The Cosmic Battle: Revelation 12:1-9 - Revelation: The Apocalypse

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

But when we start praying, Lord, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

On earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our day forever.

We pray that way.

Miracles start to happen.

Supernatural stuff starts to happen.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Welcome to the Road, glad you're here.

Um, I'm Steve Holt, the pastor teacher at The Road, if you're new, and I have been sick now for about 12 days, and I'm probably 75% better today, but that's about it.

I've never been this sick.

It is a great dietary plan, though.

I will tell you that.

I've lost 14 pounds, and um I have no appetite, like zero.

So it is great to be back, and um, if I start to have a spaz attack up here and cough, um, I've got my trusty water, but we'll know, Greg, that that's where we kind of cut the recording and all that.

So um, anyway, great to be with you.

If you have your Bibles, we're in Revelation chapter 12.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

If you're looking at the app, it's there, the notes are there.

Revelation chapter 12.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

That's where we are in our journey through the book of Revelation.

And this particular topic today deals with Satan and the demonic.

It's not my stock message that I give on the satanic world and the demonic.

If you're interested in that series, about two years ago, we did a series called War.

And you can go online and I go through all the details from the beginning of time, as far back as we know, starting in Genesis with the cosmic warfare.

But even in that series, I cover this chapter, this part of this chapter in that.

So I'm not going to rehearse it all again because I want to focus more on the nation of Israel today in the last part of the message, because I believe one of the great wars of our times in the cosmic world that's affecting the three-dimensional world is a war on Israel.

It's been going on now for thousands of years, as many of you know, but this particular passage gives us an insight into this warfare that's been happening since the beginning of time between God and the rebellion of Satan.

And so we're kind of covering some cosmic stuff here.

We're in the middle of the tribulation period in our study of Revelation, and it would seem fitting that John is given a view into what's behind the scenes that's creating the tribulation that's leading up to the final days before the coming of Christ.

So we're in Revelation 12.

Let's start at verse 1, and we're going to read some of this passage today, and we'll cover more next week.

Now a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.

And that symbol is really important as to the identity of the woman.

Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth, quite an image.

And another sign appeared in heaven.

Behold, a great fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on his head.

So this image of the dragon and the seven heads and the ten horns and the seven diadems is going to be mentioned several more times now in the book of Revelation.

And by the way, in a couple weeks we're going to talk about the signs of and the aspects leading up to the Antichrist, which is in Revelation 13.

His tale drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth to devour her child as it was born.

She bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God and his throne.

Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God that they should feed her there 1,260 days.

So John is granted two signs.

First time in Revelation, the term signs are used.

It appears to be a warning.

And the first sign is a woman in travail, a woman in transition, woman in labor.

I've been a part of this seven times.

And I am so glad that in God's great economy of how to lay down curses, that that was not a curse laid upon men.

And if you've been a part of that, it's like you're in a deliverance session.

And we've done our, we did four home births.

Um we did do it at home, and it's how many of you have had a home birth?

Anybody here at a home birth?

Oh, a lot of you, okay.

Home births are cool because you don't have any doctors hovering over you.

And you don't have any nurses bugging you and poking things and doing things that are probably necessary to them but unnecessary to the baby.

But anyway, they do all that stuff, and it's really nice.

But if you go and you go into the hospital, it's like, seriously, man, everybody's on steroids there.

And everybody's freaking out.

It's already hard enough, right?

So you can imagine that John, who would have been used to home birth, goes in to this vision and he sees a woman, this woman with the 12 stars, in labor, and right next to her is a dragon, ready to devour that baby.

And men and women, when you are born again, when you are birthed into Christ, there is a dragon ready to take you out.

You enter from what's probably a very peaceful world of sin and rebellion, and you're just in line with all of the culture of this world.

But when you come to know Christ and you begin to have some convictions from the Word of God, you begin to start having some convictions about the life you want to live, there is an enemy ready to take you out.

Do you know that?

And so I woke up this morning, so did you, and you looked on your phone and you saw that in Cincinnati there was a shooting and a nightclub.

And it seems like it's become increasingly commonplace for us to see this kind of murderous acts and activities going on that's completely demonic.

It's satanic.

And the enemy, men and women, is after your soul.

And so at every decision you make and in each of the convictions that you begin to grow into, there is a dragon.

