(Ver 3.2)  This is now the third part in an advanced series of Bible lessons on the subject of  discovering the “True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12”.  These lessons are intended for spiritually mature Christians with an open mind and a willing heart to dig deep, study and learn from the Bible.  It is not for anyone with a closed mind believing they already understand the subject found in Revelation 12 fully.  I love one quote that a man named Will Rogers said “We are all ignorant, just about different things”.  This means that none of us knows everything, especially me.  But, it is my desire and goal to learn and know more today, than I knew about God and His Word yesterday.  I pray that this is your goal also.  If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would highly recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1“.  We have covered a tremendous amount of new revelation that has been hidden by God in the Bible.  We will not be able to repeat the previous lessons in today’s.

INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW

OK, in the last lesson, we talked about the identity of the symbolic moon found in Revelation 12 as being Satan.  I believe this information was encoded (hidden) in the Bible by God’s design using some very intelligent techniques.  One of these techniques for hiding information that has been used by God is the method of calling one person or spiritual entity by many different names, titles, symbols and descriptions.  If you have ever studied the Bible you know that Satan is referred to as the serpent, the great dragon, the devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the father of lies, the ruler of darkness, the prince of darkness, the god of this world, the deceiver, the tempter, the thief, the accuser of the brethren, etc., and as we learned in the last Bible lesson the symbolic “moon”.  That of course was not a complete list of Satan identifiers, but just an example of what is being taught.  If you would like to see a more complete list of “Names, Titles, Symbols and Descriptions for Satan” you can click on that link and go there.

There are many reasons why I believe that God has concealed information in the Bible, but one of the main reasons is to allow Him to reveal the true meaning at the appointed time.  Another great reason is to keep the information hidden from His enemy Satan.  If God told Satan everything He had planned in a straightforward plain way of speaking it would allow Satan the ability to narrow his attempts to stop God’s plan on the earth.  But, hiding the information provides us the blessing of finding it and Satan the opportunity to be surprised by him not knowing what to expect next from God.

For example, the Old Testament was full of the prophecies of the coming Messiah, but yet Satan didn’t understand them and neither did any of the Jews who kept the scrolls.  Jesus went through the scriptures and began to reveal Himself in the O.T. to His disciples and to the apostle Paul only after He was risen from the dead (Luke 24:32, 45, Romans 16:25) .  There are many reasons for this hiding of information. It also establishes a pattern of how God works with humans.  It gives us notice that if He did it once, He can do it again if He so chooses.   You might call this a part of God’s modus operandi.

God has given to us a huge book of divine information, which contains a countless number of  prophetic scriptures and God can reveal them to us even now and I believe that is exactly what He is doing (Dan 12:4).  I have quoted this verse in this series at least two times but it represents one of the foundational principles of truth that applies to us understanding the woman in Revelation 12 that is clothed with the sun, standing on the moon with a crown of 12 stars.   This would be a good verse to memorize and perhaps that is God’s goal for repeating it:

Rom 1:20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

I would like to review this verse from Romans again to place new emphasis on what it reveals to us.  What we can see in this verse is a very powerful spiritual truth being revealed to us about God’s visible and perceivable creation.  This verse proves there was intelligent design contained within all of the physical components of our universe.  Nothing came into being by random chance or accident.

Every created natural entity has a design and a purpose to reveal something that is not yet understood by most humans.  This verse claims that God created all these natural things in our visible world to reveal greater spiritual things that we need to understand to help us know about Him.  By knowing these, God informs us that we will be able to understand even parts of His awesome omnipotent power and His divinely gracious Godhead.  That is why it is important to note how created things like the sun, the moon and the stars fit by His design into the greater spiritual picture.  By understanding these naturally created things God is revealing some very powerful spiritual truths to us.  I just can’t say that enough.

