The
We are introduced in this
chapter to two more of the key players in the Tribulation period. Starting in chapter
ten we have been looking at the contents of the “little book” prophecy that was
given to John by the powerful angel. The first characters we were introduced to
were the two witnesses in chapter 11—two prophets. They have a tremendous
ministry to
In chapter twelve the focus
is on the woman (
The titles of Satan that we find in Scripture
These
titles say something about his character on the one hand and they say something
about his goals, objectives, his methodologies on the other hand.
1.
The title that is
used most often is the term Satan which is a Hebrew word [satan] and it means “adversary.” It is used 27 times in the Old
Testament and almost 30 times in the New Testament, and it is the most common
word that is used. So Satan’s name is “adversary” and it shows his role as an
antagonist to God from his original fall where he was seeking to set himself up
as god.
2.
The devil, [diabolos/ diaboloj]. He
is the slanderer, the father of lies. Matthew 4:1. He slanders the character of
God, he slanders believers, he lies about them and misrepresents them and God’s
character for his own ends.
3.
The prince and
the power of the air, Ephesians 2:2. “… according to the course of this world…”
Here we have the term kosmos [kosmoj]. That is important to understand because kosmos isn’t just a term for the earth
or all of those who dwell upon the earth, though it is used that way in John
3:16. Here it is talking about the thinking of the world, the thought systems
of the world, and there are as many different thought systems on the earth as
there are people groups and language groups. A worldview expresses the thinking
of a people within the world. A worldview always expresses itself in terms of
reality. What is reality? Is it personal or is it impersonal? If it is
personal, does that person communicate or has that person communicated to man?
What kind of person is it? Flowing out of the idea of ultimate reality is the
idea of knowledge. How do we know about this ultimate reality? How do we come
to know truth? From the time we are born we live according to the standards of
the world system around us, we are brought up and trained to think a certain
way by those around us. An unbeliever’s thinking is always shaped by the
thinking around him. It is also called human viewpoint thinking, of which there
are many different kinds, and it is all cosmic thinking because the starting
point is always man or something in creation and not God as being distinct from
creation. This is the same kind of thinking that Satan has, his starting point
was himself and that he was a creature who could be like God. He shifted his
thinking away from God as the ultimate reference point to himself. It is the
thinking of “the prince of the power of the air” because it is Satan who lies
behind all of those different ways of thinking, his basic arrogance and
autonomy. So we are born into the cosmic system and basically brainwashed in
the cosmic system and we think the way Satan thinks. “… this is the spirit who
now works in the sons of disobedience.” The “sons of disobedience is just a
general term Paul has for those who are unbelievers who are in rebellion
against God. It is a term that is somewhat parallel to but not exactly
identical to the term that we have seen in Revelation, “earth dwellers.” The
“prince of the power of the air” emphasizes Satan who energizes the thought
systems that define the cultures in the kingdoms of man.
4.
The god of this
age. 2 Corinthians 4:4 NASB “in whose case the god of this world has
blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of
the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” The term “age”
here translates a Greek word aionos
[a)iwnoj], a word that overlaps the word kosmos. The word kosmos has to do with the world and the thinking within the
world, emphasizing its organization and its orderliness—systems of thinking. aionos emphasizes the same thing but
from a different vantage point. It is looking at that system as a system that
dominates during a certain time period. This is the word that is translated
“world” in Romans 12:2 where it is emphasizing the spirit of the age. The
spirit of the age is the spirit that dominates any culture at any particular
time. We live in an age where the spirit of the age is postmodernism. So “the
god of this age” is dictating the thought systems of the age.
5.
The ruler of this
world (John
6.
This takes us
back to his fall, Isaiah 14:12-14 where he is referred to as Lucifer in the KJV. In the
Hebrew [helel ben shahar] it means “shining one,” or “son of the
dawn.”
7.
The great red
dragon, Revelation 12:9. The great dragon is going to empower the Antichrist in
the end time kingdom is the same person that was in the garden with Eve and
what he does is deceive the whole world.
8.
The wicked one,
Matthew 13:19. This describes his character, evil to the core.
9.
He is called the tempter
in 1 Thessalonians 3:5 and Matthew 4:3. His role is to entice people to disobey
God and to live independently of God.
10.
He is the
accuser, Revelation 12:10.
Satan as the god of this age
and the prince of the power of the air is the one who is behind the rise of
this kingdom that comes into power at the end times. We can already see the
pressure and the movement in our times toward this kind of global unification.
This is not saying that the Rapture is around the corner. It may be around the
corner and it may not be for 25 or 50 or 100 years, we have no way of knowing.
