<p>12:7 <em>And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels retaliated</em>- John is as it were &quot;in heaven&quot;, viewing things going on in the heavenly throne room. Each situation and entity on earth has representative Angels, who are God's Angels, and not themselves sinful nor rebellious; although they can represent sinful situations and actions on earth. Michael, the Angel who stands for Israel (Dan. 10:21; 12:1; Jude 9), fights with the dragon entity and his supporters. We note that Gabriel is the Angel associated with the Lord Jesus. But we read here of Michael, not Gabriel. This is not a struggle between Jesus and the devil. It speaks of a struggle between Israel and Israel's persecutors. But ultimately, those persecuting the Israelites are fighting God Himself and His Angels. The same word for &quot;fought / retaliated&quot; is used of how the beast which the dragon empowers appears invincible- &quot;Who is able to make war s.w. against him?&quot; (13:4). Yet he is effectively making war against God, who is at war against him (19:11); the beast in another of its manifestations makes war / fights with the Lamb (17:14). This is another manifestation of the jihadists locusts rushing to &quot;make war&quot; (9:7,9 s.w.). The war is not only against Israel, but against the believers; for the same word is used of the beast making war against the two witnesses (11:7). This is all part of the final battle when the kings of the land gather to fight (16:14; 19:19 s.w.).</p><p><strong>What it doesn't mean</strong></p><p>Angels cannot sin and that there can be no rebellion in heaven. Thus this passage &ndash; which is the only one of its kind &ndash; must be interpreted in a way that does not involve angels sinning or there being sinful angels making people sin on earth, seeing that sin comes from within us, not from outside of us (Mk. 7:20&ndash;23). Note carefully that there is no reference here to angels sinning or rebelling against God, only to a war in heaven.</p><p>That the Devil&ndash;dragon represents some kind of political power is indicated by it having &ldquo;crowns upon his heads&rdquo; (v. 3). Revelation 17:9,10 also comments on this dragon: &ldquo;Here is the mind that hath wisdom&rdquo; &ndash; i.e. don&rsquo;t try and understand this animal as a literal being &ndash; &ldquo;The seven heads are seven mountains... these are seven kings&rdquo;. One of the kings continuing &ldquo;a short space&rdquo; perhaps connects with the Devil&ndash;dragon having &ldquo;but a short time&rdquo; in Revelation 12:12.</p><p>After the drama of :7&ndash;9, verse 10 says that there was &ldquo;a loud voice saying in heaven, <em>now</em> is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night&rdquo;. If :7&ndash;9 occurred at the beginning of the world, before the time of Adam and Eve, how could it be said that after Satan&rsquo;s fall there came salvation and the kingdom of God? After Adam&rsquo;s sin, mankind began his sad history of slavery to sin and failure &ndash; a state hardly to be described as &ldquo;salvation&rdquo; and the kingdom of God. There is rejoicing that the Devil &ndash; the accuser &ndash; has been cast down to earth. Why should there be rejoicing if his coming to earth was the start of sin and disaster for man? If a fall from heaven to earth is understood figuratively rather than literally, as representing a fall from authority (as Is. 14:12; Jer. 51:53; Lam. 2:1; Mt. 11:23), much more sense can be made of all this. If all this happened before the time of Adam, or at least before the fall of man, how could the Devil have been accusing &ldquo;our brethren&rdquo;, seeing they did not then exist? There is nothing indicating that all this happened in the Garden of Eden. A vital point is made in Revelation 1:1 and 4:1 &ndash; that the Revelation is a prophecy of &ldquo;things which must shortly come to pass&rdquo;. It is not therefore a description of what happened in Eden, but a prophecy of things to happen at some time after the first century, when the Revelation was given by Jesus. Any who are truly humble to the Word will see that this argument alone precludes all attempts to refer Revelation 12 to the Garden of Eden. The question has also to be answered as to why the identity of the Devil and information about what happened in Eden should be reserved until the end of the Bible before being revealed.