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PART 4.5 - DECISIVE DEVELOPMENTS FOLLOWING THE SOUNDING IF THE SEVENTH TRUMPET (REVELATION 12:1-17)
The Unstoppable Victory of the Lamb of God: In the first half of the Revelation of Jesus Christ we read of the appearances of God and of His Lamb, which have the purpose of calling His church, Israel, and the nations to immediate repentance. With love and severity, allurements and blows of judgment, the Almighty desires to help His people turn back, stop sinning, and begin living with Him. He wants to justify them by grace and sanctify them by His Spirit. Few, however, give heed to His call.
The seal and trumpet judgments, therefore, must come, in order to shake the nations. Yet mankind still will not be converted! Again and again the Lord grants them time and opportunity to repent. But Israel and the rest of the world choose not to be obedient to His voice. The sealing of a select number from among the tribes of Israel and the nations also signalized the hardening of the great majority.
The patience of God draws to an end. With the sounding of the seventh trumpet the legal situation is changed. From this moment on the attack of God and His Lamb begins upon an unrepentant world. No longer does the Lord call to salvation by grace alone. Instead, He implements His power, and affirms the victory of Christ on the cross. The Revelation of Christ enters into a decisive phase. All previous visions and events appear to be preparation for the climax of the final battle shaping up. The Father is making the enemies of Christ into a footstool for His feet (Psalm 110:1).
1. The Woman Clothed with the Sun (Revelation 12:1-2)
REVELATION 12:1-2
1 A great sign was seen in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was with child. She cried out in pain, laboring to give birth.
John received a new vision, which he described differently from all previous history. He suddenly recognized signs and symbols in heaven, symbolic parables for long-term developments, much like Jesus used supplementing parables to describe the kingdom of God to those standing far removed.
The first picture John saw was great and significant, glorious and fascinating. A woman appeared, clothed with the power of the radiant sun, wearing a diadem of twelve blinking stars on her head. The moon was laid under her feet.
Catholic interpreters formerly understood this sign to be a reference to Mary, the queen of heaven, a symbol which can be seen in many places even today in pictures or statues of her. Recently, however, careful observation of the following verses has forced Catholic interpreters to change their interpretation of this sign, and they no longer speak of Mary.
Other commentators see in this woman the church of Jesus Christ, who by her testimony bears witness of Jesus Christ to our world (J. Zink, Lilje, Zahn, Lohmaier, etc.). This interpretation, too, shows weaknesses, and cannot be supported by the following verses.
Some friends of Israel understand the heavenly sign of the woman clothed with the sun to be an indication of Israel, since the Old Testament people of Israel are sometimes seen in the Bible represented as a woman, a virgin or a whore (Isaiah 50:1; 54:4-5; Hosea 1:1-2, 18; Revelation 19:8; 21:2).
Pohl sees in this woman with the radiant sun Jerusalem waiting for her Messiah, whose residents would be plagued by the woes their Messiah would send.
A. Fuhr believes there are two different women in discussion: one woman in heaven (with the sun), and a second woman on earth (who bears the child and flees into the wilderness). The two together would represent a single identity. The Jews who recognized and confessed in Jesus of Nazareth their Messiah, would be ascribed to the glorious woman in heaven, while those still waiting today for the coming of their Messiah, would have to experience and suffer many woes on earth, until they recognized in the Son of Mary the Son of God.
We join ourselves with J. A. Bengel, who sees in the sun-woman the saints of God out of both the Old and the New Covenant. Both groups have become in Christ an indivisible unit (Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 2:11-22), for both live from the power of His blood through the leading of His Spirit. What God has joined together let no man separate.
Not a few interpreters, in fact, see in the church the spiritual “body” of Christ. They understand, however, His “bride” to be Christ-believing Israel. We believe, however, that all born-again followers of Christ, Jews, as well as Gentiles, are living stones of the same spiritual temple of God (1 Peter 2:5, 9-10; Ephesians 3:6). There are no two divided temples for the one Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself, throughout His parables, used different pictures to illustrate one and the same truth, in order to illuminate His kingdom from different angles. The willful incorporation of Jewish Christians into the singular body of the resurrected shows their spiritual maturity. Should they differentiate themselves as “bride” versus “body”, however, stand they in danger of regressing back to a sect under the law (Acts 15:7-11; Romans 10:1-4).