I don't mean Satan.

Don't take this wrongly.

Satan is not omniscient, and Satan is not sovereign.

And so he can only be at one place at one time, and I think in the case of most of us here, we're not too much of a worry to Satan.

But demons are.

And demons, as malevolent as they are, are right there.

And so when we're making those decisions, what is, aren't we in tax season?

So as we're as we're looking at our taxes and we're making decisions about integrity with our finances and stuff like that, there are many dragons, little dragons ready to come after us.

And so this is the image that John sees, so, and he sees these two signs.

And there's four key characters in our story.

Four key characters in this vision that John has.

One is a child, the second is a dragon, the third are the stars, and the fourth is the woman.

The child is Jesus.

Look at verse 5.

She bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God in his throne.

Psalm 2 says the Messiah will rule, will rule the world with a rod of iron.

Revelation 19, 15.

Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations, and he himself will rule them with a rod of iron.

He himself treads the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God.

So God is coming.

And as the years will go by, as we come into these last days, we will see increasingly that rod of iron.

And I believe what God does in our lives, He makes you a rod of iron.

It's interesting that when we get saved, we actually start having convictions.

You had no convictions before.

Any of you ever look back BC, before Christ's days, you look back at a time when you had no convictions.

And you just did what everybody else did, and you just partied with everybody else, and you you went to the same, to the same clubs and to the same, and did the same stuff that everybody else did.

And then you got saved and you were so excited, you were so fired up, and then you began to realize somewhere about a week or month or maybe a year or two down the road that you had changed.

I mean, you had radically changed.

And you started actually having some convictions and some ideas that were out of sync with all the folks that you used to run with.

And I remember I never did drugs, I was never into drugs, but I did other stuff.

And I remember probably about six months into coming into the Lord, and I looked at my life, and I went, man, if you'd have told me this six months ago, this is the most boring life now.

It's so boring.

But I love it.

I don't want to change.

This is what I want.

I'm actually hanging around people who actually have their head on straight.

I'm actually uh hanging out with groups of people that we laugh at good humor.

You know, and and we're not like nearly having wrecks and killing ourselves every weekend.

Um and so what happens is I think the one who is the rod of iron starts to give you a rod of iron.

You men become men.

You start to have a rod of iron.

We call it backbone.

But we begin to have some convictions in our life that steals us against the things that we just flowed with before.

We were just, we were just unwilling to stand for anything before.

And God's Spirit of God, the rod of iron, becomes our rod of iron.

And you become a woman or a man of God with a rod of iron within you.

And there becomes a new trust with that.

So this is this is Christ he's speaking of.

The dragon is obvious, is Satan, seven heads, ten horns.

He's going to be identified that way throughout the rest of Revelation.

Revelation 13, 1, Revelation 17, 3, 7 heads, ten horns.

Look at verse 7.

And war broke out in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought with the dragon.

And the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.

He was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast with him.

So the stars, church, are the demons, a third of the angels of heaven.

We believe that a third of the angels of heaven are fallen angels.

And these fallen angels, these demons have personality.

And I've cast out a lot of demons in my time.

And I've never met a demon that I like.

Demons, if you don't have an understanding of the spiritual warfare, again, I'd go back to the series on war where I cover that.

The problem today, there's twofold problems when it relates to the demonic and spiritual warfare.

One is the part of the church that doesn't want to acknowledge it at all.

It's just too scary for them.

And yet it's all through Scripture.

From Genesis to Revelation, these malevolent spirits, these demonic spirits, are always shadowy background to everything that's happening in the great drama of the ages, but especially in the life of Christ who came to set the captives free, almost at every turn, Jesus has to deal with the demonic.

So the demonic is out there, and for some there's this mentality don't talk about it, it's too scary, and it's too weird.

And I want to encourage you to listen to my series, to grow in it, because it gives you a balanced perspective to evil in the world.

The second is there's a demon behind every bush mentality.

And there's another element of society, there's another element of the body of Christ that's just talking about demons all the time.

And it's like everything bad that happens, anything negative that occurs, and any temptation that comes their way must be demonic.

I don't agree with that either.

And so here at the road, we walk that balance of taking Scripture as it's given to us and recognizing that there is a malevolent enemy against God called Satan.

