‘A viper will come forth from the root of the serpent and its fruit will be a flying dragon’, so Isaiah says.1 The dragon (always) stands in front of the ‘woman and her child (children), to devour them, for she has also ‘the rest of her offspring’.2 In ‘Heaven the Son, in His revelation as the King, is snatched away to God and His throne in front of the ‘dragon’ and his angels.
The Son’s ‘being generated/begotten before ‘time’ and His Kingship and dominion over everything as the ‘Word’ that sustains Creation and the Universe are closely associated with one another. In Psalm 2 as well. The Authorised Version says: “Yet have I set My King upon My Holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto Me, ‘Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”3 And Revelation 12:5 NIV says: “She gave birth to a son, a male child, who ‘will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre.’” For a short while now the scene appears to shift to earth: the ‘woman’, who has given birth to the Son, flees into the desert. Israel, the Jewish people that brought forth the Christ; finds a refuge in the ‘wilderness’ during the period of the ‘great tribulation.’4 The Church does not bring forth the Christ, on the contrary, Christ brings forth the Church. Why is the ‘dragon’ still persecuting the ‘woman’ on earth, now that the child has been born? Replacement theology claimed that the Church replaced Israel as the chosen people of God. But the devil apparently does not believe in replacement theology. If we as the Church did replace Israel as the chosen people of God, the devil could have left the Jewish people and Israel alone. But the devil knows better. He knows that one-day the Lord will use the Jewish people and Israel again to bless the whole world. And he wants to block God from performing His plan of salvation and redemption and blessing. And when he ultimately cannot prevent God from executing His plan of blessing the nations and the earth, the powers of darkness will try to at least to postpone it as long as possible. Why does the devil persecute the ‘woman’ and her offspring? Because it is in his nature to do so. The dragon always will persecute the ‘woman’ and her children, and because the ‘woman’ is – among other things – also Israel. The devil is aware of the fact that the remnant of Israel at the very end of the end-times again will be used by God as an instrument of blessing the world. One can think of the ‘hundred and forty-four thousand’, but also of the everlasting Covenant-promises that Israel will be a blessing for the nations, Genesis 12:1-3. The devil does not want that to happen. Satan knows that as soon as Israel gets the final revelation about Who Jesus really is, everything God has promised to Israel and to the nations will be fulfilled. And it is his nature to hate and to persecute everything emanating from the Lord and His Anointed One and from the Heavenly Jerusalem, ‘the mother of us all’. ‘His Anointed One’ is in Greek ‘Chrèstos/Christ’, and in Hebrew ‘Mashiach/Messiah’. This explains the background of the aggression of the Arab nations, of Europe and of the United Nations against the restored land of Israel with its Jewish State. It will only get worse.5 This is why there is also increasing hatred and contempt of Christians who are faithful to the Bible, and portrayed as ‘fanatical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ by official churches and by people in general. They are thrown onto one heap with extremist fundamentalist Moslems and ultra-orthodox Jews as potential terrorists! The outside world senses that Jews and Christians serve the same God. We might have a discussion among ourselves as Jews and Christians about who is the true Messiah, but one day the Lord Himself will solve that matter! Therefore, the devil hates us both, Jews and Christians! He knows that we are two people who serve the same God and he hates God, and His representatives on earth as well! But there will always be a safe refuge and divine protection for God’s people, but martyrdom too. Yet our position in Heaven is guaranteed and safe! And sometimes on earth as well! This verse says that the ‘woman’ will be looked after by God, just as He looked after Elijah at the brook Cherith. The Heavenly ‘sign’ guarantees this, for the ‘woman’ is seen as safe; living alone, by herself, but nourished. The Greek word ‘erèmos’, which is translated as ‘wilderness/desert’, comes from a root word that literally means rest, quiet. So that can be anywhere in the world. Not just in the ‘desert’, as some expositors claim. God bears her peacefully away from the Heavenly and earthly scene of battle. The sign/paradigm in Heaven is clear about it. The ‘woman’ is safe and nourished for 1260 days = three and a half year.
• The male ‘child’ can also refer to a group, a ‘body’ of men and women. The Greek actually uses a neuter word. Some therefore see the carrying away of this ‘being’, this ‘group’, to God and His throne as a sudden snatching away of the Church from earth to Heaven. In our opinion though, all this is still taking place in Heaven at this moment, as a general sign, and as a divine principle.
• The Hebrew spelling Yeshua appears in some later books of the Hebrew Bible. Once for Joshua the son of Nun, and 28 times for Joshua the High Priest and other priests called Jeshua – although these same priests are also given the spelling Joshua in 11 further instances in the books of Haggai and Zechariah.
• It differs from the usual Hebrew Bible spelling of Joshua, found 218 times in the Hebrew Bible, in the absence of the consonant ‘hé’ and placement of the semivowel ‘vav’ after, not before, the consonant ‘shin’. It also differs from the Hebrew spelling Yeshu which is found in Ben Yehuda’s dictionary and used in most secular contexts in Modern Hebrew to refer to Jesus of Nazareth, although the Hebrew spelling Yeshua is generally used in translations of the New Testament into Hebrew and used by Hebrew speaking Christians in Israel.
• The name Yeshua is also used in Israelite Hebrew historical texts to refer to other Joshuas recorded in Greek texts such as Jesus ben Ananias and Jesus ben Sira.
• In English, the name Yeshua is extensively used by followers of Messianic Judaism, whereas East Syriac Christian denominations use the name Isho in order to preserve the Aramaic name of Jesus. The 2004 film ‘The Passion of the Christ’, which was made in Aramaic, used Yeshua as the name of Jesus and is the most well-known western Christian work to have done so.
Bible References:
1.Isaiah 14:29 2.Revelation 12:17 3.Psalm 2:6–9 KJV 4.Revelation 7:14, 13:5–7; Matthew 24:20; 5.Daniel 12:1
