Revelation 12:10

And I heard a great voice in heaven saying, Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom, of our God, and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night.

I heard a voice in heaven ... We do not need to identify the voice as being either that of the martyrs or other deceased Christians.

The singers are heavenly beings, but are not designated more precisely. They are not saints, for these are not represented by the book as being in heaven before the end.[61]

This doxology, beginning with this verse, should be separated in a new paragraph to set it off from the "war," as in Wilcock's translation mentioned above. Many scholars suppose that this doxology was "sung" despite there being no mention of singing. See under Revelation 5:9.

Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ ... There can hardly be any doubt that Beckwith's comment here is correct:

The expulsion of Satan from the seat of his dominion in the heavens assures his complete overthrow in the end, and calls forth one of those outbursts of praise common in the book, celebrating the future triumph as if present. The hymn is anticipatory. The kingdom of God and the Messiah is not yet established.[62]

Since the kingdom of God and the Messiah and the establishment of the "authority" of Christ mentioned here took place at the very beginning of the Christian dispensation (Matthew 28:18-20), this doxology has the quality of being proleptic at the time it was spoken in heaven by the angels, and from the standpoint of the apocalyptist the quality of being retrospective! Thus, this indicates that the victory celebrated took place long before Christianity began.

For the accuser of our brethren is cast down ... Some have thought that the use of "our brethren" here meant that "the voice" was that of deceased Christians; but that is not correct. Angels might very properly refer to God's people on earth as their "brethren," for an angel so referred to John himself in Revelation 19:10. This brotherhood between earthly beings and heavenly beings fits beautifully into the purpose here of providing encouragement to suffering and persecuted saints. The fact of the doxology being spoken in heaven "is unsuited to the martyrs beneath the altar,"[63] or any other earthly followers of the Lord. They are not yet in heaven. Ladd also agreed that, "This verse is proleptic and looks forward to the consummation which has not yet occurred."[64] However, the rejoicing angels properly understood that the "casting down" of Satan meant that the ultimate establishment of Christ's kingdom (the church) was a certainty, for the "casting down" was a prophetic token of what would follow. This simply cannot mean that after the atonement, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, then Satan would have to be thrown down to earth before the kingdom and authority of Christ could be established. No indeed! Satan had already been operating upon the earth ever since the garden of Eden. Thus this passage regarding the heavenly "war" refers to an episode as old as the race of man upon the earth. Barclay misunderstood this passage to refer to "the song of the glorified martyrs when Satan was cast out of heaven."[65] This would require the view that Satan was operating in heaven when the martyrs died for their faith in Christ and would also make the achievement of Michael and his angels to be some kind of great victory beyond and in addition to what Christ had already achieved upon the cross; and, to us, such views are absolutely untenable. Such interpretations derive from mythology, not from the word of God.

[61] Isbon T. Beckwith, op. cit., p. 626.

[62] Ibid., p. 625.

[63] Ibid.

[64] George Eldon Ladd, op. cit., p. 172.

[65] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 83.