Earth is the Site of the Problem and Heaven is Earth in Rev. 12.7-10.

Consequently, the earth is the site of the problem. What God contends for is the earth. In the prayer which our Lord Jesus taught us to pray, it reads in part: “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” (Matt. 6.9b-10). According to the grammatical construction in the original Greek, this phrase “as in heaven, so on earth” is actually a part of all three petitions and not merely applicable to the last petition. In other words, the most accurate rendering of the original should be: “Hallowed be thy name, as in heaven, so on earth. Thy kingdom come, as in heaven, so on earth. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” So that from this prayer we can readily discern that there is no problem in heaven but that a great problem exists on earth. Let us recall that after the fall of man, God had said to the serpent: “upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3.14b). This was to signify that thereafter the earth was to be the serpent’s boundary and that he was to crawl upon it. Hence the sphere of Satan’s work was no longer to be in heaven but on the earth. Accordingly, if ever the kingdom of God was to come, Satan must be driven out from the earth; if ever the will of God was to be done, it must be done on the earth; and if ever the name of God was to be hallowed, it must be hallowed on the earth. Hence, all the problem is centered on the earth.

Among many important words to be found in Genesis, there are especially two that are full of meaning. One is “subdue” (1.28); the other is “keep” or “guard” (2.15). From a consideration of these two words we may see that God appointed man both to subdue and to guard the earth. For God’s original idea concerning the earth was that He had “created it not a waste, [but] formed it to be inhabited” (Is. 45.18b). God gave the earth to man to dwell upon and to guard it against the intrusion of Satan. Since after Satan’s fall God had limited him to the earth, and since further Satan is intent upon doing the work of destruction here, God has chosen man to recover the earth from Satan’s hand.

Another thing to be noticed here is that, more accurately speaking, such recovery extends not only to the earth but also to the heaven that is related to the earth. In the Scriptures there is a distinction made between “heavens” and “heaven.” The “heavens” is where the throne of God is, the sphere in which His authority is respected. “Heaven, on the other hand, refers at times in the Bible to the heaven which is akin to the earth. This heaven, too, like the earth, needs to be recovered (see Rev. 12.7-10).