Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #4 of Revelation, chapter 12, and we are going to be reading at Revelation 12:1-4:

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

I will stop reading there.  Again, this is a parable that describes the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, into the world.  We know Jesus was born in the Jubilee year of 7 BC and this is giving us insight through this language of the “woman,” the body of believers, who is being used by God to bring forth this man child. 

In opposition to her there appears this other “wonder in heaven,” the great red dragon.  We saw last time that this language can only identify with Satan.   Of course, he is called Satan because he is the adversary of that which is good, the adversary of the kingdom of heaven.  God had determined that the time had finally come (after 11,006 years from creation) for the birth of Christ in 7 BC.  It was the long-awaited promise to the people of God that “Emmanuel” would come, born of a virgin and He would be called Jesus, the Almighty God, the Prince of Peace.  The glorious time had finally arrived and now God was going to show, once again, how faithful and true He is to His Word.  When He gives a promise, He fulfills the promise. 

From man’s perspective, it was quite a long period of time.  Eleven thousand years is an extremely long period of time from our vantage point, but, nevertheless, God fulfilled His Word and Christ came at the exact time that God had always planned for Him to come.  There was no delay.  He came at exactly the point in history that He was supposed to enter into the world and Satan was there to resist Him, typified by the “great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns.”  Again, this is a figure of Satan and the word “dragon” and the “seven heads and ten horns” all describe him.  This is Satan, but he has many heads and many horns.  We find language in other places in the Bible that goes along with what we are reading here.  We find it says in Daniel 7:3:

And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

Then it says in Daniel 7:6-8:

After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

Now this describes the same evil being, Satan.  Yet, here, God refers to Satan as having four heads and ten horns.  There is no doubt this is the same being and the same fallen angel who is in view.  Yet, in Revelation 12 he is said to have “seven heads and ten horns,” and God has reasons for this.  Remember that numbers in the Bible are words that have meaning and significance.  The number “seven” points to perfection and the number “four” points to universality, the furthest extent of what is in view and the number “ten” points to the complete rule of Satan, just as those “seven heads” also identify with Satan’s complete rule.  The dragon in Revelation 12 has “ten horns” and this beast in Daniel 7 has “ten horns,” and it is the same fallen angelic being.  The “ten horns” point to the completeness of Satan’s rule.

We also read in Daniel 7:17:

These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.

Then it says in Daniel 7:23-24:

Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

This is helpful because it tells us that the “four beasts,” or the “four heads,” are four kings and kings rule over kingdoms and that is why the “fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon the earth.”  This is consistent with what we also find in the New Testament in the Book of Revelation.

But, before we read of more language that relates to the kingdoms in Daniel 7, let us also read something, in Revelation 13, which speaks of a similar beast.  It says in Revelation 13:1-3:

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

Is this describing the same dragon as in Revelation 12:4, which also had seven heads and ten horns?  Is Revelation 13 speaking of the same thing?  Yes, it is also describing Satan as the beast, but there is one difference.  In Revelation 12:4, there are seven heads and ten horns, but the crowns are upon the heads.  In Revelation 13:1, the crowns are upon the horns and that is the only difference.  Why is that?   It is because Revelation 12 describes Satan’s rule throughout time, since the fall of man when Satan conquered mankind and became the god of this world and mankind became subservient to him.  In Revelation 13, the focus is upon the final rule of Satan during the little season of the Great Tribulation period.  That is when the ten horns are crowned, but, typically, throughout history the heads were crowned.  So God helps us by making that small distinction between them and we can determine which rule of Satan is in view.

Let us also go to Revelation 17:3:

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

Here, again, we know from the description that this beast is Satan.  The “seven heads and ten horns” tell us that.  Interestingly, God does not speak of crowns upon the heads or the horns, but we know from the description it is Satan.  Then it says in Revelation 17:4-5:

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Now the “woman” was seated upon the beast, which is very unusual.  We had thought for some time that the “woman” represented the churches, which had become “Babylon,” and that the churches were in subjection to Satan.  And that is the figure that God gives in the Bible because God also says that Satan, the man of sin, takes his seat in the temple.  Satan is the one that was seated and when you “sit” you are ruling; so when the man of sin took his seat in the temple, he was ruling over the church.  But, here, it is the woman who is seated upon the beast.  We wonder what this refers to, but we are not going to get into this right now, so we still have some time to study it.  We still have a few chapters to go before we get to this in Revelation 17, but it is helpful that the woman is called “Babylon” and she is seated upon the beast that has seven heads and ten horns; those “heads” represent the rule of Satan all throughout history of the world since he conquered mankind in the Garden of Eden.  This means that Babylon is there ruling over all of those kingdoms over the entire period of time, which helps us to understand why it is God says, in chapter 18, that in her was found the blood of the prophets and saints and all those that were slain upon the earth – all of God’s people.  In the Gospel accounts it even goes back to “righteous Abel,” who was slain by Cain in the early days of earth’s history.  We will look at it another time, but there the blood was “counted” and Abel was included in all the prophets that were slain.

