Thursday 15th December
Read Revelation 11:19-12:6
“Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. 12 1A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who ‘will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre.’ And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.” (NIVUK)
The challenge of understanding John’s vision becomes clear towards the end of the passage. The woman who gives birth seems to change identity. If the woman is identified definitively as Israel (v1) then it is confusing if she flees into the wilderness after the birth of Jesus. For in John, the ‘1260 days’ (v6), ‘the time, times and half a time’ (v14), the ‘42 months’ (Revelation 13:5), all point to the time between Jesus first coming and His return – so the woman is the church. Or, more symbolically, the woman is God’s people, old and new, gathered around Jesus.
Whilst some interpreters insist on taking this literally, the manifold ways in which this ‘three-and-a-half-year period’ is described, and the unlikely coincidence that it is precisely half of seven should make us pause. The woman and the dragon are clearly symbols, so the time period is equally likely to be symbolic. It reflects a length of time, not unending but not yet complete, that is marked at each end. At one end is Jesus’ entry into history in the incarnation and ascension, His first coming. The other end is marked by His return (cf Revelation 11:1-13). Personally, I think the reason it is symbolically ‘half of seven’ is John’s way of saying that the incarnation and coming of Jesus is the pivot point of history. The most important moment in the universe.
In this post-Christmas time though, we are in constant danger because the dragon’s failure has resulted in fury (v12c) and war (v17) against God’s people. But just like God’s people of old, protected in the wilderness and cared for with manna and water, His new people are protected until He returns and we enter the land of promise. It does not mean things won’t be hard, (it is a wilderness after all), but it does mean we are never abandoned. Christmas calls us to consider those who feel abandoned at this time and hold out to them the security and safety we ourselves have found. That is the ‘big picture’ of Christmas!
