Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

12:5-9
seems almost an allegory of that event. The Dragon
tried again, of course: tempting the Lord (Luke 4:1-13),
seeking to have Him murdered (Luke 4:28-29),
subjecting Him to human and demonic oppression
throughout His ministry, possessing one of the most
trusted disciples to betray Him (John 13:2, 27), and
finally orchestrating His crucifixion. Even then –
rather, especially then – the Dragon was defeated, for
the Cross was God’s way of tricking Satan into fulfilling
His purposes, according to His wisdom – “the hidden
wisdom,” St. Paul says, “which God predestined before
the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the
rulers of this age has understood; for if they had
understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord
of glory” (1 Cor. 2:7-8). In wounding the Seed’s heel,
the Serpent’s head was crushed.
5 And she gave birth to a Son, a male (cf. Isa. 66:7-8)
who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron. St. John
returns to Psalm 2, one of his favorite texts, to explain
his symbolism. The Son is, obviously, Jesus Christ, the
Seed of the Woman, the Child of the Virgin, born of
Israel to rule the nations. In this verse St. John
telescopes the entire history of Christ’s earthly ministry,
stating (as if it had happened all at once) that her
Child was caught up to God and to His Throne. It is
as if Christ’s Incarnation had led directly to His
Ascension to the Throne of glory. St. John’s point is
not to belittle the atonement and the resurrection, but
to stress that the Lord’s Anointed completely escapes
the power of the Dragon; and we should note that St.
John’s order follows that of the Psalm. Telling of His
exaltation to the heavenly Throne, the Christ says:
I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD:
He said to Me, “Thou art My Son,
Today I have begotten Thee. 24
Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations
as Thine inheritance,
And the very ends of the earth as Thy possession.
Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron,
Thou shalt shatter them like earthenware.” (Ps. 2:7-9)
“The Psalm makes Messiah’s heavenly birth all one
with his enthronement; if he is fathered by God, he
reigns.” 25 In spite of everything that the Dragon does,
the Seed is caught up to the Throne and now rules the
nations with a rod of iron, just as if He had gone
straight from the Incarnation to the Throne; Satan had
no power to stop Him. The Ascension was the goal of
Christ’s Advent.
6 And the Woman fled into the wilderness where she
has a place prepared by God. As will become apparent
below, the Woman’s flight into the wilderness is a
picture of the flight of the Judean Christians from the
destruction of Jerusalem, so that the Dragon’s wrath is
expended upon apostate rather than faithful Israel.
While she is in the wilderness, the Woman is nourished
for twelve hundred and sixty days, 26 a period
equivalent to the “time, times, and half a time” (3 1 /2
years) of verse 14, and symbolically related to the 42
months/1,260 days of 11:2-3 and 13:5. We saw on 11:2
that the Scriptures use this terminology to speak of a
limited period of ascendant, triumphant wickedness, a
period of wrath and judgment due to apostasy from the
Covenant. During this time, therefore, when Satan
seems to be dominant, the Church is protected. The
Woman’s flight into the wilderness calls up associations
with Elijah’s wilderness sojourn during the three and a
half years of drought, when he was miraculously fed by
ravens (1 Kings 17:3-6); similarly, St. John says, the
Woman’s flight does not signify God’s abandonment of
her but rather His loving provision. The faithful Bride
has a place prepared by God (cf. 2 Sam. 7:10; 1 Chron.
17:9; John 14:2-3). He gives His messengers charge
concerning her (Ps. 91:11-13) and sends her into the
wilderness so that there they may nourish her. St.
John also means for us to think, as we will see below, of
Israel’s flight into the wilderness from the face of the
Egyptian Dragon; and of the flight of the Virgin Mary
into Egypt from the murderous wrath of King Herod
(Matt. 2:13-21).
War in Heaven (12:7-12)
7 And there was war in heaven, Michael and His angels
waging war with the Dragon. And the Dragon and his
angels waged war,
8 and they were not strong enough, and there was no
longer a place found for them in heaven.
9 And the great Dragon was thrown down, the Serpent of
old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the
whole world; he was thrown down to the Land, and his
angels were thrown down with him.
10 And I heard a loud Voice in heaven, saying: Now have
come the salvation, and the power, and the Kingdom of
our God, and the authority of His Christ, for he has been
thrown down – the accuser of our brethren, who accused
them before our God day and night.
11 And they conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and
by the word of their testimony, and they did not love
their life even to death.
12 For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who
tabernacle in them. Woe to the Land and the Sea,
because the devil has come down to you, having great
wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.
7-9 The scene changes abruptly: St. John now sees war
in heaven, Michael and His angels waging war with
the Dragon. This is not, as some suppose, a sequel to
the preceding vision, as if Satan, frustrated in his
attempt to devour the Messiah, now directs his assault
toward heaven. On the contrary, St. John unveils this
scene in order to explain the preceding verse – to show
why the Woman had to flee into the wilderness. Once
that is explained, in verses 7-12, he returns to the
theme of the flight of the Woman. In addition, St. John
uses the imagery in this passage to display another
aspect of the Child’s conflict with the Dragon.
24. Some will argue that this phrase refers not to the incarnation or physical
birth of Christ, but to His eternal generation instead; for John’s purposes of
Biblical allusion, however, that question is beside the point. His emphasis is,
with the Psalmist, that the Child goes from birth to reign.
25. Farrer, p. 141.
26. For the relationship of the 1,260 days to the number of the Beast (666), see
comments on 13:18.
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