</p><p>In view of this and many other things in Revelation 12 (and the whole prophecy) which are just incapable of any literal fulfilment, it is not surprising that we are told first of all (Rev. 1:1) that this is a message that has been &ldquo;signified&rdquo; &ndash; i.e. put into sign language, or symbol. As if to emphasize this in the context of Revelation 12, Revelation 12:1 describes the subsequent action as &ldquo;a great sign&rdquo; (A.V. margin). In reading of what the Devil does when he is on the earth, there is no description of him causing people to sin; indeed, vs. 12&ndash;16 show that the Devil was unsuccessful in his attempts to cause trouble on earth once he arrived there. This contradicts the popular interpretation. In their eagerness to show that Rev. 12:7&ndash;9 refers to fallen angels at the beginning of the world, apologists for a personal Satan have rather overlooked the context of the passage. A woman in Heaven, in the agony of childbirth and resting her feet on the moon, is faced by a dragon, whose tail throws down a third of the stars of Heaven to earth (Rev. 12:4). She gives birth, and the child &ldquo;was caught up unto God, and to his throne&rdquo; (Rev. 12:5). Clearly enough the &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; where all this occurs isn&rsquo;t the &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; where God lives and where His throne is. Next we read of a power struggle &ldquo;in heaven&rdquo;, and the dragon and his angels are &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; (Rev. 12:9). The dragon throws one third of the stars of Heaven to earth &ndash; are these Angels? If so, how come the dragon and not God casts them to earth? That&rsquo;s quite the opposite of the scenario painted in <em>Paradise Lost</em>. How can a literalistic reading of this passage cope with the <em>two</em> episodes of Angels being cast down to earth? At the very least, care in thought and exposition is clearly lacking in the orthodox reading of this passage. The woman, who is never recorded as leaving &ldquo;Heaven&rdquo;, then flees &ldquo;into the wilderness&rdquo; (Rev. 12:6). Once the dragon is cast to the earth, then he starts persecuting the woman by hissing huge volumes of water at her (Rev. 12:13). The earth opens and swallows this water (Rev. 12:16) &ndash; even though the woman is never recorded as losing her &ldquo;in heaven&rdquo; status. All this is reason enough to not interpret &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; and &ldquo;earth&rdquo; in this passage in any literal manner. The appearance of the woman and dragon &ldquo;in heaven&rdquo; is described as a <em>semeion</em>, a &ldquo;sign&rdquo;, something that needs to be interpreted, rather than a literal fact (Rev. 12:1,3).</p><p>The language of &lsquo;war&rsquo; is surely metaphor rather than literal description. What begins as a literal battle ends as a legal one, as the metaphor changes to the law court, with accusers, judge and Satan&rsquo;s case rejected. If the legal language isn&rsquo;t to be taken literally, why should the &lsquo;war&rsquo; language be so literal?</p><p><strong>The Chronological Problem</strong></p><p>The woman of :1 is &ldquo;clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars&rdquo;. These heavenly bodies, as well as the woman, apparently suspended in heaven, cannot be literal. She could not literally be clothed with the sun, or have stars as big as the earth on her literal head.</p><p>Another sign appears in heaven in :3 &ndash; a red dragon. This is commonly taken as a literal heaven, but why should it be, seeing that the same heaven is referred to in v. 1 and that is clearly figurative? Verse 4 shows the dragon casting a third of the stars of heaven to earth. We have seen that because of the size of the stars and earth, this cannot therefore refer to literal stars or heaven. The Kingdom of God is to be established on earth (Dan. 2:44; Mt. 5:5), which will not be possible if the earth is destroyed (which it would be) by huge stars falling onto it.</p><p>The woman in &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; then delivered her child, who was &ldquo;caught up unto God and to his throne&rdquo; (v. 5). God&rsquo;s throne is in heaven. If the woman was already in heaven, why would her child have to be &ldquo;caught up&rdquo; to heaven? She must have been a symbol of something on earth, although in a figurative &ldquo;heaven&rdquo;. She then flees &ldquo;into the wilderness&rdquo; (v. 6). If she was in literal heaven, this means there is a wilderness in heaven. It is far more fitting for her to be in a figurative heavenly place, and then flee to a literal or figurative wilderness on the earth.