revelation uncovered #11: chapter 12 the art of war...

REVELATION UNCOVERED #11: CHAPTER 12 THE ART OF WAR MORNING MESSAGE

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SUN TZU AND THE ART OF WAR In the 6th century BC, the legendary general, Sun Tzu of China wrote, THE ART OF WAR. He wrote: All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Revelation 12 is all about the reality of spiritual war. Sun Tzu’s insights are like a page right out of our enemy’s playbook. Sun Tzu said something else we’d be wise to remember: Know thy self, know thy enemy.

That’s what this morning is all about: KNOW THY ENEMY. Chapters 12 through 14 are known as the seven significant signs. If the interlude and seventh trumpet of chapter 11

encapsulated the book of Revelation; chapter 12 encapsulates the entire Bible.

To understand chapter 12, we need to understand this. The events are not sequenced in time, but in focus. And the

focus of this chapter is the scope of the spiritual war that is raging around, and in us. In this chapter, God gives us the perspective of our real enemy; Satan. It pulls together imagery from Middle Eastern history and Scripture, from Genesis, to the Gospels. There are layers of meaning; and each layer reveals a new deadly feature of our enemy.

The objective this morning is to recognize when Satan is at work. Scripture calls that “discernment.” Churches are filled with honest believers being used as Satan’s tool for the simple reason; we don’t appreciate the scope of the battle, or the tactics of our enemy. –So we get snared into fighting over foolish things and absorbed by churchy activity that in the eternal, mean virtually nothing. We are out-maneuvered by an enemy and a war we haven’t bothered to take seriously.

We’ll go into the symbolism of chapter 12 this evening, but for our objective this morning, we’re going to start from the conclusion. We’ll explain a quick summary of chapter 12. The interpretation is based on sources that consider the full scope of ancient Jewish thought and Middle Eastern history. –In other words; they look through the eyes of the Apostle John who experienced this vision. That being said, here we go…

THE STORY OF CHAPTER 12 The first great sign opens with the vision of a woman. She is clothed with the sun, representing the direct light

of God, and stands on the moon, the reflected light of God; the New and Old Testament, respectively. The image

is a parallel of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream that he related to Daniel. The woman represents ancient Israel with her hope in the coming Messiah.

The scene switches to untold millennia before. It is the time when the angel Lucifer is perverted by his pride and leads a third of the angels of heaven to rebel against God. The image provides us with a stark contrast between God and our enemy.

The scene switches back to the birth of Christ. The woman, who is Israel, is pregnant and in the labor pains. Once

again, it’s direct imagery borrowed from the Old Testament. She is about to bear a child who is the Christ. A dragon, who is Satan, stands before her ready to devour the child as soon as it is born. The child is born and then snatched to


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heaven. The vision skips over the life of Christ to His victory and ascension because, the focus here, is not the life of

Christ, but the great spiritual war that is raging. Satan didn’t want the Christ born into the world. He tried to devour Him through the acts of Herod.

The woman, or Israel, flees to the wilderness after the Christ is born. The wilderness represents other nations of the world. That is; the people of Israel will continue to exist as peoples in other lands. This goes on for 1,260 days which we’ve learned, was the time period of the darkest violation of ancient Israel under Antiochus, and ended by the Jewish resistance fighters, the Maccabees. …The time period is the literal time that Israel suffered this violation. Now, its main

purpose is as a metaphor.

Then the story pops back to the beginning of the great spiritual war. There is a war that broke out between the archangel Michael and the dragon, or Lucifer. The fallen angels fight back but lose. Satan is hurled to the earth with his legions.

The story shifts again to the Cross at which time the authority of Satan is shattered. The war is won; however, the woes of earth and humanity are really just beginning. We have a powerful entity from heaven, who is now insane with rage and venting on us.

At the Cross, Satan’s destiny is synched. Even if his life should last ten thousand years, it is still short because he now has a limit of time that didn’t exist before. And time is always short. The serpent, Satan, uses his greatest weapon symbolized by water to try and destroy the woman, Israel, but God’s intervention is symbolized by land which saves her. Satan wages war on her offspring who are the faithful of the Old and New Testament; those who keep God’s commands and the testimony of Jesus.

Here is the first vital point to take away from this: The great enemy of humanity isn’t the left-wingers, it really isn’t

even Hitler or communism or Kim Jong-un of North Korea, or the extremists of ISIS. The real enemy is far more ancient. So what does this chapter tell us about our enemy? Let’s pull some features together…

FEATURES OF THE ENEMY ~Fiery red dragon. The vision portrays a fiery red dragon. In the original Greek, the work “drakon” actually means fabulous or fascinating kind of serpent. The idea being dazzling or hypnotically beautiful.

This beautiful creature is red, so what does that symbolize in Scripture. From the negative side, it represents the affect of sin. Isaiah 1:18 calls sin a scarlet stain that is impossible to remove by any natural means.

Red represents blood, or the spilling of blood; it implies getting one’s blood pumping for the wrong reasons, so

death, violence, or violent passions. We saw that with the fiery red horse of Rev. 6:4.

