Revelation 12:1-6
And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.
I want to start by reading a verse from the last chapter because I think it is an important point to remember as we start this chapter.
Revelation 11:15 ~ Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
So we want to keep this in mind as we look at the verses today. God and Christ have taken back full control of the earth and are now reigning over it.
We may have a question already which is if God and Jesus are back in control then why is this same type of story-line still going on? What's up with this dragon? Let's break this down and see if we can come to some conclusions.
So let's start with this ~ We have three characters of sorts in which we need to look at. We have a woman who is pregnant, the child within her, and a dragon. John is seeing this vision starting off as he gazes to heaven but it will transition to the earth.
1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.
So it starts with this being a great sign, which means something pretty awesome is happening that involves this woman and her soon to be child.
She is clothed it says with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown with twelve stars on it. Clothed with the sun is an indication that she had this brightness around her, could it be just light or could it be the Holy Spirit we don't know. Are these twelve stars on her crown a representation of the twelve tribes you think? We don't know for sure but it could be.
Who is this woman? Some say it is the virgin Mary and the unborn child is Jesus. Some say the woman is a representation of the church as a whole and that her unborn child is Jesus who it later says was caught up by God and seated on His throne. I'm not sure either of these fit perfectly to who she is.
I do think that the child for sure is Jesus because He was caught up by God and seated on His thrown. This makes perfect sense.
I think we need to read on a little more in the hopes we can get a little more insight on this but I'm not sure we will.
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.
More questions what does this dragon represent? Satan? Verse nine will tell us it is Satan. What's Satan doing in heaven? Wasn't he cast out of heaven a long time ago? Is this somehow looking back in time?
This dragon has seven heads it says and ten horns. So three of the seven heads had two horns instead of one. Who knows what diadems are? They are crowns or something on a crown. So this dragon is big, smart, and thinks a lot of himself that he gave himself seven crowns.
4 (1) His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
Is this a third of the fallen angels?
4 (2) And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.
I want to reflect on this child again for a moment, this is what we know. His mother who will birth him was wearing a crown with twelve stars on it, the the child was born of that mother, this dragon “Satan” was attempting to devour him, but God swept him up to sit on his thrown and rule.
5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron... Could this be scripture? It is as sharp as a double edged sword.
The second part of chapter twelve which we will go over next week may help us tie some things together a little better I think, but to me their seems to be things happening over a long period of time and not necessarily in order.
It could be this weaving together is just an indication of God's will unfolding over the history of the creation of man from beginning to end in some ways.
