I mentioned last time that in Revelation 12 there are three wars taking place. We looked at the first one last time as Satan stands against the nation of Israel. First, attempting to destroy Jesus Christ, in His incarnation. Having failed at that, he goes after the nation of Israel itself, and God protects them which seems to be a picture of something going on in the Tribulation Period not back at the time of Jesus’ birth. The Lord in Revelation 12:6 has protected them for three and a half years as it says at the end of that verse.
Now we move on to a second war that takes place in heaven. The first one was on earth and this second one is in heaven. This is a very interesting section of Scripture. Something is going on here in heaven that we wouldn’t know about if God didn’t tell us. It says in Revelation 12:7, “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.” We have this unique picture of a war taking place between Michael and his elect, righteous angels and Satan and his demons. As we saw back in Revelation 12:4, about a third of the angelic hosts fell with Satan when he rebelled against God. If that is the case, and there is this angelic war, there is nothing quite like this in Scripture. This is a very unique section. We don’t understand it all by any means, but we have this picture where we find that the dragon, who is Satan, is not able to overthrow Michael and his angels, and so they are thrown down.
In Revelation 12:9 it says, “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan,” so we have no question about who this dragon is, “who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” These stars in Revelation 12:4, are Satan’s angels, often called demons in the New Testament, are thrown down with him to the earth. They are unable to overcome.
In Revelation 12:10 it says, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down he who accuses them before our God day and night.” Notice three times it says that Satan and his minions have been thrown down. That will also be repeated in Revelation 12:13. They are dethroned. They are moved from their position that they had before in the heavenly places and cast down. One of the things that a lot of the people don’t realize is that although Satan has been removed from his glory and his position in heaven because of his rebellion, he still seems to have access to God. We see this in the book of Job where he comes and speaks to God and reports to God. We see this in places like Ephesians 6 when it tells us that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in heavenly places. So, the demonic angels and Satan have some realm in the heavenly places currently, but that is no more in Revelation 12. At this point, which is the midpoint of the Tribulation Period we believe, they are thrown down out of the position of heaven and down to the earth. Notice here that, “the accuser of the brethren has been thrown down.” That is a unique phrase as well. One of Satan’s tasks is to accuse the people of God before God himself. Kind of like he did in Job. There we have kind of an object lesson of how that works. He wants to accuse us. He wants to tell God just how bad we are, but that doesn’t work out too well for him because of the blood of Jesus Christ . . .
