The Visited Planet
Some 50 years ago, author J.B. Phillips, in a book called New Testament Christianity, imagined a conversation between a senior angel and a very young angel.
The more experienced angel has just shown the younger angel the splendours and glories of the universe. Whirling galaxies, blazing suns, infinite distances in the deathly cold of inter-stellar space. The little angel was actually beginning to get bored. It seemed like an awful lot. But there was one last thing the older angel wanted to point out. They entered the Milky Way galaxy and drew near to the star we call the Sun. The senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. To the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had just seen, the designated planet look as dull as a dirty tennis ball.
Here’s the conversation that followed:
"I want you to watch that one particularly," said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.
"Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me," said the little angel. "What's special about that one?"
"That,"' replied his senior solemnly, "is the Visited Planet."
"Visited?" said the little one. "You don't mean visited by --‑?"
"Indeed I do. That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and not perhaps over‑clean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory." And at these words he bowed his head reverently.
"But how?" queried the younger one. "Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendours of His Creation, and millions more that I’m sure I haven't seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth‑rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?"
"It isn't for us," said his senior a little stiffly, "'to question His ‘why's’ except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers, as you seem to be. But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that. As to why He became one of them ‑ how else do you suppose could He visit them?"
The little angel's face wrinkled in disgust.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?"
"I do, and I don't think He would like you to call them 'creeping, crawling creatures` in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him.”
The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.
It is almost beyond our comprehension: We live upon the Visited Plant. The great and glorious Prince—the one by whom and for whom all things were created; the one who is before all things and in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:16-17)—entered into our world of brokenness and despair. “God, who knows no before or after, entered time and space. God, who knows no boundaries, took on the shocking confines of a baby’s skin, the ominous restraints of mortality.” (Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 45)
This, as we’ve been saying throughout the Advent Season, is the Mystery of Godliness. It is a wonderful truth beyond our complete understanding or explanation. It is the touchstone of our faith.
Our key verse during this series has been 1 Timothy 3:16. An ancient hymn quoted by the Apostle Paul—I’ve been calling it the first Christmas carol—it has provided the outline for our messages. Here’s what it says:
16 Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great:
He appeared in a body,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.
This Christmas morning, our focus is going to be on that last line: “was taken up in glory.” Today, we are going to think about Christmas as it played out in the “realms of glory.”
Parallel Worlds
When I read that line: “taken up in glory” I immediately think of Jesus’ ascension back to heaven following the resurrection. That is most certainly what this little hymn has in mind. Jesus is, today, seated at the right hand of God the Father and one day He shall return to judge the living and the dead.
But when I read that line in terms of the Christmas story, I think about the angels’ appearance to the shepherds in Luke 2. I remember that they sang “Glory to God in the highest.” I think about that Christmas carol: “Angels from the Realms of Glory.”
Both—the idea of Christ’s ascension back to the Father and the idea of angels descending from another realm—remind us that there is another dimension to reality that we are not always aware of. As Christians we believe that we live in parallel worlds: what happens here on earth, and what is happening in the spiritual realm.
There are places in the Bible, though, where these two dimensions are viewed together. This is particularly the case in the book of Revelation. And so, as we consider what it means for Jesus to be “taken up in glory”, I’d like to share with you a very unusual version of the Christmas story. It can be found in Revelation 12:
1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
This is a highly stylized, symbol-laden retelling of the Christmas story.
By any measure, Revelation is an unusual and complicated book. But if we take the time to understand some of the symbols and references here, we’ll find that the Apostle John has taken us beyond the world of mangers and donkeys and shepherds and given us a glimpse at what was happening on a cosmic scale on Christ’s first journey to earth.
A Woman, a Dragon, and the Christ
So let me take you through this passage, and I’ll say a little bit about each of the characters.
First, we have the woman of verses 1 and 2. She is quite a woman. Clothed with the sun and standing upon the moon, she wears a crown of 12 stars on her head. She is pregnant. And as the scene unfolds, she collapses into the travail of child birth.
Now, given that it is Christmas morning, you might think that this woman is Mary, the mother of Jesus. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
But you wouldn’t be entirely correct, either.
This woman does more in this story than just deliver a baby. In verse 6 she flees into the desert. And at the end of the chapter—verses 13-17—she is pictured as being in conflict against the dragon.
