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BIBLE DISCUSSION THREAD 10189

Bible Discussion Thread

 

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  • Boyet Christian on Revelation 12 - 12 years ago
    Some people identify the woman of Revelation 12 as Israel. But, where does it say in the bible that Israel "fled into the wilderness" to be protected and nourished by God AFTER the messianic child has been enthroned in heaven? These verses clearly describe what God does for His People of the New Covenant after Christ’s coming, not the Israel of the Old era. Some people also say that the woman of Revelation is the Church, but the ecclesial interpretation by itself DOES NOT make sense of all the data, for Revelation 12:1–5 portrays the woman as the mother of Jesus Christ. If the woman represents the Church, we must ask, how could the Church give birth to Jesus Christ? Rather, it should be the other way around!

    Three main characters emerge in this scene: the woman, her male child, and the dragon. The woman gives birth to the male child, who is attacked by the dragon. The child is caught up to God and enthroned, while the dragon is defeated and cast down ( Rev. 12:1–9). Two of the three characters are easily identifiable. The dragon is explicitly identified as "that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan" (12:9). The male child is Jesus Christ, for he is described as destined to "rule all the nations with a rod of iron" ( Rev. 12:5) a reference to the description of the messianic king in Psalm 2:9. Furthermore, since the child is caught up to God and sits on His throne, most scholars identify the child as Jesus Christ. The other two main characters are identified as individuals (the male child being Jesus Christ, and the dragon Satan), it seems unlikely that the third major character is only a symbol for a collective group. Rather, if the dragon and the child represent individuals, the woman also is likely to be an individual.

    The woman of Revelation 12 is the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. A Marian interpretation avoids the pitfalls of views that see the woman not as an individual at all, but only as a symbol for the People of God. Such an either-or proposition itself is foreign to the biblical worldview in which individuals often symbolically represent collective groups (e.g., Romans 5:19, where Adam represents all humanity, and Psalm 44:4, where Jacob stands for all of Israel). Given this biblical notion of individuals representing larger groups of people, the woman in Revelation 12 could be understood as both an individual (Mary) and a representative of God’s People as a whole. And the Blessed Virgin Mary is just the right person to embody both the Old and New Covenant since she herself stands at the hinge between the and the New. If there was one woman in salvation history who could represent both Israel and the beginning of the New Covenant People of God, it would be the Blessed Virgin Mary.



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