As a quick reminder, we aren't going deep into the signs and symbols yet because we are doing an overview of the full book before we continue.

1. Lesson 1 A Book For You: Our story begins not with a chaotic look into the future, but a specific blessing on those who hear, keep, and obey its words. Revelation is an ethical prophecy that demands a response of repentance and obedience.
2. Lesson 2: The Promised Inheritance: Written to seven specific churches. Jesus weaves together seven distinct promises to those who overcome—promising them the Tree of Life, the Crown of Life, hidden manna, authority over nations, white garments, a pillar in the temple, and a seat on His throne. When you look closely, these aren't different tiers of rewards for different groups; they are the unified inheritance of a victorious Bride who will wear Jesus' name on her forehead and be arrayed in fine linen, bright and clean.
3. Lesson 3: The Worthy Lamb: But how does the Bride actually receive this inheritance? To find out, the scene shifts directly into a heavenly courtroom. Sitting in the center of the room is a sealed scroll—the ultimate title deed containing all the covenant promises made throughout history, from Eve to Abraham, through David, and down to these seven churches. No one in heaven or earth can open it until the Worthy Lamb steps forward and claims the everlasting kingdom to share with His saints.
4. Lesson 4: The Curses: When Jesus breaks the seals, Jesus initiates a judgement on to a lawsuit rebellious nation that broke His covenant. We learned The final destruction of the wicked cannot proceed until God's people are safely delivered and marked for protection—just like Lot fleeing Sodom or the Israelites spared by the Passover blood in Egypt. We saw a contrast between the 144,000 are sealed and an innumerable multitude of believers who are martyred during the Great Tribulation and received the promise of the 7 churches.
5. Lesson 5: From Warnings to Final Verdict: We see that God always desires the repentance of people. Even before He pours out His wrath in the bowls, launched in direct response to the prayers of the saints, we see that he uses the Trumpets as warning judgments to call people to repentance.
6. Lesson 6: The Eviction of the Counterfeit: When mercy is refused, the time for repentance is officially over. We see the trumpets and Bowls mirrors the Exodus plagues against a new system spiritually called "Sodom and Egypt.". We are called to be like Rahab and look for Gods Kingdom to overtake the Earth.
7. Lesson 7: We say the mystery of the Woman Zion revealed her to be Old Testament and New Testament people of God. Those that keep His commands and hold to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She is the a symbol for a bride, daughter and mother that is clothed with the Glory of God. Lets see what happens to her in the climax of the Bible!

How Chapter 12 Wraps Up the Bible

Because Revelation is written as a chiasm, Chapter 12 acts as the final scene in a movie. With flashbacks of everything that as happened leading to the final battle. It summarizes the entire Biblical narrative in just a few verses: Lets take a look at it together!

!The Woman And The Dragon.canvas

Let's look at the symbols in Revelation 12 and see how the Old Testament defines them. Fill in the blanks using the provided Bible verses:

Second, is a balance to the first - never give Satan too much credit. The crown the the woman wears in verse 1 is the stephanos crown, which is a victory wreath. The devil is never said to wear that stephanos crown. Victory is not attributed to Satan. Instead, he wears diadems - the crown the emperors wore - and of course, each empire has passed away. Empires come and go, but Zion remains. God has given victory to the church, not Satan. Satan may rule, but his rule is diminishing because of the victory of the bride. Never give too much credit to Satan.
We've already seen that the woman was the mother church in Israel that the book of Acts describes.

ragons not inherently evil since they were created by God (Gen. 1:21; Job 40:15-24; 41:1-34). There were three kinds of dragon: Tannin (Ps. 91:13), Leviathon (Ps. 104:26), and Rahab (Job 26:12-13).

Second, it says that he was fiery red. Well, his prefall name was Lucifer, which means "Day star." Well, the Day Star was Venus, which Space.com calls a hot, hellish, and volcanic planet. It is fiery red. I put a NASA picture of it in your bulletin. So if he was named after Venus, he may indeed have been fiery red. And he was also called "son of the morning," no doubt because of his color. He was said to walk among fiery stones.

n. Psalm 91:13 speaks of the Tannin. Those were the dragons that Genesis 1:21 talks about. Psalm 104:26 speaks of Leviathon. It says that God made Leviathon to play in the sea. And I love that image of a dinosaur-like creature playing around in the sea and having fun. And then Job 26:12-13 speaks of yet another dinosaur called "Rahab" in the Hebrew.''

