The Accuser of the Brethren Overcome and Cast Down - 1852
By J.C. Philpot
Preached on Lord's Day Morning, August 15, 1852, at Eden Street Chapel, Hampstead Road
"And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven. Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." Revelation 12:10, 11
The prophetical portions of God's word admit, for the most part, of a twofold interpretation--one literal and historical, the other spiritual and experimental. It would seem, at first sight, that the former was the more easy to understand. But it is not so. Great difficulties usually beset the literal interpretation; and besides that it requires more research and study than most persons can give to the subject, the most intelligent commentators have been puzzled to make it so square in all points with history and chronology, as to furnish a distinct, coherent meaning. But of the spiritual and experimental interpretation every child of God in a measure, carries in his own bosom the key; and, therefore, the intricate wards of this lock, a very Chubb or Bramah to mere literal commentators, he can in many cases turn with comparative facility. Yet these two interpretations are very closely connected--the spiritual being based upon the literal; so that we must in some measure be able to understand the literal interpretation before we can fully enter into the spiritual. With God's blessing, therefore, I shall devote a few moments this morning to a brief literal explanation of the verses preceding the text before I enter into the spiritual meaning of the words before us.
"There appeared," we read, "a great wonder in heaven." The heaven here spoken of is not heaven in its usual sense--that is, the glorious mansion of God--but the mystical heaven, what the Lord calls (Matt. 13) "the kingdom of heaven," that is, the dispensation of the gospel, the kingdom of grace and mercy set visibly up on the day of Pentecost. In this mystical heaven there appeared "a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." The woman thus gloriously arrayed represents the primitive and apostolic church as shining forth in the dispensation of the gospel, bright and beauteous. She stands clothed with Christ's righteousness, the dispensation which had passed away being under her feet, and crowned with the preaching of the gospel in its apostolic purity.
But she is represented as "being with child, and crying out as one travailing in birth." This signifies the soul travail of the primitive church for the manifestation of Christ to the world; that his grace and glory might be spread abroad; and he be brought forth as the Son of God to be believed in and adored by all nations--anticipating, as it were, in desire the millennial day. It has no reference to Christ's birth of the Virgin Mary, but to the bringing forth of Jesus in the glorious gospel, and to the full acknowledgment of his resurrection whereby he was declared to be the Son of God with power.
But there appeared another wonder in the mystical heaven--"A great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads." This represents Rome pagan--or rather Satan using the pagan Roman empire as a means of opposing the propagation of the gospel. The seven heads and ten horns with the seven crowns, represent the power of Rome Imperial. Nor were these persecutions without effect--"His tail drew away the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth," this being the effect of the persecution of Rome pagan in causing many who seemed to be stars in the heaven of the church, by persecution to prove apostates. But the dragon "stands before the woman which was about to be delivered, to devour the man child as soon as it is born." This represents the attempts of Rome Pagan to destroy the gospel by persecution, and to swallow up all profession and acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus. But "she brings forth the man child." All the efforts of Pagan Rome are ineffectual--Christ is brought forth and is made manifest by the preaching of the gospel in its apostolic purity.
