This chapter is one of the most exciting and dramatic found in the book of Revelation.  It depicts the great controversy between Christ and Satan and shows how the Lord has miraculously preserved His church!

1.  What did John see when the “great sign” appeared in heaven?  Revelation 12:1.

Answer: A clothed with the , with the under her , and on her a of twelve .

This woman represents the people of God.  God has always used the symbol of a woman or a bride to refer to His people.  See Jeremiah 6:2.   Christ has only one bride, one church consisting of His faithful people throughout the ages.  "The general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven." Hebrews 12:13.  The word ‘church’ means a "called out assembly."  God has always had a people on the earth.  Scripture includes the Jews of the Old Testament in the term ‘church.’  See Acts 7:38.   From the ‘church’, God’s people, came the Messiah as we shall see! 

2.  What was this woman in the process of doing when John saw her?  Verse 2.

Answer: She was about to give to a .

The woman was having labor pains.  She was about to give birth to a very special child!  The next few verses tell us who this Child was and how the enemy of souls hated that Child!

3.  What was the next thing that John saw appear while the woman was giving birth?  See verse 3.

Answer: A great having heads and ten and seven upon his .

Notice that this dragon (which we will see represents the devil) had ‘seven heads.’  Many Bible commentators believe that this refers to the seven great powers that the devil has used throughout history.  Some identity these seven heads as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Pagan Rome, Papal Rome, the apostate Protestantism of the USA, and the New World Order that is being formed right now!  The ‘ten horns’ probably refers to the nations of Europe that came out of the breakup of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.

Notice also that the dragon wears ‘crowns’ and has seven of them, one on each of the seven heads.  This shows that the devil claims to rule over the nations!  See Matthew 4:8-9.   Also, these seven powers were all ruled by a king.  The last two (apostate Protestantism, and the New World Order, or One World Church) will have a religious king.  We will learn more about this in a future lesson.

4.  What did the dragon’s tail do to the ‘stars’ of heaven?  See verse 4.

Answer: them to the .

The ‘stars’ represent angels.  For proof of this see Revelation 1:20 now.   Lucifer’s deceptions caused one third of the angels to follow him, and as a result, they were cast to the earth after ‘war’ broke out in heaven!  This is what verses 7-8 are all about.

5.  What did the dragon plan to do as soon as the woman’s Child was born?  See verse 4.

Answer: He wanted to the Child as soon as He was born!

We know that the devil does not come out in the open and proclaim himself as the destroyer.  He always uses a nation or person to do his bidding.  In this case, in symbolic language, the word of God is describing how the devil wanted to kill the Child that would come from the people of God.  To do this He used Pagan Rome as his weapon of choice!  You can read about this in Matthew 2, verses 16 through 18.  This is a very important point because it identifies ROME as the enemy of God.  When we study chapter 13, we will see that Pagan Rome gave its seat to Papal Rome!  A transformation took place from the Roman government to the Papal See of Rome!

6.  Where did the church (the woman) flee to?  See verse 6.

Answer: The .

The woman hid for 1260 days (or prophetic years).  This 1260 year period began in 538 A.D. when the Papal church officially began to rule Christendom and continued, supreme until 1798! The wilderness area refers to sparsely populated places.  In fact the United States, a bastion of religious freedom, began to be settled during this period.  Here was a place where the true church could find religious freedom and rest from the dragon’s persecution!  We will learn more about this in lesson 13.

7.  What do verses 7, 8, and 9 speak about?

Answer: The that began in between and .

War began in of all places -- heaven!  Lucifer, the once glorious and high ranking angel was cast out to the earth with the other millions, perhaps billions of fallen angels!  This was where the great controversy between Christ and Satan began, and we are in the midst of this fierce battle right now!

8.  What does the devil do "day and night" to the people of God? Verse 10.

Answer: He them before God!

The devil is constantly saying to the Lord something like this, ‘See your people here on earth, they are not obeying you! They deserve the same penalty as I! They are following me instead of you!’  This is why he is so angry with those who keep God’s commandments!  He cannot tell the Lord that all the world is following him!  See verse 17.   But in this same verse it says that salvation and strength by the power of ‘His Christ’ will give us the victory and shut the devil’s mouth forever!

9.  How do the people of God overcome the devil?  See verse 11.

Answer: They overcome by the of the and the of their .

It is only by the blood of Jesus that we can overcome sin and the devil!  But we must have a personal experience with Jesus, a ‘testimony’ that we can give of what He has done for us!

10.  Why did the voice from heaven say ‘woe to the inhabitants of the earth’?  See verse 12.

Answer: Because the is come here and he is because he has just a time!

This is the reason we see the world growing worse and worse! The devil knows that he has but a ‘short time.’

11.  What did the devil do when he saw that he was cast to the earth?  Revelation 12:13.

Answer: He the .

The woman represents the church, the people of God!  The devil began a war against God’s people.  The moment he was cast to the earth he headed for the Garden of Eden to plot man’s fall! Since then he has persecuted true believers!

12.  Where did the woman flee to and for how long?  See verse 14.

Answer: She fled into the for a , and , and half a .

The Lord provided wilderness places for his church to flee to during this time of terrible persecution.  In the Bible a ‘time’ represents a year as when King Nebuchadnezzar was told ‘seven times’ would pass before he would be restored to his kingdom. See Daniel 4:16.   A time would be a year, ‘times’ would refer to at least two years, and ‘half a time’ would be half a year.  There are 1260 days in three and half years!  Since in prophecy, a day equals a year, this time period refers to the 1260 years of papal supremacy and persecution we talked about earlier!