In Revelation 12:1 we have been studying a descriptive picture or a symbolic woman with a specific purpose and design.  For emphasis I believe that I should review these featured symbolic elements and what we have learned so far.  This woman is said to have the following distinctive characteristics and features:

1.  A Woman (an unnamed female)
2. Her head covered by a crown of 12 stars (emblem of victory in a contest)
3.  Her body clothed with the Sun (the Greater Light, Jesus Christ)
4. Her feet standing on the moon (the lesser light, Satan)
5. The location of the woman is said to be heaven
6.  Finally from Rev 4:1 we learned Rev 12 is a prophetical future view into events being described.

These are basic statements of revealed facts.  They are all so very significant.  We have discovered though study that the head of the woman is crowned with a symbol of victory from winning a contest like an Olympic event.  We have discovered by study that the body (the church) is clothed with Jesus Christ who is the revealed symbolic Sun.  We have discovered by study that the woman’s feet are standing on the ruler of the darkness, the moon, who is revealed to be Satan.  We have discovered by study that this event occurs in the future during the coming soon tribulation period of 7 years of time.  We have read numerous scriptures to back these explicit and implicit asserted truths that we cannot repeat here.  Knowing this revelation and understanding it will now help us to clearly identify the woman.  However, we will now go over some new verses that are recorded by God to confirm this information:

Psa 136:7  To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
Psa 136:8  The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
Psa 136:9  The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.

We can see that the Genesis 1 day 4 account of day 4 of creation is being repeated as a second witness of confirming truth here in the book of Psalms.  This information verifies what we have already learned and provides greater emphasis to the importance of the information.  The Sun rules the kingdom of the “day” and we are told that the moon and the stars rules the kingdom of the “night”.  I like to provide at least two or three witnesses to every Bible truth so that you will know that I am not taking things out of context or just making stuff up as I go.

UNDERSTANDING WHAT IT MEANS
FOR SOMEONE TO BE UNDER HER FEET

Today, we need to explore this subject using a much deeper application to its position to the woman to help confirm the identity of the symbolic moon in Revelation 12 we know is called the ruler of darkness.  We will do this from a different perspective to determine if we can establish precedence from the scripture for Satan to be declared under the feet of any woman?  We will do this specifically by studying these women suspect candidates that could represent the woman in Revelation 12:

1. The Church (the body and bride of Christ)
2. Israel (the Old Covenant Wife of Jehovah)
3. Mary (the virgin natural mother of Jesus).

We all know that the woman in Revelation 12 is said to have the moon under her feet.  It must have been important to God to specifically mention these two symbols in this relationship.  Technically we should know that by standing on the moon this is synonymous to the moon being under her feet?  Let’s start by asking God what does it mean in your Word to have something or someone under your feet?  Is there a figurative meaning to this expression that is important for our correct interpretation.  I believe the answer is YES!  I believe that any good Bible student has seen this in the Bible before and can probably teach this section of the lesson..

From my Bible research and study I believe that anything or anyone that is stated to be under someone’s feet in the Bible is a symbolic reference to them being lowered in position of order, power, rank or authority.   Someone being under foot is a figurative sign or symbol of their defeat by the person that is standing in triumphant victory over the one underfoot.  The person underfoot is certainly the implied enemy of the one standing upon them being conquered.  For example, God told Joshua in the Old Testament, everywhere the sole of your foot shall tread, I have given to you (Joshua 1:3).  To “tread on” literally means to walk over something or someone with your feet to be given their possessions.

We learn from this established Joshua principle that whatever God has already given to humans, they are required to fight and to possess including overcoming the enemies holding that land.   This is an established spiritual law of faith.  These were God’s ways of demonstrating to Joshua that he was going to be victorious over his enemies. It is clear to me that the natural nation of Israel had many natural enemies.  This Old Covenant between Israel and Jehovah was a physical battle between natural physical forces being backed by opposing spiritual powers. It is also clear from reading just Joshua that natural Israel won their victories over most of their enemies by being led and obeying the voice of Jehovah.  I believe this was a type and pattern for the church in the coming spiritual warfare in the New Covenant.

