And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, "...the accuser of our brothers...has been cast down."  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.  Rev. 12:10, 11.
 
    Satan here attempts to defeat God by accusing His people!  He questions their standing with Him, their fitness to share in the victory that God won at the cross.  But they can thwart Satan by applying the blood of the Lamb to their experience.  When God's people truly understand what Christ did for them at Golgotha, even the threat of death cannot affect their loyalty to God.  But what does all this mean in daily life?
 
    Satan's accusations are powerful weapons in an addictive society.  Addictive behavior often traces back to abuse and rejection in the past.  Careless parents traumatize children with words of rejection.  Children from caring homes sometimes get abused at school or in the neighborhood.  Even good parents can get trapped by the frantic pace of life.  They may be physically there with their children, but absent emotionally and mentally.
 
    So most youth grow up with a sense of rejection and abandonment, even though their parents never intended any such thing.  Satan's accusations cause young people to blame themselves for their pain.  He makes them feel worthless and helpless, tempting them to turn to alcohol, sex, and entertainment as emotional medicine for the soul.  The more he can make them feel ashamed and alone, the stronger the chains of addiction become.
 
    I knew a young man who responded to Satan's accusations with a vicious cycle of desperate sexual actions.  After falling into sin a few times, he would try to pray his way out.  Then he would slip into a few more episodes of sexual obsession, followed by still more prayer.  Once he tried anointing.  Nothing seemed to help, until one day others caught him in the act and he found himself thrown in jail.  While Bill's sexual addiction was the result of abandonment by parents as a child, his inability to change led him to feel abandoned by God as well.  Satan accused God in the man's mind.  "You'll never get better.  If God cared, He would cure you."
 
    I suspect the apostle John also knew Satan's accusations from personal experience.  "You've served God all your life, and all you have to show for it is a ticket to some God-forsaken island!"  But the prophet doesn't buy into Satan's accusations, because he knows the blood of the Lamb.  The blood of Jesus goes to the root of the addiction, the sense that we are worthless and alone.  How?  The "blood of the Lamb" means we are worth the whole universe to God.  We are precious in His eyes.  With that assurance we can enter into a process of healing that will affect the whole person.
 
Lord, I feel alone today, not because You don't care, but because the accuser trained me to believe that.  Help me to see the value You placed on me at the cross.

    And there was war in heaven.  Michael and his angels gathered to fight against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels also fought.  And the dragon was not strong enough, neither was a place found in heaven for them.  And the great dragon, the ancient serpent, the one called devil and Satan, who deceives the whole inhabited world, was thrown down into the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, "Now have come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ, for the accuser of our brothers, the one who accuses them before the throne of God day and night, has been cast down."  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto death.  Rev. 12:7-11.
 
    The size of the known universe is dizzying.  While the planet Earth is a large place, it is small compared to other planets circling a very average star.  Our solar system is located at the fringe of a very average galaxy, which contains at least 100 million stars, many of them with solar systems of their own.  We now know that there are billions and billions of galaxies in the known universe.  This means that we are either very important--or very unimportant.
 
    When you see how easily our planet could be lost in the limitless realms of the universe, you might begin to think we must be rather irrelevant.  But when you read Revelation 12 you get a quite different impression.  You begin to realize that what is going on here may be of greater significance to the universe than events anywhere else.
 
    Revelation 12:4 tells us that the dragon threw down a third of the stars in heaven.  In a symbolic-style story like this they are clearly not literal stars or galaxies.  Revelation 1:20 interprets stars as angels, suggesting that the dragon (Satan) precipitated a conflict in heaven (the control center of the universe, wherever that is) that resulted in a third of the heavenly inhabitants becoming exiled to this earth.  So our planet has become the ongoing location of an insurgency that began long ago in heaven.
 
    This is the ultimate answer to the issue of evil, pain, and suffering of this earth.  No doubt the angels who remained in heaven wondered if Satan's rebellion had any merit.  The cross settled all their doubts.  A God who would die for His creatures can be trusted to do what is right and fair.  While Satan had some access to the heavenly courts before the cross (Job 1 and 2), his viewpoint has been banished from heaven since then (Rev. 12:10, 11).
 
Lord, I see the beauty of Your character at the cross. I choose to be faithful to You no matter what the cost.

