One of [the beast's] heads was as if it had been slaughtered to death, but the wound of his death was healed.  And the whole world followed the beast with great amazement.  They worshipped the dragon, because he gave his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, "Who is like the beast?" and "Who can possibly make war against him?"  Rev. 13:3, 4.
 
    Verse 3 contains a clear allusion to the cross.  One of the beast's heads was as if it had been slaughtered to death, then its deadly wound healed.  The word "slaughtered" is exactly the same word found in verse 8: "The Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world."  The wound of the sea beast is a clear parody of the death of Christ.  Now, if the beast is slaughtered to death, what does it mean for the "wound of his death" to be healed?  A resurrection!  The sea beast has a death and resurrection like that of Jesus Christ.
 
    But this counterfeit has even more to it.  Revelation 13:1 describes the beast as having 10 horns and seven heads.  It looks just like the dragon!  Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9, NIV).  And anyone who has seen the sea beast has seen the dragon!  Revelation 13:2 tells us that "the dragon gave [him] his power and his throne and great authority (NIV).  This reminds us of the saying of Jesus in Matthew 28:18: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (NIV).  Just as Jesus received His authority from the Father, the sea beast obtained its authority from the dragon.
 
    The sea beast also has a ministry.  According to Revelation 13:5 that ministry is 42 months long.  Three and a half years!  How long was Jesus' ministry?  Also three and a half years.  Thus the length of the sea beast's ministry is the same as that of Jesus!  That makes the question of verse 4 quite interesting: "Who is like the beast?"  The original readers who understood a little Hebrew would have known that the name Michael (the previous reference to Jesus in Revelation 12:7-9) means "Who is like God?"
 
    The sea beast, then, is a clear counterfeit of God the Son, Jesus Christ.  At the end of time as part of a great worldwide deception a counterfeit trinity stands in the place of God.  The dragon, sea beast, and land beast form the three members of that trinity.  In the last days of earth's history Satan brings in deception so carefully crafted that people will have difficulty telling which side is the right one.
 
    What difference should that make in our lives today?  As we approach the end of the world, we should pray and search Scriptures as never before.  Satan will seek to distort our understanding of them by any means possible.
 
Lord, I want the truth no matter what the cost.  Help me to see what You desire for me to see in Your Word.

  And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and upon his horns ten royal crowns, and upon his head the names of blasphemy.  The beast I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like a bear, and his mouth was like the mouth of a lion.  The dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority.  Rev. 13:1, 2.
 
    The description of the beast in this passage has political overtones.  The Old Testament frequently uses a horn as a symbol of political power.  The beast wears the royal crowns (diadems) of political authority.  The leopard, the bear, and the lion remind the reader of the great empires of the past such a Babylon, Persia, and Greece.  Behind all this political power lurks the dragon, that old devil, the serpent Satan (Rev. 12:7-9).
 
    One of the horrifying things about this passage is that the devil does not do his work alone, but has the active support of people.  Human beings who follow Satan are capable of incredible depravity.  It does not take long to come up with a Hall of Shame that includes Nero, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot; the Arab and Western slave trades; terrorism; and genocide in Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Armenian Turkey.  No evil is impossible when demonic power removes all human restraint and amplifies the natural evil of human sin.
 
    Human rights investigator Gary Haugen discovered in Rwanda that mass murder does not require "pathological" killers.  "When all restraints are released, farmers, clerks, school principals, mothers, doctors, mayors, and carpenters can pick up machetes and hack to death defenseless women and children."  Haugen concludes, "The person without God...is a very scary creature."
 
    The Nazis knew that almost anyone is capable of unspeakable brutality.  Prospective SS officers received a German shepherd puppy at the beginning of training.  The puppy grew up with the officer candidate.  Working, playing, and sleeping together, they were constant companions for six months, the dog developing total trust for the budding officer.  But the officer's final test before induction into the SS required him to strangle the dog to death with his bare hands.  Those who couldn't do it were expelled from the SS.  But those who did the deed had become capable of monstrous evil, and it had happened in only six months.
 
    We certainly object to evil when it gets out of hand in a quantitative way.  But are we as willing to acknowledge that the evil we exhibit each day is not substantively different from what manifests itself on a large scale?  But for the grace of God...
 
Lord, don't be afraid to confront me about the depths of my own depravity.  I am willing to know the truth about myself so that You can purify me and make me more like You.

  And the dragon was angry with the woman, and he went away to make war with the remnant of her seed, those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.  And he stood upon the sand of the sea.  Rev. 12:17, 18.
 
