Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #11 of Revelation, chapter 12, and we are going to be reading Revelation 12:9-10:

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

As we have seen before in our prior studies, Revelation 12:9 is speaking of the binding of Satan at the cross.  That is the time he was cast out of heaven and he no longer had access to heaven, to go before the Lord.  We also see that, in verse 10, he had been a constant accuser of the brethren, but before we look at this, let us look at the first part of Revelation 12:10:

And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ…

The first thing mentioned is “salvation,” following the Lord Jesus Christ’s entry into the human race and his eventual going to the cross, and it was God’s plan to save more people during the New Testament church age than He had done previously in the entire Old Testament.  We see this right away, in the Book of Acts, chapter 2, where on the day of Pentecost three thousand people were saved in one day, as the Apostle Peter preached a sermon.   And that was just the beginning of the “spiritual firstfruits” that were brought in during the entire church age.  That is why, at this point, the Lord Jesus had been born as the man child and He has ascended back into heaven, and now the “woman” has fled into the wilderness where she will be fed for “1,260 days,” which represents the entire 1,955 years of the church age.  It is during that time that the dragon had been cast out of heaven and was bound.  As a result of his binding, God was now able to send forth the Gospel into the world and establish His kingdom through the preaching of His Word, which will result in salvation.  There would be many more people saved during the church age, even though it was not quite as many as we previously thought, but it was far more than the numbers saved during the Old Testament period of time.  That is why the declaration is made in our verse in Revelation 12:10:

Now is come salvation, and strength… 

The word “strength” is a translation of the Greek word “dunamis,” which is Strong’s #1411.  The word “dunamis” is often translated as “power.”  For instance, it says in Acts 1:8:

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

The word “power” is a translation of the word “dunamis.”  The “power” comes as Acts 1 describes the point in history when the Lord Jesus is about to ascend into heaven and then He says: “Ye shall receive power,” and following that, the Holy Spirit is officially poured out on the day of Pentecost and they received “power,” as a result, to establish God’s spiritual kingdom and to bring the Gospel which will result in salvation.  Concerning this word “dunamis,” it is also used in Romans 1:16:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

So the “power” of God is the Gospel unto salvation.  Our verse is proclaiming, “Now is come salvation and power;” that is, it is power unto salvation as the Gospel goes forth.  Then it goes on to say in Revelation 12:10:

Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God…

Earlier in Christ’s ministry it was declared that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.  Now Christ has gone back to heaven; He has ascended after his life on earth.  After His resurrection, He has returned to His Father in heaven and, again, it is declared, “Now is come the kingdom of our God,” and that is because the kingdom of our God was established early on in Christ’s ministry, throughout His ministry and then after His ministry.  It is established by the preaching of the Word of God, especially when individuals become saved as the Gospel is heard by God’s elect (those He had predestinated to hear the Gospel and to be born again) and they are added to the kingdom of God.  It is a spiritual kingdom.  Remember what Jesus said in John 18:36:

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

The kingdom of God is not of this world.  It is a spiritual kingdom that cannot be seen with the physical eye.  It is the building up of the elect people of God to form the kingdom.  Of course, in our present time of living after the Tribulation, God has completed the building up of that kingdom.  He has saved all His elect, so He is not sending forth the Word any longer to further the kingdom, as far as adding souls to it.

To continue in our verse, it says in Revelation 12:10:

Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ…

We saw earlier that the word “strength” is “dunamis” and can be translated as “power,” but the word “power” here is really a word that expresses the idea of “authority.”  It is Strong’s #1849.  It has to do with the authority of Christ to do these things – to establish the kingdom of heaven, to establish salvation, and so forth.  God makes reference to the authority which Jesus possesses to do these things according to the Father’s will.

Now let us go on to the second part of Revelation 12:10:

…for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

Once again, we know this refers to Satan, the devil, the serpent and great dragon – all the names God gives him.  We can now add another name to the list.  He is the adversary of God and he is the “accuser of the brethren.”  We saw this when Satan went before JEHOVAH in the Old Testament in the days of Job.  God said that Job was a “perfect man,” as He says in Job 1:1:

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.

God said Job was perfect.  First of all, we wonder how God could say that.  The only possible answer is that Job was “made perfect” through Christ, the Messiah.  Job’s sins were taken by the Lord Jesus Christ and paid for from the foundation of the world, which had already occurred.  It is not that Job must look “toward” this event; it had already happened.  His sins were already paid for and God had already saved Job and applied that redeeming work of the blood of Christ to Job, making him perfect in God’s sight.  Does this mean that Job never sinned?  No – it does not mean that.  He was a man that was still in the flesh and, certainly, he would have sinned at various times.  But, from God’s perspective, he was “perfect and upright” because God saw the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Noah found grace in the eyes of God in the same way, just like every child of God is made righteous “by the obedience of one.” 

So, here is Job, one of our brethren, because he is a child of God.  Then it goes on to say in Job 1:6-11:

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before JEHOVAH, and Satan came also among them. And JEHOVAH said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered JEHOVAH, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And JEHOVAH said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered JEHOVAH, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

There is the accusation.  Satan is saying, “Job fears you because you have blessed him richly with all sorts of material things.  Look how rich he is.  You have given him all these things.  Of course he is going to love you.  But take them away and put your hand upon him and he will curse you to his face.”  That is the accusation against one of God’s children.  Satan goes on to make further accusations when that does not work.  This is typical of Satan, according to our verse in Revelation 12:10.  It is what Satan was involved in, day and night, from the fall of man into sin throughout the Old Testament period.  “Day and night” is a time reference that points to the timekeepers of this world, as time goes by and history unfolds, and Satan was constantly accusing the people of God to God: “Here is a sin I see over here in this one.  Here is a wrongdoing this one is involved in.”  You know, Satan was actually taking upon himself a role that did not belong to him.  That is not surprising.  Satan is extremely proud and arrogant.  He was assuming the role of a judge, the role of the Law of God.  The Lord Jesus says in John 5:45:

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust.