And finally, seven diadems speaks to perfection of rule. His rule really was perfect initially. God said so. He said in Ezekiel 28, "You were the seal of perfection... You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you."

So this is not God casting the angels out of heaven. This is Satan taking angels out of their heavenly domain and kingdom and forcing them into an earthly kingdom that he was now ruling over. He had succeeded in robbing earth from Adam and he now sought to overthrow the kingdom of heaven. But the most he was able to do was to get one third of all angels to rebel.

3 And another sign appeared in the sky: behold, a dragon, huge, fiery red, having seven heads and ten horns, with seven diadems on his heads. 4 And its tail grabbed a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the land.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth in order to devour her Child as soon as she gave birth. 5 And she bore a Son, a male, who was about to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was snatched up to God, even to His throne.

• God put --enmity-- between the serpent and the --woman--. The dragon waits to --devour-- the child, just like Pharaoh (the great dragon/monster of Egypt) tried to destroy the Hebrew children.

• The male Child is promised the nations as an inheritance and will rule them with a rod of --iron--.

And that there was conflict that went on with humans is implied in the Greek tense for the word "stood" in verse 4. It is in the perfect tense. The perfect tense indicates that the action had already started in the past and continues to happen at the time the writer is writing. So when verse 4 says, "And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth" it indicates that the standing before the woman had been going on, continued to go on just before the woman gave birth, and would continue on after she gave birth. And of course, the rest of the chapter says the same thing.

But when Satan gets hold of him, they look for another. Then perhaps the Messiah would come through Abel. But when Cain kills Abel (probably at Satan's instigation - that's why 1 John says that Satan was a murderer from the beginning), God continues to promise a Messiah through Shem. So Satan fights against the seed of Shem. And then it was through Abraham, through Judah, through David, etc. Satan only knew so much, but he engaged in conflict with the woman to kill whatever seed she might bring forth that would do him in.
It's not by accident that on two occasions Satan tried to have Sarah raped by a pagan king. The dragon's enmity with the seed is manifested symbolically in the enmity of Esau against Jacob even in the womb.
atthew 1:21 says that Jesus came to save us from our sins. And there are stages to that salvation. We have been saved meritoriously in Christ's life and death, we were saved judicially from the penalty of sin in justification, we are being saved from the power of sin progressively in sanctification, and we will be saved from the presence of sin in our glorification. All of that is labeled as salvation in Scripture. Well, when you apply that concept of being saved individually from sin you can see that salvation came to heaven when heaven was forever cleansed from sin. It was swept out of heaven

But we are not just saved from sin; we are saved from Satan. 1 John 3:8 says, "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." So salvation doesn't just involve saving us from the authority, penalty, power, and presence of sin; it also involves saving us from the authority, power, and presence of Satan and his demonic armies.

1 John 1:7 says, "...if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." Who is he talking to? To believers. Believers confess their sins and are cleansed from their sins by claiming His blood.
 1 Peter 1:19 says that Christ's blood buys us back us from fear and bondage. Satan loves to torment our consciences, but Hebrews 9:14 says that Christ's blood frees us from a guilty conscience. Any work that Satan might do in our lives to make us ineffective, Christ's blood can wash away. So when we appeal to the cleansing of Christ's blood, we are free. A cleansed conscience is a huge part of victory over the demonic. So that is the first way in which the blood of Christ helps us to overcome Satan - it removes the sins that make us weak.

Verses 1-4 give two visions of two signs in heaven covering the same time period.

• When Chapter 12 opens, John sees two great signs in the sky. These operate like two summary "movie clips" that fast-forward through history, spanning from Genesis 1 all the way up to just before the birth of Christ.
• Then verses 3-4 shows a summary history of Satan during the same time period - from Genesis 1 to just before the birth of Christ. So verse 2 and verse 4 are referring to the same time period - just before the birth of Christ.

5

Verses 5-6 give the history from the birth of Christ to AD 66.

Though I am not dogmatic, I believe verses 7-12 take place at Pentecost of AD 66 - God's last warning to Israel that war was imminent. The other alternative is to see it as right at the beginning of the Festival of Trumpets, which was September 8 of AD 66. But I take it as May because I think it is more consistent with what happened in chapter 8.

Verse 13 explains the heating up of the persecution of the church that happened in May and the months following that almost led to the virtual extermination of the church around the empire. But obviously not everyone was killed. In Matthew 24 Jesus prophesied that if this tribulation had not been cut short, no one would have survived.

