And she brought forth a male son, who shall shepherd all the nations with an iron rod; and her child was caught up to God and to his throne.
In one short verse a son is born, marked out to rule the nations, and taken up to God. Two questions follow. Who is this child? And why is the whole story between His birth and His going up to God left out?
Who the son is tells us who the mother is. One writer rests the case on a simple point. The church never gives birth to Christ:
This is the Jewish people, I have no doubt — nothing else. Christ is not born of the church. Seen as reigning and glorious in the world, He was born of the Jews: "from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ." The idea that Christ was born of the church makes no sense at all.
The verse says nothing about the church, and nothing about the cross. That silence tells us what this vision is set on:
Everything here concerns the earth. You can see it from this: there is no mention at all of the church period. The verse names only the kingdom. If Christ is born, it is to rule all nations with a rod of iron, according to Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. The cross is not even mentioned, although we know it came before He was caught up to God and to His throne.
The verse steps from the birth straight to the throne. It passes over the whole life, and the death itself, in a single line. There is a reason for that:
God is going back to His purpose in Christ, born as the heir of the world — not in connection with the calling of the church, but as the man of might, destined to govern all, and with no weak hand. Christ's death and resurrection are not mentioned here, but His birth and His being caught up (not His death) are given in brief summary. We see the woman in pain, about to give birth. The male child is born. Then He is taken away to the throne of God above. Of course this is not given as history. The Lord Jesus had been born and had died long before. If this were history, His all-important death would not, could not, have been left out.
One writer notes whose hand holds the rod, and how the word for "rule" really reads:
The rod is the sign of power — "the rod of Your power" (Psalm 110:2) — and here it is in the shepherd's hands. The shepherd is the true pattern of kingship as God sees it. Even the iron rod that Christ will strike His enemies with is still shown in a shepherd's hands. In every passage it really reads, "He shall shepherd them with an iron rod." Hard as the blow may be, love guides it. How terrible for those whom everlasting love must strike in this way!
The verse names a rule that has not yet begun:
The child here is clearly Christ. He did not take the power — He took nothing, but was caught up to God.
Man's sentence against Him seemed to be the end. It was not:
Only the nation itself could pass the sentence that would destroy it, as far as man could do so. That sentence stood in Pilate's handwriting on the cross. But the woman's Seed escaped in victory from the cross and the guarded grave: "her child was caught up to God and to His throne."
Commentators differ here. Some hold that the child means more than Christ alone. They point to a promise given to those who overcome:
To rule the nations with a rod of iron is the promise made to the overcomer in Thyatira. That is, the Lord associates His saints with Himself in the day when He takes His power and will rule and reign. When He does that, dear fellow-believer, you and I will be with Him, and therefore I take it that the taking up of the "man child" includes the church.
Others read the chapter differently:
The subject of this chapter is not the church, but the history of those (Israel above all) who suffer under Satan and his great servant, the Man of Sin.
- Promise — The woman is Israel; the son born of her is Christ, heir of the world, marked out to rule all nations.
- Threat — Man's sentence against Him was written in Pilate's hand and fixed to the cross.
- Rescue — The cross and the sealed tomb become the very route of escape; the child is caught up to God and to His throne.
- Delay — He holds the title to rule, but He took nothing yet. The life, death and resurrection are passed over, because this vision is not history.
- Rod — When He does rule, the iron rod stays in a Shepherd's hand: it strikes, but love guides it.
And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has there a place prepared of God, that they should nourish her there a thousand two hundred [and] sixty days.
In Revelation 12 the child has just been caught up to God's throne, and His mother stays behind on earth. Verse 6 tells what happens to her next, and raises two questions: who is this woman, and when does she flee?
Commentators start with the son, not the mother. His identity fixes hers:
In the twelfth chapter we have a woman who gives birth to a man-child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Anyone would say that must be Christ. There is no one person to whom rule of this kind is given but Christ, though His saints may share it with Him. The woman, if the application is to Christ, can only be the Jewish nation. Nothing else is possible. Christ was not the offspring of the Church, not even of the Jewish Church, as is plain. As the apostle tells us in the ninth of Romans, and as is perfectly clear — of Israel Christ came according to the flesh.
The child's ascension and the mother's flight look like back-to-back events. They are not:
There is a gap of thirty-three years between the birth of the Child and His catching up. In the same way, an interval of nearly two thousand years comes in between the catching up and the flight. In fact the whole history of Christianity bridges the time from the ascension of Christ until the woman flies into the wilderness.
Satan failed to destroy the Son. So he turns his hatred on the nation the Son came from:
The Child was caught away, but the woman was left behind, and, left behind, she is also exposed to Satan's hatred. So "she fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God." The woman, remember, is Israel — Israel as seen in the purposes of God. Satan, disappointed in his rage against Christ, turns all the more fiercely against God's beloved people. But God cares for Israel, just as He had cared for the Man-child.
The desert is more than a hiding place. Standing outside the world costs something, and that is where God's blessing meets them:
The reign of the beast will, for this godly remnant, turn the world into a wilderness. They will find their refuge and blessing by taking a place outside the political and religious world of their day, with its terrible violence and corruption. To stand apart from the world system may involve suffering, but it will secure spiritual blessing. In the outside place that God has prepared, this remnant will be nourished for a thousand two hundred and sixty days. It is just as the Lord can say through the prophet Hosea: "I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her."
In the original wording, the word "there" appears twice. That repetition was deliberate:
The repeated word is not a mere Hebrew redundancy, as one has said. It is meant to mark how definite the place prepared for her is, and where she is nourished or cared for. God provides for the woman both the place and the food for 1260 days… Here the careful numbering of the days shows the Lord's tender interest in His suffering saints. He counts them up one by one, so to speak.
Where does she go, and for how long? One earlier man lived through something like it:
The true Israel of God will not be called to resist the dragon, but to flee to a place of no human resources, where God will protect and care for her for the stated period. Elijah, we may remember, fled into the wilderness to a place appointed by God, and later to Zarephath. In both places God fed him by a miracle, and his time of trial lasted three and a half years. Now the 1,260 days of our verse is exactly 3½ years by Jewish reckoning. The same period appears again in verse 14 as "a time, and times, and half a time." Chapter 11 has already given it as 42 months and as 1,260 days.
Not everyone in Israel survives this. The woman stands for a particular company:
The woman is the nation as God sees it. She is not all Israel, nor even all the saints in Israel, but those God has ordained to continue, and who therefore represent the nation before Him… Still God preserves a people to be the core of the nation in the coming kingdom, and this, of course, is what Satan most wants to destroy. God's own hand keeps them safe, though in the middle of trial — the kind of trial the word "wilderness" suggests. God means that trial to purify them.
- Prepared — she does not stumble on a hiding place in a panic. God appointed it in advance, and He supplies the food.
- Prepared for whom — the woman is Israel as God sees her: the nation Christ came from, kept as the seed of the coming kingdom.
- Prepared after a gap — nearly two thousand years of Christian history sit between the child's ascension and the mother's flight.
- Prepared in emptiness — the wilderness leaves nothing human to lean on. Standing outside the world system costs something, and gains more.
- Prepared to the day — God counts the 1260 days one by one. The trial has a fixed limit, and He watches every day of it.