Revelation 12:10-12 “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: “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 has been thrown down— he who accuses them day and night before our God. They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea; with great fury the devil has come down to you, knowing he has only a short time.”
Satan has been banned from heaven for all time and the saints are rejoicing! From the beginning of time, Satan has accused, criticized, belittled, and done everything he could to undermine God and the saints and to spoil all creation. Barclay gives this explanation: The historical background of the age in which the Revelation was written lends sharpness to this picture of Satan. This was the great age of the informer, the delator. People were constantly being arrested, tortured, killed because someone had informed against them. Tacitus, writing some years before, had said: “He who had no foe was betrayed by his friend.” That ancient world knew only too well what malevolent, cynical, venal accusers were like.
Heaven is being cleansed and the martyrs are singing praises to God! But who are these martyrs? The martyrs are those who have died rather than denying Jesus Christ. Again, Barclay gives us useful answers:
The martyrs are those who have overcome Satan.
(a) Martyrdom is itself a conquest of Satan. The martyr has proved superior to every seduction and to every threat and even to the violence of Satan. Here is a dramatic truth for life every time we choose to suffer rather than to be disloyal is the defeat of Satan.
(b) The victory of the martyrs is won through the blood of the Lamb. There are two meanings here. First, on his Cross and through his Resurrection Jesus overcame forever the worst that evil could do to him; and those who have entrusted their lives to him share in that victory. Second, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross sin is forgiven; when a man accepts in faith what Christ has done for him, his sins are wiped out. And when he is forgiven, there is nothing for which he can possibly be accused…
(c) The martyrs are victorious, because they lived the great principle of the gospel. They did not consider life more important than loyalty. “He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). This principle runs all through the gospel …. For us this is not necessarily a matter of dying for the faith but of setting loyalty to Jesus Christ before the comfortable way.
(iii) This passage finishes with the idea that Satan is cast out of heaven and has come down to earth. His power in heaven is broken, but he has still power on earth; and he rages ferociously because he knows that all that he has left is a short time upon this earth before he is finally destroyed.
If you ask any congregation, “Who wants to be blessed abundantly?” everybody will be up on their feet raising their hands and shouting. But if you then ask “How many of you are willing to be martyrs?” you aren’t going to get many takers. We all want things to be comfortable; however, the test of your loyalty to any cause is whether or not you will remain true when it begins to cost you something. In the old days, missionaries who were posted to assignments in West Africa packed their things in their coffins. WHY? Because West Africa had so much malaria and yellow fever that it was known as “The White Man’s Grave Yard.” Those missionaries took their coffins with them because they expected to die on the mission field. And many of those coffins got used within a few months of the missionaries arriving.
Knowing that their time might be short, missionaries tried to do everything they could to win souls. In Accra, Ghana, the Basel Mission only allowed its missionaries to preach in English for three Sundays. By the fourth Sunday, the Mission expected that the missionary would give a message in a local language, even if it was very short. The Basel Mission also required each missionary who came to have a trade such as masonry, carpentry, etc., and to practice that trade and teach it to the local people as they were learning local languages. In Yendi in the North, Bertha Buchwalter and others began Bible teaching and outreaches despite primitive conditions. Buchwalter herself died from black water fever, a complication of Malaria, and was buried in Yendi.
Recently Christians in Burkina Faso and Northern Nigeria have been massacred by Muslim extremists. One elderly Australian doctor kidnapped from northern Burkina Faso in January 2015 has never been heard of again. Even in America, worshipers in some states are facing severe opposition from some politicians.
How do you prepare for martyrdom? You prepare for dying for Christ by living for Christ. Each moment, you make a conscious decision that God’s will is going to rule in your life and not your own. You acknowledge that you are only made righteous by the Blood of Jesus and not by anything that you can do. And you hang on, no matter what happens. To have faith means to trust where you cannot see, to continue with what you have seen in the light when all around you is darkness.
PRAYER: Father God, the very idea of being a martyr frightens us! But right now you are calling us to live for you. Help us to follow so hard after you that if we must die rather than deny you, we will neither falter nor fail. In the matchless Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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