The focus of verses 14-16 is on the Jewish Christian remnant that escaped and survived in the city of Pella for the duration of the three and a half year war against Jerusalem.

The focus of verse 17 is on Satan's persecution of the rest of Zion's offspring - that is, the Gentile church that had not been exterminated yet. And according to ancient church fathers, that persecution did indeed almost exterminate the Gentile church and was ended when Nero died in AD 68.

So the chapter as a whole describes incredibly troubling times for the church. Yet in the midst of this worst persecution ever, verses 10-11 form a testimony of faith concerning the total victory of Jesus over Satan. It is looking at the mess through the eyes of faith. Verses 10-11 are the heart of the chiasm of this chapter. In a sense they are the heart of the whole book. And we will look at those two verses next time. So that's an overview of where the chapter is heading.

War broke out in heaven (v. 7a) - why would God allow this?

And we are now up to verse 7, which speaks of war breaking out in heaven. And that raises the question, "Why would God allow war to break out in heaven? Isn't heaven the place where everything is perfect?" Verse 7 says, "War was declared in heaven; Michael and his angels were to wage war with the dragon; so the dragon and his angels made war..."
Notice first who initiates the war. Verse 7 says, "War was declared in heaven; Michael and his angels were to wage war with the dragon..." It is Michael's armies that initiate the war. It is only in response to heaven's declaration of war that Satan responds with his own declaration of war: "so the dragon and his angels made war." So the good armies took the offensive.

This was not the first time that war had happened in the heavenlies (cf. Dan. 10:12-13, 20-21; 2 Kings 6:15-18; Ps 68:17-18; Zech 1:8-11; 6:1-7; etc.)

What is implied here about the connection between Daniel's prayers and the success of the angels in battle is illustrated so well in Exodus 17. In fact, anytime you think of spiritual warfare, it might be helpful to have the image of Exodus 17 in your mind. There was a major battle between Israel and Amalek and during the whole battle Moses raised his hands in prayer on behalf of the Israelite army. Let me read verses 11-13 of that chapter:

Ex. 17:11 And so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. Ex. 17:12 But Moses’ hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. Ex. 17:13 So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.

Verse 10

Why did God allow Satan and his evil angels to have access to heaven's court? (cf. Job 1:6; 2:1; 1 Kings 22:19-23; 2 Chron. 18:18-22; Zech. 3:1-5)

5. The Flight to the Wilderness

14 And to the woman were given two wings of the great eagle, so that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, so that she might be nourished there for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.

• The woman is given the --wings-- of a great --eagle-- to fly into the wilderness, just like the Israelites when they were delivered from Egypt.
  Malachi 4:2 speaks of His supernatural healing: "The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings." His wings are associated with supernatural healing. Psalm 17:8 promises supernatural protection from the enemy: "Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me under the shadow of your wings." Psalm 36:7 promises supernatural provision: "How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings." Deuteronomy 32 promises the church supernatural guidance, training, and leading. Speaking of God's guidance of Israel with the Glory Cloud, it says,

Deuteronomy 32:10-12 He [God] encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye. 11 As an eagle stirs up its nest, Hovers over its young, Spreading out its wings, taking them up, [the little eaglets will sometimes ride on the back of the mother eagle to get a feel for it - "Spreading out its wings, taking them up"] Carrying them on its wings, 12 So the LORD alone led him,

"the great eagle" that are given to her. In fact the word "the" is emphasized twice in the Greek, literally "two wings of the eagle, the great one

Alluding to taking Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness, God said, " I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself" (Exodus 19:4). Deuteronomy 33:10-12 says, “he maintained him in the wilderness [ἔρημος] … as an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so the LORD alone led him...” This emphasizes His personal intervention. He was there in the form of a theophany - a pillar that glowed at night and a pillar that looked like a cloud during the day. So this is why many commentaries believe that this is a reference to God Himself personally bearing her up.6

One interesting side note is that if this is indeed using the Old Testament symbol of God rescuing His bride out of Egypt on eagles wings and taking her into the wilderness to protect her, then Jerusalem and Israel are now being likened to pagan Egypt. Of course, that is not the first time God has done that.

Note that waters frequently represent pagan armies (cf. 2 Sam 22:5; Ps. 18:16-17; 93:3-4; 124:4; Is. 59:19; Jer. 46:7; 47:2; Dan. 9:26; 11:22)

• David said, "The floods of --ungodliness-- made me afraid,"

• Isaiah 59:19 says, "When the enemy comes in --like a flood--.