And the woman fled into the desert, where she had a place prepared for her by God, in order that she might be nourished there for a thousand two hundred and sixty days.  Rev. 12:6.
 
    Bible scholars generally agree that the woman of Revelation 12 represents the church suffering at the hands of Satan, particularly after the resurrection of Jesus.  Persecution, of course, can come in many forms. 
 
    I was born on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when it was relatively poor (today that neighborhood contains America's most expensive real estate).  My parents soon found affordable housing across the Hudson River in New Jersey.  But while I grew up in another state, my family and I still thought of ourselves as New Yorkers.  We went to church in Manhattan, and when we could afford it, my brother and I went to Adventist schools in the city as well.
 
    It was tough growing up Adventist in New York City. Not only were most of the people on the street secular, but we didn't even feel at home with Christians of other denominations.  We were a tiny, scattered community in the midst of an enormous world of skyscrapers and forbidden attractions.  Like most New Yorkers, we hurried from one familiar place to another through a vast jungle of strangers with unfamiliar faces.
 
    I can't say that anyone ever really persecuted me for my faith.  I just knew I was different, even strange.  I wanted to be liked, but the neighbor kids knew I was not one of them.  I didn't go to the movie theaters with them and never showed up at the school dances on Friday night (I went to public school for five years).  If my friends asked if they could come over on Saturdays I made some excuse or other.  When offered a beer or a smoke, I declined as politely as I knew how (although I suffered many guilty struggles at the neighborhood candy shop).  Persecuted?  No.  Abused?  No.  Scorned and rejected?  Not really.  My non-Adventist friends and neighbors were really nice people.  A fish out of water?  Yes.  A stranger in a strange land?  Definitely.
 
    Growing up, I felt more at home in the book of Revelation than I did in my neighborhood.  John seemed to understand my struggles with the world--the forbidden attractions, the sense of being different, even weird.  He portrayed the kind of world I was living in.  When I read about the woman in the desert, I felt she represented me.  The Roman world as understood by Bible scholars was a lot like my world.  Christians in Asia Minor, even if no one persecuted them, still struggled with how to live in a pagan world.
 
Lord, train me in the relatively easy times to be faithful in the hard times that Revelation tells us are coming.

And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is about to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron.  And her childwas snatched up to God and to His throne.  Rev. 12:5.
 
    The child in this verse clearly represents Jesus Christ.  So in the middle of an apocalyptic vision we got a glimpse of something familiar--the Christian story.  John has the birth and ascension of Jesus Christ on display here.
 
    Although we are familiar with the stories of the Christmas season, it is still hard to imagine Jesus as a child.  Did He fall and scratch His knee at times?  Did His mother put a bandage on the Son of God?  How did Jesus get along with His playmates?  When they grabbed one of His toys, did He demand it back, or did He simply let it go?  Did they take advantage of Him as a result?  Did His mother or father ever ask Him to do something that would have violated His conscience?  How would He have handled that?
 
    Some time ago I ran across a wonderful set of lessons that children learn in life.  Reviewing them will give you a chuckle and also bring home the amazing truth that God did not send His Son to earth as an adult, ready to deal with adults, but as a child, subject to the lessons of everyday life.  Here are some great truths about life that little children have learned:
    1. No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
    2. When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair.
    3. If your sister hits you, don't hit her back.  Parents always catch the second person.
    4. Never ask your 3-year-old brother to hold a tomato.
    5. You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
    6. Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
    7. Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
    8. You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
    9. Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
    10. The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.
 
    Several of the illustrations would have been unfamiliar to Jesus as a child growing up in Nazareth.  They do, however, give a delightful window into the world of the child and how life's lessons get experienced--and hopefully learned.  It is moving to realize that God took the enormous risk of inserting His Son into a world He as a child could not control, an environment in which He was relatively helpless, facing the wrath of the dragon in full force.  The measure of God's sacrifice is also the measure of His love for us.
 
Lord, thank You for sending Jesus to explore human life and its complications fully.  I trust You to understand and meet my needs today.

 And another sign was seen in heaven: a great, fiery red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven crowns.  His tail dragged down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.  The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when her child was born he might eat it up.  Rev. 12:3, 4.
 
