Revelation 12:1

PERSONALITIES OF THE ANTICHRISTIC WAR, Revelation 12:1 to Revelation 13:18.

Satanic dragon and man child Christ, Revelation 12:1-6.

1. And In the opening of this chapter three representative beings appear on the scene. The man child, Christ; the mother; and the dragon, ready to devour the child. The grouping at once suggests the source whence the symbolism is drawn. We at once think of the virgin mother, the infant Jesus, and the murderous Herod. Yet the subsequent wilderness history of the woman shows that the virgin is here introduced as a symbol of the Church; that as Herod is not actually named, the dragon is truly the literal Satan, and that the man child is truly Christ. Yet the habiliments of the dragon show that he is Satan as representative of pagan Roman antichrist, and the man child is Christ as representative leader in the battle against antichrist. As the woman is symbol, and the Herod is symbol, so the man child is here symbol. Alford is right in insisting that “the man child is the Lord Jesus Christ and none other,” (not Constantine, nor any other Roman emperor;) but he is wrong in ignoring the plain fact, that both Christ and the dragon are here representatives of Christianity and paganism in the Roman world; that the battle here is truly between the two great causes, and that the overthrow of the dragon is the downfall of paganism.

As the beast of Revelation 13:1, is the specific antichrist of the New Testament, according to the apocalypse, so Gebhardt holds the dragon to be rather anti-god. This may in due degree be admitted. The paganism of the Old Testament, and even as it laps over into the New, is opposed not so much to Christ as to God. It supplies a rival, and denies the true divine existence. Yet, by another view, as Christ is the Jehovah of the Old Dispensation, so the anti-god is, through all ages, the lineal antichrist. See introductory note to 2 Thessalonians, chap. 2. We might, then, (and some of our readers may prefer the view,) reckon the contest with the dragon as part of the coming anti-christic war, and so reckon four rather than three “overthrows of antichrist.” Yet as the man child and the dragon are here presented as the two powers which, after this antecedent contest, are reserved in the background as the source, inspiration, and controllers of the manifest war, we prefer to consider this contest as preludial, introduced to show the genesis of the main war and to authenticate the personalities introduced in the next chapter as the combatants; thereby leaving but three main “overthrows.”

There appeared From the symbolic heaven, where the panorama was in action, the seer looks upward to a higher ethereal region, the atmospheric heaven, where the woman, and subsequently the dragon, appear; yet higher still, the third heaven, is the throne whither the child was caught up. Note Revelation 4:11.

Wonder Rather, sign, token, symbol, a phenomenon significant of some idea. So 1 Corinthians 14:22; Matthew 12:39; Matthew 24:3.

Sun In the gorgeous imagery investing the woman is truly to be seen a recognition of the unparalleled honour of the blessed virgin in becoming the mother of the Incarnate. Sad as is the error of the Romanistic adoration of her person, no reaction of thought should prevent our recognising the due honour which Scripture pays her. And one honour is, that she is clearly here the basis of the symbol of the Church in its struggle with paganism. Note on Matthew 1:18.

There is an apparent incongruity in the Church’s being here the mother of Christ and also, hereafter, the bride of Christ. But the two are to be separated in thought as different symbols. The maternal symbol of the Church is a specialty, terminating at a particular historic point. The bridal symbol comes from another region of thought, and extends into the final glorification.

Clothed with the sun ”Invested,” Newton well says, “with the rays of the sun of righteousness.”

The moon The symbol of sublunary change, over and upon which the ideal Church stands exalted.

Crown of twelve stars The twelve apostles, under whom she stands as the apostolic Church. The three orders of heavenly luminaries combine to do her homage. Robed with the sun, and crowned with the stars, she stands on the moon her silver pedestal. While each of these investments may have its symbolic import, the clustering of the whole is to render glorious the personified Church. The dragon, on the contrary, in a different hemisphere of the firmament, is clothed in no such glory, but equipped with symbols of power and fierceness.