    A few years ago our house had no windows on the south, the side where the sun shines most of the time.  That made the public part of our house fairly dark.  Since our garage is attached to the south side of the house, we couldn't do much about the situation as things were.  So we decided to add on a sunroom to the west side of the kitchen and bring a flood of light into the house through it.
 
    Since we had to have a lot of new wiring run to the sunroom, we thought we would add a couple outlets along the kitchen counter.  The contractor warned us that if we did that, the code required us to upgrade all the kitchen outlets with a special push-button breaker system.  We saw no problem with that and gave the order for him to redo the wiring in the kitchen.
 
    For several months we were totally delighted with our new sunroom and the extra outlets in the kitchen.  Then a strange thing happened.  The lights and power went out in the garage.  This was extremely annoying, as we now had to lift and lower the massive door to our garage by hand!  I rushed immediately to the breaker box in our laundry room, fully expecting the red bar to show that the breaker to the garage had tripped.  But I saw no sign of red anywhere on the breaker box.  I couldn't figure out any way to get the power going to the garage again.  We called in our handyman, and the problem stumped him as well.
 
    After a couple of days I was frantic.  What could be cutting off the electricity?  I ransacked my mind for ideas and talked to everyone I knew about the problem.  But no solution seemed in sight.  On the third day I suddenly remembered the upgrade on our kitchen outlets.  Could that have anything to do with the garage?  It hardly seemed possible.  But having tried everything else, I went into the kitchen and pushed the little breaker buttons on the kitchen outlets.  Then I went to the garage and pressed the door opener.  Immediately it responded!  Somehow the new breakers in the kitchen were tied to the circuit in the garage.
 
    It strikes me that being connected to Jesus is a lot like a breaker box.  When I break one of His commandments, He does not permanently disconnect Himself and cast me away.  By His grace I can be reset and offered a fresh start.  Thanks to Him, the remnant will prove one day to be genuinely obedient to Him.  In the meantime let's remember to push the button of repentance as often as necessary.
 
Lord, I thank You that I can be reset today for a fresh start with You.  Give me the confidence to let Your power flow through me.

  And the serpent spewed water like a flooding river out of its mouth as it pursued the woman, in order that he might cause her to be swept away by the flood.  And the earth helped the woman.  It opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.  Rev. 12:15, 16.
 
    The book of Revelation uses the symbol of water in three different ways: it can represent (1) nourishment; (2) cleansing; and (3) flooding, or destructive power.  The image of a great flood of water swallowed by the earth is not unknown in geography.  This very thing occurs in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa.  It is a huge place called the Okavango Delta.  There a large river pours into one of the driest deserts in the world.  The water splits up into a delta full of plants and animal life, but the land is so dry that as the water continues flowing it disappears into the desert.  Beyond the delta the land remains as dry as a bone.
 
    The mouth of the serpent seems to be an allusion to the serpent's lying words in the Garden of Eden.  If that is the case, the flooding waters here may mean powerfully deceptive errors as much as persecuting force.  The flooding waters contain both deception and threat.
 
    Satan has two main methods of leading people away from God: (1) deception and persuasion on the one hand, and (2) force, threats, and persecution on the other.
 
    Flooding rivers and winged dragons are actually parallel images in the ancient world.  From above, most rivers look a lot like snakes, meandering back and forth across the countryside.  Now imagine that the river has overflowed its banks.  From a vantage point looking down, that same river might now resemble a snake with wings.  This is probably the root concept behind the ancient idea of a dragon.  In that case, ancient readers or listeners would see the flood of waters as a natural way for the dragon to attack the woman in this story.
 
    Many students of the Bible believe that this scene anticipate the situation of Europe in the Middle Ages.  Faithful followers of God, such as the Waldenses in northern Italy and southern France, copied and studied the Scriptures.  They often faced threats and destruction from armies sent out by the dominant Christian church.  Their spread of the Scriptures posed too great a threat to the prevailing belief system.
 
    In the final days of earth's history prayer will be a vital protection when God's people find themselves in distress.  "Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.  You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance" (Ps. 32:6, 7, NIV).
 
Lord, I know that I haven't persevered in prayer the way I need to.  Energize my heart and soul to reach out to You more frequently than ever.

  And the serpent spewed water like a flooding river out of its mouth as it pursued the woman, in order that he might cause her to be swept away by the flood.  Rev. 12:15.
 
