And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
The woman crying out in labor is God's holy people, and her children are God's people throughout all history to the close of time. The verse opens the prophecy in which the dragon stands ready to destroy Christ at His birth, and the dragon is Satan, working secondarily through pagan Rome as his chief earthly agent against Christ and His people in the first centuries of the Christian era.
That war is carried on by earthly governments that trample God's law and persecute His people, pictured as a great red dragon, a leopard-like beast, and a beast with lamblike horns, whose warfare against God's people lasts till the close of time. Through that long conflict the woman and her children are greatly in the minority, and in the last days only a remnant remains, defined as those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
The verse belongs to the portrayal of the last great conflict between the obedient and the disobedient, in which all people on earth are divided into two parties, those loyal to Christ under His bloodstained banner and those in rebellion under the black banner. Together with the prophecies of chapters 12 through 18, it is being fulfilled now as part of the final warning message that all are to hear.
The woman crying out in labor is God's holy people, and her children are God's people throughout all history to the close of time. The verse opens the prophecy in which the dragon stands ready to destroy Christ at His birth, and the dragon is Satan, working secondarily through pagan Rome as his chief earthly agent against Christ and His people in the first centuries of the Christian era.
That war is carried on by earthly governments that trample God's law and persecute His people, pictured as a great red dragon, a leopard-like beast, and a beast with lamblike horns, whose warfare against God's people lasts till the close of time. Through that long conflict the woman and her children are greatly in the minority, and in the last days only a remnant remains, defined as those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
The verse belongs to the portrayal of the last great conflict between the obedient and the disobedient, in which all people on earth are divided into two parties, those loyal to Christ under His bloodstained banner and those in rebellion under the black banner. Together with the prophecies of chapters 12 through 18, it is being fulfilled now as part of the final warning message that all are to hear.