My response to Jason’s next chapter will be a little bit different. In this chapter, he presents the “big picture,” which in his understanding is set forth in the book of Revelation 12. “My thesis for this chapter, therefore, is that in Revelation 12:1-6 the church is given a glimpse of Christ’s victory in His cosmic war with Satan, and that glimpse provides comfort and protection for God’s people” (p. 89).
This is the kind of chapter that makes it evident that when paradigms are as different (as they are here) it is important to spend some time trying to figure out how to talk around that. When you don’t know where to start it is hard to know how to start. But here are just a few comments.
First, if you assume, as I do, that the book of Revelation was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and is principally about that monumental event, and you try to talk with someone who holds that it was written outside that context, near the end of the first century, it is not surprising that you come off like an Australian aborigine trying to order foie gras torchon in a high end restaurant in Lyons. What we have here is a failure to communicate.
But if the book of Revelation was given before 70 A.D. it is a radically different book than if it was revealed in the last decade of the first century. It is affected by its time stamp in a way that, say, the book of Romans would not be. In my understanding, it is radically grounded in the historical events of the first century — Nero is the sixth head of the beast, the harlot is apostate Jerusalem, and so forth. But if you place it a few decades later, and there are no immediate historical places where applications are obvious, it is most reasonable to take the book as a general exhortation for believers in all ages — which is what Jason appears to be doing in this chapter. He takes our situation as being very much the same as that of the saints under Diocletian. If there are no specific historical applications, and it remains the Word of God, then it applies to all of history. The basic set up never changes, and the twelfth chapter of Revelation is as applicable to us as it was back then. Jason and I each took a different path back at the crossroads, and that explains why, on this issue, we are barely within shouting distance of each other.
One other thing. One of the things I don’t understand in the amillennial scheme is how the reign of the saints with Christ in the heavenlies can be described as ruling over the nations. There is an instance of it in this passage (Rev. 12:5). I honestly don’t get how the nations figured out how to ignore a rod of iron like that.