Revelation 12:12 - Meaning and Application

Here we have an account of this war, which was so happily finished in heaven, or in the church, but was started again and carried on in the wilderness, the place where the church had fled and where God and her Savior had kept her safe for a time. Notice:

I. The warning given about the distress and trouble that would come on the people of the world because of the devil’s anger and rage. His malice is aimed mainly at God’s servants, but he is also an enemy of mankind in general. When he is beaten in his attacks on the church, he turns to troubling the world as much as he can: “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea” (Revelation 12:12). Satan’s rage grows even greater when he is limited in both place and time. When he is shut up in the wilderness and given only a short time to rule there, he comes with fiercer anger.

II. His second attack on the church, now in the wilderness: “He persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child” (Revelation 12:13). Notice, first, the care God had taken of his church. He had carried her away, as on eagles’ wings, to a safe place he had prepared for her, where she was to remain for a set time. This is described in prophetic language taken from Daniel 7:25. Second, notice the constant malice of the dragon against the church. Her hidden place could not fully protect her. The old sneaky serpent, who first hid in Eden, now follows the church into the wilderness and sends a flood after her to sweep her away.

This flood is usually understood as a flood of error and false teaching, stirred up by Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, and many others, which put God’s church in danger of being overwhelmed and carried off. The church is in more danger from false teachers than from persecutors, and heresies come from the devil just as surely as open violence does. Third, notice the timely help God gave the church in that dangerous moment: “The earth helped the woman, and opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood” (Revelation 12:16). Some think this means the swarms of Goths and Vandals who invaded the Roman empire and kept the Arian rulers busy. Those rulers might otherwise have been as fierce in persecution as the pagans had been, and they had already shown great cruelty. But God opened a way through war, and the flood was, in a sense, swallowed up, so the church had some relief.

God often uses war to punish those who break his covenant. When people choose new gods, there is danger of trouble in the land. Civil strife and conflict often end with a shared enemy invading from outside. Fourth, since the devil was defeated in his plans against the whole church, he turned his rage against smaller groups and individual places. His hatred of the woman pushed him to make war with the rest of her offspring. Some think this refers to the Albigenses, who were first driven into barren mountain places by Diocletian, a Roman emperor, and later cruelly killed by papal power for many generations. They suffered for no other reason than that they kept God’s commandments and held fast to the testimony of Jesus Christ. Their faithfulness to God and Christ, in doctrine, worship, and practice, exposed them to Satan’s rage and to the violence of his agents. That same faithfulness will still expose people, in greater or lesser measure, until the end of the world, when the last enemy is destroyed.