Revelation Chapter 12 – John Karmelich

1. This lesson is called, "Understanding God's Game Plan".

a) Before I begin, I want to share that this chapter is important to me personally. Many years ago, when first studied this chapter is when understood God's "big game plan" for mankind. I felt like a light went off in my head.

b) Chapter 11 explains God's the key points of His redemptive plan in word pictures. In these 17 verses, we are going to deal with God, Jesus, Israel, angels, the devil, demonic creatures, saved and unsaved people. No problem. ☺

c) Since there are only 17 verses, this chapter does skip a few details. ☺ The important point of this chapter is that it lays out God's redemptive plan for mankind in word pictures.

2. Let's summarize where we are in Revelation:

a) Revelation is about Jesus Second Coming. We've had chapter after chapter of "earth judgment" in preparation for the event itself. One reason God drag's out this event is to give one big "last call" to the people on earth to repent. The punishment on earth has gotten progressively worse. It is God saying in effect, "OK, if that particular judgment didn't get your attention and have you repent, try this one on for size". ☺

b) The last two chapters were a break from the judgment process to focus in on some details:

i) John was told to measure the temple and count the people in that temple.

ii) Then the text described two human witnesses who will be specifically sent to Jerusalem to be God's witnesses.

iii) The last part of Chapter 11 focused back on God's throne room where people were praising God in effect by saying, "Now it is the time for the wrap up process". It is showing gratitude to God for sending Jesus to rule from the earth.

c) Chapter 12 starts another vision. It is God saying to John in effect, "Put everything you've read so far on hold while I explain the big picture."

3. With that said, let me summarize the chapter:

a) The chapter opened with a description of a woman "clothed with the sun, moon and stars" giving birth to a male-child who will rule the world. A dragon tries to kill her child before it was born. The child lived and was taken up to heaven. The woman who gave birth had to run for safety from the dragon. Then there was a war in heaven and the dragon and his followers lost the war. The dragon was then cast to the earth where the dragon went after the woman and her other offspring.

i) Confused? Welcome to the club! ☺ All of this is explainable if one understands the word-pictures behind this vision. I'll break it down as we go through the text.

b) Here's the first key to understanding this lesson: The word is "sign".

i) Verse 1 says John saw a "sign" in heaven.

ii) That means we're dealing in word-pictures as opposed to a literal woman and a literal dragon. It is designed to be word pictures.

c) So why word pictures? Why doesn't God be blunt about all of this?

i) For starters, the human mind remembers pictures better than facts and figures. That is why your computer screen has a bunch of little pictures (icons) to click on as opposed to having us type out detailed commands. Our minds remember pictures better than it does facts and figures.

ii) Next, God wants us to "think about these things". Putting this story in the form of word-pictures helps us to contemplate what is happening.

iii) For example, the woman in these word-pictures is "Israel", the dragon is Satan (this is stated in the text). Her son is Jesus and the "rest of her offspring" are believers. This word-picture story is about salvation from heaven's perspective.

d) What Chapter 12 is doing is giving us the heavenly perspective of human history. It talks about the existence of Satan, his rebellion against God and other demonic creatures that follow Satan. This chapter uses word-pictures about our salvation through Jesus Christ and Satan's ultimate destruction.

i) What I'm going to get into in this lesson is the "why" question: For example, God created Satan and his demonic followers. What was God's purpose in doing this? Why did Satan rebel in the first place? How does that affect our lives?

ii) The idea is not to give every possible answer, but to focus on our "motivation". The short answer is Satan exists as a motivating factor to keep us close to God. If it's not bad enough that we mess up on our own, God allows this demonic world to exist to keep us close to Him through prayer. To put it another way, "God and us make a majority". Through prayer, we can overcome any adverse demonic situation that comes our way.

e) OK, I pretty much know that Jesus died for my sins, the devil exists and all that stuff. Why should I care? What I hope you get out of this lesson is not all the details, but to understand mankind's role in all of this. When I first understood it, it motivated me to become a stronger Christian. I understood my little part in human history as it relates to God's eternal plan. In other words, knowing God's plan for mankind should motivate us to draw closer to God and to work for Him as part of His eternal plan.

i) If all of this is confusing, hang in there. Let's go through the lesson and discuss our motivation as a Christians through this lesson.

