The Options
Option 1: “The language of being “thrown to the earth” (v. 9) could suggest Satan’s primordial fall from heaven, as many Jewish and Christian interpreters understand to be portrayed at least typologically in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 (cf. LAE 12:1–16:3). However, the limits to Satan’s actions described in Revelation 12 (e.g., no access to heaven, intense anger because his time is short) have hardly characterized his career since that primeval event itself. Possibly this later expulsion repeats and intensifies key features of the pattern of that original fall” (Fanning, ZECNT, 356).
Option 2: “A second quite plausible option is the decisive defeat of Satan at the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ. Verse 5c in this vision focuses on the exaltation of the woman’s male child, and several references in John’s Gospel point to Jesus’s coming death as the decisive judgment of Satan (John 12:31; 16:11; Luke 10:17–18 is sometimes read this way). But it seems unlikely that Satan is understood to have no more access to accuse Christians before God (v. 10) for the entire period after the cross of Christ. It makes more sense to understand a decisive victory to have come at the cross, resurrection, and exaltation (Col 2:15), but that this victory awaits its full accomplishment in the end times (see comments on v. 5c; cf. 1 Cor 15:20–28; Heb 2:8–9, 14–15)” (Fanning, ZECNT, 356).
Option 3: “A third interpretation takes this expulsion as a yet-future event just prior to the arrival of “the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” on the earth (Rev 11:15; cf. 12:10a), at the time of the seventh trumpet when God’s revealed plan for redemption is brought to completion without further delay (10:6–7). This coheres with the point that the devil’s brief remaining time to inflict his anger will bring great woes for the earth and sea (v. 12b), and that the woman will need protection from him for a period of three-and-a-half years in the future (vv. 6, 14; cf. 11:2–3; 13:5)” (Fanning, ZECNT, 356).
Further Arguments for Option 3: A Timing within the Final Day of the Lord
John 12:31–32 does not seem to be the most relevant text for understanding Revelation 12:7–12. First, Revelation 12 concerns the expulsion of Satan from heaven to earth. John 21:31–32 concerns an expulsion from earth. Alford’s interpretation of John 12:31–32 harmonizes well with the rest of the biblical data: “Observe it is ἐκβληθήσεται, not ἐκβάλλεται, because the casting out (ἔξω, ἐκτῆς ἀρχῆς, Euthym., Grot., or better perhaps, out of ὁ κόσμος οὗτος, his former place) shall be gradual, as the drawing in the next verse. But after the death of Christ the casting out began, and its first-fruits were, the coming in of the Gentiles into the Church” (Alford, 836). Raymond Brown posits much the same: “However, the ordinary reading of vs. 31 is not a reference to Satan’s expulsion from heaven but to his loss of authority over this world. This inference seems contrary to the statement of I John v 19: ‘The whole world is in the power of the Evil One.’ Perhaps we can say that the victorious hour of Jesus constitutes a victory over Satan in principle; yet the working out of this victory in time and place is the gradual work of believing Christians. Even in the Christian life there is a tension between a victory already won (I John ii 13) and a victory still to be won (I John v 4-5)” (Brown, AB, 1:477).
Luke 10:18–19 relates to the mission of the seventy-two in which even the demons were subject to them. What they experienced was a foreshadowing, an initial experience, of the ultimate downfall of Satan (cf. Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 63–64). David Garland (Luke, ZECNT, 428–429) explains:
Gathercole argues that this is a vision of endtime events and the ultimate downfall of Satan.13 Nolland claims it is a vision of the future akin to those of the Old Testament prophets. The prophets did not have visions of what had happened or was happening in heaven but what would happen. Jesus “has seen the coming triumph of the kingdom of God over the rule of Satan and has identified this triumph as his own task. He sees this as what God intends to achieve through him.”
Jesus, therefore, can put his followers’ success in a heavenly perspective that is hidden from them. He projects the limited defeat of demons onto the broader screen of the cosmic conflict between God and the forces of evil. What is happening is not simply the expulsion of random demons that they might come across in their travels but the beginning of the complete overthrow of Satan’s rule.
Thus, Jesus in Luke 10:18–19 could be looking forward to the eschatological events of Revelation 12:7–12. There are exegetical and contextual reasons for an eschatological location of Revelation 12:7–12. First, 12:12 indicates that the throwing down of the devil from heaven to earth signal to him that his time is short. This results in intensified wrath on the part of the devil. In addition, Both Revelation 12:6 and 12:14 place these events in the context of Daniel’s seventieth seven. Jesus, in the Olivet Discourse, with his reference to the abomination of desolation, locates that seventieth seven is the eschatological day of the Lord.
The reference to Michael also points in an eschatological direction. The angel Michael is mentioned only in Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1; Jude 9. The Daniel 10 verses and Jude 9 refer to past events. However, Daniel 12:1 occurs in the midst of a section (Dan 11:36–12:13) that deals with Antichrist (11:36) during the last half of Daniel’s 70th seven (12:1, 7). Daniel 10 had already indicated that in world affairs there are angelic battles behind the scenes. Revelation 12:7–12 would be an example of that in relation to Daniel’s seventieth seven. In fact, it would appear both from Daniel 12:1 and from Revelation 12:6, 14 that this battle in heaven results in the final expulsion of Satan from heaven just before the middle of the 70th seven.
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