God Saves Israel in the Wilderness; Rev. 12:1-3

The kingdoms of man are the kingdom of Satan. He works his way through the political entities of human history. We are all part of that whole flow of the kingdom of man and the culture of man. As much as we love our country we have to recognize that it is a part of the cosmic system just as every other nation in history. Ultimately they all boil down to the bestiality of the kingdom of man that are all used as pawns by Satan. The seven heads represent the historic train of kingdoms: five that were, one that is, and one that will be. The five that were had to do with those anti-Semitic nations, the nations that persecuted Israel—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Greece in the past, Rome at the time that Paul was writing and then the future revived Roman empire. The future revived Roman empire is made up of a federation of ten nations (the ten horns). Then we see the army that Satan has, the third of the stars of heaven—the third of the angels who are with him, and he sends them to the earth to be part of his attack against Israel. He seeks to destroy the Messiah, v. 4. In v. 6 the woman fled into the wilderness. This is when the Jews who believe Jesus leave at the mid-point of the Tribulation when they see the abomination of desolation, and she will be nourished there, God will take care of her for that 1260 days in the second half of the Tribulation. Matthew 24:15 ^NASB “Matt 24:15 “Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.” This means just those who are in Judea, not those who are in other places in the world.

The only reason a Jew will flee to the mountains when he sees the abomination of desolation in the holy place is because they know that Jesus said this and they believe that He knew what He was talking about. It is believed that for the most part the Jews who hit the road at that point will be saved. They will be justified already, believers in Jesus as the Messiah. The nation doesn’t get saved as a nation until Jesus comes back at the end of the Tribulation, so they are justified but the nation is not saved yet. Jesus makes it very clear that this is going to be the worst scenario in history.

Isaiah 63:1-5 ^NASB “Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like the one who treads in the wine press? “I have trodden the wine trough alone, And from the peoples there was no man with Me. I also trod them in My anger And trampled them in My wrath; And their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My raiment. For the day of vengeance was in My heart, And My year of redemption has come. I looked, and there was no one to help, And I was astonished and there was no one to uphold; So My own arm brought salvation to Me, And My wrath upheld Me.” His garments are pictured as dyed red with blood. This is the one who is glorious in His apparel, the Messiah. This is at the time of His day of vengeance and this puts it clearly in the Tribulation period when God is bringing about His judgment on all of the nations.

Jeremiah 49:22 ^NASB “Behold, He will mount up and swoop like an eagle and spread out His wings against Bozrah; and the hearts of the mighty men of Edom in that day will be like the heart of a woman in labor.” This is a picture of protection. God is going to watch over these Jews who have obeyed Him and fled to the wilderness and is going to provide for all of their needs.

Revelation 12:7,8 speaks of the war in heaven. ^NASB “And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven.” At this time, after the mid-point of the Tribulation, the angelic conflict in heaven reaches this boiling point and the elect angels defeat the fallen angels and they are finally and permanently thrown out of heaven and down to the earth. This tells us that they had access to heaven back and forth, still do today, and Job speaks of these in various assemblies that meet before God challenging believers on earth, but it is not until this point that they are permanently cast out. From the imagery in Scripture we can go two ways. One is that they have an intense but still invisible impact on human history, or that it becomes a visible presence on the earth. We tend to think that it is a visible presence on the earth just like their presence was visible prior to Noah’s flood. At the end of this last half of the Tribulation God brings final judgment on all of the demons and unbelievers and all of those who have been arrayed against Him in history; these are all isolated, as it were, in one kill zone and they are going to be taken out at the end of the Tribulation period.

Revelation 12:9 ^NASB “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 earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” Satan, also called the devil, is the serpent that was in the garden and he is the one who deceives the whole world. He is thrown down to the earth and his angels are thrown down with him.

Rev 12:10, 11 ^NASB “ Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come…’ Once again this is a proleptic use of the aorist tense here, it is anticipating the future as if it is a present reality. With this ejection of Satan and the demons from heaven it is now a certainty that the end of history is upon us and that the judgment of Satan is about to happen. ‘… for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.’ And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb [because they believed Jesus died on the cross for their sins] and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” The imagery of blood is a picture of death and the Lamb, of course. It will be a terrible time when multitudes of believers lose their lives because they have trusted in Jesus as their saviour.

Revelation 12:12 ^NASB “For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them [elect angels]. Woe [announcement of an intensified curse] to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has {only} a short time.” This is the time of Satan’s final temper tantrum in history. He knows he has but a short time and so will try to do as much damage as he can, and the focal point of his energy is on the Jews.

Revelation 12:13 ^NASB “And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male {child.}” So there is going to be an intensification of anti-Semitism in the last part of the Tribulation. This is against the remnant, those who are true Israel of Israel. [14] But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness …” Somehow she is able to fly. This could be an airlift but we don’t think it is speaking about that, it is speaking of the fact that God is going to supernaturally protect her in her flight. “… to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time [three and a half years], from the presence of the serpent.” In two instances now we have had a reference to a three and a half year period. Earlier it was the one thousand two hundred and sixty days. The reason for pointing this out it has been said that these terms, “time, times and half a time,” refers to the first half of the Tribulation and 1260 days refers to the second half. We don’t think that is true, we think that refers to different aspects of whatever it is talking about in terms of what God is doing. In this chapter the two terms are used synonymously to refer to God’s protection of Israel. So it is not thought that a really strong case can be made for a lot of distinction between those terms, based on their usage here. This is why this final half of the Tribulation is going to be such a horrible time for Israel. Jeremiah 30:7 ^NASB “Alas! for that day is great, There is none like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s distress, But he will be saved from it.”