4. Chapter 12, Verse 1: A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

a) The first word to notice is "sign". This is a "sign" in heaven. The verse mentions a woman. Since this is a sign, it is not a literal, historical female figure, but a word picture.

b) It is helpful at this point to remember a couple of rules about interpreting the bible:

i) Rule #1: Read the text in context. In order to properly interpret the text, study the surrounding text. Unfortunately, Chapter 12 is a new topic so there isn't much text from Chapter 11 that can help us. There is a lot more information about this woman in the rest of the chapter, and that gives us clues as to its meaning.

ii) Rule #2: Read the text in context of Revelation. Look what else is said about this woman in Revelation. Unfortunately, all that is said is in Chapter 12.

iii) Rule #3: Read the text in context of other writings by the same author: Again, John also wrote Gospel of John and 1st, 2nd and 3rd John. No clues are there.

iv) Rule #4: Read the text in context of the rest of the bible. This is the key. One must remember that the bible is consistent in its themes and "rules about God" from book to book. My point of these four rules is "context" is the key to understanding Revelation. Sometimes context means the entire bible as a reference.

c) Now lets apply those rules and figure out who is this "woman" in Verse 1:

i) Verse 2 says this woman is pregnant.

ii) Verse 5 says this woman's child is to rule the world. That sounds pretty Jesus-like to me. ☺ This "could" be the Virgin Mary, based on this sentence.

iii) Verse 6 says this woman fled to the desert for 1,260 days (i.e., 3 and one half years) so that God could protect her. Reading Verse 6 in context of the last chapter, this is talking about the "Great Tribulation". This may rule out "Mary" as a possibility. I don't think the Virgin Mary is on earth through this time period.

iv) Verse 17 says the dragon (Verse 9 bluntly states the dragon is Satan) goes after the rest of the woman's offspring. Again, that doesn't sound like Mary to me.

v) My point of this little exercise is to show this woman does not represent Mary. She doesn't "fit the text". I make a big deal about this because the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages incorrectly interpreted this as Mary.

d) Another theory about this woman is that it is "the church".

i) If this woman represents the church, we have a problem because this woman is "pregnant" as stated in Verse 2. I don't think the church (symbolically speaking) gives birth to anything. Paul refers to the Christian church as a "virgin bride" (Ref.: 2nd Corinthians 11:2). In Verse 17, this woman gives birth "to the rest of her offspring". Therefore, this "woman" word picture here is not about the church.

e) The key to understanding this verse is to compare Verse 2 to something in Genesis:

i) Revelation 11:2 says, "A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head."

ii) Genesis 37:9 says, "Then he (Joseph) had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. "Listen," he said, "I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me." (NIV)

a) The next verse of Genesis says, "When he (Joseph) told his father (Jacob) as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, "What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?"

b) This is the famous story of Joseph's dreams. Joseph had a dream of the sun, moon and eleven starts bowing down to worship John. In Verse 10 of Genesis 37, Joseph's father Jacob understood that the sun and the moon represented Joseph's mother and father and Jacob understood the eleven stars represented Joseph's 11 brothers.

c) Here in Revelation we have a sign with a moon, sun and "12" stars. The signs are the same if you count Joseph as an equal with his brothers.

iii) The point of all of this is to understand this woman represents the Nation of Israel.

a) Since we can't interpret this verse from Revelation-only, we look elsewhere in the bible and the only other place this same symbolism is used is in this text in Genesis 37.

f) I spent over a page on this point, as once you understand this woman represents the nation of Israel, the text is "downhill" from there. Let's move on to Verse 2 and we can understand this a little better.

5. Verse 2: She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

a) We will learn that this offspring of the woman represents Jesus. How does the Nation of Israel "give birth" to Jesus? What about the virgin birth? Don't forget Mary was Jewish. Don't forget that Jesus comes through a long line of Jewish people. It was through Jesus' Jewish ancestry that a Messiah was promised.

b) Let's step back and look at the big picture: Why did God "require" a nation of people, (i.e., Israel) in order to bring Jesus into the world? Why didn't Jesus just die on the cross after Adam and Eve sinned and then we could all look back to that moment in time?

i) The reason I'm bringing up this question here gets back to my introduction theme. It is about understanding God's redemptive plan for mankind.

ii) God's goal was and is to get as many people as possible to accept Jesus as the Messiah. God waited for thousands of years to send Jesus 1) to show through history how sinful mankind is without Him and 2) to give as much historical evidence as possible that Jesus is the Promised Messiah (i.e., king).

iii) God set up a large group (Israelites) to be His witness group to the world. That group would have prophets who predicted the coming of a Messiah (i.e., king).

iv) The words of those prophets were preserved in the Old Testament. Those prophets told of other things that came true to validate themselves as prophets.

v) If you wanted to claim you were "sent by God", the only way to prove it is to make lots of predictions about the future and watch all of them come true. Since God exists outside of time, He could tell prophets of future events that will occur.