    I believe that the woman in this text represents the people of God throughout the Christian Age who have endured oppression at the hands of totalitarian governments and hostile majorities.  Those persecuted for their faith always face temptation to ask why.  The suffering of the moment is usually incomprehensible.  It is impossible fully to explain why God allows it.
 
    What Revelations 12 does is pull back the curtain and show us the larger context for Christian suffering.  A war rages across the universe, one that began in heaven (Rev. 12:3, 4) and climaxed after the death of Jesus on the cross (verses 7-12).  The battles we face from day to day are a miniscule part of that larger conflict.  It may not be possible to see how our experiences fit into the totality of God's plan.  But Revelation reminds us that when bad things happen to His people it is because of a supernatural fury that must be allowed its moment in the sun, but will one day be destroyed forever (Rev. 20:7-15).
 
 
    So we need to be patient and trust God no matter what happens.  Justice is coming, but it will not take hold before I pass through serious trials.  If I demand an explanation for everything that happens to me, I will not only lose faith in God but perhaps even my mind.  I need to be content with the fact that in this life we "know in part" (1 Cor. 13:9).
 
    This reminds me of a story about a lost marble.  A man condemned to solitary confinement in a pitch-black cell had only one thing to occupy his mind with--a marble, which he threw repeatedly against the walls.  He spent his time listening to the marble as it bounced and rolled around the room.  Then he would grope in the darkness until he found his precious toy.
 
    One day the prisoner threw his marble upward.  It failed to come down.  Only silence echoed through the darkness.  The "evaporation" of the marble and his inability to explain its disappearance deeply disturbed him.  Finally he went insane, pulled out all his hair, and died.  When the prison officials came to remove his body, a guard noticed something caught in a huge spiderweb in the upper corner of the room.  That's strange, he thought.  I wonder how a marble got up there.
 
    Sometimes our experience poses questions the mind is unable to answer.  But valid answers always exist.  When it comes to the things we suffer, it is wise not to expect all the pieces to fit on the basis of our limited perception.  God alone knows the big picture.  The cross tells us that we can trust Him.
 
Lord, I trust the One who died for me.  Give me endurance even when I don't understand.

 And the serpent spewed water like a flooding river out of its mouth as it pursued the woman, in order that he might cause her to be swept away by the flood.  Rev. 12:15.
 
    The mouth of the serpent reminds the reader of the temptation in the Garden of Eden.  While the devil certainly seeks to hinder the church by force, his most effective weapon is often deception.  The attacks and the temptations come from unexpected directions.
 
    The bomb went off shortly after noon and shook the entire building like an earthquake.  The offices of Cantor Fitzgerald in the north tower of New York's World Trade Center went dark.  No one knew what had happened, but within minutes the 700 employees calmly headed for the stairs.  The stairway quickly became a traffic jam as 20,000 workers on lower floors also evacuated that cold February day, but the Cantor Fitzgerald people didn't panic.  Some of them lashed their ties and belts to the wheelchairs of people with disabilities and carried them down the 105 flights of stairs.  Others helped those who had difficulty walking until the firefighters, on their way up, took over around the twenty-fifth floor.  Everyone made it out safely.
 
    It was 1993, and a terrorist bomb had exploded in an unoccupied van in the Trade Center's underground parking garage.  Six people died in the explosion, and many regarded the bombing as a warning to be better prepared the next time.  Cantor Fitzgerald and the other tenants of the World Trade Center invested heavily to safeguard themselves against future incidents.
 
    Among other security improvements, the Trade Center rebuilt stairways to make it easier for firefighters and police to enter.  Security at ground level and below tightened.  Cantor Fitzgerald and other businesses prepared detailed disaster-recovery plans.  And life went on.  Somewhere in the consciousness of those who worked at the World Trade Center was the belief that terrorists, like lightening, would not strike the same place twice.
 
    No doubt the security improvements saved lives on September 11, 2001, but to a tragic extent, the Trade Center had erected its defenses primarily against the strategies of the past.  No one fully foresaw the horror and destruction that was to come.  Cantor Fitzgerald lost more than anyone--685 employees died when the first plane struck the north tower a few floors below, trapping them with no hope of rescue.  For them the disaster recovery plan had no meaning.
 
    Just as terrorists constantly look for undefended targets, Satan studies us with great diligence, seeking points of weakness.  In our own strength and wisdom we will be as helpless as the residents of the World Trade Center.
 
Lord, help me to "let go and let You" be my defense against temptation today.  Give me divine discernment to make the right choices and to give You free reign in my life.