</p><p>We then come to v. 7 &ndash; &ldquo;there was war in heaven&rdquo;. All other references to &ldquo;heaven&rdquo; in Revelation 12 having been figurative, it seems only consistent that this was war in a figurative heaven. This must be the case, as there can be no rebellion or sin in literal heaven (Mt. 6:10; Ps. 5:4&ndash;5; Hab. 1:13). The common view claims that wicked angels are locked up in hell; but here they are in heaven. They are not therefore literal angels.</p><p>I sometimes ask those who believe in the orthodox idea of the Devil the following question: &lsquo;Can you give me a brief Biblical history of the Devil, according to your interpretation of Bible passages? The response is highly contradictory. According to &lsquo;orthodox&rsquo; reasoning, the answer has to be something like this:&nbsp; <br />a) The Devil was an angel in heaven who was thrown out into the garden of Eden. He was thrown to earth in Gen. 1.</p><p>b) He is supposed to have come to earth and married in Gen 6.</p><p>c) At the time of Job he is said to have had access to both heaven and earth.</p><p>d) By the time of Is. 14 he is thrown out of heaven onto earth.</p><p>e) In Zech. 3 he is in heaven again.</p><p>f) He is on earth in Mt. 4.</p><p>g) He is &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; at the time of Jesus&rsquo; death, according to the popular view of &ldquo;the prince of this world&rdquo; being &ldquo;cast out&rdquo; at that time.</p><p>h) There is a prophecy of the Devil being &lsquo;cast out&rsquo; in Rev. 12.</p><p>i) The Devil is &ldquo;chained&rdquo; in Rev. 20, but he and his angels were chained in Genesis, according to the common view of Jude 6. If he was bound with &lsquo;eternal chains&rsquo; then, how is he chained up again in Rev. 20?</p><p>From this it should be obvious that the popular view that the Devil was cast out of heaven for sinning cannot be true, seeing that he is described as still being in heaven after each occurrence of being &lsquo;cast out&rsquo;. It is vital to understand both heaven and the Devil in a figurative sense.</p><p><strong>Revelation 12: Deconstructing Pagan Myths</strong></p><p>Various scholars have shown that this passage is full of allusion to contemporary pagan myths (e.g. Neil Forsyth, <em>Satan and the Combat Myth</em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) chapter 13). For example, the Greeks believed that the dragon Python attempts to kill the new born son of Zeus but is stopped the escape of the child&rsquo;s mother, Leto, to the island of Delos; Apollo then comes and slays the dragon. For the Egyptians, Set the red dragon hunts Isis but is then killed by her son Horus. In other myths, the dragon of darkness tries to kill the sun god but is killed by him. There are other examples of the sun god myth being alluded to in Revelation. Take the description of Jesus as having eyes as a flaming fire and feet of pure bronze (Rev. 2:18). This is said to the Thyatira ecclesia &ndash; and the god of Thyatira was Apollo, the sun god, known locally as Tyrimnos, who appeared in this very form on the city&rsquo;s coins. The point of the allusion was that actually, there is no sun god &ndash; for the Christians in Thyatira, that means Jesus.</p><p>This is in keeping with what we have seen elsewhere in the Scriptures &ndash; pagan myths are alluded to in order to deconstruct them. Surely the point of all the allusions here in Revelation 12 is to say: &lsquo;Take your attention away from all these myths of what supposedly is going on out in the cosmos. Get real. Here on earth, you are going to be persecuted by Rome or some other adversary. Prepare for it in your hearts. The real enemy isn&rsquo;t a dragon in the sky. It&rsquo;s Rome&rsquo;. Other scholars have demonstrated that Revelation 12 and 13 contain many allusions to contemporary Jewish writings &ndash; e.g. Rev. 12:9; 13:14 speak of the beast / Satan &ldquo;leading astray those that dwell on the earth&rdquo;, quoting from the <em>Apocalypse of Abraham</em> and <em>Enoch</em> 54.6 about the armies of Azazel / Satan who &ldquo;lead astray those that dwell on the earth&rdquo;. The point is that pagan Rome and the Jewish &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; were those who were leading astray, and who would be punished in the cataclysm of AD70; and in a last days context, it is the latter day Satan / beast who will lead astray many and be destroyed by the second coming of Christ.