The remnant in Revelation 12

Revelation 12 clearly teaches that God has a remnant church in the time of the end. Verses 1-6 of that chapter picture a woman who gives birth to a royal Man-child and a great red dragon that tries to destroy them both. The woman is a symbol of God’s faithful people (see Isaiah 54:5, 6; 2 Corinthians 11:2); the dragon is Satan (see Revelation 12:9); the Man- child is Christ (see Psalm 2:9); and the 1,260 prophetic days refer to the period of papal supremacy from the sixth century to the end of the eighteenth century (538-1798).GP 40.2

Revelation 12:7-12 comprises an interlude explaining where Satan came from. In verse 13, John returns to the story begun in the first six verses of that chapter:GP 40.3

Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.GP 40.4

And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ (verses 13-17).GP 40.5

Verses 13-15 describe in symbolic terms the persecution of the Christian church, first by the Roman Empire and later by the apostate Roman Church. In verse 16, the earth—personified, and representing the newly discovered continent of America—helps the church by providing a safe haven, symbolically swallowing up the persecuting armies (see Revelation 17:15). In the seventeenth century, sending armies across the Atlantic was a difficult undertaking.GP 41.1

Revelation 12:17 places us in a time after the 1,260-day period—in other words, in the nineteenth century. Satan, seeing that he was unable to destroy God’s faithful people, is angry with the remnant of the woman’s seed—the remnant church.GP 41.2