Revelation 12:15 ^NASB “And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood.” We take it that this is not talking about literal water but this is using imagery here of comparing a military attack to a flood, a huge number of people chasing after Israel into the wilderness to destroy the last of the Jews. [16] “But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth.” So at this point the earth is literal, there will be an earthquake that will swallow up the armies of the Antichrist chasing the Jews at this point, much as the earth opened up and swallowed the rebellious Jews following Korah in the wilderness. This all takes place towards the end of the Tribulation period. To understand all of this we have to understand something about the final military campaign that occurs in the last part of the Tribulation period called the campaign of Armageddon.

Most of us when we have been taught anything about the campaign of Armageddon we basically got the idea that the Antichrist is going to bring his military coalition into Israel and the battle is going to take place at Armageddon, that at Armageddon the blood will flow as high as a horse’s bridle and that Jesus is going to return to the Mount of Olives and from there He will defeat the Antichrist. That isn’t exactly correct. It is partially right but there is a lot more to it than that when we put together all of the various passages in the Scripture. It is a lengthy military campaign that has eight specific stages.

The first stage takes place with the gathering of the armies of the Antichrist at the valley of Armageddon or the valley of Megiddo. The Antichrist’s capital is in literal Babylon—that will be rebuilt. There is an assault on Babylon that is finally and completely destroyed. So he sees the smoke on the horizon, knows his time is up, so he attacks Jerusalem from the north down through what is now the west bank and he will pretty much wipe out and devastate Jerusalem. The Jews have escaped down to Petra or Bozrah and so he is going to send his armies after them. This is when Israel will turn and call upon the Lord to deliver them as a nation. So this is talking about corporate Israel’s rebirth as a nation. They are already justified, already individually regenerated; this is talking about the nation as a whole. This is when the curse from Matthew 12 is lifted. Then the Lord is going to return at the second coming, He returns to Bozrah to deliver them there and then will lead them up from Bozrah with the tribe of Judah in front, up through the southern Judean desert back to Jerusalem and the valley of Jehoshaphat where the battle will end. That will be where several judgments at the end of the Tribulation will take place and then there will be His victory ascent up the Mount of Olives.

Megiddo is almost exactly on the same latitude as Babylon. The Antichrist whose headquarters is in Babylon is going to send his armies there and it is on the plain of Esdraelon, also known as the valley of Megiddo, that his forces will gather as a staging area. Haifa is the only natural harbor in Israel, so it makes sense that as military personnel and supplies are shifted into Israel they will be taken in through the harbor at Haifa and that just feeds into the north-west end of the valley of Esdraelon. This is where the army collects to attack Jerusalem and to destroy the last remnants of the Jews.

The valley of Esdraelon is a very long valley and down its middle runs the Kishon river, the same river that Elijah draws water from to soak the altar. The ridge line on the upper north-west corner is the ridge of Mount Carmel. The Kishon is also the river that apparently flash-floods during the battle of Deborah and Barak against the Canaanites in Judges chapters 5 & 6, and God uses that flood to wipe out the Canaanite chariots. The valley is a huge area and from Haifa across almost to the Jordan river. It is the staging area where all of the supplies are going to be brought in for the assault on the Jews.

The next thing that happens is while the Antichrist is gearing up for battle he hears a rumor from the east that Babylon is being destroyed. He looks toward the horizon and sees the smoke ascending, and Babylon is finally and ultimately destroyed. Historically among dispensationalists we grew up hearing that Babylon in Revelation wasn’t really talking about literal Babylon, it was talking about Rome; it was a code word. We call that non-literal interpretation. In the 1980s a lot of dispensationalists began to study this and realized that the Old Testament prophecies about the complete and final destruction of Babylon had never truly been fulfilled. Those prophecies indicated that Babylon would be completely uninhabitable. But there have always been Arabs and a few small villages on the site of ancient Babylon all through the centuries, it has never been uninhabited. So that prophecy has never been fulfilled. Babylon will be rebuilt and will be the economic heartbeat for the future kingdom of the Antichrist.

Revelation 18:1 ^NASB “After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illumined with his glory. [2] And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird.” The stock markets everywhere will crash and there will be no recovery. Isaiah 13:9 prophesied it this way: ^NASB “And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” Nothing can be found of Sodom and Gomorrah; nothing has lived there, it is a barren wasteland. That is not true of the modern site of ancient Babylon. [20] “It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch {his} tent there, Nor will shepherds make {their flocks} lie down there.” But Arabs have been there up to the present and shepherds have rested their flocks there. So this hasn’t been fulfilled.

