Advent: Between D-Day and V-Day

The Book of Revelation is in large part a book about the return (or "parousia") of Christ. It speaks of the condition of the fallen world of men prior to the final, triumphant coming of the Messiah. It speaks of seals opened, trumpets blown, battles fought, and the everlasting worship of God amidst all of the world's chaos. Sometimes all these images scare us, confuse us, make us ignore this book's contents.

But nestled right in the middle of the Book of Revelation is something we might not expect: The Christmas Story.

Have you missed it? Well, look again at the first few verses of chapter 12:
"¹A 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. ²She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. ³Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. ⁴His 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. ⁵She 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."

Surely, good Jewish readers of John's day recognized the messianic prophecy concerning the One who would "rule all the nations with an iron scepter" (Ps. 2:9), and just in case we missed it John himself tells us that this is none other than Jesus Christ in Rev. 19:15. So this "son, a male child" is the infant Christ. We know his mother, Mary, from other stories in the New Testament. And we know of Satan's attempt to "devour her child the moment it was born" when we recall Herod's "Slaughter of the Innocence" in Bethlehem. But the story goes on....

In a nutshell, the dragon fails to devour the child, and the child, Christ, conquers the dragon at the cross and at his bodily resurrection from the dead (Revelation 12:7-9 poetically speaks of the cross and resurrection of Christ in terms of the warrior archangel, Michael, casting the dragon out of heaven). The dragon is hurled down to earth, and "he knows his time is short" (v.12). While he still holds the last vestiges of power and influence, the dragon begins a last-ditch campaign against the "offspring" of the woman (v.17), who are described as "those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus." This is us, the followers of Christ; we are the dragon's target now.

And here is where we live....We live in between D-Day and V-Day.

We live in a world where the decisive victory against evil, "the dragon," has been won. Christ has triumphed. Evil is decaying, even as it lashes out one last time. The cross, the resurrection, the ascension--these are past events. We look back at them to reassure us that our hope for the future is not in vain.

But we are not out of the woods yet. The Christ has come, but he is also still yet to come. The first advent is in the past; the second is in the future. And so we enter this "advent season" once again, remembering, as John the Revelator did, that Christ's first coming guarantees his second coming. Because he has already won the decisive victory over evil, we can be assured that he will finally step in and end the war against evil that still rages today. The Christmas story and the story of Christ's Return at the end of the age are two sides of the same coin. We live between the advents, between D-Day and V-Day, and we live in the power of the Spirit who enables us to be faithful to "the testimony of Jesus."