The woman clothed with the sun shows how the saints have been enveloped and penetrated by the glory of God (Song of Solomon 6:10; Isaiah 60:1; 61:10), and how the radiance of Jesus Christ is reflected in them. All those who have been shaped by Christ are called upon to put on the new man (Ephesians 4:22-24). Through our faith- connection with the Lamb of God we are filled from Him (Colossians 2:9-10). “Christ in you, the hope of glory!” (Colossians 1:27; Romans 8:29; 1 John 3:1-3; Judges 5:31) exclaimed Paul, who bowed his knees in prayer for the church, which had been joined together from Jewish and Gentile Christians, to be filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-21).
The clothing of the woman with the sun is also a symbol of her protection by the power of the triune God. Because of her nearness to Him, she is kept secure in Him. She cannot exist alone. She needs her Lord day and night. Only “in Him”, and “with Him”, is she spiritually viable, and able to bring forth new life.
The twelve stars in the diadem of the woman in the sun represent the twelve tribes of Israel. By nature the twelve tribes of Israel are sinful and dark, like the rest of the world. In the twelve apostles, however, as well as in the martyrs of the early church, in Paul, Barnabas and Silas, as well as in the 144,000 sealed of Israel, do the twelve tribes begin to radiantly shine. An exception was the tribe of Dan, whose star had been removed as a result to their turning to the organized worship of idols (Judges 18:1-31).
The moon under the feet of the woman in heaven is seen by J.A. Bengel as being a subjugated Islam, whose emblem, the crescent moon, is born on every mosque throughout the world. Islam wants to conquer and rule every nation of the world by force. It will in the end, however, be shattered upon the Lamb of God, just as Jesus said: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (including its satellite, the moon) (Matthew 5:5).
The Woman in Pains of Birth: The splendid sign in heaven unexpectedly changes. The woman clothed with the glory of God is pregnant, and she cries out in her birth pains and great agony. She now appears on earth (Revelation 12:5-6). The heavenly reality of the people of God is often reflected on the earth through sighing, disappointment, suffering, oppression and despair. The chosen nation of Israel is mainly seen in the Bible as the suffering people of God, and the church of Jesus Christ around the world is continuously despised and persecuted. The saints of God are a foreign body in this world, one which is hated, oppressed and excluded by the followers of the prince of this world. In Islam, the oppression and subjugation of Christians is regarded as a command of Allah's established in the Koran (Sura al-Tawba 9:29-30).
Some interpreters see in the woman's birth pangs a painful breakthrough by the Old Testament nation, leading to the recognition that the despised and crucified Nazarene is, in reality, the promised Messiah. The majority of Jews until today, however, cannot and will not grasp this truth. Jewish people know that if they affirm this fact they then become nothing more than blind, confused, lost and condemned. They would have nothing more to offer than the grace of the crucified One, who would constitute their only hope and justice (Isaiah 45:23-25; Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15-16). John had this recognition in mind when he wrote at the beginning of his revelation: Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, and they also who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7).
In case Catholic theologians were correct in earlier maintaining that the woman clothed with the sun was Mary, the Queen of Heaven, then would the assertion made by Catholics and Orthodox, that the birth of Christ had been painless, be annulled, because the indication in this verse is that the woman cried out in labor and pain to give birth to her son.
PRAYER: Wise Holy One, we thank and worship You because You revealed to us a glorious vision. You gathered the believers from times before and after Christ in the image of the woman that was clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet. Jesus, the Prince of Peace was born in pains of birth, and He became a true man, though Satan had tried to kill Him immediately after his birth.
QUESTION:
- What did you understand from this vision seen and revealed by John?