And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.
We have here the picture of a dragon standing before a woman about to give birth to a child, and ready to destroy it. The child is born, and is caught up by God. The woman flees to the wilderness, where God has prepared for her food and shelter. Bearing in mind that we are now being given an explanation of the ultimate issues that underlie the conflict between the Church and the world, it is clear that the message of this chapter is that the fundamental battle between good and evil in the universe centres upon Jesus Christ, Who is, of course, the child in the vision. The woman symbolises Israel, or the Church, as the community of God, not in the New Testament sense only, but as the one people of God throughout the ages. It is this Israel of God from whom the promised Messiah comes. What we have here is in fact a pictorial representation of the Incarnation, a telescopic picture of the history of Old Testament revelation, culminating in the fulfilment of the promise made in the Garden of Eden that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). The picture of the dragon standing at the ready to slay the newborn child must therefore be taken not merely to refer to the actual birth of Christ at Bethlehem - did not Herod make a determined attempt to destroy the infant Saviour? - but also to every attempt of Satan upon the royal line of the promise down the Old Testament ages, to prevent the fulfilment of the divine purposes of redemption, and indeed to all subsequent attempts to frustrate the forward movement of the gospel that brings hope and life to men. But more of this in the following Note.