The “Woman” of Revelation 12

In Revelation 12 we find a most striking prophecy of the church of Christ, under the symbol of a woman clothed with the light of the sun, and having on her head a crown of twelve stars, who brought forth a man-child “who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron,” etc. The woman fled into the wilderness from the face of a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, where she was preserved for a period of 126o prophetic days (or years) from the face of the serpent. The woman symbolizes the true church, which commentators generally admit. The man-child is our Savior, who was “caught up unto God, and to his throne.” The great red dragon symbolizes the Roman power, which stood before the woman “to devour her child as soon as it was born,” in the person of Herod, a Roman governor, who tried to put Jesus to death when he killed all the male children in Bethlehem that were two years old or under.ChSa 173.3

The reader will notice with peculiar interest the fact that the woman, or true church, was hidden away in the wilderness from this persecuting power precisely the same length of time that the “little horn” of Daniel 7 was to persecute the church of God and seem to change his law. That period began AD. 538, when the last of the three kingdoms was plucked up by the papacy. About the same time the adherents of the true church, as we have seen, no longer remained in union with the Roman Catholic Church; and they were ever after known as heretics. They hid away in retired places, while the apostate power “exalted himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped,” in the very “temple,” or church, of God himself. Thus Inspiration represents this wonderful period of human history.ChSa 174.1