I attend a nightly (6 nights a week) Evening Prayer Meeting, and was asked to take over leading on Thursday Nights. We are currently working our way through Revelations following the Lectionary and in my preparation I was prayerfully reading Revelation 12.

I am NOT a theologian, but the Bible was not written by theologians. john who wrote Revelations was a simple fishermen when he met the Lord. Below is my interpretation of Chapter 12, you can agree or disagree with it, it is just my opinion, given without recourse to theological interpretation.

I believe that the woman is Israel. The 12 stars on her head are the 12 tribes of Israel. The Red Dragon is representative of both the Roman Empire and Satan. The Romans loved their dragons and the Draco was a military standard of the Roman cavalry. The 7 heads are the 7 hills of Rome, the 7 crowns - Rome was ruled by 7 Kings. But it is also Satan, the third of the stars thrown down are the third of the Angels that joined Satan in rebelling against God. Even before the war in heaven they were serving Lucifer and tried to kill Jesus the moment he was born - through Herod, remember Herod's massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem.

The war raged both on earth and in heaven during the entire time of Jesus life and ministry and was finally won when Jesus died on the cross, Satan using his Red Dragon - the Romans to crucify Jesus. But Jesus announced the war's end, “It is finished”. He won the victory for us all, and rose from the grave beating death!

Satan lost! He and his angels were thrown out of heaven, and he knew his days were numbered. Jesus is now physically and spiritually out of Satan’s reach, so out for revenge against God he pursues and persecutes the Jews (the woman, the people from whom Jesus came) Revelation says she was carried off by a great eagle (the Roman legions) into the wilderness (Europe) for 3 ½ years - that is 1, 277 days. If, as believed in prophecy, 1 day = 1 year in real time then 1277 years. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and carried off the Jews in 70 A.D. - 1277 years later is 1347 (Mid 14th Century).

In the 14th Century the Francisians began to represent Roman Catholic interests in Jerusalem. The Jews who had been barred from the city by the Crusaders began returning and from the mid 14th Century inhabited their own quarter of the city of Jerusalem. www.britannica.com

The dragon (Satan) did not give up and has continued through the Centuries his persecution of the Jews. The flood is the Holocaust during WWII, but it backfired on Saten and Israel survived and got back their nation.

The Oct 7th massacre in Israel and the war in Gaza, along with a worldwide rise in anti-semitism shows he still seeks a Jewish genocide. If Israel falls we are next. Revelations 12 indicates this is the truth. But it also indicates Satan will eventually give up anyway then he will turn his attention to us, to Christians, even more than he already has, just remember Jesus who is in us, is stronger than he who is in the world.