We're going to talk about him in just a moment, a little bit of his background.

That when he rebelled from heaven took a third of the angels of heaven, and those are the demonic spirits on the earth today.

So if you have your Bibles, if you have your whole Bibles, look at Ezekiel 28.

If you're looking at the app, it's on there.

But Ezekiel 28, I want to just quickly do an overview of the history of Satan, where he came from, a little understanding of his ways.

Again, in this in the series on war, which is on the sermons online, you can we go into much more detail.

So Ezekiel 28, verse 12, one of the most famous passages in Scripture about Satan.

Ezekiel 28:12

Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, you were in Eden, the garden of God.

So we believe that at the time of the six days of the formation of the heavens and the earth, that Satan had not rebelled yet.

He evidently is in Eden, in the garden of God, perfect in beauty.

So he has not rebelled yet.

He's unfallen.

Every precious stone was your covering, the Sardis, topaz, and diamond, barrel, ox, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.

This is important in the next verse.

The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created.

A couple things.

Number one, Satan's created.

He's a created cherub, a created angel, we believe.

He was a worship leader in heaven, taking worship from the angels of heaven, and then almost like a prime minister of God, taking that worship and giving it to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Perfect in his beauty and the idea of the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes, seemingly to be some type of a worship leader.

He led worship in heaven before he fell.

Interesting quote by Karl Marx.

Karl Marx said, If you give me the poetry, art and music of a nation, I will control them.

There's power in music.

There's power in art.

There's power in poetry.

And one of the things that we've noticed over the last hundred years is the loss of a Christian worldview as it relates to art and poetry and much of music.

Karl Marx understood that was a way to control people's minds, and Satan has been doing it for millions of years.

You are the anointed cherub who covers, I established you.

You were on the holy mountain of God.

You walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones.

Again, a picture, we believe, of him as a worship leader.

You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you.

By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within, and you sinned.

Therefore, I cast you out as a profane thing out of the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stone.

So this is where sin began.

It was birthed in Lucifer.

Some kind of a spontaneous generation within his heart of pride welled up in him, wanting to be like God.

So turn your Bibles to Isaiah 14, and it gives the actual incident of what occurred with Satan when he fell from heaven.

Isaiah 14.

We call it the five I wills.

The five I wills.

Isaiah 14, starting at verse 12.

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.

How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations.

For you have said in your heart, and here's the five I wills of Satan, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.

I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the furtherest sides of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will be like the Most High.

And so, church, that's where sin really begins, isn't it?

It's going from thy will be done to I will be done.

My will be done.

It was from the beginning.

It is today.

It's our greatest temptation.

It's our struggle.

For I think even in relation to this merger.

We're in the midst of this merger with Chapel Hills Church.

Bobby and Ryan and I have been together now for almost three years, hanging out, praying, retreats, mentoring, meeting with the elders, had relational stuff.

We've done a combined Christmas Eve service.

And that's been our prayer.

Does that make sense?

Not our will be done, but your will be done.

Lord, what do you what do you want?

And here we are.

We're gonna know something in the next two weeks.

We'll have a FAQ um fact sheet for you guys next week when you come.

And it'll give all the different aspects of the merger, any questions that you may have, I think we'll answer.

And I'll just uh say this here that if you can stay, say about 15 minutes after the service next week, um, we'll have a congregational meeting and we'll go through the FAQ and answer any questions that you guys have.

We had a meeting with our leaders um last week, right after the service.

I came staggering in and coughed my way through the meeting.

Um, no, we had a great meeting, and and the vote was uh 38 to 1 to move forward with the merger from our perspective.

And then we're meeting with the uh Chapel Hills Church elders this week, and we're having a roadmap with them next Sunday.

So it's exciting, and but that's our prayer.

Do y'all understand that?

That's our prayer.

Our prayer has never been, oh Lord, let's let's start getting together so we can have a merger.

It was more of a gradual thing of getting to know each other and becoming friends and having mutual vision for our neighborhood and for our city and for the nations of the world.

And the prayer has been, God, what is your will?

Not what is our will.

Because I'll tell you guys, so many times our will in the short term seems easier than thy will be done, doesn't it?

And but when we start praying, Lord, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

When we pray that way, miracles start to happen.

Supernatural stuff starts to happen.

How many of you have seen that movie?

