Now we’re reading Revelation 12:7. A sign appeared in the heavens: a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was with Child and cried out from the birth pangs.
St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, Tobias Verhaecht, 1598
Then another sign appeared: a dragon, red like fire, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his seven heads. With its tail, it dragged a third of the stars from the heavens. The dragon stood before the woman, waiting for her to give birth to then eat her Child. The woman gave birth to a male Child. This Child will shepherd all nations with a rod of iron. The Child was caught up and raised to the throne of God, and the woman fled into the desert, to a place that the Lord had prepared for her, to be nourished there for 1,260 days.
That’s the scene that was described. We can assume that the scenes described in Revelation aren’t necessarily recounted in chronological order, but each one is independent. It’s not obvious that all this will happen in chronological order according to how it’s recorded in Revelation. We don’t know for sure, but some interpreters believe it’s written chronologically.
The Apostle John sees a war in Heaven: And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Rev. 12:7-9).
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, chiliasts, claim that here the Archangel Michael means Christ. But this isn’t true, because Christ is the Lamb in Revelation; He is at the throne of God, the Child of the woman, called up to God. He has nothing to do with the Archangel Michael, who is waging this war. There are also references to the Archangel Michael in Scripture when he fought with the devil over the body of Moses. The Gospel says how the Disciples told Christ: Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through Thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven (Lk. 10:17-18). But the Lord Himself didn’t wage this war. The Archangel Michael fought in the name of the Lord against this great dragon, who could no longer remain in Heaven and was cast down to earth, as it says in Revelation. This dragon is the serpent of old that seduced Adam and Eve, called the devil and satan.
Why is he called the devil? Because he slanders (from the Greek verb “διαβάλλω”—“to take something with the help of another, to penetrate through something, to slander, to defame, to present something in a false way”) and misrepresents the word of God. He slandered God before the first-created ones, saying to them: “Why don’t you eat of all the fruits? Because God told you not to? Because He doesn’t want you to become like Him?”
And he’s called satan (from the Hebrew for “adversary,” “enemy”) because he was against Christ, against Jesus. This devil, satan, has deceived the entire cosmos. Of course this is a figurative expression. There were and are people who aren’t deceived by satan. But here the Apostle wants to show what influence and power the devil has in relation to mankind, bringing great difficulties into life. He fell to earth, and all his angels with him. When did this happen? We don’t know. Certainly, it happened before the Incarnation of God the Word, since Christ’s word has power: I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven (Lk. 10:18). But we can’t know exactly when.
The Fall of Satan, Gustave Doré All our interpretations are assumptions and guesses. No one can interpret the Revelation of St. John the Theologian reliably and authoritatively, because it’s a prophetic text, and it will become clear when these events come to pass.
You may ask: “Then why was Revelation written if we can’t interpret it?” It wasn’t written to satisfy our curiosity, so we can say: “Then this will happen, and this will happen at this time.” It’s written to show the warfare taking place in the spiritual realm, to show the serious war that the antichrist, the devil, wages against Christ. And also to leave us an eternal message: “Christ will prevail. Christ will reign in the world, and all those who love Christ and are united with Him will live and reign together with Christ.” A man should not be afraid or troubled on the spiritual path when he sees wars, problems, opposition, resistance to him personally and to the whole Church.
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 (Rev. 12:10). Remember how in the life of St. Job the Much-Sufferingthe devil stands before God and slanders Job, saying: “Do You think that Job honors and loves You just because? You’ve given him so many good things, so many kinds of things. How could he not love You?” And he asked God for the power to tempt Job. God allowed him to do whatever he wanted with Job, but only not to touch his life. The devil began to attack Job, raining much evil down upon him. Blessed Job remained an adamant of patience and faith, and he was victorious. The devil was his accuser before God. He asks God for authority over the people of God, over our brethren. Since we have our weaknesses and sins, we give the devil power over us through them. He looks for opportunities to assert his rights over us, to then condemn, punish, and wear us down. He arranges various temptations and tribulations, and if he succeeds, he brings us to despondency and despair, provoking us to grumble.
