Revelation 12:1-6 – The Invasion of Christmas
The “D Day” invasion of Normandy in World War II was one of the greatest military operations in history and marked a dramatic change in the course of the war. There are many factors that led to the success of the Allies against the Nazi occupiers, but the lack of Nazi preparation wasn’t one of them. The Germans didn’t know exactly when and where the invasion would take place, but they knew it was coming. The beaches of Normandy were heavily fortified and fiercely defended.
This isn’t a history lesson or a paean of praise for the courageous veterans and victims of D Day, but the image of that horrific and momentous event can help us understand what Christmas is all about. Because yes, this is about Christmas. You won’t find any shepherds or mangers or wise men in this passage, but it tells the story of Christ’s coming into the world just as well as the familiar story from the second chapter of Luke. What makes it different is that it doesn’t tell the story from an earthly, human perspective. This passage tells us what happened on Christmas on the spiritual plane. When we see it this way, we can recognize it as a cosmic battle that puts the invasion of Normandy to shame. Christmas was an invasion by the forces of good into territory occupied by an evil enemy, in order to liberate its inhabitants.
We only heard about the forces of evil that opposed God for the first time in Chapter 11. Beginning in this passage and extending on until Chapter 20, we will see the confrontation between God’s servants and Satan and his minions over and over again. This passage is “round one.”
First, let’s make sure that we know who’s who in the story. It begins with the description of a woman who represents the people of Israel. She’s clothed in glory, which is exactly how God treats his people. You may recognize a reference to Joseph’s dreams when he foresaw the honor he would receive from his family. John’s vision recycles the images of Genesis 37:9-10: Joseph’s brothers and father knew that the images of the sun and moon were his parents, and the eleven stars were the brothers. Add in the twelfth star of Joseph himself, and the sun, moon, and twelve stars of this woman help us see that she is the people of Israel. Is she also Mary? Yes. Is she also the church, whom Satan attacks? Yes. All of the above.
The woman is pregnant and about to give birth. The late stages of pregnancy certainly evoke the same kind message that the mighty angel of 11:6: there will be no more delay! The awaited time has come. The woman’s child is, of course, Jesus Christ. God himself comes into the world through his people. He comes to take over the world, just like the Allied forces landed in Normandy to take over Europe. Or, to word it more accurately for both events, Christ came to retake the world from an enemy who had tried to steal it, and the Allies came to liberate the countries that had been overrun by the Nazi death machine. In both cases, the invaders were coming to kick
Next, we meet a tremendous and fearful dragon. The dragon is, of course, Satan or the devil, the supreme spiritual being or force that opposes God. Representing Satan as a dragon taps into the typical symbolism of the ancient world that portrayed dragon-type creatures as the primordial enemy of God. Dragons are associated with serpents, like the one that we meet in the Garden of Eden story. They are also connected with sea monsters, like we find in Isaiah 27:1. The stars that the dragon swept out of the skies are the fallen angels who joined him in his rebellion against God; stars and other celestial bodies were considered to be spiritual beings. Satan, the dragon, had come down from heaven and had invaded the earth. He considered it to be “his” territory. Remember how Satan tempted Jesus by offering him power over the earth if he would just worship him? Satan truly does consider the earth to belong to him. I suppose in some ways we can’t really blame him. Look at the violence, immorality, greed, bitterness, suffering, and nastiness that fills our world. Read the newspaper or watch the evening news, and it sure looks like Satan owns the earth.