The spiritual enemy to the church is of course, Satan and I won’t go into every scripture that we could use to verify this.  I believe that what God spoke to Joshua was a prophetic utterance that further applies to a pattern for us in the spiritual church to follow.  What I will do now is give you some Biblical backing for “treading” on an enemy.

Psa 44:5  Through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us.

Here we see a powerful prophetic principle given to us.  This is a statement that can clearly be taken either naturally or spiritually.  Symbolically speaking, God is referring to the enemies of the church being under our feet.  It definitely also applies to the natural nation of Israel.  I cannot see any application of this verse to Mary.  If we can find this principle in the Bible, it will make the task of identifying the woman in Revelation 12 easier to confirm.  Here is another interesting Old Testament scripture that must be related to Revelation 12:

Psa 91:13  Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Did you notice the references to an “adder” and a  “dragon”?  Do you see the symbolic parallels related to Revelation chapter 12?  I don’t think there are very many dragons in the Bible directly named and said to be under someone’s feet.  I believe that this verse is directly related scripture that further points us to the identity of the “moon” under her feet, as being the defeated Satan, also defined as the dragon and the old serpent in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2.  As I ran references in the Bible looking for the principle of treading down I ran into verses like this one:

Job 40:12  Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Maybe you recall how Satan was lifted up in pride in the Old Testament (Eze 28:7, Isa 14) and some of the statements that he is said to have made.  God makes a prophetic declaration in these verses in Isaiah 14:11.  God informs Satan that “His pomp will be brought down to the grave… and worms will be under and over him.  That sounds like someone in a natural grave that humans walk over all the time.    Notice the similarities found here in Job when God says that everyone that is proud will be brought low.  Then it also speaks of the wicked being tread down (walked upon).  I think these references apply to Satan.

It is interesting to note what God told Adam in Genesis 1.  God gave Adam some specific instructions and here is one that is very relevant to our discussion:

Gen 1:26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

We understand from this verse that God created the man to look like Him.  God then turned His control of the earth over to His creation.  God specifically says man has been given “dominion” over all the earth, and everything that moves on the earth.  That is a very powerful bit of information for us to understand.  It is also important that we know the Hebrew word translated as “dominion” has the following definition in the Strong’s:

H7287

A primitive root; to tread down, that is, subjugate; specifically to crumble off: – (come to, make to) have dominion, prevail against, reign, (bear, make to) rule, (-r, over), take.

Uh, oh!  This Hebrew word has far reaching implications attached to it.  It declares that man was intended to rule the earth.  But, did you notice the word literally means “to tread down”.   That is an active command for Adam to walk with his feet on every enemy to demonstrate their defeat.  This Hebrew word clearly means to “prevail against” an enemy.

We must realize that God intentionally and prophetically declares the end from the beginning in this statement (Isa 46:10).  God is saying in Isaiah that the end will be like I intended it to be from the beginning.  I believe that is why we are learning about this woman in Revelation standing on the defeated moon object.

Adam was given charge over the earth and the instructions to defeat every enemy that came against him.  God knew there was coning an enemy to defeat.  But, instead Adam let Satan into our world and Satan became the god of our world system (2 Cor 4:4).

If we look at verse 28 in Genesis 1 God repeats His instructions to the man, but this time the man is told to “subdue”.  This Hebrew word again means to “tread down”.  In other words walk on.  The word literally means to conquer and to bring into subjection every enemy.  By placing someone underfoot they have been clearly defeated.  These are all historical and prophetic words of a warfare that should have occurred 6000 years ago but is waiting to be fulfilled.

I believe that the church will be used by God to demonstrate Satan’s defeat.   You see the man was created on the last part of the 6th day of creation.  If you understand how the days of creation are prophetic this would indicate that man will again become spiritually mature at the end of the 6th day or near the end of the 6000 year time period that God has given humans to have dominion.  This would also mean that what God intended for the man to do this on Day 1 but since the first Adam failed, God introduced the second Adam and I believe will use His bride to soon make this happen.  This must occur very soon before the end of the 6000 years (Day 6).