I think it came out 15 or 20 years ago, called Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith.

True story about a man who, I mean, against all the odds, um, began to make it in the business world in San Francisco.

He said, I've been watching this and I'm going, this movie's supposed to pick me up.

I mean, it doesn't get good till the last five minutes.

I've seen it so many times, so I knew that.

But I remember thinking, is he gonna get hit by a car again?

You know, it's like one bad thing after another.

But but in watching that, in realizing that in our lives we go through intense struggle, and in some of your cases, there's huge, I mean I'm talking about huge things working against you because of your family of origin, because of the battles that you've been through, because of the struggles that you go through, to begin to pray, God, I pray thy kingdom come.

I can't do this.

I've got to have your kingdom.

I want your will.

There's nothing else on this earth that I want more than your will.

I'm gonna quit trying to figure this out.

And I'm surrendering all to you.

Some of you here today, you're carrying burdens you're not destined to carry.

Give them to the Lord.

Let him have them.

So Satan was full of envy and pride in his heart, and he lost his position in heaven.

Well, who is the woman?

And this is what I'm gonna I want to conclude with this idea of the woman, because uh I've got a video that I want you guys to watch of a interview, not an interview, excuse me, a press conference with Nikki Haley.

Not yet, not yet.

There she is, but no commercials this time, please.

No commercials, please.

Um we now have permission to do YouTube, and we have an account with YouTube, so there's no commercials.

Um why are y'all laughing?

Did something happen?

There's something I don't know about.

If you guys were not here that day when I showed that YouTube and the commercial came on, I was like I won't go into it.

Um okay, who's the woman?

Who's the woman in our story?

Because this is really important.

Um have said that the woman in our story in Revelation 12 is the church, but it can't be the church because the church didn't give birth to Jesus.

Jesus gave birth to the church.

Some say it's Mary, and I think in a in one sense it is Mary birthing the Messiah Jesus.

But the key here is in verse 1.

Verse 1 it says, A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.

Now let's go back to Genesis 37, where Joseph had a dream, and in his dream, it's almost the exact same imagery.

In his dream he says, This, then I dream still another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, Look, I have dreamed another dream, and this time the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me.

And so Joseph, being one of the stars, twelve stars, I believe that in this case we're speaking of the nation of Israel.

The woman is the nation of Israel.

She's giving birth to the Messiah.

Christ came from the nation of Israel.

The dragon is there to devour, and the dragon has been there to devour the nation of Israel since the beginning of time.

Through her womb came forth Abraham, the nation of Israel, the tribe of Judah, which is where the Messiah Christ came from.

Romans 11 is clear that in the last days there's going to be a great revival and a great move of God in Israel.

And Satan has always been positioning himself against the nation of Israel.

And so we could go through the history of the nation of Israel, trying to stamp out the seed of the Messiah, but also to wipe out the seed of the nation of Israel.

Satan knows the prophecies.

Satan empowering Pharaoh to slaughter the Jewish male children in the time of Moses.

Ahab and Jezebel had all of the royal seed slaughtered, except for Joash, was the only one who escaped, which kept the seed of Israel.

In the time of Esther, Haman set out to slaughter and wipe out the entire nation of Israel.

Herod going to Bethlehem to slaughter all the male children, hoping to kill the Messiah, the Pharisees wanting to kill Jesus, Titus of Spassian destroying Jerusalem in 70 AD, Hitler and his slaughter of the Jews during World War II.

No other nation of the world has been under more demonic and satanic attack than the nation of Israel.

Now let me say this, and I've said this many times before, but I always have to say it again, especially because we're going to watch this video.

I'm not condoning everything that Israel does.

Israel is just made up of men, and it's not a Christian nation.

Do you guys understand that?

And so some of the things that have been done by the Jews toward the Palestinians is just totally wrong.

And the things that have happened from the Palestinians toward the Jews is totally wrong.

I do believe that there can be a peace plan in the Middle East, even in these last days, some kind of a peace plan.

I think we should work toward that.

But it goes without saying that the enemy has been trying to wipe out the nation of Israel now for thousands of years.

So this is Nikki Haley.

She's just come out of her first um her first gathering with the Security Council as our ambassador to the United Nations, and I found her words quite interesting and quite riveting.

Um saw in there, the Security Council just finished its regular monthly meeting on Middle East issues.

