Bible Questions and Answers

Can you explain Revelation 12:14 where it says that "the woman would be sustained out of sight of the serpent"?

Revelation 12:13-17 Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. 14 But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. 15 So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. 16 But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

I understand the woman to represent the early Church and the dragon to represent the pagan Roman authorities which persecuted the early Christians. The dragon was ‘cast to the earth’ when Constantine came to the throne and supported and legalised the Christian religion, removing paganism from the ‘political heaven’ of the Roman Empire.

We read in Revelation 12:11

Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him (the dragon) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

Though removed from the centre of Roman government, paganism was still a problem in the provinces, but eventually the ‘Barbarian’ trbes also adopted Christianity, and in this way the ‘earth helped the woman’.

You may find this of some help (please click on the link below):

Thirteen Lectures on the Apocalypse: Lecture 8 - Revelation chapters 12 and 13

I hope you find this helpful.

God bless,
Glenn