Revelation 12:7-12 War in heaven, the accuser is exiled

The war in heaven is the underlying cause of all that will happen on earth. When the devil realizes that he cannot prevail against God, even to the point of staying in heaven as the legal adversary (accuser = Satan), and that he has only a short time on the earth, he is filled with wrath. Rebellion seemed so deliciously appealing at the outset, but its end is bitter indeed.

          Whose voice is this? One of the angels, no doubt, announcing that not only was Satan, the accuser, thrown out of heaven, but he was overcome on the earth by God's people. Their strategy for defeating him includes three main points.

•    The blood of the Lamb

•    Their testimony

•    Their acceptance of death for their faith

The only thing that Satan can do on earth is kill them. And that just sends them straight to heaven to be with Jesus. Since he has been thrown out of heaven, he can no longer attempt to cast doubts on their faith in the court of heaven by accusing them. The blood of the Lamb atones for all their transgressions. So once they are there, he cannot touch them. Heaven will rejoice because such committed believers are headed their way. Woe to the earth because Satan plans to turn it into hell. He will almost accomplish this by getting rid of all the believers on earth.

          Although these events are eschatological and deal with the final outcome of the earth and humankind, it does not seem to be too much of a stretch to ask how these dynamics would apply to our personal lives right now. In Zechariah 3:1 we are shown the spiritual court scene in which Satan stands up to accuse Joshua the high priest. Satan is rebuked. Zechariah does not go on to describe what Satan does next, but John does. Satan is furious and sets off to do on earth what he cannot do in heaven. He seeks to compromise the faith of believers either through temptation or through persecution and intimidation. We see in the lives of Daniel, Stephen, and contemporary believers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer that faithfulness to the testimony of God, even in the face of death threats, brings victory. Of course, many of us may temporarily fall off the faith train through yielding to temptation (and the stories are too common to need mention), but the blood of the Lamb is the means by which we have victory over Satan. We thus become a brand plucked from the fire. (Zechariah 3:2)