I believe we are this phase of God’s plan now with it occurring at the end of the Church age.  God speaks of this by declaring us to be the victorious one (1 Cor 15:57).  Victory was the way that God intended it to be in the beginning and this is the way that it will be at the end of human history.  I believe that the church will go out victorious with Satan under our feet.  But, let us look for and confirm all of this in the Bible.

Let us continue now by looking at what Jesus says to the church right before He ascends into heaven.  At this point and time Jesus was already crucified, and after 3 days arose to live forever more.  Here in Luke we see some instructions being given to someone.  We must ask this question “were these instructions given to us, the church or just the natural Jew?”  In the book of Luke Jesus makes this amazing statement:

Luk 10:19  Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

In this verse, I believe that God is talking to the future saved church who began with all Jewish men about their spiritual enemy.  I know the statement is made to the group of Jewish men that were sent out in pairs to cast out devils and healed the sick.  But if you read the context of this statement you will find clues that indicate we in the church are also included in this promise.  For example, in verse 20 Jesus said “don’t rejoice because spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  Wow that has to be saved Christians.  We know this from studying the Book of Revelation and reading the scriptures about the book of life in heaven (Rev 3:5, Rev 17:8, Rev 20:17).  This book of life contains all of the living and those whose names are not found written are forever declared dead and this is the second death.  Wow!

Jesus is referring to a spiritual enemy and not a fleshly, carnal or natural enemy.  We know this very clearly because Jesus said “spirits are subject to them”..  In this verse, Jesus clearly delegates His authority from His victory on the cross to the church.  But, did you also notice the referenced connection to an enemy symbolically called a “serpent”?

Please understand that this serpent is defined to be Satan in our study chapter of Revelation 12.  Three times in Revelation 12 Satan is called by the name of the serpent.  This Greek word G3789 is translated as “serpent” in 14 New Testament verses including Luke and Revelation.  That makes them related by God’s choice.  Where was “the serpent” suppose to be according to Jesus our Lord and Savior?  We are informed that this symbolic evil being is intended to be under the feet of the church, yes?   Tread on means to put under your feet and walk on just as God instructed Joshua and commanded Adam to do.

This is a descriptive symbolic representation of where Satan (the serpent Rev 12:9) is to be in relation to where the church is suppose to be.  It is not coincidental or by accident that the identity of the serpent is clearly given to us in Revelation 12:9.  But, where does this statement and concept first originate in the Bible?  The “serpent” is found in the Bible for the very first direct reference in Genesis chapter 3 verse 1 before Adam and Eve sinned.  Satan deceives the woman.  Uh oh, here we go with a woman.  Could this be another divine connection of prophecy being made?  After Adam and Eve sinned God comes on the scene of the garden and speaks the following words directly to the serpent, who we know from Revelation 12:9 is Satan:

Gen 3:15  And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

I am going to challenged here, because the translators made a huge mistake.  But I’ll attempt to explain it and hopefully you will understand it.  God is speaking to Satan, the ancient serpent.  Therefore, we know who at least one of the primary subjects or nouns in the verse represents.  God says to Satan “I will put enmity between thee…” and let me stop right there.  What is enmity?  It means hatred, it is an emotional status between two enemies!  It seems to indicate an implied confrontation or even an assumed warfare.

How is this going so far?  Now God reveals the other primary subject or noun in the verse and He calls this one “the woman”.  Let’s stop there again and figure out which woman.  Since there was only one physical woman on the planet, was it Eve or was this woman a prophetic statement of a different spiritual woman to come?  Since at no time in scriptures do we ever see that the physical Eve crushed the head of Satan, I feel we can rule out this natural woman Eve as being the woman that God is referring to.

Many have tried to claim that this woman is Israel who gives birth to Jesus and that is certainly one possibility for interpretation.  But we really need scriptural evidence to confirm this interpretation. Since we are studying a woman in Revelation 12 and there are verses that we have not learned yet, I have eliminated this prophesied woman to be Israel.  Therefore, I am convinced that this Genesis 3 woman is a prophetic statement concerning the church and I will tell you why soon.