a) Those "short-term" predictions validated the prophet. Those same Jewish prophets would then give long-term predictions that tied to Jesus.

vi) The reason I'm getting into all of this here is to understand why God formed the Nation of Israel. Their primary purpose was to be God's witness of His existence to the world. They were given the responsibility of brining the Messiah into the world. They were also in charge of preserving the Old Testament writings for us to study. (Whether you realize it or not, I just summarized Romans Chapter 10!)

c) All of this, surprisingly, does lead back to Verse 2: She (Nation of Israel) was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.

i) Remember that Satan's goal is to either stop or "slow down" God's redemptive plan for mankind. I believe Satan understood from the time of the Garden of Eden that his days on earth are limited and that God would send "himself" (Jesus) to pay the price for sins. I believe Satan understood that in the end, he loses. Therefore, Satan wants to slow down his end as long as possible.

ii) One way Satan tried to slow down his end is to prevent the birth of the Messiah to begin with. It is interesting to reread the Old Testament from the perspective of an attempt to kill the lineage of the Messiah. Throughout the Old Testament, there were numerous attempts to kill off all of Israel. As God "focused" who would be the Messiah, so would Satan's attacks. Let me give you some examples:

a) The Egyptian Pharaoh killed all the male babies knowing there was a promise of a redeemer. (Ref.: Exodus 1:22) One can see Satan working behind the scenes in order to stop the Messiah from coming to the world.

b) During the time of Esther, a man named Haman plotted to kill the entire Jewish race. Can you see Satan's motivation behind this?

c) When King Herod found out a "promised Messiah" was born in Israel, that king sent out orders to kill all the male babies under two years old in Bethlehem. (Ref.: Matthew 2:16) Joseph and Mary fled out that night. Again, can you see Satan's motivation behind this?

d) Getting back to Revelation Chapter 12, Again, I believe this baby is Jesus. Her "mother" in this word picture is Israel in the sense of Israel giving birth to the promised Messiah. The verse said she "cried out in pain" as she was about to give birth.

i) Remember all of this is a "sign". It is not about a literal woman and literal birth pains. It is about the suffering that Israel had to endure in exchange for the promise of having the responsibility of being the "Chosen People."

ii) One might ask what about all the suffering that has happened to Israel since Jesus? We'll cover that topic later in this lesson.

6. Verse 3: Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads.

a) The first thing to notice about Verse 3 is the word "sign" appears again. The point here is that this is not a literal dragon, but some sort of word-picture.

b) The good news is we don't have to speculate about who is this dragon. Verse 9 says, "The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan.

i) If you've ever wondered why the devil is shown as being red with horns, now you know. It ties to Revelation 12 and the picture of Satan as a red dragon. In reality, Satan is described as beautiful angel until he rebelled (Ref. Ezekiel 28:13-15).

c) So why is Satan pictured as a dragon? The Greek word is "drak-on" so the English word is transliterated from the Greek. It literally means a large serpent. It can be tied to the Garden of Eden because it was a serpent that tempted Adam and Eve.

i) Again, this is a sign. Satan is not literally a dragon, but being compared to one.

ii) The idea of a dragon is one of a large, ferocious beast that basically, causes damage. It is the idea of a terrible, evil monster.

d) Back to the verse: This dragon had "seven heads and ten horns".

i) The good news is the bible interprets this text for us. Remember one of the interpretation rules is to look elsewhere in the same book! The next chapter describes a "beast" which we will learn is the antichrist. The description of the antichrist also has seven heads and ten horns in Chapter 13.

ii) Chapter 17 interprets this: Revelation 17:9 says, "The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while.

a) First of all, Revelation 17:9 also mentions a woman. Chapter 17 has a different symbolic woman word-picture, and we'll deal with that later.

b) Again, the "dragon" sign here in Chapter 12 represents Satan as stated in Verse 9. Chapters 13 and 17 deal with a "beast" that we'll learn is the antichrist. Both the dragon and the beast are described as having "seven heads and ten horns". Since the antichrist "reflects the work" of Satan, the word-pictures are connected.

c) The verse here in Chapter 12 also says there are "seven crowns" on the dragon's head. That would also tie to the "seven king" connection.

iii) Again, Revelation 17:9 says, "the seven heads are seven hills". We'll discuss this more in Chapter 17, but "seven hills" are associated with Rome. Rome is known then and now as "a city built on seven hills". One has to remember that John wrote this during a time of Christian persecution by Rome. John needed to write about Rome "in code" in order for Revelation to be passed around.