These waters are referring to some kind of unbelieving armies. They are not literal water.

these waters symbolize human armies, or human enemies more examples are (2 Sam 22:5; Ps. 18:16-17; 93:3-4; 124:4; Is. 59:19; Jer. 46:7; 47:2; Dan. 9:26; 11:22).

Part 2: Conclusions - Unlocking Revelation 12

Now that we have seen the Old Testament blueprints, we can understand exactly what this vision means without making any guesses!

The Accuser

[!Bible] Revelation 12:9-10 "So the great dragon was expelled... who is called Slanderer and Satan... because the --accuser-- of our brothers has been thrown down, who accused them before our God day and night."

• In the Old Testament, --Satan-- used to have access to present himself before the LORD to oppose and act as the --accuser-- of the brothers, but now he has been thrown down.

Exposition of verses 1-2

Second, notice that this sign appeared in heaven. Isaiah 7:14's sign appeared on the earth; this one appears in heaven. In Philippians 3:20 Paul says, "our citizenship is in heaven..." We are part of the kingdom of heaven invading earth,. Zion's identity is with heaven.

As Jesus told Nicodemus, we are "born from above" (the literal rendering of what the old KJV translated "born again.") Every time a person is converted, there is a birth that the heavenly Zion has achieved. We are born from above. Everything in the New Covenant kingdom comes from above. So Psalm 87 speaks of this heavenly Zion and says of believers from Philistia and Tyre, "This one was born there." And "when He registers the peoples; 'This one was born there.'"

And that is why Colossians 3 tells us that we must seek those things which are above, where Christ is. If you are a part of Zion, then like Christ you can say, "My kingdom does not originate from this world; it invades this world."

That's as far as I will go this morning. Next week we will get into some of the intense spiritual warfare that the passage talks about. But I wanted to settle the question of the identity of the woman today.

And I do want to conclude with one additional admonition, and that is that we should value the church of Jesus Christ like verse 1 values the church. Is the church perfect? No. That's why it needs to be clothed in Christ Himself. The church's glory is Christ's glory. That is the only glory worth seeing. But it is important that we learn to see Christ in the church and to see His glory in the church.

Verse 1 shows that she is glorious and her destiny is glorious. It is easy to get frustrated with how far short of this glory the church of today really falls. But it helps us to not get as frustrated when we remember three things.

First, verse 1 describes the church as she appears to God clothed in Christ Jesus - clothed in the Sun. This is not just her destiny, but her legal status. The church shares in the glory of Christ. She is secure in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and if God does not cast her away, neither should we. We need to look at a messed up church through the eyes of her position in Jesus. That will help us to love her more.

Second, remind yourself that you too fall far short of this glory of God, yet God values you. This will give you a little bit of humility. God can see past the less than pleasant aspects of travail and birth pangs and the blood and perspiration and see the woman for who she is. We need to try to do the same.

Third, pray that the church would more and more reflect the glory of heaven - that God's will would be done in the church of earth as it is in heaven. Amen. Let's pray.

Christ's words in Matthew 12:46-50

And Jesus gives the answer of what was symbolized in Matthew 12. He doesn't deny that Mary was His mother, but in various places in the Gospels He downplays that role and up-plays the role that Zion, the people of God had. I'll read verses 46-50 of Matthew 12.

Matt. 12:46 While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him. Matt. 12:47 Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.” Matt. 12:48 But He answered and said to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” Matt. 12:49 And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! Matt. 12:50 For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”

Notice that Zion fulfills the role of being both mother and brothers, just as we will see that Revelation 12 shows that Zion plays the role of both mother and brothers of Jesus. And Christ's last words are almost identical to Revelation 12:17 that defines the offspring of the woman as being those who keep God's commandments. They are the brothers of Jesus.

Four context hints that Rome is incorrect

Let's look first of all at four hints in the immediate context that militate against the Roman Catholic interpretation. The first problem with their interpretation is the order of the events. Verse 1 has the woman appearing in heaven before she gives birth to the child, whereas Roman Catholics say that verse 1 is describing the end of her life - her bodily assumption to heaven to become the queen of heaven at her death. But verse 1 occurs before verse 2. There is an order in these verses. Whoever this woman is, she appears in heaven before Christ is born into the world. That is a major problem for the Roman Catholic view.

