Revelation 12 is a chapter with a war in it, and I want to be careful about how we read a chapter like that, because this book is an unveiling of Christ and not a chart.
There is no date here, nothing to identify with anything in the news, and nothing anybody needs to be afraid of. What there is, in verses ten and eleven, is a description of what an accuser does and what overcomes it, and that is what we are going to stay in.
Here is verse ten.
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.Revelation 12:10, King James Version
Which accused them before our God day and night.
Read the frequency. Day and night. Not occasionally, not at low moments, not when a person has done something recent. Continuously, without a pause in it anywhere, as an occupation.
And read the content. He accused them before our God. It is not slander at large. It is a case, presented, about specific people, to God.
The accusing has a stated frequency
I want to stay on day and night, because there is enormous relief in it for the person I am writing to.
If an accuser runs constantly, and the constancy has been taken as evidence of its accuracy, then this verse is doing something important. It says the constancy is the nature of the thing rather than a measure of the case.
An accuser that only spoke when it had something would be a witness. An accuser that speaks day and night is doing a job.
You are not the prosecution and you are not the judge. Revelation 12:10 gives the accusing to somebody else and puts God in the seat, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps those roles distinct for a person who has been running all three.
Now, the honest part. This is a description of a spiritual reality in a vision, and the passage does not say anything about what happens inside a human head. I am not going to claim that every hard thought a person has about themselves comes from outside them, because Scripture does not say that and it would be a comfortable thing to say and not a true one.
What the passage gives is a pattern: there is such a thing as accusing that runs continuously, and it is answered, and the answer is not a counter-argument.
Look at the answer.
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 12:11, King James Version
Two things are credited, and neither is a defense.
The blood of the Lamb. That is something done by somebody else, entirely outside the person, and finished before the accusing started.
The word of their testimony. That is something said, out loud, by them, about what happened to them. Not an argument about their innocence, and not a rebuttal of the charge. An account.
You have been given two items and neither one is a rebuttal. Revelation 12:11 credits the blood and the testimony and never once credits a counter-argument, and the same Spirit who kept that list at two is the reason nobody has to win the case.
I want to press on the second one, because it is the part a person can actually do tonight.
The word of their testimony. Testimony is not self-defense. It is a description of what somebody else did. A witness in a courtroom does not argue the verdict, they say what they saw.
Which means the overcoming in verse eleven is not a person proving they were not guilty. It is a person saying out loud what was done for them, while the accusing continues.
You are overcoming in the middle of the noise rather than after it stops, and Revelation 12:11 never says the accusing went quiet first. The written word puts the overcoming and the day and night accusing in the same paragraph, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps them there for somebody waiting for silence before they will call anything a victory.
You have an account to give rather than a case to win, and the difference is the whole of it. Revelation 12:11 says the word of their testimony, and it is His Spirit who keeps testimony and defense from collapsing into one thing for somebody who has been trying to argue.
And notice the tense: they overcame. Past. In the passage it is already done, spoken about people, and the announcement in verse ten begins with now is come salvation.
So stop preparing the defense.
You have been building a case for years, and the case keeps losing, and it keeps losing because you are running the prosecution and the defense and sitting on the bench, and no verdict from that court has ever held for more than about a day.
You are not required to win an argument, and neither of the two things named in the verse is an argument. Revelation 12:11 credits the blood and the testimony, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the reason that reaches a person at eleven at night rather than staying a scene in a vision.
You have something finished behind you that was finished before the accusing began. The written word names the blood of the Lamb first, and the same Spirit who put it first is the reason the ground you stand on is not something you are producing now.
And I will not lay one gram on you: an accuser that runs day and night is described in Scripture as an occupation rather than as a diagnosis of the person it is accusing. Nothing here tells you the constancy means the charge is true. What God casts down, nobody may reinstate, and He has never once required a person to feel acquitted before He would call them an overcomer.
Declare this over yourself
- Accuser that runs in my own head, you are not the court. Revelation 12:10 says the accusing goes on day and night, which makes it an occupation and not a verdict, and His Spirit puts God back in the seat. I am not the prosecution and I am not the judge.
- Case I have been preparing, get out, in the name of Jesus. You have had me running both sides and the bench, and the written word credits the blood and the testimony and never once credits an argument, which ends you, and his Spirit is reading that back to me and it settles it. What God finished, I do not have to prove.
- Lord, You are the God who put the blood of the Lamb first in that verse, and You are doing that here. Scripture names something finished before the accusing ever started, and Your Spirit stands me on it rather than on tonight's performance. I am saying the charge once, and then I am saying the two things that answer it.
Revelation 12:11
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