iv) Revelation 17:9 also says that, "They (seven heads) are also seven kings. Five have fallen (past tense), one is (present tense), the other has not yet come (future)."

a) I added in parenthesis the fact that these "seven hills" represent seven kings. Five are fallen kings in that they no longer rule or exist. One is present tense at the time of John writing Revelation and one is future.

b) When John wrote Revelation, there was five great empires that had existed: 1) The Egyptian Empire, 2) The Assyrian Empire, 3) The Babylonian Empire, 4) The Mede-Persian Empire and 5) Greek Empire.

c) It might help to think of empires in terms of control over Israel. For example, no Chinese Empire is relevant, as it never ruled over Israel.

d) At the time of John's writing Rome ruled over Israel. That was the sixth king that is "present tense". There is also a 7th king that is future tense.

v) Putting this all together, the text is implying that Satan is "behind" the seven great empires that ruled over Israel. Remember that one has to read this text in terms of geographical context. The focus of the text is on Israel, where Satan is trying to stop God's plans. This is the "center point" of the Great Tribulation.

e) Remember this word picture of a dragon had seven horns and ten heads. I just spent over a page explaining these seven horns on this dragon's head. The good-news is that the "ten horns" of Revelation Chapter 12, Verse 3 can be explained much faster. ☺

i) Again we have the answer in Revelation 17: "The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast." (Revelation 17:12-13 NIV)

ii) What this means is Satan (through the antichrist) will lead a "team" of 10 kings. These kings give their power and authority to the antichrist in Chapter 17.

f) Putting it all together, Verse 3 of Chapter 12 is an introduction to Satan's purpose during the Great Tribulation. Before Revelation, five empires had ruled over Israel. When Revelation was written, Rome ruled over Israel. In the future, there will be another great empire, lead by the antichrist. There will be "10 leaders" under the Antichrist.

i) That is a summary of the "seven heads" (i.e., the seven empires over Israel) and the "ten horns", (i.e., the ten kings that rule under the antichrist). If this is still confusing, be patient. We'll explain this much more in later chapters.

g) Now let's get back to my theme: "Understanding God's Game Plan":

i) The purpose of Revelation is to "reveal" to us God's plans involving Jesus Second Coming on Earth. There is a big judgment period prior to the actual event itself. It is God's "last call" to see who wants to be saved before it is too late.

ii) Satan knows that whenever this event occurs, his time is now very limited. Therefore Satan also makes this "concentrated effort" to stop God's redemptive plan from happening. Thus, Satan organizes this final world empire with the ultimate goal of trying to prevent God's Game Plan from happening.

iii) Remember that God created Satan. God also gave him free will. Ultimately God wins, but a (not the) purpose of all of this is to show God's power is greater than the power of any "thing" created by God, including Satan himself and all of his forces. Another purpose is to get people to pick the winning side in the battle! ☺

7. Verse 4: His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.

a) The "tail" refers to the dragon. The text says the tail of the dragon swept a third of the stars out of sky and flung them to earth.

b) The question of the moment is, what do the "stars" represent? Verse 4 says that the dragon (Satan) took a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. In order to interpret the text, we have to go back to our interpretation rules. The basic idea of interpretation is "context". The verse needs to be read in context of the chapter.

i) We know this is "sign" as stated in Verse 3. Therefore, we can rule out literal stars. A literal dragon cannot drag literal stars to earth with its tale. We can rule out a literal interpretation because it is not possible.

ii) Earlier in the chapter, this woman word-picture had 12 stars around her head. That refers to the Nation of Israel. I can't see Satan dragging the saved-Jewish people out of heaven down to earth, so that can't be the correct interpretation.

iii) Way back in Chapter 1, there was another word picture where stars are described as angels. (Ref.: Revelation 1:20). If stars were compared to angels in Chapter 1, it would be logical that the same interpretation should be true here in Chapter 12. It would also be "logical" that demonic angels followed Satan from heaven.

iv) Tying this all together, the tail of the dragon (i.e. Satan) took a third of the (demonic) angels with him to earth. If Satan took a third of the angels of heaven, the idea is that one third of all angels joined in Satan's rebellion.

c) Here is some strange things to think about:

i) Angels must have free will. You get the impression that the angels choose to join in the rebellion. Either that, or Satan has such power as to force these angels to join them. The question is why would these angels choose to join Satan?

ii) Now contemplate this question: Do these demonic angels believe Jesus is God? I would argue yes. They simply choose not to follow Jesus as God. That is a "test" for human salvation. People can argue God exists. People can believe Jesus is God. The test