Revelation 12:1-6--The Woman and the Dragon

Revelation 12:1-6
English Standard Version

The Woman and the Dragon
12 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.

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John is going to receive a set of visions that is going to help set the stage for the third woe.  First, he sees a great sign appear in heaven.  He sees a woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head is a crown a twelves stars.  I would imagine that this is going back to Joseph's dream about the sun and the moon and stars bowing down to him, and the number 12 here makes me imagine we are probably talking about the nation of Israel.

Another sign appeared in heaven and there appeared a great dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems (crowns) on the seven heads.  (He is given great power and the rulers of seven kingdoms/nations are controlled by him).  His tail swept through the stars (symbolizing the angelic host of heaven) and one-third of the angels fell and became demons who served him.  He and these demons were cast down to earth where they have been working against God and His people from the very beginning--since the Garden of Eden when the "seed of the woman" was promised.  It was at that moment that Satan knew there would be a chosen people with a chosen Descendant who would one day crush and destroy him, and Satan sat waiting to destroy the people of God before they could give birth to the Messiah (which wasn't allowed to happen) or to destroy the Messiah as soon as He appeared (again, wasn't allowed to happen) or to try to keep Him from fulfilling His mission (which he thought he did, but he only helped bring about the actual plan to bring about the salvation of God's people from every tribe, tongue and nation).

Satan's plan to destroy the Messiah fails and Jesus is back in heaven ready to return to set up His Kingdom, so now Satan is going to be focused on how he can prevent that from happening.  Whatever God wants to do, Satan wants to try to keep that from happening.  Unable to destroy the Child, the dragon (Satan) instead seeks to attack the woman (Israel and by extension, the Church who have been adopted into the family of God or grafted into the True Vine--whichever picture you like better).  God has prepared a place for them in the desert to be safe from all these plagues (think of how Goshen was spared from the Ten Plagues or the people in the Ark were safe during the Flood, or the city of Zoar was kept safe during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah).  God is going to prepare a special place of protection for His people that is not named where Satan can't touch them--it just described as a desert or wilderness place that no one would think of as a place of safety.  God led His people through the wilderness for 40 years and protected and provided for them, so He clearly can protect and provide for them for the 1,260 days (3.5 years) of the Tribulation that we've seen so far.

We'll continue to look at these two characters next time--where we focused mostly on ethnic Israel in this first story, we will see the people of God grow and expand to "Those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus." who are counted as "her offspring."  That is, the Church is part also "birthed" through Israel and Satan is going to be trying to destroy not just the Jews, but also the Christians.  We'll then into a set of visions that help us understand how he plans to do this through political, religious, and economic means by controlling all the levers of power.