts her down.

Revelation 12:11, if you look further down from the reading we initially took, says: "And they overcame him 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." John is describing the overcoming of the martyrs, that they are triumphing, though they are slain. Why? Because the church of Jesus Christ belongs to those who are more than conquerors; they have overcome. They are clothed in the white robes of the only begotten Son of God. They have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.

I love how Meredith Kline says: "Strange detergent, staining blood." Blood that cleans; blood that washes away sins, and we stand as overcomers.

So this woman here in John 12, if we have understood it correctly, describes the people of God as a whole, and it is under divine protection. John describes this too. Look at verse six:

"Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days." 

And then in Revelation 12:14: "But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the presence of the serpent."

John pictured the persecuted churches like those in the wilderness, like aliens and foreigners without peace or home. But the Lord will nourish her. These time references, as you will see in Revelation, are expressed in different ways, one thousand two hundred and sixty days, which is the same as forty-two months, which is the same as a time, times, and half a time. All three are used in Revelation in different cycles and are symbolic markers of this present age before the second coming. So the woman flees into the wilderness; she becomes an alien, a stranger, a foreigner in the world. For this present age, Satan will persecute her, and yet she is under divine protection.

These time references allude to Daniel seven, and also a passage in Luke 4:25–26. Jesus said this: "But I tell you the truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months." That is the time calculation here in Revelation. "Yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow."

John appears to link what the present church will undergo, persecution, with the provision of God during that famine described in Kings, a time, times, and half a time. He is alluding to a period where the people of God were under immense persecution. These were the days of Jezebel; God’s people suffered greatly under her attacks, and Satan was behind Jezebel unleashing. But God sustained his people for that period. John appears to say, he will do the same again: he will sustain his church; his bride will overcome, and Christ will again return at the end of the age.

Believer, fear not if you live in a time of Christian decline. For some of you older folk who have come from a time where perhaps you have seen this church filled, you have seen churches in Invercargill filled, and now you feel as if you are living through a time of Christian decline, wondering where the power of God is. Does he still care for his church? Has he abandoned us? If you live through a time of decline, if your neighbours or your children harden their hearts against Christ, if the government or all manner of power oppose and try to suffocate the church, if you see all of these things, rejoice in the knowledge that the victory belongs to Christ, and it is he who holds and will keep his church.

Our advocate is the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of heaven and earth, and he shall never leave or forsake us. In Luke 22:31–32, Jesus said: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail." This woman is under divine protection. She flees, but God will bear her up on the wings of eagles, a reference to the time of the Exodus, when God bore Israel up like eagle's wings. He will do the same; he will protect his church. His bride will overcome.

Conclusion

So now I trust that this Christmas, you have a perspective of this cosmic scale, the spiritual warfare that rages on in this world as a consequence of Christmas. We see that behind the historic struggle of the church is a war of a kind that we cannot see or detect; it is led by Satan. Yet, despite the adversary's attacks, he will never succeed or hinder the advances of the true king, the male child born to rule, and rule he does. Christ and his victory are assured.