You see, everything in the book of Revelation is symbolic, and the 12 stars on this woman’s head give a pretty good clue to her identity. 12, of course, is the number of tribes in ancient Israel. 12 is also the number of apostles who followed Jesus. Both are referenced frequently in Revelation (i.e. Rev. 21:12 & 14).
So, rather than think of this as a picture of the Virgin Mary, it is better to think of the woman as representing the whole believing, Messianic community of the Old and New Testaments. She represents all those Old Testament believers who trusted God and longed for the appearance of the Savior, as well as the New Testament church that continues to trust and believe in Jesus right up to today.
Verses 3 and 4, then, describe an enormous red dragon. The identity of the dragon is not too hard to decipher. Verse 9 tells us explicitly that he is “that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” From the beginning of the Bible—from the Garden of Eden--a serpent or dragon has been a common image for Satan.
In fact, it shouldn’t be missed that what we are looking at here is a direct reference to the Garden of Eden. There, after the serpent tempted Eve and the first man and woman fell into sin, God comes down and addresses the serpent, cursing him to crawl on his belly and telling him that there will be “enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)
This wondrous scene in heaven is a fulfilment of that ancient prophesy. The woman represents all who have been longing for the seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head; and the dragon represents Satan, who would rather the seed of the woman never arrives.
And so, this terrible, enormous red dragon is pictured standing crouched before the woman—even as she goes into labor—prepared to grab the child and devour him as soon as he is born. This is a grotesque image—intentionally so. We are supposed to be revolted. This wretched dragon is about to grab the newborn child and destroy him.
But he doesn’t.
Verse 5 tells of the birth of the child, and also tells us that He was snatched up to God and to his throne.
This is, of course, Jesus. And here the entire span of His life is covered in a single verse: from His birth to His ascension. And the idea is that throughout Jesus’ earthly life Satan—the enormous red dragon—was always in hot pursuit.
And so, we can think about how, shortly after his birth, wicked King Herod ordered the death of every male child in the region of Bethlehem in an attempt to snuff out the Messiah. That was Herod’s madness, but Satan stood behind it.
Or, we can think of the story in Luke 4 where the people of Nazareth—the hometown folks—carried Jesus to the brow of a hill in order to throw him down the cliff. Or the time in John 8 when angry Jewish leaders picked up rocks in the temple courtyard in order to stone Him. Those were the actions of angry mobs, but Satan stood behind them.
Or, for that matter, we can think of the cowardly actions of Pilate and Caiaphas and the others that led to Jesus being wrongly condemned and sentenced to die on the cross. The guilt of those actions lies entirely with those men, but you get the sense that Satan—the enormous red dragon—was lurking in the background.
The point is: throughout Jesus’ life, He was being stalked by the devil. Satan had a vested interest in seeing Jesus removed from the picture. Like a hungry red dragon, he was always looking for an opportunity to knock Jesus’ mission off the tracks.
But he failed. Jesus was born. He died on the cross—and Satan thought he had won--but then Jesus conquered death in the resurrection. He ascended back into heaven.
Verse 6 then, pictures the woman—now representing the New Testament community of believers, you and me—living in the desert for 1,260 days. Without taking a lot of time to explain it, I believe this represents the current period of time—the time between Jesus’ first coming and His return. 1,260 days is a symbolic (everything in Revelation is symbolic, remember) a symbolic way of expressing a complete amount of time.
The Cosmic War
Which leads to verses 7 and 9.
Verses 7 and 9 are a parallel account of the story told in the first 6 verses. Even as the conflict between the enormous red dragon and the woman and her offspring played out on earth, there was a cosmic battle taking place in the heavens.
And really, I think that’s the main point we need get this morning: Christmas is about more than what happened in the manger. At the same time there was this war in heaven.
Michael and the angels fighting against the dragon and his demonic minions. And even as Jesus was being born, and as His parents were fleeing to Egypt, and as He slipped away from the angry mobs that would lynch Him too soon—the angels and demons were locked in mortal combat. As Jesus died on the cross, the devil and his cohorts found that they were not strong enough and lost their place in heaven. Even as Jesus was being raised in glory and walked past the rolled away stone, the great dragon was being hurled down—literally “bounced” from heaven to earth.
