Chapter 12 The Woman, Her Seed, and the Dragon
¹And a great sign was seen in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars, ²and being with child, and crying out with contractions and anguish to deliver.
and the moon under her feet
When you think of the appearance of the moon, most people think of either a full moon or a crescent moon. Looking at a map of North America, the southeastern section of the United States along with the eastern shore of Mexico forms a curve in the shape of a “C” or crescent shape.
on her head a crown of twelve stars
The stars on the Unites States flag represent the 50 states that make up the country. There are 12 states that have more than 80% of their most northern point touching the northern border. These states are from west to east, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
The woman symbolizes the United States. A woman gives birth to a child. We refer the term “Motherland” to a mother country, i.e. the place of one's birth, the place of one's ancestors, the place of origin of an ethnic group or immigrant.
³And another sign was seen in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns,
a great red dragon
World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. This war involved a majority of the world's nations—including all of the great powers. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Nazi Party, grew into a massive totalitarian movement that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945
The Axis powers (Germany, Japan, Italy), also known as the Axis, were the nations that fought in the Second World War against the Allied forces (United States, Britain, France, Soviet Union). The Axis’ alliance grew out of the mutual efforts of Germany, Italy and Japan to secure their own interests in expanding their territories and ideals. In addition to the 3 major Axis powers, 4 more countries signed the Tri-Partite Pact as its member states. Of the 4 countries, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria participated in various Axis military operations, while the 4th, Yugoslavia, saw its pro-Nazi government overthrown in a coup days after it signed the Pact, and the membership was reversed.
At its high point during World War II, the Axis seized territories and occupied large parts of Europe, North Africa, and East Asia.
The red dragon is the evil one that worked through the Axis Powers to bring destruction, persecution and death to millions of people on the earth.
⁴and his tail is pulling one third of the stars from heaven; and it threw them to the earth.
Tracer ammunition are bullets or projectiles that are built with a small pyrotechnic charge in their base. Ignited by the burning powder, the pyrotechnic composition burns very brightly like fireworks, making the projectile trajectory visible to the naked eye during daylight, and very bright during nighttime firing. This enables the shooter to make aiming corrections without observing the impact of the rounds fired and without using the sights of the weapon. At night the tracer rounds appear like shooting stars flying across the sky. Tracers were very common on most WWII aircraft which had fixed machine guns or canons mounted on.
The painting on the left is an artist rendering of a coastal bombing raid during World War II. The destruction resulting from bomb raids throughout war territories was devastating. For example, the German city of Cologne was bombed in 262 separate air raids by the Allies during World War II. The number of bombs the allies dropped during WWII were 3.4 million tons. The total average amount of bombs dropped by the allies each month during WWII was 27,770 tons. This is not including the millions of more bombs dropped by Germany and the other Axis powers.
And the dragon took his stand in front of the woman who was about to deliver, so that he might devour the child whenever it was born.
⁵And she bore a son, a male child, who was destined to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.
After World War II, the United States experienced phenomenal economic growth. The war brought the return of prosperity, and in the postwar period the United States consolidated its position as the world's richest country and a military superpower. Gross national product, a measure of all goods and services produced in the United States, jumped from about $200 billion in 1940 to $300 billion in 1950 to more than $500 billion in 1960. The country played a central role in the global recovery, including providing energy aid to a devastated Europe. The child born is the great revival, renewal, growth and prosperity that manifested out of the United States after the war.
⁶And the woman fled to the desert, to where she has a place prepared there by God, so that there they might take care of her for 1,260 days.
While searching for oil in Saudi Arabia under a concession signed with the King, Standard Oil of California’s chief geologist Max Steineke struck oil on March 3, 1938. In 1943, with concerns growing about the diminishing U.S. oil production capacity, President Franklin Roosevelt declares Saudi oil vital to U.S. security and provides financial support. In February 1945, Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul Aziz meet aboard a U.S. ship on the Suez Canal to discuss closer ties. A few years later, the world's biggest oil field is found in Saudi Arabia, and the country quickly becomes the world's largest exporter of oil. The end of World War 2 brings about the end of U.S. gas rationing. The U.S. auto industry booms, with the number of cars in the United States jumped from 26 million to 40 million in the five years after the war. In the decades that follow, the transportation sector's (mainly automobiles) share of oil consumption rises from about 50 percent to more than 70 percent.
1260 days equals approximately 3.45 years. Man’s understanding and concept of time is not the same as that of Gods. The creation of days, times and years were created for the understanding of human minds. God is omnipresent meaning he is everywhere in all time, past, present and future. 1260 days does not literally mean 1260 days but this number is important. The woman (Unites States) will be taken care of during this time by the place in the desert (Saudi Arabia) prepared there by God. The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is important. More about that in the Epilogue at end of this reading.
⁷And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels must make war with the dragon. And the dragon made war, and his angels also,
⁸and he was not strong enough, neither was their place found anymore in heaven.
⁹And the great dragon was thrown out, that ancient serpent, which is called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was thrown to the earth, and his angels thrown along with him.