The second problem is that verse 6 says that the woman flees into the wilderness where she is protected for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, and verses 13-17 apply that period of time to the time of trouble from AD 67 to AD 70. But was Mary even alive at the time of that war? And the answer of church fathers and of history is an absolute no. She seems to have died sometime in the 50s. Even Roman Catholics teach that she died at the age of 72 sometime in the mid-50s. And simple math demonstrates that. If Jesus was born in 5 or 4 BC, and if she conceived at the age of twelve or thirteen (assumimg a very young age for the sake of argument), then according to Roman Catholic teaching, she would have been assumed to heaven around AD 56. But that is far too early for the Roman war. So the immediate context of the war of AD 67-70 simply does not fit their interpretation. And it doesn't even fit a non-Roman-Catholic interpretation.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Roman Catholics try to rescue their theory by saying that verse 6 applies to their flight into Egypt, not to the AD 67-70 flight. Egypt is a wilderness. So voila - she stayed in Egypt for three and a half years. The problem is that Matthew 2:19-23 makes clear that as soon as Herod died, an angel told Joseph and Mary to return to Israel, which they immediately did. Well, Herod died in 4 BC. If you count forward from the earliest date that Jesus could be born, and then add the forty days mentioned in Luke 2 which were required by the law before Mary could present Jesus in the temple, and then her traveling back to Bethlehem, you barely have a year that she could have been in Egypt. If Jesus was born in 4 BC, then they were in Egypt for less than a year.

And on the web there are various chronologies that work these early events in Christ's life out for you. Answers in Genesis has a good one. But, assuming the earliest date proposed for Christ's birth, even if they slowly made their way from Egypt to Nazareth, it would still be early 3 BC, and still make their sojourn in Egypt barely over a year. Yet verse 6 is quite explicit that it is an exact number of days - one thousand two hundred and sixty days that the woman is hidden in the wilderness. That adds up to three and a half years. So her stay in Egypt is two and a half years short of what is required by this text. It doesn't fit.

In any case, interpreting the three and a half years as being in Egypt in 4 BC contradicts the parallel part of the chiastic structure of this chapter where verses 13-17 interpret the three and a half years as being the three and a half year war against Jerusalem. So that is a major problem to the Mary interpretation. It forced me to see the woman as something going beyond her.

But even if you were to ignore that problem, there is another problem for the Roman Catholic theory. Verse 17 says, "So the dragon was furious with the woman and off he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, those who keep the commands of God and hold the testimony of Jesus." The problem for Roman Catholics is that the Greek word for offspring is σπέρμα, a word, that if taken literally would refer to your own biological children. They don't believe she had any other children, and the word 'rest of' in verse 17 (rest of her children) implies that she did if you take the passage in a literal way. Now, that's not a problem for them if they take it symbolically, which of course they do. They say that the literal Mary is the symbolical mother of the church. The problem is, they jump back and forth between literal and symbolical. If Roman Catholics want to take Mary as the only referent rather than as the literal symbol of something else that is going on, then they should acknowledge that Mary had other children and was not a perpetual virgin. That they are unwilling to do.

But even if you are not a Roman Catholic and you believe that Mary had other children by Joseph (something clearly affirmed by several Scriptures) verse 17 still does not make sense. According to history, her literal children were dead by AD 70. Now, I am not saying you should take it literally. John doesn't want us to. He calls all this a sign or symbol. And commentators point out that "the rest of her offspring" in verse 17 is grammatically defined by the next clause - all those "who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus." In other words, the children appear to be a reference to the corporate people of God, not simply Mary's literal children. So that argues for a corporate or symbolical interpretation for the whole passage.

And there is yet another problem for the Roman Catholic theory. Verse 2 says, "she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth." If you read much on Roman Catholic forums you will discover that it is a rather embarrassing verse to them because Roman Catholic dogma says that Christ came out of the womb without the pains of childbirth and indeed, without any vaginal delivery whatsoever. Here is how the Catechism of the Council of Trent words it,

But as the Conception itself transcends the order of nature, so the birth of our Lord presents to our contemplation nothing but what is divine. Besides, what is admirable beyond the power of thoughts or words to express, He is born of His Mother without any diminution of her maternal virginity, just as He afterwards went forth from the sepulchre while it was closed and sealed, and entered the room in which His disciples were assembled, the doors being shut; or not to depart from every-day examples, just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted manner did Jesus Christ come forth from His mother's womb without injury to her maternal virginity. This immaculate and perpetual virginity forms, therefore, the just theme of our eulogy. Such was the work of the Holy Spirit, who at the Conception and birth of the Son so favored the Virgin Mother as to impart to her fecundity while preserving inviolate her perpetual virginity.2