</p><p>For 15 years Dr. David Pitt-Francis applied an exceptional mind to trying to get to grips with the book of Revelation (David Pitt-Francis, <em>The Most Amazing Message Ever Written</em> (Irchester, UK: Mark Saunders Books, 1983)). His conclusion, written up in chapter 9 of his book, was that not only does Revelation 12 not teach the existence of a personal Satan, but it actually is a parody of the whole belief in a sinful Satan figure existing in Heaven. He follows the approach that Revelation 12 alludes heavily to pagan myths of a Satan figure existing in Heaven, and that the whole idea of the chapter is to show that, given the victory of the Lord Jesus over all evil, those pagan ideas are just no longer tenable in any form. The idea of a Satan figure in Heaven has been &lsquo;cast down&rsquo; for the serious believer in Christ: &ldquo;Satan was imagined to have dominated at least a third of heaven in pre-Christian times. Babylonian, Zend and Teutonic thought assumed &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; or his equivalent to be in possession of about a third of heaven. Jewish apostate thought (as in Enoch) also imagined a third of heaven to be in the possession of rebellious angels. The vision of a dragon occupying a third of heaven, and specifically defined as the &lsquo;Devil and Satan&rsquo; is provided at this stage, not to indicate some literal fact, but to summarise the preconceptions about the Devil which had existed in pagan thought before the coming of Christ, and that had even crept into Judaism... It was primarily the task of Christianity to show the world that evil could have no place in heaven, that it did not occupy a place in heaven except in the imagination of mankind, and that it could be vanquished by the grace of Christ, and the Word of His testimony... The casting forth of Satan from heaven is a powerful symbol of what would happen to the human concept of evil as a result of the teaching of Christ. The woman and the dragon cannot coexist in heaven... Could there have been such a literal &lsquo;Devil&rsquo; or even a &lsquo;literal&rsquo; dragon, who perverted a third of the angels in heaven and cast them to the ground, as Jewish apocalyptic writers had actually believed? If we adopt this literalistic stance, we not only fall into the error of those books against which the Revelation was written but miss the main message of the chapter, that since the advent of Christianity to disprove the concept of imagined evil in heaven, no &lsquo;Devil&rsquo; has ever had any place there&rdquo;. He goes on to suggest that &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; in post&ndash;Christian religions e.g. Islam has always been envisaged as a being living under the earth, in a supposed &ldquo;hell&rdquo;, rather than in Heaven. Whether or not we feel happy with this kind of &lsquo;spiritualized&rsquo; interpretation of Revelation, the allusions of Revelation 12 to material in the book of Enoch about Heavenly rebellions, Enoch being caught up to God etc., cannot be gainsaid. And I suggest that such allusions are indeed, as David Pitt-Francis suggests, in order to deconstruct these wrong ideas.</p><p><strong>First century applications</strong></p><p>Revelation is a description of events on earth from the perspective of what happens in Heaven &ndash; encouraging the early Christians that God and His Son and His Angels are in fact intensely aware of the crises going on, and actually the whole scenario is playing itself out in the court of Heaven. All powers and individuals and organizations on earth have in Heaven their Angelic representatives, and the situations are tried by God before His throne &ndash; with the result that it is those on the side of Christ who are vindicated. The language with which John&rsquo;s Apocalypse achieves this is shot through with allusion to earthly realities, often deconstructing the claims of pagans. Rome was the great reality of the first century world; it was appropriate for the Jewish mind of the time to understand the &ldquo;serpent&rdquo; / adversary figure as referring to Rome. According to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, &ldquo;the Serpent is spoken of as <em>Harasha&rsquo;</em>, &ldquo;the Wicked One,&rdquo; in Gen. R. xx., Bek. 8<em>a</em> (compare Targ. Yer. Gen. iii. 13); and Rome as the wicked kingdom, <em>Malkut ha&ndash;resha&rsquo;ah</em> (Gen. R. lxxvi.)&rdquo; (5).