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 (Rev. 12:11). These brothers of ours—Christians, martyrs, saints—defeated the devil by the Blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. We Christians are nourished, we live, move, and have our being in the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Christ is the Lamb slain for the life of this world, and all people are children of the Church. They’re strengthened, live, conquer, exist, and are nourished by the Blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Nourished by Christ, living with Christ, they testify of Christ, because they didn’t love their own lives and even disregarded them to the point of death. They didn’t consider themselves worthy of special honor for their love of Christ; they disregarded themselves for the sake of this love. They put love of themselves and love of things in second place. They loved Christ first and only then all the rest. Therefore, they conquered the devil and remained steadfast, being nourished by the Blood of the Lamb and their testimony. This shows us what a Christian’s life is like, what our life is like.
Our life must be constantly united with Christ through the Holy Mysteries. As a result of this unity, we must become confessors, testifying to the word of God and proving its truth through our lives, so our deeds would confirm the word of God. If our life doesn’t confirm the word of God, then we’ll surely have problems, and others will have problems, because they won’t be able to believe us.
And when do we live in a convincing manner? When we love Christ more than anything in this world, and then everything else. When we don’t love our own lives, when we disregard death, only then can we remain faithful to Christ to the end.
Our problem today and always is that we’re inconsistent people; we don’t live by the Blood of the Lamb, we don’t live every day in unity with the Lord because of our negligence, our unworthiness, our carelessness and indifference, and therefore our word doesn’t bear witness to Christ. Our word isn’t convincing, it isn’t confirmed by our life. Quite often, we say one thing and do another. And our love for Christ is secondary. If we were to choose between life and Christ, we’d probably choose our life, and not Christ and death. The martyrs and saints put Christ first, and only then all the rest. And they didn’t fear death.
Talking about all of this, I remember a time when I was young and living on the Holy Mountain. There was an ascetic living there in Karoulia—a completely vertical part of the Holy Mountain. If you fall from a cliff, the sea is 7,875 feet there. There’s no beach below; you fall right into the deep sea. The elders would say that the sea is as deep there as the height of Mt. Athos, which is also 7,875 feet. We didn’t really believe them. But one time when I was on a boat headed there, I happened to be next to the captain. Among the instruments was a bathometer, which measures depth. The captain said: “Oh, the sea is very deep here!” I asked what the depth was where we were, and he said it was 7,875 feet. There’s a sheer cliff there. Amongst the rocks are caves, natural and hollowed out, where some ascetics lived. To go down into these caves, you have to hold onto the chains and climb down with your feet. If you slip or let go of the chain or it breaks, then you’re done for. No one will find you. Many people have been lost there: monks, laymen, and ascetics.
Karoulia, Mt. Athos
One time, someone climbed down and asked another: “Father, do you change the chains often?”
“We will when they break.”
There was an ascetic living there, a Serb—Fr. Stefan. I went one time to see him and I got scared. How could anyone climb in there and live there, in such a desolate place? There was a rock wall, a kalyvia, a cell built at the mouth, and a small church. You had to think carefully to get there—climbing down and back up isn’t so easy. People in boats would send things up there in baskets pulled along the chains.
Fr. Stefan spoke about himself: “When I came here, I brought one bag with some clothes—as much as I could carry on my shoulders. After spending the first few days here, I started thinking, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Will I be able to get up there again and bring some other necessities? It’s impossible. No one’s going to come here. Even birds don’t fly here. Then I said to myself: ‘You’ll stay here until you die. You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to die here.’”
And having said that to himself, he remained there. When I was talking with him, he had lived there for seventeen or eighteen years already. He recently reposed in the Lord, Who took care of him there as he takes care of all of us.