¹⁰And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying, "Now has come the salvation and power and kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown out, the one accusing them before our God day and night,
When Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, they instituted a series of measures aimed at persecuting Germany’s Jewish citizens. By late 1938, Jews were banned from most public places in Germany. During the war, the Nazis’ anti-Jewish campaigns increased in scale and ferocity. In the invasion and occupation of Poland, German troops shot thousands of Polish Jews, confined many to ghettoes where they starved to death and began sending others to death camps in various parts of Poland, where they were either killed immediately or forced into slave labor. In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Nazi death squads machine-gunned tens of thousands of Jews in the western regions of Soviet Russia
In early 1942, at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, the Nazi Party decided on the last phase of what it called the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish problem” and spelled out plans for the systematic murder of all European Jews. In 1942 and 1943, Jews in the western occupied countries including France and Belgium were deported by the thousands to the death camps mushrooming across Europe. In Poland, huge death camps such as Auschwitz began operating with ruthless efficiency. The murder of Jews in German-occupied lands stopped only in the last months of the war, as the German armies were retreating toward Berlin. By the time Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, some 6 million Jews had died.
Jesus was a Jew. All of his 12 disciples were Jewish. The Christian faith was birthed by the Jewish believers that believed the Gospel and believed that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus called his disciples to preach the Gospel to the whole world. Acts 9:10 tells about the early apostles such as Paul preaching the Gospel in Jewish synagogues throughout the region. John of Patmos was one of those early Jewish believers of the Gospel. The “accuser” refers to the evil one working through Hitler and the Nazi Party to bring persecution and death to millions of Jews.
¹¹and these have overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives even unto death.
“These” and “they” refer to the United States. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt officially pronounced 7 December 1941, as "a date which will live in infamy" and asked for a declaration of war on Japan before a joint session of Congress on 8 December 1941. Just three days later, on 11 December 1941 Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States
Prior to America's entry into World War II in December 1941, individual Americans volunteered to fight against the Axis powers in other nations armed forces. Although under American law, it was illegal for United States citizens to join the armed forces of foreign nations and in doing so, they lost their citizenship, many American volunteers changed their nationality to Canadian.
During the war, over 16 million Americans served in the United States Armed Forces, with 290,000 killed in action and 670,000 wounded. There were also 130,201 American Prisoners of war, of whom 116,129 returned home after the war.
America contributed a large amount of supplies and weapons to the Allied cause which were critical to the war effort. The war would have been much harder if not impossible to win without US production. The leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin said at the Tehran Conference that "without American production, the United Nations could never have won the war."
¹²“Rejoice over this, O heaven, and you who dwell therein! Woe to the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you with great fury, because he knows that he has but little time." ¹³And when the dragon saw that he was thrown to the earth, he went after the woman that bore the male child.
The evil one has been around since the beginning of our existence starting with Adam and Eve but the world has never seen the evil, hate, destruction, ruin as we see now. This downfall includes every aspect of our lives and civilization. It includes our environment, our physical wellbeing, and our mental and spiritual state. It is very evident that around the time of the beginning of World War II, there has been a dramatic moral and ethical decline that followed. The evil one is deceptive. The changes that resulted to our current moral condition and state of being did not happen overnight but has been a gradual and slow process. The gradual process was intentional and strategic. The intent was for us not to notice the change and to become numb and dull to it.
For a time, there was an effort to preserve the appearance of propriety. For example, in radio, motion pictures, and television, immoral content was censored. But that did not last long. William Bennett, formerly a U.S. secretary of education, explained: “By the 1960’s, however, America began a steep and uninterrupted slide toward what might be called decivilization.” And this was reflected in many other lands.
The 1960’s saw the sexual revolution with its so-called new morality. Birth-control pills were developed which gave man the thought that sex could be enjoyed without fear of pregnancy. It became common for people to have sexual relations without any commitments by either partner.
The media, the movies, and television relaxed their moral codes. A former head of the U.S. National Security Council, Zbigniew Brzezinski said regarding values presented on television: “They clearly extol self-gratification, they normalize intense violence and brutality, [and] they encourage sexual promiscuity.”
The 1970’s brought about the personal video players such as the VCR which allowed us to view the content that we pleased in the privacy of our own homes. We were now able to view sexually explicit and immoral material that we never would allow ourselves to watch in public. Now with the Internet, pornography of the worst kind is easily accessible to anyone having internet access via a computer, tablet or smartphone. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have at least one of these devices?
The consequences in many ways are frightening. “Ten years ago,” said a warden at a U.S. penitentiary recently, “when kids would come in off the street, I could talk with them about right and wrong. But these kids coming in now have no idea of what I’m talking about.”
¹⁴And she was given the two wings of a great eagle to fly to the desert to that place of hers where she gets taken care of for a time, times, and half a time, away from the face of the serpent.
The United States was the birthplace of aviation. The Wright brothers invented and flew the first airplane in 1903 in North Carolina. Between 8 and 31 May 1919, the Curtiss seaplane NC-4 made the first crossing of the Atlantic flying from the U.S. to Newfoundland, then to the Azores and on to mainland Portugal and finally the UK. The whole journey took 23 days.
¹⁵And the serpent poured water from his mouth like a river after the woman, to cause her to be swept away by a flood,¹⁶and the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the flood that the dragon had poured from his mouth.¹⁷And the dragon was enraged over the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her seed, those keeping the commandments of God and bearing the witness of Jesus.
¹⁸And he stood at the shore of the sea.