Revelation 12:6

Revelation 12:6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they may nourish her there a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days. The fortunes of the woman's child having been described, we are now informed of her own. The flight of Elijah into the wilderness, perhaps even the temptation of our Lord there, is present to the writer's mind; and the words are applicable to the condition of the Church during her whole pilgrimage state in the present world. Thus closes the first scene of the chapter, and we have now to ask as to its meaning. It appears to us that the key to this is to be found in the opening verses of the Gospel of St. John (John 1:1-5), the parallelism of which to the present passage it is impossible to mistake. We have the same contrasts as those there presented, light, darkness, light shining in the darkness, the darkness trying to prevail against the light, but not overcoming it (see note on John 1:5). Here also, as there, nothing is said of the origin of the darkness. We read only that it exists. If these observations be correct we can now understand the scene. It is not interrupted at Revelation 12:7, in order that the war in heaven may be described, and again resumed at Revelation 12:13. There is a marked difference between the two scenes contained in Revelation 12:1-6 and Revelation 12:13-17, and the difference consists in this, that the first is ideal, the second actual. Strictly speaking, the woman in Revelation 12:1-6 is neither the Jewish nor the Christian Church. She is light from Him ‘who is light, and with whom there is no darkness at all,' light which had been always shining before it was partially embodied either in the Church of the old or the new covenant. Her actual conflict with the darkness has not begun. We behold her in her own glorious existence, and it is enough to dwell upon the potencies that are in her as ‘a light of man.' In like manner the dragon is not yet to be identified with the devil or Satan. That identification does not take place till we reach Revelation 12:9. The former differs from the latter as the abstract and ideal power of evil differs from evil in the concrete. As the woman is ideal light, light before it appears in the Church upon earth, so the dragon is ideal darkness, the power of sin before it begins its deadly warfare against the children of God. Thus also we learn what is intended by the son who is born to the woman. He is not the Son actually incarnate but the ideally incarnate Son, ‘the true light, which lighteth every man, coming into the world' (John 1:9). More difficulty may be felt in answering the question, whether, along with the Son Himself, we are to see in this ‘son, of man's sex,' the true members of Christ's Body. Ideally, it would seem that we are to do so. All commentators allow that in the son's being ‘caught up unto God and unto His throne' there is a reference to the ascension and glorification of our Lord. But, if so, it appears to be impossible to separate between the risen, ascended, and glorified Lord and those who are in Him thus risen, ascended, and glorified. In a note on John 16:21 we have called attention to the use of the word ‘man' instead of child in that verse, as showing that we are there invited to behold the new birth of regenerated humanity, that new life in a risen Saviour with which the Church springs into being. The thought thus presented in the words of Jesus meets us again in this vision of the Seer. Christ's true people as well as Himself are made to sit down with Him in His throne, even as He sat down with His Father in His throne (Revelation 3:21). They not less than their Lord tend as a shepherd the nations with a sceptre of iron, even as He received of His Father (chap. Revelation 2:26-27). We cannot separate Him from them or them from Him. Everything then in these verses is anticipatory or ideal. The forces are on the field. We see light and darkness, their natural antagonism to each other, the fierce enmity of the darkness against the light, the apparent success but real defeat of the darkness, the apparent quenching but real triumph of the light God's eternal plan is before us. We have a ‘pattern' like that ‘showed to Moses in the mount' (comp. chap. Revelation 4:11).