The Rapture is imminent which means there is nothing that has to occur in
prophecy before it occurs, but Satan is constantly pushing in order to be ready
so that when the Rapture occurs—he doesn’t know when it will occur any more
than we do—he has some person and some strategy in order to pull together some
sort of kingdom. All of the empires that have arisen throughout the church age
were power bases which, because of their global reach, Satan could use if the
Rapture occurred as a vehicle for promoting his man, whoever that might be. In
Revelation chapter 13:1-10 we will be introduced to him, the first beast, and
in
Revelation 13:1 NASB
“And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore. Then I saw a
beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his
horns {were} ten diadems, and on his heads {were} blasphemous names.” The NASB translates,
“And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore.” The NKJV or the KJV the text
says, “I stood on the sand of the seashore.” The reason there is a difference
here is because there is a discrepancy among some of the MSS related to
this verse. The difference has to do with just one letter of the text. The word
that is used here for “standing” is estathen
[e)staqhn]. The “n” on the end of it in Greek means the first
person singular, so that should be translated “and I stood.” That is found in
the Majority Text as well as in the Textus Receptus which is the tradition
behind the KJV. The Majority Text and Textus Receptus are not
absolutely identical. In many texts and three or four of the oldest texts the
word is spelled estathe, dropping
the last “n.” The difference is whether it is saying “I stood” or “he stood.” A
“he” would be a reference to the dragon, that is why the NASB translates
it “And the dragon stood.” If the Majority Text is correct it should be
translated “I stood,” and in evaluating the data it seems that it makes sense
from an internal argument that it is more likely that the scribes dropped a
letter than added a letter. There is no real reason for the dragon to e standing
on the sand of the seashore but there is a necessity for saying that John has
now moved his position of viewing to the sand of the seashore, and so it makes
much more sense that the original reading would be, “I stood on the sand of the
sea, and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea.”
The word that is translated
“beast” here is therion [qhrion] and it refers to a wild beast or wild animal. This
is not a tame animal, a domesticated animal, it is picturing this as at its
most bestial, ravenous, destructive form. The sea represents the Gentile
nations, and this has its support in two passages. The parallel passage to what
we are studying is in Daniel chapter seven, the second great vision recorded in
Daniel. Daniel 7:2 NASB “Daniel said, “I was looking in my vision by
night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.”
Notice the winds are coming from heaven and they are acting upon the great sea.
The word for “wind” is ruach, the
same word that is translated “spirit” for the Holy Spirit moving upon the face
of the deep back in Genesis 1:2, and the word is also used for evil spirits or
demons. So what we have here is a play on words, that the spirits of heaven are
stirring the great sea. The picture that we have is that the affairs of human
history are influenced and acted upon by unseen forces in the angelic realm.
This is clearly substantiated in passages such as Ephesians 6:10ff as well as
Daniel 10 and 12 which talk about Michael coming to answer Daniel’s prayer
being resisted by the prince of
Daniel 7:3 NASB
“And four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one
another.” These four beasts that come out of the sea are the same four beasts
that are going to be brought up in Revelation 13:2 NASB “And the
beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like {those} of a bear,
and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and
his throne and great authority.” What Daniel sees is these four beasts, each different
from the others, and he sees a lion with the wings of an eagle, representing
the ancient neo-Babylonian or Chaldean empire; the lopsided bear with the ribs
in its mouth represents the Media-Persian empire; the leopard with the wings of
an eagle represents the kingdom of Greece under Alexander the Great; the fourth
beast is just a great and terrible beast that eventually in its final
manifestation has these ten horns like the ten horns in Revelation 13:1—the ten
kingdoms that will comprise the confederacy of the Antichrist’s kingdom in the
end time.
We see the same thing
indicated in Revelation 17:1-3 which gives us another picture of the
Antichrist’s kingdom, this in the imagery of the great harlot who sits on many
waters. The many waters there relate to the sea.
Revelation 17:1 NASB
“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me,
saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits
on many waters, [2] with whom the kings of the earth committed {acts of}
immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of
her immorality. [3] And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and
I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having
seven heads and ten horns.… [15] And he said to me, “The waters which you saw
where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.” So
the Scripture makes it clear that the sea represents the mass of the Gentile
nations. And it is contrast to that that the second beast is going to come up,
and he is going to come up out of the earth, which in contrast to the seas
would mean he comes out of
Revelation 13:2 NASB
“And the beast which I saw was like a leopard [indicating speed], and his feet
were like {those} of a bear [power and massive strength], and his mouth like
the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great
authority.” This takes us back to Daniel chapter seven.
Dan 7:2 NASB
“Daniel said, ‘I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds
of heaven were stirring up the great sea’.” What we see in Daniel is the
beginning of the period that Luke refers to as the times of the Gentiles. The
times of the Gentiles refers to the power base on the earth in terms of
empires. Up until 586 BC there is a Jewish kingdom—from the inauguration of
Saul to 586. But because of their idolatry and their rejection of God, God is
going to take them out of the land according to the 5th cycle of
discipline (Leviticus 26). By taking them out of the land God is showing them
that there is a shift and He is going to start working more directly through
these Gentile powers. The times of the gentiles began in 586 because from that
time until the present