It's the first meeting like that that I've attended, and I have to say it was a bit strange.

The Security Council is supposed to discuss how to maintain international peace and security.

But at our meeting on the Middle East, the discussion was not about Hezbollah's illegal buildup of rockets in Lebanon.

It was not about the money and weapons Iran provides to terrorists.

It was not about how we defeat ISIS.

It was not about how we hold Bashar al-Assad accountable for the slaughter of hundreds and thousands of civilians.

No, instead, the meeting focused on criticizing Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East.

I am new around here, but I understand that's how the Council has operated month after month for decades.

I'm here to say the United States will not turn a blind eye to this anymore.

I am here to underscore the ironclad support of the United States for Israel.

I'm here to emphasize the United States is determined to stand up to the U.S.

anti-Israel bias.

We will never repeat the terrible mistake of Resolution 2334 and allow one-sided Security Council resolutions to condemn Israel.

Instead, we will push for action on the real threats we face in the Middle East.

We stand for peace.

We support a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is negotiated directly between the two parties, as President Trump reiterated in his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday.

The outrageously biased resolutions from the Security Council and the General Assembly only make peace harder to attain by discouraging one of the parties from going to the negotiating table.

Incredibly, the U.S.

Department of Political Affairs has an entire division devoted to Palestinian affairs.

Imagine that.

There is no division devoted to illegal missile launches from North Korea.

There is no division devoted to the world's number one state sponsor of terror, Iran.

The prejudiced approach to Israeli-Palestinian issues does the peace process no favors.

And it bears no relationship to the reality of the world around us.

The double standards are breathtaking.

Just a few days ago, the United States sought, unsuccessfully, to have the Security Council condemn a terrorist attack to Israel, where the terrorists opened fire on people waiting for a bus and then stabbed others.

The Security Council would not hesitate to condemn an attack like that in any other country, but not for Israel.

The statement was blocked, and that's downright shameful.

Israel exists in a region where others call for its complete destruction, and in a world where anti-Semitism is on the rise, these are threats that we should discuss with the United Nations as we continue working toward a comprehensive agreement that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But outside of the UN, there is some good news.

Israel's place in the world is changing.

Israel is building up new diplomatic relationships.

More and more countries recognize how much Israel contributes to the world.

They are recognizing that Israel is a beacon of stability in a troubled region, and that Israel is at the forefront of innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological discovery.

It is the UN's anti-Israel bias that is long overdue for change.

The United States will not hesitate to speak out against these biases in defense of our friend and ally, Israel.

Now when I was a kid, um I remember one time coming home from school, and I used to cut through this little alleyway between the school and the neighborhood to get home, and there was these kids who kind of pushed other kids around, and they um they started pushing me around.

And I've never been in a fight in my life except where I got jumped by one of my best friends.

I wrote a note about I wrote a note to a girl from him.

So I probably wasn't really wise to do, but anyway, I did that, so he jumped me.

But um, so we were we were walking, and I remember the interaction between another kid and this kind of bully guy about how this guy said, Well, my dad, he can whoop your dad.

And I you know, stuck with me, like, could my dad whoop anybody?

I remember thinking that, you know.

Have you ever said that?

You know, can't my dad can whoop your dad.

Well, men and women, our dad can whoop their dad.

And Jesus is your dad now, and he can whoop the devil.

And he can whoop the devil in your life.

And there may be strongholds, and there may be areas of your life that you've never really surrendered to Christ.

And I know for me, fear of man, those different aspects of fear of man were struggle in my life, and learning to surrender to the fear of God was a revival in my heart.

Our dad can whoop their dad.

And if you'll trust him, if you'll put your faith in him, if you'll give those areas of your life over to him, where you just can't, it won't change.

You've tried to change it, it won't change.

But you say, God, I've done everything I can do.

I surrender to you.

Would you come and fill me with your Holy Spirit?

Would you come with the power that I need and the wisdom that I need and the guidance that I need?

I need you to whoop the devil in this area.

I need you to take him on.

I need you to kick him out of our house.

I need you to kick him out of my kids' lives.

I need you, Lord, to come into my marriage and push the devil back.

And then daily commit that to the Lord.

Daily pray.

Daily cry out to God to come with his power and drive back darkness.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.