And that’s why the prospect of God coming into the world was something that Satan would not tolerate. Again, think of the Nazis on mainland Europe. There was no way they were going to let the Allies get a toehold on the beaches! They did everything they could to protect “their” turf. Never mind that they had no rightful claim to the countries that fell to their blitzkrieg. As far as Hitler and his lackeys were concerned, it all belonged to them. Satan’s pride and greed convinced him that he had to defend his world from God’s invasion. It was all Satan could do to tolerate the presence of God’s people in his world. Well, tolerate is hardly the right word. He did his best to root them out, but for some reason he could never finish the job. God’s righteous remnant kept springing back up like weeds in a flower garden. Unbeknownst to Satan, of course, he couldn’t get rid of them because God was protecting and preserving them. They had the seal of protection upon them. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but God’s people in a world run by Satan was a bit like the underground resistance fighters in occupied countries like France, the Netherlands, and Norway. Now, Satan got wind of the possibility that God was going to invade, and that he was going to use his people as a beachhead (OK, so the analogy with World War II kind of breaks down here: the underground resistance wasn’t how the Allies came into Europe, but the beaches of Normandy and the boot of Italy).
The image of the dragon crouched in front of the woman, ready to devour her baby as soon as he was born, is strikingly similar to King Herod’s plot to kill the infant Jesus (Matthew 2). We need to be careful, however, not to think that Herod was the embodiment of Satan. The relationship between the spiritual and the earthly is a bit more complex than that. Think of Satan as the spiritual central command, commanding all of his agents, both demonic and human. Herod’s actions were a reflection or an expression of Satan’s dominance of the world. You might not care much about Herod, but you may encounter people or social forces through whom Satan is wielding his nefarious power. That person or force is an agent, willing or not, of a larger demonic influence.
You’ve got to hand it to Satan: the best way to deal with an invading enemy is to grab him when he’s still a helpless little baby. You don’t wait until he’s full grown and has a band of loyal followers and a base of operations. Just like the Nazis didn’t wait until the Allies had an established foothold on French soil.
But this was no ordinary baby. When verse 5 describes him as one who rules the nations with an iron scepter, that’s a direct reference to Psalm 2, which describes God’s authority over the rulers of the world who resist him and think that they can stand up to him. In the psalm, God laughs at their schemes. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? I’ve got the power to crush you. All of the power that you think you have is a joke, an illusion.” And this, again, is where the comparison with D Day breaks down. The Allied invasion could have failed. But there’s no way in the world that Satan would ever be able to stand up to Christ’s invasion. If we think again about the threat of Herod killing all the Bethlehem babies, Jesus didn’t just escape by the skin of his teeth. It may have looked that way. But God was in control of the whole situation.
After the baby’s birth, John’s vision moves along on a pretty fast timeline. Verse 5 covers everything from Jesus’ birth to his ascension into heaven. His baptism, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection. John just glosses over it all. Not because it’s not important, but to get to the particular point that he’s dealing with here. The child, the invader, is safe. There’s nothing Satan can do about him. But what about the mother: us, God’s people who are still here in enemy occupied land? Satan can still make things pretty nasty for us. Let’s stick with World War II for an example, but go over to the eastern front. In 1989 I was in what was then the Soviet Union, and we toured a cemetery of villages. It’s a memorial unlike any other you can imagine. As the Russians slowly pushed the Germans out of their land, the Germans had a cruel response. Every time they lost a battle, they would target a random village that was still in their control. They surrounded it, killed all of its residents, and burned it to the ground. To honor their memory, the Russians selected one of these villages to serve as a memorial for all of them, and erected monuments in it for each of the destroyed villages. As memory serves me, there were at least a couple hundred monuments there, each testifying to a brutal event. The Nazis were losing the war, but they did what they could to exact revenge and terror. We are like those poor Russian villages still under Nazi control. Satan is enraged that Christ is reclaiming his territory, territory that Satan thinks is his. He can’t get at Christ, so he does the next best thing and attacks his people: us. The Nazis couldn’t beat the Russians, but they could terrorize the Russian people under their heel. If you ever wonder why horrible things happen, and continue to happen, they are partly the result of Satan’s frustrated lashing out over Christ’s invasion. And the more closely associated you are to Christ, the more likely he is to target you.
But there’s good news. The woman may not have been lifted up to heaven to escape the dragon, but God brought her into a wilderness place where she could find refuge for a while. We aren’t in heaven yet, but God offers us protection, at least for a while. In Scripture, the wilderness is often a place where people encounter God (think especially of the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea and Jesus after his baptism). We’ve got an enemy prowling about, but God is sending us protection in the midst of it.