Jesus is saying, “I do not have to accuse you.  There is already one that accuses and that is Moses.”  (Moses is a synonym for the Law of God.)  The Law of God accuses you to the Father because it is the Law of God you have transgressed;  at every point of transgression the Law says you are guilty and “the wages of sin is death,” so it is the Law that is the accuser of the wrongdoer. 

But when it comes to the children of God, the elect chosen by God to salvation, the Law does “accuse” the elect, but the Law also recognizes that those sins were laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ paid for those sins, thereby satisfying the Law’s demands and satisfying the Law’s accusation.  Therefore, as a result, the Law has no more to accuse concerning the elect people, like Job.  That leaves an individual like Job “perfect and upright” in the eyes of God.

This is where Satan comes in.  He does not go to God to accuse the “religious” person like the unsaved professed Christian.  He does not go to God to accuse the secular individual.  He does not go to God to make accusation against anyone in the world who is unsaved.  The Law of God makes that accusation; the Law of God condemns them.  So Satan does not attempt to accuse them, but it is only those “select” people chosen by God (who sins He has taken upon Himself as the Lamb of God and paid for them) that Satan accuses to the Father and makes charges against them to say they are “guilty.” 

We read an interesting historical account of a woman taken in the act of adultery, in John 8:3-6:

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

Now one thing we see is that if you look up the word “accuse” or “accusation,” or “accuser,” you are going to find that the scribes and Pharisees often made accusation against Christ.  Why was that?  It is because Satan is able to stir up his emissaries to perform his bidding and to do as he would have them to do.  Satan wanted to find fault or error within the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah.  Satan worked “overtime” to find some misdeed or some wrongdoing to accuse him.  Of course, not finding any fault did not stop Satan from making the accusations through his emissaries. 

Here, they are bringing forth this woman caught in adultery, saying, “Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned.”  So the Law of God accuses the adulteress or adulterer of wrongdoing; the charge is that they have transgressed the Law on this point and they are guilty of death and they should die.  (This teaches us that when we transgress God’s law we are guilty of spiritual adultery.)  But, in this case, the Jews knew that the Law is the accuser, so they use the Law in an attempt to accuse Christ and they brought this woman to Him in order to trap him.  If Jesus agrees with the Law, then they will stone the woman to death and then run to the Roman authorities and say that Christ was involved in a stoning, which was against Roman law.  But if Jesus said they were not to stone her, then they would turn to their fellow Jews and say, “We caught this woman in adultery.  The Law of Moses is very plain.  It tells us to stone the woman and Jesus refuses to stone her – He broke the Law.”  So, either way, they were going to make an accusation; it was a perfectly laid trap.  But, of course, you cannot trap Eternal God, so it says in John 8:7-11:

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Now this woman is one of God’s elect; Christ pardons her and He does not condemn her, just as we would read later in the Epistle of Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”  We had already received condemnation through Christ and His death and, therefore, there is nothing more the Law can do.  There is no “double jeopardy,” wherein we must pay for our sins a second time and make payment to the Law of God a second time.  The Law does not require that.  No law of the land, as far as I know, requires such a thing of its subjects in this world.

One payment is all that is necessary and Christ made that payment.  Here, men grabbed hold of the woman and accused her, as well as setting a trap to accuse Jesus.  They were trying to accomplish both.  They were trying to “accuse the brethren,” as this woman is our brethren because she had been forgiven her sins.  The Lord Jesus Christ is also our “brother,” as Jesus said, in Mark, chapter 3: “Who is my mother, or my brethren? For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”  

So, Satan was very active in his attempt to accuse Jesus and to accuse the woman and, yet, he failed.  He constantly fails, except he did succeed when the time finally came for Christ to go to the cross.  We read in Luke 23 of Jesus being brought before the Jewish council and then He was taken to the Roman authorities, and it says in Luke 23:2:

And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a King.

Of course, when they cannot find an honest accusation because there is no error, fault or wrongdoing, as they try to accuse the “spotless” Lamb of God, then they make it up and they fabricated a story that Christ forbade to give tribute to Caesar.  When He was tempted in that way, Jesus had said, “Show me the coin.  Whose image and superscription is thereon?”  And they said, “Caesar’s,” and then Christ replied, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  That was not forbidding to give tribute; it was actually stating that the Jews should pay their tax.  Here, the accusation is made before Pilot and then it says in Luke 23:10:

And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused him.

They continued with their accusations before Pilot.  They were all false accusations and their “witness” did not agree with one another (we read in another place).  Then it says in Luke 23:13-14:

And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and the rulers and the people, Said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him:

The accusations had no merit; they were not justifiable.  Pilot found Christ innocent of all accusations against Him and Satan, the accuser, who had certainly stirred up his emissaries to make these charges, was disappointed.  But, since it was according to the predetermined counsel and foreknowledge of God that the Lord Jesus go to the cross, the circumstances forced Pilot’s hand into finally crucifying Him, so that the tableau would be completed to demonstrate what Christ had done from the foundation of the world.