    And the serpent spewed water like a flooding river out of its mouth as it pursued the woman, in order that he might cause her to be swept away by the flood.  And the earth helped the woman.  It opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon spewed out of his mouth.  Rev. 12:15, 16.
 
    The story of the woman of Revelation 12 would have been familiar to many readers in the ancient Roman world.  The ancient Greek writer Homer told the story of Leto, the bride of Zeus, king of all the Greek gods.  Hera, queen of the Greek gods, was jealous and angry when she heard that Leto was soon to bear twins to Zeus.  In her anger Hera forbade all the lands of the earth to give shelter to Leto, so Leto, heavy with twins, found herself forced to wander from place to place with nowhere to rest.
 
    Python, a huge dragon that spat black venom, received a warning that Leto's son would one day destroy him.  So Python chased after Leto as she wandered the earth, in the hopes of destroying her before the birth of the fateful child.  Poseidon intervened, raising the island of Delos from the sea.  Delos floated on top of the ocean, with only a single palm tree as its vegetation.  Since Delos was free from the land, it was also free from Hera's bidding, so Leto could rest in the shade of the palm tree.  When the dragon came seeking her there, Poseidon submerged the island temporarily to hide her from Python.
 
    After Python left Delos, Hera was angry that Leto had found shelter.  She ordered that Ilithyia, the goddess of childbirth, remain in Olympus and not allow Leto's twins to be born.  As a result Leto suffered horribly in labor for nine days until Hera relented.  Firstborn was Artemis, goddess of Asia Minor, and next came Apollo.  Zeus blessed the twins with strong bows and magical arrows.  Apollo came to the slopes of Mount Parnassus and slew Python with 1,000 golden arrows.
 
    During the first century, coins reveal, some emperors linked themselves with Apollo.  In Asia Minor Roman propaganda equated Leto with the goddess Roma.  She became the mother goddess, and the Roman emperor was her child, the savior of the world.
 
    In the vision of Revelation Jesus is the one who slays the dragon and its related beasts.  Through the person of Herod, the dragon of Rome sought to destroy Jesus at His birth.  Jesus' escape from Herod was a foretaste of His deliverance of the woman in this text and of the remnant in the text that follows.  The vision takes over one of the great myths of the time to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus to all other claimants to divinity.
 
Lord, help me not to be distracted by modern claims to greatness and stardom.  You are the true source of meaning for my life.

  For this reason rejoice, heavens and those who live in them!  Woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you in a great rage knowing that he has only a little time.  And when the dragon saw that he was thrown to the earth, he persecuted the woman who had given birth to the male child.  The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle in order that she might fly from the presence of the serpent into the desert to her place, the place where she would be sustained for a time, times, and half a time.  Rev. 12:12-14.
 
    Commentators usually understand the woman to represent the experience of the church during the long years between the time of Jesus and the end.  What the church goes through will not be a picnic.  Much persecution befalls those who take the name of Jesus.  Such suffering stands in startling contrast to the assertions of victory and power made in Revelation 5.  How to relate Christian suffering to the victory of God has always been challenging.
 
    No one noticed the smoke seeping from the windows of the rental truck as Timothy McVeigh pulled up to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that gray morning.  McVeigh had lit two fuses to the 7,000-pound fertilizer bomb in the truck and then parked beside the building's day-care center.  The explosion vaporized the front of the building, leaving a yawning cross-section of cables and smoke.
 
    The dead would number 168, including 19 children.  At least six of the survivors or those who lost loved ones have since killed themselves.  When McVeigh was executed in 2001, he remained convinced that he had punished the U.S. government for its 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
 
    For America, the bombing was an introduction to mass-casualty terrorism.  The enemy was no longer uniformed platoons but lone extremists in our midst.  They could not be easily ferreted out or understood.  But Oklahoma City also wrote the book on recovery.  The survivors have become indispensable companions for the families of the September 11 victims.  And the memorial to the tragedy shows that traumatized cities can unite to protest unimaginable evil.
 
    While this may be little comfort to those in the throes of loss or suffering, nothing is ultimately wasted with God.  In His infinite wisdom even the greatest of tragedies can lay the foundation for healing and recovery.  While hurt people often injure others themselves, many victims of tragedy find resources in God to become healers instead of hurters.
 
Lord, help me today to set aside bitterness and revenge as responses to the things and to the people who have hurt me.  Help me to become a source of healing instead of pain.

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. 12:11.
 