Now here comes the hinge point of this morning’s message: the history of the dragon.

~The Dragon’s History. Remember, the Jewish faith didn’t rise in a bubble anymore than our thinking has today. Abraham came out of Babylon

and the nation of Israel was taken captive there centuries later. The Babylonian religion held that the creation


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story was the battle between Marduk, the creating god and the dragon of chaos. That imagery finds its way

into Jewish imagery. It’s interesting to note that the image of the dragon isn’t found anywhere in the Bible until we get to Revelation, and it exposes a second feature of our enemy.

In Jewish imagery, the primary symbol was the serpent. The serpent was beautiful in Genesis, but the lethal power

highlighted was his ability to deceive. The entire story of the fall revolves around deception. But now we have a

related, but different feature; chaos. That ties into traditional Jewish thought in another way, which helps explain the

appearance of this dragon.

~The symbol of chaos is water. The story of creation deals with God separating order from chaos. In Jewish imagery, water represents chaos.

Land represents order. In the creation story, God separated the water and the land. The first great act of God was to separate order from chaos.

So it’s not surprising that the monster of chaos in the ancient Jewish mind was a sea-monster.

Psalm 74:12-14 But God is my King from long ago; he brings salvation on the earth. It was you who split open the sea by your power; you broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert. Centuries later, the imagery is still prominent in Jewish thought. The prophet Isaiah gives this image: Isaiah 27 1. In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong, will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan

that twisted serpent; and He will slay the reptile that is in the sea.

Water is chaos, and it is the habitat of the monster of chaos.

So far; here are the features of our great enemy: ~There are seven heads, and seven represents completeness. The idea is that the presence and power of this

dragon is complete.

~The horn is a symbol of power, for good or bad, depending on the context in Scripture. The dragon has

ten horns. Ten (“ahsahrah” Esehr) is taught as the number of the completed cycle, it is the complete tithe, the

complete congregation, body, or kingdom for good or evil. The dragon is complete in his power and incorporation.

~There are seven crowns, seven is a divine number, and if you remember, we looked at two words for crown. The

word here is Diadema, which is a royal crown. This dragon appears convincingly divine, and impressively regal.

~John mentions the dragon by two names, the devil or Satan. First impression is that John’s being redundant,

but history and language show this is actually layers of meaning.

The word “devil” (diabolos) means false accuser.

The word “satan” originally meant any enemy, it evolved to mean council for the prosecution.


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We get the picture of a corrupt lawyer. He is your enemy, he has the power of litigation, and he is willing to abuse that authority and break any rule to get you. He is the worst kind of enemy, lots of smarts and lots of authority.

If we put it all together we find that we are in the middle of a cosmic spiritual battle, and we are the targets of

an insane rage. The one who hates us is hypnotically beautiful. He is regal in manner and appearance. His

authority extends everywhere. He is so powerful that he appears god-like. He not only is a master of deception,

he is the lord of chaos. Chaos is a main weapon.

We have honed down the big picture to one main player, our enemy, and the purpose was to pare down even further to

one main weapon of that one player; the weapon is chaos.

THE WEAPON OF CHAOS If you look up definitions for chaos, you’ll find that it once meant “abyss.” You’ll find that it means unpredictability in

behavior or nature. It means, lawlessness, regarding the laws of man, nature, or God. Chaos is not so much the opposite of order as the absence of it. Consider what that means at any level:

When life is absent of man’s law; we no longer have civilization.

When life is absent of nature’s law; we no longer have healthiness or physical safety.

When life is absent of God’s law; we have no rooted morality, we have no direction or purpose, we don’t

even have a solid identity!

I couldn’t explain the absence chaos brings better than the atheist Will Provine who was honest enough to state what

it means in only one area of thought (I emphasize, just one area); creation. Here is what he says: VIDEO

Chaos is Satan’s nature and greatest weapon. The void it brings isn’t just a loss of the afterlife, our

very existence is up for grabs. It’s the absence of moral footing, direction, hope, purpose, joy; anything that foster quality and value in life.

Even now a postmodern thinking deconstructs order in the guise of enlightenment. I’ve recently seen a form with eight different options for gender!

The intellectual mindset today deconstructs everything; gender is now whatever one feels at the moment. History is

revised, morals are relative, right and wrong are illusions, and the only truth is that there is no truth. It’s our duty to smash every boundary, distain every discipline and call that freedom… and yet, the human mind and spirit has never been more enslaved. …That’s how the weapon of chaos works. In the end, only those who keep the commands of God and the testimony of Christ will see eternal life. In other words;

only those who recognized chaos and resist it, and truly prize the order, as a holy God has created it.

Do you know your enemy? Do you really know your God? If your life, practices, values, and views were closely examined; would they reflect the

broken boundaries of Satan’s chaos, or the ordered steps of a Christ-life?

The gap between the two is growing. Time is short; it’s time to get serious about the war that is raging.

revelation uncovered #11: chapter 12 the art of war...

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