A New Vision; a New Section

As we move into chapter 12 of Revelation, we not only begin a new vision (Rev. 12-14) but we also begin the second main part of Revelation that continues through chapter 22. Unlike chapters 1-11, these chapters will show us the spiritual battle that is the cause of the travails of the “present evil age”. The main characters of this section are introduced in the fourth vision of Revelation (Rev. 12-14) and they are: the dragon, the beast out of the sea, the beast out of the earth, Babylon and those humans who bear the seal of the beast. As we will shortly see, these are the enemies of God, and the things that we witness and experience in this present evil age are but the manifestations of the spiritual warfare raging between the Christ and the dragon, and his allies. As we study these remaining chapters, I must remind you, dear reader that these are visions that John saw “in the Spirit”. Thus, we must resist the temptation to try to take them as literal prognostications of the future; they are entirely symbolic. Yet that isn’t to say that they aren’t important, far from it! These are some of the most significant passages in all of Scripture, and if we will allow ourselves to grasp what they are telling us, we will not only understand the Scriptures better, we will also have an enhanced understanding of the world around us.

The action begins in chapter 12:1-6…

A great 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. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

John’s vantage point is now from a heavenly perspective; he is seeing the story of his (and our) time the way God sees it. It is particularly interesting that John is the one who reports of this vantage point, since he is also the one who wrote the Gospel that presents Jesus’ earthly ministry from a heavenly point of view, beginning not with His birth, but from the perspective of His eternal identity (John 1:1-4; 14).

The woman who is about to give birth is described in glorious terms; she is representative of God’s people, His true Israel. You might recall that in our recent study of Romans, we learned that there was always a remnant within Old Testament Israel who was faithful to God, even when most were not; these were those of the Jews who believed that their path to salvation lie in their faith, not their ability to keep the Law by their own strength. We also learned in that study that these were the ones likely to follow Jesus Christ as the church began after His resurrection from the dead, and who now, together with faithful Gentiles make up the Body of Christ, the Church. These are the ones symbolized by the woman… God’s true Israel, the Church. (cf. Is. 50:1; 54:1; Hos. 2:1; Eph. 5:32 in addition, see Is. 54; Amos 9:11; Matt. 21:33 ff.; Rom. 11:15-24; Gal. 3:9-16, 29; Eph. 2:11; 1Pet. 2:9; Rev. 4:4; 21:12-14). The next character is the child, who is the Christ, and the third character is the devil, Satan.

Next time, we will see what these characters are up to, and how this affects the world we live in today.