This isn’t a history lesson or a paean of praise for the courageous veterans and victims of D Day, but the image of that horrific and momentous event can help us understand what Christmas is all about. Because yes, this is about Christmas. You won’t find any shepherds or mangers or wise men in this passage, but it tells the story of Christ’s coming into the world just as well as the familiar story from the second chapter of Luke. What makes it different is that it doesn’t tell the story from an earthly, human perspective. This passage tells us what happened on Christmas on the spiritual plane. When we see it this way, we can recognize it as a cosmic battle that puts the invasion of Normandy to shame. Christmas was an invasion by the forces of good into territory occupied by an evil enemy, in order to liberate its inhabitants.
We only heard about the forces of evil that opposed God for the first time in Chapter 11. Beginning in this passage and extending on until Chapter 20, we will see the confrontation between God’s servants and Satan and his minions over and over again. This passage is “round one.”
First, let’s make sure that we know who’s who in the story. It begins with the description of a woman who represents the people of Israel. She’s clothed in glory, which is exactly how God treats his people. You may recognize a reference to Joseph’s dreams when he foresaw the honor he would receive from his family. John’s vision recycles the images of Genesis 37:9-10: Joseph’s brothers and father knew that the images of the sun and moon were his parents, and the eleven stars were the brothers. Add in the twelfth star of Joseph himself, and the sun, moon, and twelve stars of this woman help us see that she is the people of Israel. Is she also Mary? Yes. Is she also the church, whom Satan attacks? Yes. All of the above.
The woman is pregnant and about to give birth. The late stages of pregnancy certainly evoke the same kind message that the mighty angel of 11:6: there will be no more delay! The awaited time has come. The woman’s child is, of course, Jesus Christ. God himself comes into the world through his people. He comes to take over the world, just like the Allied forces landed in Normandy to take over Europe. Or, to word it more accurately for both events, Christ came to retake the world from an enemy who had tried to steal it, and the Allies came to liberate the countries that had been overrun by the Nazi death machine. In both cases, the invaders were coming to kick
Next, we meet a tremendous and fearful dragon. The dragon is, of course, Satan or the devil, the supreme spiritual being or force that opposes God. Representing Satan as a dragon taps into the typical symbolism of the ancient world that portrayed dragon-type creatures as the primordial enemy of God. Dragons are associated with serpents, like the one that we meet in the Garden of Eden story. They are also connected with sea monsters, like we find in Isaiah 27:1. The stars that the dragon swept out of the skies are the fallen angels who joined him in his rebellion against God; stars and other celestial bodies were considered to be spiritual beings. Satan, the dragon, had come down from heaven and had invaded the earth. He considered it to be “his” territory. Remember how Satan tempted Jesus by offering him power over the earth if he would just worship him? Satan truly does consider the earth to belong to him. I suppose in some ways we can’t really blame him. Look at the violence, immorality, greed, bitterness, suffering, and nastiness that fills our world. Read the newspaper or watch the evening news, and it sure looks like Satan owns the earth.
And that’s why the prospect of God coming into the world was something that Satan would not tolerate. Again, think of the Nazis on mainland Europe. There was no way they were going to let the Allies get a toehold on the beaches! They did everything they could to protect “their” turf. Never mind that they had no rightful claim to the countries that fell to their blitzkrieg. As far as Hitler and his lackeys were concerned, it all belonged to them. Satan’s pride and greed convinced him that he had to defend his world from God’s invasion. It was all Satan could do to tolerate the presence of God’s people in his world. Well, tolerate is hardly the right word. He did his best to root them out, but for some reason he could never finish the job. God’s righteous remnant kept springing back up like weeds in a flower garden. Unbeknownst to Satan, of course, he couldn’t get rid of them because God was protecting and preserving them. They had the seal of protection upon them. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but God’s people in a world run by Satan was a bit like the underground resistance fighters in occupied countries like France, the Netherlands, and Norway. Now, Satan got wind of the possibility that God was going to invade, and that he was going to use his people as a beachhead (OK, so the analogy with World War II kind of breaks down here: the underground resistance wasn’t how the Allies came into Europe, but the beaches of Normandy and the boot of Italy).