<br clear=all /><br />Roman coins depicted the goddess Roma, THEAN ROMEN, as queen of the gods and mother of the world&rsquo;s saviour. John speaks of she who claims to be the queen of the earth (Rev. 18:7) &ndash; and portrays her instead as nothing but a prostitute, who is soon to be destroyed. The fact Revelation alludes to the goddess Roma in this way doesn&rsquo;t mean that &lsquo;she&rsquo; actually existed in Heaven in reality. And the way John in Rev. 12 likewise alludes to myths about dragons and beasts doesn&rsquo;t mean they exist either. The material in Rev. 12 has some twists in it which debunk the legends &ndash; thus it is not emperor of Rome who slays the dragon, it is the victory of Christ on the cross, through His blood, which is the real means of victory against all opposition on earth. The telling paradox is that the escape for the persecuted child is through <em>death</em>, through blood, rather than through some dashing heroic victory in battle. When Jeremiah compared Babylon to a dragon gulping down Jerusalem whole, we don&rsquo;t for a moment think that Babylon was a literal dragon (Jer. 51:34); likewise when Ezekiel calls Pharaoh a dragon lying in a stream (Ez. 29:3). The message was that the real dragon / chaos monster was earthly powers &ndash; and God would break them. And so it is with Revelation&rsquo;s message, although more attention is given to the idea of those earthly powers having Angelic representatives in the court of Heaven.</p><p>The language of judgment is really common throughout the Bible. In fact we could say that legal language is disproportionately common in the Bible. The idea of a Divine, heavenly court is common. God is the judge who upholds the weak, those who are condemned by human judgment (1 Sam. 24:15; Ps. 9:4; 43:1; 140:12; Lam. 3:58; Mic. 7:9); He is even portrayed as the one appealing for justice (Ps. 74:22). If God is the only and ultimate judge, then <em>His</em> judgment is all that ultimately matters, and in this sense human &lsquo;sentences&rsquo; or judgment from the court of human opinion are reversed by Him (Prov. 22:22,23). Yet the pain of being judged by those around us is highly significant to us mortals; and time and again, Scripture is reminding us that we should not pay deep attention to this, because God&rsquo;s judgment is what ultimately matters; and the Divine court is sitting in session right now, at the very same time as those around us are judging us with their meaningless human judgments. This, then, is the ultimate answer to the pain of being slandered and defamed, being misunderstood and misrepresented, or feeling that persecution by worldly powers is not noticed by God.</p><p>The traditional reading of Revelation 12 makes out that there was a rebellion in Heaven, the Devil came down to earth, and then trouble started down here. But the whole idea of Revelation&rsquo;s visions of &lsquo;heaven&rsquo; is that we are being given snapshots of the &lsquo;throne room&rsquo; of Heaven, the Divine court... which is a reflection of what is actually going on here on earth, and what will subsequently follow from this in the future. I wish to stress this point, because I think it&rsquo;s fundamental to understanding Revelation. Those visions aren&rsquo;t historical descriptions of what happened before creation, before human history. They are insights into how God right then in the first century viewed what was going on there in the Middle East on planet earth, showing us how He judged the situations and Governments and individuals involved, and what would follow from this. Thus when we read that no place was found for the opposing forces in Heaven (Rev. 12:8), we are to imagine the representative of those forces, the barrister as it were, being thrown out of court. They would simply disappear from the Heavenly court room, thrown out of court as it were, perhaps reflected by the Angel representing them leaving the court. What makes interpreting Revelation so confusing is that there are so many layers of allusion going on in the text at one and the same time. Thus Rev. 12 alludes to the surrounding myths, and yet also on multiple further layers to Old Testament themes. The vision of Rev. 12 clearly has in mind Pharaoh pursuing the escaping Israelites as a dragon pursues (Ex. 14:8), Israel like the early church carried on eagles&rsquo; wings to some safety (Ex. 19:4), Pharaoh trying to destroy Israel by drowning them in the water of the Nile, God providing for His people in the desert. Again, these allusions are to a real historical situation that happened here on earth &ndash; and not to some Biblically unrecorded drama somewhere out in the cosmos.</p>