The Cosmic Christmas Rev 12:12-14
Revelation 12:12
12Therefore, 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!”
This blog's name came from the response to verse 11. Because of our victory by the birth of Christ and the blood of Lamb we can rejoice. This verse again highlights a choice to be made. If we have our sights set on heaven, we can rejoice. The word "sea" represents evil throughout the entire book of Revelation so therefore, if we have our sights set on worldly and evil things, then woe to us for the devil has come down to us.
Revelation 12:13-14
13 And 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.
This is such a literary masterpiece. It's about here that we start to realize that John has been telling us two parallel stories at the same time.
Here's where we start to get a little different vision of who this woman is. If the goal was to devour the child, why pursue the woman? If you remember from a previous post, we talked about this woman being something more than just the mother of Jesus.
This is also the second time we've seen the symbolism for a time period of tribulation and persecution. We saw this in verse six as 1,260 days. It's still the same time period in this verse as time, times, and half a time. This is a recapitulation of something we've already read, but as we look at it again from a slightly different angle it takes a different shape. I don't want to give any spoilers, but we're going to look at it one more time tomorrow at which point it all comes together.
The woman was given two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness. Where does this fit in the Christmas story? Let's look at Matthew.
Matthew 2:13-15
13Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
I just want to be blunt here. We want to assume that the dragon is Herod, but that's not the case. Herod was a lunatic and he was influenced by his desire for worldly things. Woe to this guy for the devil has come down to him. He definitely had his sights set on the sea and the world.
Herod was the King of the Jews, but not rightfully so. He was from Idumea and kind of weaseled his way into convincing the Romans to make him the King of the Jews. Since Herod was not the rightful King, he was paranoid for the day that someone would come for his crown. He had 10 wives and he was so paranoid that he started killing his own sons and some of his wives if he thought they were conspiring to take his crown. With that in mind, think of how crazy it made him when the Magi show up and say that they are looking for the rightful King of the Jews that had been born.
To close up for today let's revisit this question.
Is this woman Mary? Yes.
However, as we will be able to piece together in a few coming verses tomorrow, this woman is also the people of Israel. Not only that, we are still going to find that she is representative of even more and this will all come to light in the last three verses tomorrow.