16. (a) Revelation, chapter 12, displays a confrontation between what two principals, and yet what manages to be born successfully? (b) Where and why is the symbolic mother obliged to be nurtured spiritually under safeguard?

¹⁶ Since Eve to whom Satan the Devil lied by means of the serpent, was not the “woman” referred to in Genesis 3:15, who is she? Again the book of Revelation helps us to a correct understanding. Chapter 12 describes a confrontation of Satan the Devil and a “woman” who, from head to foot, is clothed with light by the sun, moon and stars (12 of these). Common sense tells us that this must be a symbolic “woman” in heaven, for none of the heavenly angels are spoken of as females. She is pregnant, and, like a devouring dragon, Satan the Devil waits to swallow down the offspring to which she gives birth. But the heavenly Father of that offspring is watching and blocks Satan, so that at the birth of a male offspring it is “caught away to God and to his throne,” that from there it might “shepherd all the nations with an iron rod.” (Rev. 12:1-5)

19. What does the “woman” that mothers the male “child” picture, and why so?

¹⁹ The male “child” that is mentioned in Revelation 12:5 is evidently symbolic. All the things said in connection with it disclose that it pictures, not an individual person, but God’s kingdom with his Son Jesus Christ having the authority to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod, to smash them to pieces in the yet future “war of the great day of God the Almighty” at Har–Magedon. (Rev. 16:14-16) As the “child” is not an individual person, so its mother, the “woman” in heaven, is not an individual person. Since this symbolic “woman” was made pregnant by God as her husband, she must picture God’s spiritual organization.