Chapter 12 (pdf)
Download1 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.
A woman in the Bible is an ideology. Jerusalem is a virgin and wife to God. Wisdom is referred to as a woman: wife, sister, mother, and was with God from the beginning (Proverbs 7-9 and others). Wickedness is a woman that’s been put in a basket in Zechariah 5:7. Here we see both good and evil shown as a woman. This woman was clothed with the sun. Here’s a verse describing clothed:
Ezekiel 16:3-10 Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem: “Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you, you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you; but you were thrown out into the open field, when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you thrive like a plant in the field; and you grew, matured, and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare. When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord GOD. “Then I washed you in water; yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you with oil. I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin; I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk.”
In the verses from Ezekiel, God clothed his bride, he gave her status, protection, prosperity and identity. The woman here is clothed with the sun. Previously the sun would have been an emperor, and at the time after the inquisitions, it is kings that rule. It would be a king that shows the woman favor, protection, prosperity and identity. There is a crown of twelve (dodeka, what the 12 apostles were called) stars (God's elect), that adorns the woman's head. The church fathers of the time were now printing Bibles but primarily the New Testament. In 1384 John Wycliffe, who has been named the morning star of the reformation, had translated just the New Testament into English. After the printing press in 1455, there was the Tyndale Bible published, but again only in the New Testament. The church was now crowned with the glory of the testimony of Jesus.
It's interesting that the moon is under her feet, so she has authority of the lesser ruling authority, such as a senate or co-regent, etc. There is a king starting in the 1530's that took the woman and made a church with authority over all other governmental power. King Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Church, creating a separate denomination, and by law, instituted rules of worship that governed his land. This land would then become the largest empire on the earth by the 1900s, and would also translate it's own bible, the King James Bible, which is still the most widely printed bible and best-selling book ever.
2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.
(greatsite.com/english-bible-history/)Before the church in earnest was born, the birth pains and agony were those who stood up to the Catholic Church and were executed because of it. The Pope was so infuriated by the teaching of Wycliffe and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river! One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe’s idea that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language. This was in opposition to the tyranny of the Roman church because they threatened anyone that possessed a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, with Wycliffe’s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire. The last words of John Hus were that, “in 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.” Almost exactly 100 years later, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses of Contention (a list of 95 issues of heretical theology and crimes of the Roman Catholic Church) into the church door at Wittenberg. The prophecy of Hus had come true!
(greatsite.com/thomas-linacre/) In the 1490’s another Oxford professor, and the personal physician to King Henry the 7th and 8th, Thomas Linacre, decided to learn Greek. After reading the Gospels in Greek, and comparing it to the Latin Vulgate, he wrote in his diary, “Either this (the original Greek) is not the Gospel… or we are not Christians.” The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel… yet the Church still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin… though Latin was not an original language of the scriptures.
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.
We can again connect this to the beast that comes out of the abyss in Revelation 11:7. The horns and heads are described in Chapter 17, which is different than the beast in Chapter 13 that rises out of the sea and has 10 horns, 7 heads and 10 crowns on his horns. The description of the horns and heads is in chapter 17.
We have the dragon being present in several chapters of Revelation and the Jesuits are the only group that fits in the entirety. In regards to the Protestant Reformation the Jesuits were the force that tried to stop the progress of the Church of England, and later the King James Bible. They were considered the “secret arm of the papacy.” See the bible study above for more study.
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.
From biblehub's Topical - tail: Though the word appears five times, these three scenes trace a single prophetic thread: Satanic or demonic forces exercising deceptive and injurious power in the final judgment era. Deuteronomy 28:13–44 contrasts head and tail to describe covenant blessing or curse: obedience makes Israel “the head and not the tail.” Isaiah 9:15 identifies “the prophet who teaches lies” as “the tail.” The tail thus comes to symbolize false guidance that drags others into ruin. These antecedents prepare readers to recognize the tail in Revelation as a figure of deceptive influence.
The tail of the dragon would eventually cast down the Reformation Churches through the Counter Reformation. The third of Europe that succumbed to the Counter Reformation were Spain, Italy, and the Habsburg lands (Austria and Bohemia) aiming to halt Protestantism through the Inquisition, the Jesuit order, and military action. Other key regions involved included Poland, Bavaria, and the Southern Netherlands. A dragon is an entity that defies God's command, as Leviathan does in the Old Testament. Red is bloodshed, great is powerful or expansive.
On December 27, 1594, a crazed former student at the Jesuit College of Clermont in Paris attempted to murder King Henry IV of France. As a result of the ensuing uproar, the Society suffered banishment from most of France for eight years, from 1595 to 1603. The Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt to assassinate King James I of England during the Opening of Parliament in November 1605. The plan was organised by Robert Catesby, a devout English Catholic who hoped to kill the Protestant King James and establish Catholic rule in England.