    The psalmist said, "The heavens declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1, NIV).  One of the best definitions of "glory" is a representation of character.  The psalmist tells us that the universe displays God's character in the things that He has made.
 
    But the author of Revelation tells a slightly different story.  Satan has done his best to obliterate the image of God that the Creator embossed into His creation.  Sin has marred and defiled the earth, and it reflects God's glory in only the dimmest fashion.  So it should not surprise us that the findings of honest science on this earth might not totally agree with the Scripture record.  The evidence has been tampered with.
 
    But shouldn't the condition of the wider universe be a different matter?   After all, one would expect the ravages of sin to be located primarily on earth.  Would not the wider universe remain unspoiled with clear traces of God's hand?  Another psalmist begs to differ: "The heavens are the work of your hands.  They will perish, but your remain; they will all wear out like a garment.  Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded" (Ps. 102:25, 26, NIV).
 
    Science bears out that the "perfection" of the universe is, at best, a very different one from what we might expect.  Craters pock the moon, spots cover the surface of he sun, and planetary satellites have powerful volcanoes that alter their landscapes in destructive fashion.
 
    Stars appear to go through life cycles in which they form, burn through a massive amount of fuel, explode, and then dwindle down to cold, lifeless spheres.  Black holes suck in or destroy everything that passes near.  Galaxies collide and cast debris here and there.  It would seem that even in the heavens we find traces not only of God's hand, but also of the tail of the dragon, the old serpent, Satan.
 
    The safest course for the people of God is to stay close to His Word.  The evidence of our eyes and ears can deceive us,  The words of Scripture, on the other hand, guided by the illumination of the Spirit, give a picture of God that corrects the misconceptions inevitable in a universe marred by sin.
 
Lord, I purpose to seek You in all I do today.  I want to be open to Your leading in research and experience, but help me to correct that understanding through Your Word.

 And another sign was seen in heaven: a great, fiery red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven crowns.  His tail dragged down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.  The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when her child was born he might eat it up.  Rev. 12:3, 4.
 
    A strange-looking animal does extraordinary things here.  At first glance, such stories seem totally out of touch with today's world.  But that is not really the case.  Take the Disney cartoon movie The Lion King, for example.  Like Revelation, it appears to be a simple animal story at first glance.  But it is much more.  It is actually a parable about the way people and groups of people interact with each other.  Furthermore, it is about taking risks, developing relationships, avoiding conflict, and confronting issues that make a difference on everyday life.
 
    But The Lion King is even more than a sociological treatise in disguise.  It derives from an African version of apocalypse.  The story involves the ruin and restoration of a paradise wherein all function in happiness and prosperity.  The Lion King tells about an evil that arises from a dark place at the edge of paradise.  And it is about the hope for the future that can result when a redeemer figure seizes their destiny with courage.
 
    That's what makes the book of Revelation so powerful.  Although it reads like an animal story (Rev. 11:7; 12; 13; 17), it's not really about animals.  It is about people and their relationships, about interactions among groups of people--both good and evil--and how the course of human history will turn out.  In other words, it is about the fundamental issues we all wrestle with from day to day.
 
    Movies tend to be most successful when they intersect with the basic struggles, conflicts, and tensions within society's popular myths and fears.  Such movies as The Lion King show that apocalyptic genre is as popular today as it was when John wrote the book of Revelation.  The credibility of apocalyptic movies depends on whether their analysis of society and the human condition is believable.  The same is true of ancient apocalypses.
 
    No one knows whether anyone will remember The Lion King 100 years from now.  But the book of Revelation has spoken powerfully for almost 2,000 years.  It helps us understand both ourselves and the situation of the whole human race.  Mirroring reality in a way that bypasses our psychological and emotional defense mechanisms, it strikes home with powerful force where we least expect it.  And it helps us see the self-deception that lurks within each one of us.
 
Lord, give me eyes to see the truth about myself.  May Your presence tame the dragon that lurks within me.

 And a great sign was seen in heaven, a woman dressed with the sun.  The moon was under her feet and upon her head was a victory crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant, and she cried out in pain as she labored to give birth.  Rev. 12:1, 2.
 
