God's Kingdom Is Born! - A Rival Woe!

 Chafing because of the third woe, Satan is now intent on afflicting mankind with his own particular  brand of woe.  It is: "Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time." ( Revelation  12:12b) Satan's ousted from heaven does not inded woe for the literal earth, which is to be ruined  by selfish humans under his control.  (Deuteronomy 32:5)  Even more so, Satan's policy of 'rule of rule' brings woe to the symbolic earth, the structure of human society, as well as to the symbolic sea, the turbulent mass of mankind itself.  During the two worls wars, Satan's wratj was reflected in the wrath of the nations subject to him, and the similar explosions  of demonic rage continue to this day-though not for much longer!   (Mark 13:7, 8)  But terrible as the Devil's devices may be, they will  never approach the woeful effect that the third woe-action  by God's Kingdom-will produce on Satan's visible organization!

Since Satan's catastrophic ouster, Christ's brothers still on earth have borne  the brunt of his wrath, John reports:  "Now when the dragon saw that it was hurled down to earth, it persecuted the woman that gave birth to the male child.  But the two wings of the great eagle were  given the woman, that she might fly away into the wilderness to her place, there is where she was fed for a time and times and a half a time away from the face of the serpent." -  REVELATION 12:13, 14. 

Here the vision  picks up the thought introduced in verse 6, which tells us that after the birth of her child, the woman flees into the wildernes, away from the dragon. We may wonder   how the dragon  can persecute a woman, since she is heaven and the dragon has now been cast down to the earth.  Well, remember that the woman has children here on earth, her seed. Later in his vision, we are informed that Satan expresses his rage toward the woman by perscuting her seed.  (Revelation 12:17) What happens  to the woman's seed here on earth may be regarded as happening to the woman hereself.(Compare Matthew 25:40.) And the growing number of companions of the seed here one earth would also experience these persecutions. 

Next time: God's Kingdom Is Born! - A New Nation

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