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,
In Enoch’s Animal Apocalypse the bull turns into a man who is to rule other nations. This is the best interpretation I could find for this verse. We do have one of the Kings of England who ruled the nation with a rod of iron, which is the word, see Psalms 23. See also the connection to the church of Thyatira in chapter 2. In verse 27 it says and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. As soon as the First Act of Supremacy was passed in England in 1534, the Treason Act and the tax of First Fruits and Tenths was applied to divert money from the papacy to the English Crown. Look up "Timeline of the English Reformation" to see the many rods of laws enacted against the papacy. They were crushed as when earthen pots are broken.
Being caught up to God and to his throne is similar as the "Come up here!" in chapter 11 where God promotes his church.
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.
The beginning of this prophecy starts here (early 1600s), and ends in chapter 14, go there for the fulfillment.
7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The dragon fought back with the Counter Reformation, fueled by the "secret arm" of the papacy, the Jesuits. The war was the 30 Years War, from Wikipedia: The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from the effects of battle, famine, or disease, with parts of Germany reporting population declines of over 50%. Its causes derived from religious conflict within the Holy Roman Empire, sparked by the 16th-century Reformation. (The Holy Roman Empire is the one of the heads of the dragon explained in chapter 17)
These phrases about Satan - the dragon - are misconstrued to say that Satan was cast out of heaven with a third of his angels. Once you are familiar with prophetic terminology, you can see that's not the case at all. Reading Enoch will give you a good understanding of the 200 angels that fell, and not 1/3 of God's heavenly army. Thrown down means to lose authority. See Luke 10:17-18 where Jesus commends his disciples when they came back from casting out demons and healing the sick. The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your name.” 18 So He told them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of the Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
This might be the most important verse in all of Revelation. It gives the mission statement of the work of Jesus. What happens at his coming? Why did he come? What are the tools involved in making his coming possible? I have many verses you can look up in the bible study, so take some time to look at those. Focus here not on the "coming of Jesus" but what else is written that is important? The followers of Jesus have received salvation, power and know how to operate in the Kingdom of God. They know the authority of the name of Jesus in order to throw down the accuser. The followers of Jesus have great faith because of the blood of the lamb and the Word, the testimony of Jesus, and they exercise that faith, even if it costs them their life. We do not wait expectantly for the "coming of Jesus," we live it when we walk as Jesus walked. It's time to throw out stagnant lukewarm Christianity and walk in the POWER of the kingdom, being part of the body of Christ!!
12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” 13 when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.
Great wrath is shown in Isaiah 13:9 "Behold, the day of the LORD is coming—cruel, with fury and burning anger—to make the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners within it". The Councils of Trent were the fury and burning anger of the Roman Church against the Reformation, and they used the Jesuits as their arm of justice.
(https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html#:~:text=Many%20of%20the%20British%20North,European%20Persecution) Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by men and women, who, in the face of European persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions and fled Europe. The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were conceived and established "as plantations of religion." Some settlers who arrived in these areas came for secular motives--"to catch fish" as one New Englander put it--but the great majority left Europe to worship God in the way they believed to be correct. They enthusiastically supported the efforts of their leaders to create "a city on a hill" or a "holy experiment," whose success would prove that God's plan for his churches could be successfully realized in the American wilderness. Even colonies like Virginia, which were planned as commercial ventures, were led by entrepreneurs who considered themselves "militant Protestants" and who worked diligently to promote the prosperity of the church. (internet)
The Puritans (likely the Cathars) had an official charter from the King of England to establish a colony, under the Church of England. The Pilgrims also made it over to the colonies in their effort to worship Jesus freely.
This prophecy is nearly identical to the phrases in verse 6. The start of the prophecy is in verse 6, during the English Reformation. The fulfillment of this time, times & half a time is fulfilled in verse 16. This timeline is a bit harder to find since it's not an obvious 1260 years, or 350 years like in chapter 11. Jamestown was settled by the Puritans in 1607. For our timeline, 42 years times 3.5 = 147 years, which is when the French and Indian War (also called the 7 Years War) started (1754).
15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away in the torrent. 16 But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.
The Jesuits tried converting Native Americans to make war on Christian English colonists. Flood in prophecy is a war as seen in Psalm 124:1 If the LORD had not been on our side—let Israel now declare—2 if the LORD had not been on our side when men attacked us, 3 when their anger flared against us, then they would have swallowed us alive, 4 then the floods would have engulfed us, then the torrent would have overwhelmed us, 5 then the raging waters would have swept us away. This culminated into the Seven Years War, or the French and Indian War. War is depicted as "flood" in old testament prophecy. In Chapter 11 France is the earth. In 1763 the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian
17 Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.
In chapter 13 we get introduced to two beasts, and the dragon colludes with those two beasts to incite war, called the three frogs in chapter 16.