The ‘wilderness’ places the earth provided were the Alps of Europe, the mountain valleys, and especially the United States which, as we mentioned before, was being settled by those fleeing from religious persecution in Europe!  In the next few verses we see how the devil tried to drown the church in a flood of persecution, but "the earth helped the woman" and God opened up places of refuge like the United States of America!

13.  What did the serpent cast out of his mouth?  See verse 15.

Answer: as a .

14.  What helped the woman?  Verse 16.

Answer: The .

15.  What part of the church does the devil especially ‘make war’ with in these last days we live in?

Answer: The of her seed.

A remnant refers to the last part as when a person purchases a remnant piece of carpet.

16.  What are two special characteristics of God’s true, last day remnant church?  See verse 17.

Answer: They the of God, and have the of Jesus Christ.

The true church in the end of time will be keeping ALL of the Ten Commandments, not just nine of them!  You see, if they were only keeping nine of them, they would not be keeping any!  See James 2:10-12, where James tells us that if we beak one, then we are guilty of breaking them all! Besides keeping all the commandments of God, the remnant church would have in it the ‘testimony of Jesus.’

17.  What is the ‘testimony of Jesus?’  See Revelation 19:10.

Answer: The testimony of Jesus is the of .

The remnant church would have in it the prophetic spirit!  This means that there would be some in it that have especially been used as mouth pieces for Jesus.  In the great advent movement there have been several, among them, William Foy, Hazen Foss, and notably Mrs. Ellen G. White.  The latter has recorded some 2000 visions and dreams that have correctly predicted such things as the Civil War, the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and the modern tongues speaking movement that is uniting Protestants and Catholics.  She was given health instructions for God’s people that were over 100 years ahead of nutritional science and knowledge of her time.  This was also true in the field of education and health.  It is recommended that you pick up one of her books and experience first hand the ‘spirit of prophecy’ and listen to Jesus’ testimony as given to one of His messengers!

Bonus Bible Study On The State Of The Dead

1.  Jesus compared death to sleep.  He very plainly said ‘Lazarus sleepeth’ when in fact Lazarus was dead!  See John 11:11-14 & 39-44.

2.  When a person dies, they ‘know not anything.’  The dead do not praise the Lord, contrary to what is falsely taught today.  See Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, and Psalm 115:17.

3.  At the present time, only God has immortality.  We are mortal, and will put on immortality when Jesus returns.  At that time the ‘dead in Christ will rise first.’  See 1 Timothy 6:14-16, 1 Corinthians 15:22-23 & 53-55 & 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17.

4.  The Bible teaches that a soul can ‘die.’  The word soul simply means a person.  In Genesis 2:6, when it says that the Lord breathed into Adam the breath of life, it says ‘Adam became a living soul.’  In newer translations it says ‘living person.’  Nowhere in the Bible is a soul called ‘immortal.’  This idea comes from the pagan Greeks, and earlier pagan religions and philosophies.  Even the creatures that live in the sea are called souls in the Bible.  See Genesis 2:6, Ezekiel 18:4, and
Revelation 16:3.

5.  After they sinned, Adam and Eve were stopped from eating of the Tree of Life ‘lest they eat and live forever.’  This shows that Adam and Eve were not inherently immortal.  Those who are faithful to God will once again be able to eat of the tree of life and live forever!  See Genesis 3:22-24, and Revelation 22:14.

6.  Jesus said that He would raise up the dead ‘on the last day.’ He wouldn’t have to do this if they went to heaven when they died!  Jesus said that He will return so that He could take us to be with Him where He is!  John 6:40 & 44, and John 14:1-3.

7.  The wicked will be destroyed, and turned into ashes under the feet of the redeemed.  The Lake of Fire is called the ‘second death.’  The word most often translated ‘hell’ is the Greek word ‘hades,’ and it means ‘the abode of the dead,’ or ‘the grave.’ See Malachi 4:1-3 & Revelation 20:14.

8.  The wages of sin is DEATH, not an eternal life of torture forever.  In the new heavens and the new earth, there will be no more PAIN.  ‘Everlasting destruction’ will be what the wicked suffer.  ‘Everlasting punishment’ is not ‘everlasting punishing’. There is a difference!  The believers will not PERISH like the wicked will!  See Romans 6:23, John 3:16, Revelation 21:4, Matthew 25:46 & 2 Thessalonians 1:6-11.

9.  The words ‘forever,’ and ‘eternal’ in the Bible do not always mean literally forever, or eternally.  For example, Jonah said he was in the belly of the great fish ‘forever.’  But it really was three days and three nights.  It may have seemed forever to him! A slave was to serve ‘forever,’ but only until his death!  Sodom and Gomorrah suffered ‘eternal’ fire, but they are not burning today!  See Jonah 2:6 & Philemon 15, and Jude 7.

10.  Psalm 37:20 says that the wicked will ‘vanish away.’  Even the devil will be destroyed, and never will he exist again!  See Ezekiel 28:13-19.

11.  Paul did not expect to receive his crown of life until Jesus returned when all those who ‘love His appearing’ receive it together!  Jesus also said that when He comes, His reward is ‘with Him.’  See 2 Timothy 4:8 & Revelation 22:12.

12.  Some will burn in the Lake of Fire longer than others, but all will eventually be destroyed, and turned to ashes.  See Luke 12:47-48 & 58-59, and Psalm 38:38.

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