I realize that this is an unusual Christmas message. You probably didn’t get up this morning, open a few gifts, then throw on the clothes and come to church expecting to hear about wretched red dragons trying to snatch newborn babies, or demonic forces engaged in a fight to the death with the angelic hosts.
But it is important for us to remember that there was more going on at Christmas than swaddling clothes and sweet smelling hay and a holy infant, tender and mild. This morning we remember an event of cosmic significance. Christmas is a battlefield. A war zone.
And the most important thing we can learn is that when Christ was born, Satan lost. Christmas was the beginning of the end for Satan and his opposition against God. When earth became the Visited Planet, Satan became the hurled down dragon.
Adrenaline for those with of Little Faith
So, four things I want you to know this Christmas Day. Four lessons from Revelation 12. And I’ll give you each in three words.
First, Jesus has won. This is the main point of the whole book of Revelation, the most important lesson in this book: Jesus wins. More than a book about predicting when the end will come, or whether there will be a rapture, or how to recognize the antichrist; Revelation is about the triumph of Jesus Christ over all the forces of evil.
And the assertion here is that the victory has already occurred. Verse 10 puts it like this:
“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
When Jesus died on the cross and then walked out of his own grave, the authority of the Christ was established. The doom of Satan was guaranteed.
Which leads to the second lesson: Satan has lost. Satan has already lost the fundamental fight. He’s been cast out of heaven. He is in restricted territory. He is defeated in principle. The second half of verse 10:
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
Satan can’t get at Jesus anymore. Jesus has been to earth and now He’s back at the Father’s side. Satan can no longer send mad kings after Him, or try to get Him lynched by an angry mob. No more can Satan get access to the Father. He’s been hurled down. No more can Satan threaten Jesus. He’s not a threat anymore.
But that leads to a third lesson: Satan still rages. Even though he is beaten, Satan still fights back with a terrible fury. Verse 12:
12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
You might ask: if Jesus defeated Satan in His first coming, then why is life here so unpredictable and filled with sorrow? Why do we steal deal with temptation and sin and tragedy?
And here’s the answer: even though Satan is a defeated enemy, he is still filled with fury. If anything, his fury is worse because he knows his time is short.
A faint parallel might be seen in the history of WWII. On June 6, 1943—D-Day—Allied forces began putting 1.3 million men and untold amounts of war material on the beaches of Normandy over the course of three days. To anybody with a brain in their heads, it was obvious the war was over. Once the beachhead was established, there was no way Hitler and the Nazis could win.
But did that mean Hitler said: “Oops, sorry guys” and sued for peace? Unfortunately, no. Even though he was obviously beaten, Hitler continued to fight with unparalleled fury. In fact, it was after D-Day that some of the worst fighting of the war took place. The Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of Berlin. With the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler almost broke through to the coast. The only thing that stopped him was that he ran out of gas. Not that it was going to matter, the Germans were still going to lose. But they fought on with fury.
In a sense, that is where Satan is today. He is beaten. He is defeated. Cast out of heaven, never to return. But in the meantime, he continues to take out his fury on earth. He continues to attack those who belong to Christ and make life miserable here on earth.
But that leads to my fourth and final point: Christians can stand. Here’s the thing we need to know: because of what happened when Christ came to earth, because He disarmed the principalities and powers when He nailed them to the cross, because Satan’s doom is assured; we are not powerless when attacked by the devil. We are not helpless in the face of the enormous red dragon. Verse 11 says:
11 They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Jesus has won. We know where the devil is going. And so we can stand up against the dragon today.
Eugene Peterson writes:
St. John’s imagination is adrenaline for us of little faith, and we are again dauntless, unimpressed by dragon bluster, sure of God’s preservation. The child survives, salvation is assured. God’s rule is intact...
It is St. John’s genius to take Jesus in a manger attended by shepherds and wisemen and put him in the cosmos attacked by a dragon. The consequence to our faith is that we are fortified against intimidation. Our response to the Nativity cannot be reduced to shutting the door against a wintry world, drinking hot chocolate, and singing carols. Rather, we are ready to walk out the door with, as one psalmist put it, high praises to God in our throats and two-edged swords in our hands. (Ps. 149:6) (Reversed Thunder, p. 121-122)