The image of the dragon crouched in front of the woman, ready to devour her baby as soon as he was born, is strikingly similar to King Herod’s plot to kill the infant Jesus (Matthew 2). We need to be careful, however, not to think that Herod was the embodiment of Satan. The relationship between the spiritual and the earthly is a bit more complex than that. Think of Satan as the spiritual central command, commanding all of his agents, both demonic and human. Herod’s actions were a reflection or an expression of Satan’s dominance of the world. You might not care much about Herod, but you may encounter people or social forces through whom Satan is wielding his nefarious power. That person or force is an agent, willing or not, of a larger demonic influence.
You’ve got to hand it to Satan: the best way to deal with an invading enemy is to grab him when he’s still a helpless little baby. You don’t wait until he’s full grown and has a band of loyal followers and a base of operations. Just like the Nazis didn’t wait until the Allies had an established foothold on French soil.
But this was no ordinary baby. When verse 5 describes him as one who rules the nations with an iron scepter, that’s a direct reference to Psalm 2, which describes God’s authority over the rulers of the world who resist him and think that they can stand up to him. In the psalm, God laughs at their schemes. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? I’ve got the power to crush you. All of the power that you think you have is a joke, an illusion.” And this, again, is where the comparison with D Day breaks down. The Allied invasion could have failed. But there’s no way in the world that Satan would ever be able to stand up to Christ’s invasion. If we think again about the threat of Herod killing all the Bethlehem babies, Jesus didn’t just escape by the skin of his teeth. It may have looked that way. But God was in control of the whole situation.
After the baby’s birth, John’s vision moves along on a pretty fast timeline. Verse 5 covers everything from Jesus’ birth to his ascension into heaven. His baptism, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection. John just glosses over it all. Not because it’s not important, but to get to the particular point that he’s dealing with here. The child, the invader, is safe. There’s nothing Satan can do about him. But what about the mother: us, God’s people who are still here in enemy occupied land? Satan can still make things pretty nasty for us. Let’s stick with World War II for an example, but go over to the eastern front. In 1989 I was in what was then the Soviet Union, and we toured a cemetery of villages. It’s a memorial unlike any other you can imagine. As the Russians slowly pushed the Germans out of their land, the Germans had a cruel response. Every time they lost a battle, they would target a random village that was still in their control. They surrounded it, killed all of its residents, and burned it to the ground. To honor their memory, the Russians selected one of these villages to serve as a memorial for all of them, and erected monuments in it for each of the destroyed villages. As memory serves me, there were at least a couple hundred monuments there, each testifying to a brutal event. The Nazis were losing the war, but they did what they could to exact revenge and terror. We are like those poor Russian villages still under Nazi control. Satan is enraged that Christ is reclaiming his territory, territory that Satan thinks is his. He can’t get at Christ, so he does the next best thing and attacks his people: us. The Nazis couldn’t beat the Russians, but they could terrorize the Russian people under their heel. If you ever wonder why horrible things happen, and continue to happen, they are partly the result of Satan’s frustrated lashing out over Christ’s invasion. And the more closely associated you are to Christ, the more likely he is to target you.
But there’s good news. The woman may not have been lifted up to heaven to escape the dragon, but God brought her into a wilderness place where she could find refuge for a while. We aren’t in heaven yet, but God offers us protection, at least for a while. In Scripture, the wilderness is often a place where people encounter God (think especially of the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea and Jesus after his baptism). We’ve got an enemy prowling about, but God is sending us protection in the midst of it.
posted by Rev. Peter de Vries, Old Union Presbyterian Church @ 5:13 PM
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