Here, in Revelation 17, the “woman” (who is Babylon) is the one that “sits” upon the beast; she is over all the kingdoms and has all rule.  We will see that this is what these “seven heads” point to when we go to Revelation 17:7-9:

And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

Let us stop for a second and consider this.  The “seven heads are seven mountains.”  In the Bible, mountains represent kingdoms, so the seven heads are seven mountains, or seven kingdoms, just as we saw in Daniel 7.  Remember the fourth beast over the fourth kingdom and the four heads of the four beasts were “kings” and kings rule over kingdoms.  Again, of the woman, it says in Revelation 17:9: “The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.”  God is making sure we do not miss this.  The “woman” Babylon sits over all the kingdoms of Satan throughout all time, so that makes it a little difficult to try to understand Babylon exclusively as the corporate church because it did not even come into existence until the first century AD.  Even if we were to also understand the nation of Israel as a figure of the churches, they were only around for a couple thousand of years until Christ and, yet, this rule of Babylon, the woman, that sits upon the seven heads of the beast goes back much further than that – it covers the entire period of time on earth.

It says in Revelation 17:10:

And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

Again, it mentions “seven kings” (seven kingdoms) and that identifies with the seven heads of the beast or the seven heads of the dragon in our verse in Revelation 12:4.  Notice that it tells us that “five are fallen;” that is, it is past history and we are reading information that God moved the Apostle John to write in the first century A.D.  So this means that five periods of rule (five kingdoms, five mountains, or five heads of the beast) have already come and gone.  This is understandable when we realize that the Old Testament side of the cross has many more periods of rule than the New Testament side of the cross.  There had already been 11,000 years of history leading up to the birth of Christ, and we are now at just over 2,000 years of history since his birth, so there is far more time before the cross than there has been since the cross.  So of the seven kingdoms, the majority of the kingdoms had already come and gone by the time Jesus was born and then went to the cross in the first century AD.

So “five are fallen, and one is,” and this refers to the rule of Satan during the New Testament church age.  He was bound at the cross, so that particular rule from 33 AD until 1988 AD (the 1,955 years of the church age) was a different epoch, a different era and a different “type” of the rule of Satan.  It was a limited reign.  Prior to the cross, he had more unlimited power and reach, as he had much ability to bind the hearts of men; there were relatively few people saved during the Old Testament era during his five kingdoms.  During his sixth kingdom, which identifies with the church age, God sent forth the Gospel via the churches and congregations of the world and many more people were saved than during the Old Testament period of time.  So, “one is” and that one reign of Satan would continue until the end of the church age.  In 1988 it was the beginning of the Great Tribulation as judgment began at the house of God and, at that point, the “little season” of the Great Tribulation began and the seventh rule of Satan began to take place.  That is why it says in Revelation 17:10: “and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”  Notice that language of a “short space” and how that fits with the “little season” of the Great Tribulation and that takes us back to Revelation 13, where the beast appears out of the sea, as it says in Revelation 13:3-5:

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

At this point the church age has ended and that was Satan’s sixth kingdom, according to the figure God has given us and it was during that sixth period of rule that he was “bound” and that is what this language refers to: “And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death.”  He received a death blow at the cross, as Christ bound him and limited his activity. 

Then there was the final rule of Satan, the seventh kingdom upon the earth, which is his most fierce kingdom.  He is loosed from that bottomless pit and he goes forth against the camp of the saints and this is his most glorious time; Satan is given tremendous reign over the world and over the churches.  He had never experienced anything like this.  It is a total dominion, it seems, over the wicked of the world and the numbers of these wicked had multiplied to an incredible amount.  There were billions of unsaved people in his kingdom and the numbers in the churches had also multiplied to about two billion (the third part of mankind) and Satan had rule over all this, but the rule was given him for a limited time of “forty and two months.”  This represented the duration of the Great Tribulation period, which we know was an exact 23 years, from May 21, 1988 to May 21, 2011 and then the “little season” of the Great Tribulation came to a close.  The “forty and two months” ended and the rule of Satan was finished.  There is no more rule for him.  It is the end of the seventh kingdom and the end of that seventh “mountain,” as Revelation 17:9 uses that figure: “The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.”  It is “Babylon the great” which has been ruling in conjunction with Satan, as Satan has his kingdom of Babylon, and now the end finally comes after 13,023 years of history, at the end of the Great Tribulation, in 2011.  The rule of Satan is broken and he is finally defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now we can understand this wonderful statement in Psalm 74, once we recognize that the “heads” are all referring to the one entity (Satan).   It says in Psalm 74:13-14:

Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

Keep your place in this passage and then let us go over to Isaiah 27, which we looked at in our last study.  It says in Isaiah 27:1:

In that day JEHOVAH with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Now here it is “singular” and we understand that because Satan is just one being.  JEHOVAH, with the Word of God, slays the dragon and we know that God is victorious over Satan.  You see, we are also reading about God being victorious over Satan in Psalm 74 when He “brakest the heads,” (plural) of the dragons in the waters and “brakest the heads” (plural) of leviathan in pieces; that is, God finally destroys all the rule of Satan – all seven heads or seven kingdoms – and God is now victorious over all the periods of reign of Satan, and we come to Judgment Day. 

Notice the final statement in Psalm 74:14:

Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

This is a very curious statement God makes here: Satan and his destruction are “meat” or “food” to the people inhabiting the wilderness.  We do not have time to look at that any further, but consider what might be in view with this language.  We will continue, Lord willing, when we get together next time in our study in the Book of Revelation.