    From childhood on, the moon has held a special interest for me.  When I was 9 years old I bought a three-and-a-quarter-inch reflector telescope.  With a special Barlow lens it was capable of bringing heavenly objects 270 times closer than with the naked eye.  The telescope had a heavy, cast-iron base and was angled according to the tilt of the earth's axis, so one could follow an object as it moved across the sky because of the earth's rotation.
 
    I set up the telescope in the front yard of my parents home just outside of New York City.  A half moon floated in the sky that night.  I focused the telescope on the straight edge of the moon.  The moon's craters were in sharp relief because of the long shadows near the lunar sunset.  The view was magnificent.  I stopped everyone walking by so they could have a look!
 
    It should be no surprise, then, that I got up at 3:00 a.m. the night of the first moonwalk on July 20, 1969.  Live television broadcast Neil Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface.  I distinctively remember the sound of his words: "That's one small step for...man, one giant leap for mankind."  The words were so unexpected, yet so appripriate.
 
    It turns out that Neil Armstrong meant to say, "That's one small step for a man," adapting the phrase from a children's playground game.  Instead, because of intense radio static, Mission Control in Houston and the rest of the human race heard, "That's one small step for...man," one of the most famous sentences of the twentieth century.
 
    Even on a grainy black-and-white television set the images were unforgettable.  A camera mounted on the base of the lunar landing vehicle beamed back the other-worldly milestone.  The 38-year-old Armstrong became the first earthling to stand on the moon.  Since he was assigned to handle the portable camera, most of the pictures of that mission were of his fellow astronaut, Edwin "Buss" Aldrin.  We see Armstrong mainly as a reflection of Aldrin's faceplate.  A total of 12 men have walked on the moon, the last in 1972.
 
    In another sense, though, Armstrong was not the first human to stand on the moon.  The woman of Revelation got there first!  Earth's final battle is the outcome of an earlier struggle in heaven.  The two battles appear side by side in Revelation 12.  What happens to the woman is determined by the outcome of he universal war between Satan and Christ.  Whenever my life becomes a struggle, I look up at the moon and know that I am not alone.
 
Lord, help me not to be absorbed in my own difficulties.  Keep me aware of the larger battle, of which I am only a part.

      And a great sign was seen in heaven, a woman dressed with the sun.   The moon was under her feet and upon her head was a victory crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant, and she cried out in pain as she labored to give birth. Rev. 12: 1, 2.
 
    The woman wears the sun, moon, and stars.  Scholars believe the woman represents Israel, in part because her crown has 12 stars.  The Old Testament often thinks of God in terms of Israel's husband.  "For your Maker is your husband--the Lord Almighty is his name--the Holy One on Israel is your Redeemer" (Isa. 54:5, NIV).
 
    While the woman symbolizes God's people on earth, Revelation depicts her as being in heavenly places.  Our identity as His people is not determined by where we are on earth, but rather by our relationship with heaven.  It is helpful, therefor, to build into our lives reminders of our higher relationship.
 
    John McCain spent five and one-half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  In the early years of his imprisonment the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) kept him in solitary confinement or at times with one or two others in a cell.  In 1971, however, the NVA moved its prisoners from isolation into large rooms with 30 to 40 men.  One of the men in the larger room was named Mike Christian.  A Navy flight officer, he had been shot down and captured in 1967.
 
    As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home.  Some of the packages included handkerchiefs, scarves, and other items of clothing.   Mike got a bamboo needle.  During a period of a couple months he created an American flag and sewed it onto the inside of his shirt.  Every afternoon, before they had a bowl of soup, the prisoners would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.  In that stark cell it was the most important and meaningful event of the day.
 
    One day the Vietnamese searched the cell, as they did periodically, discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it.  That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, took Mike Christian out, and beat him severely for the next couple hours in sight of the others.  Then they opened the door of the cell and threw him back in.  His cellmates cleaned him up as well as they could.
 
    After  the excitement died down, his fellow prisoners spotted Mike in the corner of the room, sitting beneath a dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt, and his bamboo needle.  With his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, he was, nevertheless, fashioning another American flag.  He was making that flag not because it made him feel better, but because it reminded him of home."
 
Lord, help me to build into my life reminders of my heavenly citizenship.

 And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple, and there were lightenings, noises, thunders, an earthquake, and great hail.  Rev. 11:19.
 