    No aspect of human experience arouses our energies faster than the prospect of immediate death.  The drowning man struggles desperately to keep his head above water.  A woman who falls off a cliff frantically clings to the branch of a bush growing out of the rock near the top.  The dying patient searches the Internet for some hope of a cure.  Impending death sets the full powers of our being into action.  Yet our best efforts are not good enough.  While we can sometimes postpone death, the ultimate sentence will be cancelled only in earth's final generation.  Our only hope until then is to trust completely in God's power to save us even beyond death.
 
    This text, therefore, implies that those who overcome do so on the basis of complete trust in God.  They place their lives in His hands, do whatever He says, and rely on His power to accomplish those things that seen impossible in their own strength.  A modern-day example of overcoming occurred in the beginnings of the 12-step movement during the 1930s.
 
    Bill Wilson was a stockbroker who lived in Brooklyn, New York, and had a serious problem with alcohol.  On a business trip to Akron, Ohio (May 1935), he found himself outside a bar, tempted and desperate.  In the past he had fought the urge by talking to other alcoholics, who truly understood his struggle.  That day he left the vicinity of the bar and began looking for a church.  Through a local church group he found surgeon Robert Hollbrook Smith.
 
    Dr. Bob and Bill W., as Alcoholics Anonymous members know them, promised to keep each other sober.  Bill developed a strategy: a simple set of principles later refined into 12 steps.  Alcoholics, Bill said, must admit they are powerless against their addiction.  Next they must fearlessly inventory the defects and weaknesses in their character.  They must make amends to everyone they have harmed.  And above all else, they must submit to God, however they understand Him, to provide the power that they do not have on their own.
 
    The advice did not take immediately.  Dr. Bob went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, for a convention.  Several days later he showed up at the Akron train station, totally soused.  On June 10, 1935, the dried-out but still jittery doctor was due in surgery.  That morning Bill W. gave Dr. Bob a bottle of beer to steady his scalpel hand during surgery.  The beer was Dr. Bob last.  The two men pledged that day to bring Bill W.'s principles to other alcoholics, one day at a time.
 
Lord, I admit that I am powerless in the face of (alcohol, food, sex, drugs, anger, overwork, laziness, whatever).  I place my life under Your control today.  I need the power only You can give.

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. 12:11.
 
    The book of Revelation usually associates the word "testimony" with Jesus.  The "testimony of Jesus" is a vision that John saw (Rev. 1:2).  It is the reason that the prophet is on Patmos in the first place (verse 9).  A possession of the end-time remnant (Rev. 12:17), it is the spirit that inspires prophecy (Rev. 19:10).  And it is the motivating force that encourages the martyrs (Rev. 20:4).  Jesus offers His testimony to the churches (Rev. 22:16).
 
    But the word "testimony" can also apply to believers.  The souls under that altar were martyred because of the testimony they had (Rev. 6:9).  The two witnesses offer testimony before they die (Rev. 11:7).  And the overcomers become so in part through the word of their testimony (Rev. 12:11).  Feeble and defective though we may be, our witness is modeled on His witness.  As soon as we know something about Jesus, we start to tell others what we know.
 
    In a way it is like the blind leading the blind!  A friend of mine, Jim Park, visited St. Paul's Cathedral in London one day.  After touring it, he needed to get back to the Waterloo train train station during rush hour.  A guide at the cathedral suggested that he ride the bus instead of the underground, and that seemed like a nice adventure.
 
    It took him several minutes, however, to find out which side of the street he should stand on and which bus to board.  Finally he got on what he fervently hoped was the right bus and settled down for a ride that would last 20 minutes--or so he had been told.  A couple of stops later a well-dressed blind man got on the bus and sat close to Jim.  The two men got acquainted, and Jim learned that Roger worked at a music publishing house and was on his way home.  Since the blind man was not used to taking this particular route to Waterloo station, he asked Jim if he could guide him to the proper place.
 
    Jim meekly stammered something about his own uncertainty, but offered to give the best help that he could.  Fortunately for both of them, a third man guided them both off the bus and into the station.  Roger said he could find his own train, but Jim insisted on being his eyes.  Somehow they were able to quickly work through the confusion and rush of the station in record time, and Roger boarded his train just as it was leaving.
 
    God, of course, knows where He is going and where He wants us to go.  We are wise to consult Him at every turn and submit our plans to Him.  But as we learn more about His will and His ways, we become His eyes and ears on earth.  As a result, we have the incredible privilege of being His witness here.  In so doing we become like Him.
 
Lord, thank You for showing me the way.  I want to be a "tour guide" for others today.