“Be thou faithful unto death”
When a man wants to labor for God’s sake, then the limit must be set at death. Be thou faithful unto death (Rev. 2:10), says Christ. If you’re not attuned to that, you won’t be able to labor ascetically. You have to have courageous thinking and discernment. We mustn’t be reckless. If you have a courageous mindset, then even if you retreat based on discernment, it won’t be a defeat. Sometimes retreat itself is victory—but not from cowardice, rather from discernment. It’s one thing to fall back out of fear and timidity, from self-love and selfishness, from cowardice, when you’re afraid something might happen, and another thing to fall back based on discernment. We have to have such faith that we won’t fear death if it comes our way.
As a young deacon, I had just come to study and was a student in Thessaloniki. I arrived in September, and in December I started going with the bishop to serve in the infectious disease hospital. To be allowed to enter, you had to pull on full protection: gloves and masks—there were patients with dangerous diseases. We went to serve on the pre-feast of the Nativity. The bishop gave me the chalice and told me to commune the patients, accompanied by two nurses. What I saw there is beyond words! Terrible things—lepers… What can I say?
After Communion, I had to consume everything that was left. We do this every Sunday. After all the people (you’re often worried about approaching after an old person, someone who’s coughing, and you step back in line) have communed, we priests consume what remains of the Gifts. We all commune from one chalice and one spoon, and the priests consume everything that is left. Logically, we should have been a “museum of microbes.” There shouldn’t be a microbe in the world that isn’t in us. Because thousands of people come, and how can we not get infected? We enter the church, people start kissing our hands, touching us, we’re surrounded by many people, but most of all—through Communion. If it weren’t the Body and Blood of Christ, we would constantly be sick. Thank God, none of this happens!
There are many examples in the lives of the martyrs and holy fathers when they served and communed people in leper colonies, amidst epidemics of various diseases, but they never got infected by Holy Communion. For this, you have to have such faith that your heart will know that you’ll never suffer harm from it. It’s important to have faith and not be afraid, so you’re not tormented by thoughts that cause you to waver. Germs all rush to the man who fears them. Those who fear diseases are sick from morning till night. You know this.
A guest who wanted to become a monk came to our monastery. He was educated and got sick easily. When we would give him pills, he’d always want to read the instructions for them. Geronda told us not to let him read the instructions, because he would get all the side effects from the medications, from the first to the last. One time he went to the Elder and started complaining that he was starting to get side effects from the medicine a doctor prescribed for him. The Elder asked him to bring the instructions to read: “Bring them here. I also want to see what kind of side effects it has.” He read and read, and then said: “Hold on, this side effect only effects pregnant women. So how did it happen to you?” “Oh, I didn’t see that.” After he saw that, the side effect passed. Do you see what the thoughts do to a man?
Elder Joseph the Hesychast, our grandfather, was so unafraid of death that he even hunted after it. When someone got sick with tuberculosis (it used to be a deadly, infectious disease, and many people died from it), people were easily infected. The sick were isolated. Our grandfather, Geronda Joseph, would go serve tuberculosis patients. When someone died, he would take their clothes and wear them with the expectation of catching germs. But on the contrary, the more he sought after death, the more it fled from him. Nothing stuck to him. He died later, when he got old.
You must have courage and not be afraid. Be prepared to endure unto death.
If you don’t learn this way of thinking, you’ll be a coward. And when you’re cowardly, your whole life turns into endless complains, pettiness, insignificance; it becomes so bad that it’s impossible to eat or drink. Cowardice in a man’s soul is like a huge beetle that devours trees. It stems from lack of faith and constantly devours the man—he suffers greatly.
Nowadays, there are people who suffer a lot; they become so afraid of everything that it ruins their nervous systems. They need some kind of medical treatment to recover. They constantly wash door handles, they wash a thousand times a day, they bathe their babies 50 times an hour. But still, such cowardly people get sick even more. Cowardice is a terrible thing!
Revelation says that the people weren’t afraid of death. Why didn’t they fear death? Because they loved Christ. They knew that when you love Christ and are united with Him, then death isn’t a fearful thing. On Pascha night we will hear the words of St. John Chrysostom: “Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free.” We have nothing to fear. Death is a transition from the temporal to the eternal, from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the earthly to the Heavenly, so there’s no reason to be afraid.
To be continued…