Jeremiah 50:1 ^NASB “The word which the LORD spoke concerning Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, through Jeremiah the prophet: …. [39] When they become heated up, I will serve {them} their banquet And make them drunk, that they may become jubilant And may sleep a perpetual sleep And not wake up, declares the LORD. [40] I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, Like rams together with male goats. [41] How Sheshak has been captured, And the praise of the whole earth been seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations! [42] The sea has come up over Babylon; She has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves. [43] Her cities have become an object of horror, A parched land and a desert, A land in which no man lives And through which no son of man passes.”

Jeremiah 51:24 ^NASB “But I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea for all their evil that they have done in Zion before your eyes, declares the LORD.” Iraq is going to be wiped out at that point at the end of the Tribulation.

The third stage in the campaign of Armageddon is the fall of Jerusalem. The Antichrist will invade from the north coming down from the valley of Megiddo to attack and destroy Jerusalem. The city will be pretty much wiped out and laid waste by the assault of the Antichrist. Zechariah 12:2 ^NASB “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah.” So it is an attack on this area. [3] “It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it. [4] In that day,” declares the LORD, ‘I will strike every horse with bewilderment and his rider with madness. But I will watch over the house of Judah, while I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness’.”

Zechariah 14:2 ^NASB “For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.”

In the fourth stage the Antichrist will march to Petra. He is pursuing the Jews down through the southern part of Israel and across south of the Dead Sea into that barren wasteland. Jeremiah 49:13, 14 ^NASB “For I have sworn by Myself, declares the LORD, that Bozrah will become an object of horror, a reproach, a ruin and a curse; and all its cities will become perpetual ruins. I have heard a message from the LORD, And an envoy is sent among the nations, {saying,} ‘Gather yourselves together and come against her, And rise up for battle!’” This is the nations gathering against Bozrah.

The fifth stage: Israel at that time, surrounded and about to be defeated, will cry out to God for help. This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 23:39 ^NASB “For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’” Just before this He had entered into Jerusalem riding on the foal of a donkey as the King and was welcomed. But then the rejection and the conspiring against Him t have Him killed and so He says He will not come again until they as a nation welcome Him. There were many in the nation during the time of Jesus’ ministry who accepted Him and were saved but the nation as a whole rejected Him. So the nation was going to be punished by God because as a nation they rejected Him. Even the believers went through the divine discipline. Romans 11:26 ^NASB “and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB. [27] THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS’.” This isn’t talking about taking away their sins at the cross, that had already happened; this is talking about the removal of that judgment that they had been under ever since they had rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

Zechariah 12:10 ^NASB “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” This isn’t a salvation verse. It doesn’t say they will look on Him whom they have pierced and will believe on Him, this is a verse that occurs corporately when they realize as a nation what they did back in 33 AD.

Zechariah 13:1 ^NASB “In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity.” There will be a cleansing of the nation from their sin.

Joel 2:28, 29 ^NASB “It will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” That is the new covenant terminology when at this point when Jesus returns He establishes and implements the new covenant with the nation Israel and pours out His Spirit upon them. [30] “I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, Blood, fire and columns of smoke. [31] The sun will be turned into darkness And the moon into blood Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. [32] And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Will be delivered; For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem There will be those who escape, As the LORD has said, Even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.” The Hebrew word for “saved” there isn’t the usual word, it is a different Hebrew word that has to do with a physical deliverance from a physical calamity. This same verse is quoted on Romans 10:12 and it happens at the end of the Tribulation period.

The sixth event is the second coming of Christ. He returns to physically deliver them at Petra. Isaiah 63:1-3 ^NASB “Who is this who comes from Edom, With garments of glowing colors from Bozrah, This One who is majestic in His apparel, Marching in the greatness of His strength? ‘It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.’ Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like the one who treads in the wine press? ‘I have trodden the wine trough alone, And from the peoples there was no man with Me. I also trod them in My anger And trampled them in My wrath; And their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My raiment’.” This is Jesus coming, leading the remnant of Israel that He has rescued in Bozrah and bringing them up to Jerusalem.

The seventh event is the armies of the Antichrist will be destroyed. Joel 3;2 ^NASB “I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land…. [12] Let the nations be aroused And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge All the surrounding nations.” This is also the Kidron valley and where this judgment on the nations will take place.

Zechariah 14:3, 4 ^NASB “Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south. You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD, my God, will come, {and} all the holy ones with Him!” So the Jews who are being pressured by the armies of the Antichrist from the north are going to escape through this valley that Jesus Christ will create when He splits the Mount of Olives in two. They will head toward the Dead Sea for their release.

The eighth stage of the campaign of Armageddon is the victory ascent of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives. This is where He will finalize His victory, as seen in passages such as Joel 3:14-17; Revelation 19:11-13 ^NASB “And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it {is} called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes {are} a flame of fire, and on His head {are} many diadems; and He has a name written {on Him} which no one knows except Himself. {He is} clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.” That is how it ends at the second coming.

When we understand that scenario and that framework, then when we go to passages like Romans 10:9, 10 we see that can’t be talking about personal justification, it is talking about the deliverance of Israel at that end time. It also shows how God is going to protect the nation, the woman who flees to the wilderness, in Revelation 12.

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