Scripture Daily

Context No. 1273 of 4322 · Revelation

Context · Reflection

Revelation 12:1-6: in context

1A 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. 2She was with child. She cried out in pain, laboring to give birth. 3Another sign was seen in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns. 4His tail drew one third of the stars of the sky, and threw them to the earth. The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Her child was caught up to God and to his throne. 6The woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that there they may nourish her one thousand two hundred sixty days.

John sees a great sign in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, a crown of twelve stars, crying out in the pains of labor. Then a second sign, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, sweeping a third of the stars from the sky with its tail. The dragon stands before the woman, waiting to devour her child the moment it is born. She gives birth to a son who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and the child is caught up to God and to his throne, while the woman flees to a place God has prepared for her in the wilderness.

The scene is a cosmic drama behind the story of the gospel. The woman, representing God's people from whom the Messiah comes, gives birth, and the dragon, the ancient serpent, crouches to devour the child at the moment of his birth. It is the whole hostility of evil against Christ compressed into one image: from Herod's slaughter of the infants to the final cross, the dragon meant to destroy the child. And yet the dragon fails. The child is born, rules, and is caught up to God's throne, snatched to safety and to sovereignty beyond the dragon's reach. The devouring mouth closes on nothing; the child the dragon meant to destroy is enthroned. There is enormous comfort in that for a persecuted church. The great enemy is real and murderous, poised over every good thing God brings to birth, and yet God's purposes cannot be devoured; the child is caught up to the throne, and the woman is kept in a place God prepared. Evil rages against what God is bringing forth, and it fails; the dragon is real but not sovereign. What God intends to birth and enthrone, no dragon can swallow.

When evil seems poised to devour what God is bringing to birth in my life or in the world, can I trust that God's purposes cannot be swallowed, that the child the dragon meant to destroy is caught up to the throne?

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