,, And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.”
Revelation 12: 1-3
"And there appeared a great sign in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she was with child, and cried with anguish, and struggled to give birth."
John saw here an unusual woman strangely dressed who was dressed in the sun, under her feet is the moon and on her head is a wreath of twelve stars and she was pregnant and she cried out in pain and torment and struggled to give birth.
The text says "And a great sign appeared in the sky" which means that it is not a real woman but a sign or a picture and further in the text it says that she struggled to give birth and gave birth, etc. We will see that when we get there.
Such a similar sign is first mentioned in the Bible in the book of Genesis when Joseph had a dream.
,, And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told [it] to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What [is] this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?“
Gen. 37: 9-10
Joseph had a dream that the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars were worshiping him. And Jacob understood that dream like this: the sun is Jacob, the moon is his wife Rachel, and the eleven stars are his eleven sons except Joseph who dreamed this. we know clearly that: the sun is Jacob, the moon of Rachel and the twelve stars are the sons of Jacob, ie the twelve patriarchs from whom the nation Israel or the nation of Israel came. They are the sun, moon and stars because they shine and we know that light came to Israel from Israel .
So John saw the people of Israel and Israel is described in the Old Testament as a mad woman and is also described as a divorced woman because of adultery. The Church is mentioned in the New Testament as a girl, a bride and for the first time the Church in the New Testament is called a woman in Revelation the nineteenth chapter.
,, Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.”
Rev. 19: 7
So John sees Israel and practically the entire history of the people of Israel is revealed to him, and in the continuation of the text it is written: "And she was pregnant, and cried out in agony, and struggled to give birth."
At the very beginning of the Bible it says:
,, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Gen. 3:15
The people of Israel are descended from Jacob, but even before Jacob there was a war between the "two seeds." spoils because it says:
,, But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
Gen. 6: 8
We know from the Bible that God saved and saved Noah and his family, and the rest of the world is condemned and destroyed. After this, God gave the promise of the Seed to Abraham.
,, And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
Gen. 12: 3
,, And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”
Gen. 22:18
We can further see that Abraham took Sarah as the woman he writes about:
,, But Sarai was barren; she [had] no child.”
Genesis 11:30
So the dragon stands before the woman to destroy the child and the woman struggles to give birth. In other words, Satan planned to destroy the line from which Christ, the Messiah, would come later, God planned. And the plan was for God to intervene and Sarah give birth to Isaac in his old age. And now Satan has probably accused Abram of serving God because he has a son whom God gave him in his old age but we see that Abraham gave God a sacrifice or his beloved son and Satan was defeated and Isaac was saved. Furthermore, Isaac and Rebekah also see troubles and "birth pangs":
,, And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padanaram, the sister to Laban the Syrian. And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she [was] barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.”
Gen. 25: 20-21
So Rebekah gave birth to two sons, Esau and Jacob, and God fulfilled what He promised even though there was opposition from Satan as we have seen. That is why he fled to the desert because his brother persecuted him, but God saved him.
Jacob is the ancestor of the people of Israel and he changed his name to Israel
,, And he said unto him, What [is] thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel:…”
Gen. 32:27-28
and he had twelve sons, and when there was a famine in the land, all those with their families went to Egypt, where they had been for several centuries, but in the fourth generation, Pharaoh, who served Satan the dragon, issued an order:
,, And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.”
Exodus 1:22
However, God miraculously saved Moses again and later rescued Israel from Egypt with "his hand". God announced that from that people would come the promised Seed from the tribe of Judah and the house of David, and so David became the target of Satan or the dragon. he kills but God delivers him later writes about a series of troubles in David's family through which Satan tries to destroy the ..carpal line "
Through the prophet Micah, the Lord says:
,, Now why dost thou cry out aloud? [is there] no king in thee? is thy counsellor perished? for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail. Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go [even] to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.”
Micah 4: 9-10
And so thousands of years passed in a constant struggle between Satan and God over the "Seed," and finally the time came for Jesus Christ to be born of Mary of the nation of Israel, for whom it is written:
,, Whose [are] the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ [came], who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”
Rom.9: 5
and it is that woman of Revelation whom we study, who "suffered" for centuries, "to give birth."
But suddenly now John sees something else, "And there appeared another sign in heaven; and behold a great red dragon."
In the ninth verse of this chapter we see who this is about.
,, And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
Rev.12.9
This "big dragon, the old serpent" is the same "snake" that deceived Eve and then Adam, and that is actually Satan, and he deceived the human race from the beginning and caused a lot of evil throughout history, which is why he was called the executioner of the human race. Jesus gives the following description:
,, Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
John 8:44
This name "dragon" is very familiar to us because it is used to tell children a terrible story or fairy tale, and we see that it is actually Satan himself, "who is called the devil and Satan" (Rev. 12: 9). "the deceiver, the accuser of the brethren," and writes in verse ten
,,… for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.”."
Rev. 12:10
Let's imagine for a short time "that God is not watching us" and we will see the situation that before God we constantly have a "degenerate" who constantly informs God about what we do and most likely "likes" to accuse us when we do something wrong and asks God to Punish immediately. But the Bible clearly says:
,, My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for [the sins of] the whole world.”
1 John 2: 1-2
Satan constantly accuses us, but people who are born again have an intercessor before God, the Lord Jesus Christ, when he writes:
,, [There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
Rom.8: 1
What Satan does can only be done by the "enemy" and Satan means "enemy" and he is the enemy of God but also of God's people, so it is no wonder that we read in the text that "enemy or dragon" wants to devour even the Son of God.
"And the dragon stood before the woman who wished to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth."
,, And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Gen. 3:15
but until that happens, "enmity" has permeated history and the struggle is still going on, although according to what we know from the Bible, Satan "has little time" and is very angry about it.
,,… for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”
Rev. 12:12
We read further:
which had seven heads and ten horns; and on her heads seven crowns; "John gives an explanation of this in the seventeenth chapter, and writes:
,, And here [is] the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.”
Rev. 17: 9
,, And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, [and] the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”
Rev. 17:10
Here we can see that this is the "worldly pagan kingdom" that Satan used and still uses to "persecute Woman."
The seven heads are seven emperors and at the time John saw this and wrote, "Five of them fell, and one did," At that time the Roman emperor Nero was in power and the world was ruled by the Roman Empire, which was the sixth in a row and before the Egyptian kingdom, the Assyrian kingdom, the Babylonian kingdom, the Medo-Persian kingdom, and the Greek kingdom fell, and Satan used all these kingdoms to rule the world.
,, ,, And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, [and] the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”
Rev. 17:10
And this second part of the verse has not been fulfilled yet and for us this is the future and this seventh "head" is the kingdom that will come and its "king" is talked about a lot today and it is about the Antichrist who will reign but " in short "in relation to those world kingdoms of which we have spoken.
And finally, "ten horns" are mentioned, so let's see what it says about it:
,, And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.”
Rev. 17:12
So it is a "renewed Roman Empire" and it will be a "coalition or alliance" in the future of ten emperors to whom the "president, leader or emperor" will be the Antichrist.