So they teach that the baby Jesus miraculously passed through the walls of the abdomen and into Mary's arms with absolutely no pain. So how do they reconcile that doctrine with verse 2, which says that this woman "cried out in labor and in pain to give birth"? They say that this was a reference to her giving birth spiritually at the cross. And I think, "Now wait a minute! You just used verse 2 to prove that it had to be Mary since only Mary gave birth to Jesus, and now you are saying verse 2 is the cross and verse 4 is the birth?! That makes no sense." You see, that spiritual interpretation undermines their insistence that it was Mary and Mary alone who could give birth to Jesus. You can't spiritualize verse 2 and literalize verses 4-5. They are all referring to the same birth. You can't have it both ways. Either verse 2 refers to the birth of Jesus or the death of Jesus, but it can't be both. If it refers to the death of Jesus, it completely undermines their strongest argument that this is literally Mary exalted to the heavens rather than Zion.

So those are four hints in the context that there is something much bigger going on here than Mary's giving birth to Jesus. I don't have a big issue if you do say that it is Mary. I have a big issue with the Roman Catholic interpretation which exalts Mary almost above Jesus. Protestants don't deny that Mary was the mother of Jesus, but they say that this passage seems to be pointing beyond her in some way. She may be the literal sign, but what was symbolized? She doesn't symbolize herself.

Second, is a balance to the first - never give Satan too much credit. The crown the the woman wears in verse 1 is the stephanos crown, which is a victory wreath. The devil is never said to wear that stephanos crown. Victory is not attributed to Satan. Instead, he wears diadems - the crown the emperors wore - and of course, each empire has passed away. Empires come and go, but Zion remains. God has given victory to the church, not Satan. Satan may rule, but his rule is diminishing because of the victory of the bride. Never give too much credit to Satan.
We've already seen that the woman was the mother church in Israel that the book of Acts describes.

Her offspring = Gentile converts to Christianity throughout the world

Are you one of her children?

Psalm 87 (another fabulous Psalm that stands as the background to this passage) not only speaks of the Messiah as having His springs in the beautiful and glorious heavenly Zion, but says that believing Jews and Gentiles alike are all born in Zion.

Note the defining characteristics of true Christians (v. 17b)

The third thing I want you to notice is two defining characteristics of a true Christian. Look at the last clause of verse 17. It says, "he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, those who keep the commands of God and hold the testimony of Jesus." The true offspring of mother church are said to have two characteristics. If you lack these two characteristics, you lack what defines the offspring of Zion. In other words, you are not a true Christian.

1. ,Those who carefully keep (τηρούντων) the commands of God
   • they are those who carefully keep the commandments of God. The word for "keep" is τηρούντων, and refers to obeying, guarding, carefully keeping, or carefully holding onto something. Obeying God's Law Word is not a haphazard thing for them. They don't just sin and casually confess their sins as if sin is a trivial thing. No! They guard God's commandments as a treasure and consciously seek to keep those commands. Another way of saying this is that antinomianism is not Christianity. When so-called Christians say that they are not under law and therefore don't have to keep God's commandments, they are saying that they are not the offspring of Zion. says,

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him...

I don't think you could get more clear than that. Antinomianism is not Christianity. It is true that we are not under the law's condemnation, but says, "He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked." Or, as the NIV paraphrases it, "Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." "must walk as Jesus did." Jesus fully kept the law of God, and so we should seek to imitate Him by grace. Christ did not save us to enable us to sin with a free conscience. Matthew 1:21 says that Christ's whole purpose for coming into the world was "to save His people from their sins." And since all sin is lawlessness, He came to save us from lawlessness. Christians who are lawless are fake Christians.

2. Those who hold onto (ἐχόντων) the testimony of Jesus

And secondly, the offspring of mother church are described as being those who hold onto the testimony of Jesus. In other words, they never let go of the Gospel; they are never ashamed of the Gospel. It is not law-keeping apart from the Gospel of Christ. That will damn us. And it is not Gospel apart from the law. That is a false Gospel. It is law-keeping by grace once saved by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without the law there would be no need for the grace, and it is grace alone that enables us to keep God's law. The two imply each other. True believers hold steadfastly to law and Gospel.