The first post in this series ended by commenting about a passage from Genesis that refers forward to Mary, and the second one began by elaborating on that passage. Today, let's turn all the way to the back of the Bible to consider one that refers backwards to her.
When most people hear "Book of Revelation," they immediately think of a prophetic work about the end times, but that's not necessarily what it is. Much of it seems to be referring to contemporaneous events, and parts of it are about things that had already happened. The most famous of the latter is Revelation 12's depiction of an epic showdown between a woman often interpreted as Mary and a dragon explicitly identified as Satan.
As is often the case when perusing the Bible, we would do well to remember that its books were not divided into chapters and verses when they were written. That came much later, and while it has been a great help for quickly locating specific things, an unfortunate side effect is that it often leads people to isolate those things and fail to read them in their proper context. In the case of Revelation, many folks open right to Chapter 12 because they've heard of "the woman in Revelation 12" and are eager to see what that's all about; in their haste, they never see what's happening in Chapter 11 and don't quite grasp that the one is a seamless continuation of the other.
Chapter 11 closes by declaring "God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumbling, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail." That flows directly into the first sentence of Chapter 12, which opens with the capitalized word "And" - which is of course a conjunction, signifying it is mid-thought and connected to what came before, yet too many people look right at it without glancing back to see what came before.
In any event, Revelation 12 states: And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems... And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God... And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, and his angels were thrown down with him... And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child... The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and swallowed the river... Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (verses 1-6, 9, 13, 15-17)
As with Genesis 3:15, which I discussed in the previous posts, it requires very adventurous reading to fail to perceive the figures of Jesus and Mary in Revelation 12. And Satan is right there too, in each excerpt.
One needn't be a million dollar exegete to see two and two coming together and equaling four. On the one hand, the Bible's first book says enmity will pit the woman and her offspring against the serpent and his offspring. On the other, its final book says a dragon hated the woman, hunted her and her offspring, and plotted to devour a particular one of those offspring at birth. It's not going out on a limb to conclude that the woman is Mary; that her offspring consist of Jesus and his followers; that the dragon and serpent are one and the same, aka Satan; and that Satan's offspring consist of his human followers in addition to the demons who joined him in rebelling against God.
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There are other ways of looking at Revelation 12, of course. Many see the woman symbolizing Israel, not Mary, with the twelve stars representing the tribes rather than the apostles... Almost everyone agrees the male child is Jesus - but those who don't want the woman to be Mary are quick to digress that Jesus "came from Israel" in the sense that his genealogy traces back to Abraham... Some scholars intriguingly point out, as Michael Heiser does here, that when you consider constellations known to ancient Hebrews (who, don't forget, were very much into astrology) the imagery in Revelation 12:1-4 accurately describes what was visible in the sky for about 80 minutes on one particular night in 3 B.C. - which, so the thinking goes, must have been the window of time in which Jesus was born.
Personally, I think all these are correct. It's not like they're mutually exclusive, and it strikes me as silly to look at them as a collectively self-competing either/or proposition, rather than a both/and/all premise. Doesn't the latter seem more like what we should expect from the word of God?
Some Christians accuse other Christians of subtracting from their honor of God by the mere fact that they honor Mary. I think that's rubbish, if you don't mind me borrowing a word from our British friends, for it depends on the same kind of either/or fallacy that would drive one to insist the woman in Revelation 12 can't represent Mary if she also nods to the fact that Virgo appeared in a certain alignment with other constellations that one night 2,028 years ago.
As noted in this post and my prior one, Genesis and Revelation present major, beginning-and-end referents to Mary that are beyond obvious. They weren't put there for the audience to ignore or de-emphasize.
Mary-minimizers tend to speak of her as what John Henry Newman called "merely...the physical instrument of our Lord's taking flesh." While they may concede she was somehow blessed or honored by being that instrument, they quickly retreat to their comfort zones by refusing neglecting to reflect on how much that implies.
I've seen them disparage the views of fellow Christians by reflexively referring to Mary as "no better than any other woman," or as "just a woman," or "a dead woman," or "an earthly woman." I've witnessed this not only in the sewers of Internet comments sections, but also in a few face-to-face conversations. It bothers me not only because it's unbecoming, but because it at best prances on the line of insulting Christ's chosen mother, and sometimes charges across that line and does insult her. And to insult her is to insult him who created and chose her, is it not?
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One of the Mary-minimizers' favorite comfort zones is a belief that she vanished from the record after the crucifixion. That belief is unbiblical. Scripture shows her not only post-crucifixion, and not only post-resurrection, but even post-ascension, for she was present at Pentecost.
According to Acts 1:14, Mary was in the upper room when the decision was made for Matthias to become the twelfth apostle (seeing as how Judas had, you know, lost that position some time before), and the very next scene is the coming down "from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind" which "filled the entire house where they were sitting...And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:2,4).
No other woman is confirmed by name as having been there. In fact, no other person is confirmed by name as having been there except for the eleven apostles that needed to know who'd be joining them. I daresay this makes Mary apostolic.
I also daresay that her co-work with God far exceeds anyone else's in history: The implication of Luke 1:38 is that she assented to be Jesus' mother, which means she freely agreed to the assignment rather than being forced to accept it... Then she nurtured Jesus when he was dependent and provided him paternal guidance to which he "was submissive" - and all the while she paid studied attention as Jesus "increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God," and she "treasured up all these things in her heart" (Luke 2:51-52)... Then, at the cross, as Father John Waiss notes, "She stands. She watches. She fulfills Jesus' command: watch and pray (Matt. 24:42, 26:41, etc.). She listens to Jesus, and she receives his beloved disciple, given to her as a son."... Then, like I observed above, she stood firmly ensconced at the center of the church when the apostolic age sprang forth.
It is because of things like these that Jon Sweeney said of Mary: "She believed, and in so believing, became the first true disciple of her as yet unborn son...Mary is the chief disciple because she shows us how to wait on God, expect God, have awe for God, and hope for God, but not with an easy credulity. Hers was not an unquestioning belief; these qualities are, instead, the qualities of a mature disciple."
And with that, I'll sign off for now. Until next time, take care.
Note: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken at Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
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