Some commentators say she symbolizes the church. This is not a picture of an individual but rather of a group of people. But the problem with that theory is that there is no way you can fit Mary into Verse 6! There we learn that "the woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days." That never happened to Mary, and it never will. Who is this strange woman who appears clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and twelve stars in a crown around her head? The Roman Catholics say it is Mary, since she was the mother of Jesus, as this account shows the symbolic woman to be. This brings us to the identity of the woman. There he appears as a tender, loving Shepherd, ministering to his people personally and showing great kindness to them. When we come to the new heavens and the new earth, which John will be shown in the closing two chapters of this book, then Christ no longer reigns with a rod of iron because sin has been fully dealt with nothing evil will enter that scene at all. We will see more of that too as we go on in this book. Righteousness reigns in the earth, but it has to be enforced. He reigns with a rod of iron (with strict justice), because, though it is a time of worldwide blessing and prosperity and the curse is at least partially removed from nature, it is also a time when sin is still manifest to some degree. The reference to a rod of iron always indicates a millennial scene, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. Clearly that is a reference to our Lord Jesus. The psalm speaks of God establishing his kingdom on his holy hill of Zion: "I will set my King on my holy hill of Zion" (Psalm 2:6 KJV), and "he will rule the nations with a rod of iron," (Psalm 2:9 KJV). In some ways Psalm 2 is the basic Scripture out of which the whole book is expanded and grows. The male child that is born to the woman is the next easiest to identify because we are told in Verse 5 that he is the one "who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter," or "a rod of iron." Many of you will recognize that the latter phrase is taken from the Second Psalm, which is quoted or referred to four different times in Revelation. We will see much more of this as we go on in this book. His work is described also in Verse 9: The entire career of the devil is engaged in deceiving the whole inhabited earth, i.e. He appears here as a dragon, which is simply a super-serpent and a symbol of satanic worship in many countries of the world yet today. We are also told that he is the ancient serpent, the very one who appeared in the Garden of Eden to Eve, deceived her, and introduced sin into the human race. The verse says, "The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray." Here, then, is the devil, appearing as a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads. The dragon is the easiest to identify, because later, in Verse 9, we are told exactly who he is. The question that leaps at us from these verses is, "What is meant by these great signs? What or whom do they symbolize?" Two of them are relatively easy to identify, and once we find who those two are the third one will be unmistakable. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. 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. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. It is our business this morning to try to interpret these and to understand what John was shown in this vision.Ī 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. In fact there are three symbols here: The woman, her son, and a great red dragon. Chapter 12 of the book of Revelation also opens with the symbol of a woman. That was not an advertisement for underarm deodorant! It was the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the freedom that America enjoys. If any of you are immigrants to this country and you entered through the port of New York, you will remember that the first sight you had of this land was of a great statue of a woman holding a torch in her upheld arm.
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