    Today's passage offers an explicit view of the heavenly temple.  In vision John's gaze lifts from events on earth (Rev. 11:18) to the heavenly temple.  He receives the equivalent of a virtual reality tour into the temple, moving deeper and deeper until he gazes into the most Holy Place itself.  There he sees the Old Testament ark of he covenant, accompanied by flashes of lightening, loud noises, an earthquake, and heavy hail.  What is going on here!  What is the point of having an ark of the covenant in the gospel context of the New Testament?
 
    It makes a lot of sense in the context of who Jesus is.  One day He was standing in the outer courtyard of the temple in Jerusalem.  After casting out the money changers and stockyards, He finds Himself confronted by the Temple authorities.  " 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days' " (John 2:19, NIV), He challenges them.  He must have been pointing to Himself when He said this, for John explains that He was referring to the temple of His body.
 
    On another occasion Jesus said, "I tell you that one greater than the temple is here" (Matt. 12:6, NIV).  For Jews there was only one thing greater than the Temple, and that was the Shekinah glory of God's presence inside the Temple.  Putting both of these gospel text together, we can see that the very presence of God was in Jesus' own body.  The divine presence and character made the body of Jesus a temple.  He carried the Most Holy Place with Him wherever He went.
 
    So if Jesus represents the Shekinah glory, the temple is wherever Jesus is.  Since Jesus is in heaven, according to the book of Hebrews, heaven has a sanctuary in which He ministers, intercedes, and judges.  But Jesus is also present in the church (1 Cor. 3:17; 1 Peter 2:1-10).  If believers gather in a living room or even a campsite, it is a temple of God.  "For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them (Matt. 18:20, NIV).  Jesus also dwells in us by His Spirit.  "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1 Cor. 6:19, NIV).  When we receive Jesus, our bodies become temples as well.
 
    The book of Revelation emphasizes the first of these three New Testament temples.  But it also looks forward to the end-time restoration of the heavenly sanctuary (Rev. 11:1, 2, 29).  That includes the full return of God's rule to the universe.  When the character of God has been fully vindicated, universal peace and harmony will once again completely fill the universe.
 
Lord, I pray that everything I do and say today will vindicate Your character in front of a watching world.  May I rightly represent You before everyone I meet.

 The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time to judge the dead and to reward Your servants the prophets, and the saints and those who fear Your name, both the small and the great, and to destroy those who are destroying the earth.  Rev. 11:18.
 
    Those who face grief or hardship anywhere in the world can appreciate the message of the seventh trumpet.  The world belongs to God, and He will take full charge of it at the appropriate time (Rev. 11:15).  When He does, He will right all the wrongs of history, shattering all opposition to His rule (verse 18).  Today's text reminds us that when the day of judgment comes God will reward both small and great (verse 18), just as He will punish both great and small (Rev. 6:15).
 
    The hardships of he past have molded the Black church tradition of North America.  Those who endured oppression in everyday life looked forward to church, where janitors could be deacons and street sweepers could be preachers.  The Black church tradition follows the New Testament pattern in which slaves often rose to the office of bishop.  There are no limits when God is on your side.
 
    Rosa Parks was tired after a hard day as a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama.  She had to run a youth meeting later that night.  Still she didn't jump right on the first bus that came by that Thursday evening.  The bus stop was crowded, so she headed to a drugstore to shop for an electric heating pad, thinking that she could get a seat on the way home if she waited a bit.
 
    When she finally deposited her 10-cent fare on the Cleveland Avenue bus, she found a seat in the front row of the "colored" section in the back.  But after a few stops the driver ordered her to get up so a White passenger could sit down.  When Parks refused, the driver summoned the police to take her to jail.  Two hours after the arrest she was released on $100 bail.  By midnight Black leaders had formulated a plan for a citywide bus boycott.  A young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. became its leader.
 
    The boycott lasted 381 days, until the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was illegal.  The success of the boycott ignited the modern civil rights movement.  "When I declined to give up my seat, it was not that day or bus in particular," Parks said later.  "I just wanted to be free, like everybody else."
 
    "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10, NIV).  We don't need to wait until the kingdom comes to treat other people the way heaven does.
 
Lord, open my eyes to the injustice You see in my world and my community.  Help me to be an agent of change today.