Then God seems to change the subject focus off of the woman and Satan in Genesis 3, and He says “between your (Satan) seed and her (a woman’s) seed”.  Here we have the first reference in the Bible to “the seed of the woman“.  This of course is an interesting and complex concept.  But, what we need to determine is, according to the Bible, what is a “seed”?  If you would like to read the series on this subject in depth you can go to “Understanding Seeds“.

There are many different definition of seed given to us in the Bible, from natural seeds found in fruits and vegetables that you plant into the ground, all the way to the sperm in a male.  Then, children are also called seeds in the Bible.  These are all examples, of natural seeds.  But, there are also spiritual seeds in the Bible and if this is a prophetic reference to a spiritual woman, I would logically claim that “her seed” is a spiritual reference also.

So what are spiritual seeds?  Jesus tells us in the Gospels that the sower, sows the word of God (Mk 4:14).  We can learn from this statement that the seeds that the sower was sowing were God’s Words.  These are spiritual seeds that are planted into the hearts of men (Mat 13:19).  These seeds are either fruitful or they die or get eaten by birds (symbolic devils) or choked out by the enemy’s seeds (weeds which are symbolic words from Satan) because the hearer did not understand them.

There are multiple parables in the gospels about seeds, gardens and harvests that all apply to the spiritual realities that I am referring to and I will not attempt to include these in order to keep this lesson as short as possible.  If nothing else you should have learned that there are many possibilities for what the seed of the woman could be and we could apply the principle of Satan’s seed being his words that are attempting to overrule God’s Word to eliminate spiritual fruit and salvation from humans.  That is at least one valid and good interpretation for what we are studying in Revelation 12 and Genesis 3.  But, maybe you are like me and have heard it taught for years that the “seed of the woman” is Jesus Christ and He is the one to bruise the head of the serpent on the cross.  That is a common misinterpretation of God’s word and I will attempt to explain why I say this.

So here is where I may lose some readers, the next statement in Genesis 3:15 is the part of the prophecy that I believe was mistranslated by two little words.  This is what the King James Bible says “it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.  The first word is the word “it”  and this is a Hebrew word that is often times translated as “she” or “her”.  In fact if you look back at Genesis 3:12, Adam’s response to God’s question is for him to call his wife by this word and it is translated as “she”.  In this verse it is translated “the woman that you gave me, she (H1931) did give me of the tree and I did eat…”  For some reason the translation was changed to the word “it” instead of the word “her” for verse 15.

Now the last part of verse 15 says “and you shall bruise his heel”.  That is very interesting because a male child is never referenced in this verse anywhere.  However I believe that in verse 15 the translators thought (assumed) God was talking about a prophetic statement of Jesus Christ so they changed the verse to reflect the male gender of Jesus to be the one whose heel was to be bruised.   This reflected in the term “his heel”.  From what I could see by studying, there was no Hebrew word for “his” included in the verse so it was also added for the assumed clarity by the translators.  However, if we change the verse to what I consider to be a more correct translation it would read like this:

Gen 3:15  And I will put enmity between thee (Satan) and the woman (Church), and between thy seed (words) and her seed (words); she (H1931) shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise her heel.

Right now this is just a minor technicality, but I believe based upon more scriptures that I will show you it will become very significant.   Remember this, Jesus told His church to walk on serpents.  Jesus knowing Genesis 3 very well selected the symbolic name for Satan (serpent) to give them the “authority” to tread on him. Therefore, Jesus knows and understand who Satan represents.  Right there ought to tell us plainly that Jesus did not already do it!  Jesus would have never delegated something that He had already accomplished and completed.

Notice in Luke 10:19 how God has give to us all of the same nouns and verbs directly and indirectly that were found in Genesis 3:15.  I believe there is an implied “enmity” between two opposing parties.  One is the person (implied woman called the church) that is to conquer her enemy Satan and his demons.  Therefore we have the serpent, the church’s feet, and Jesus’ instruction (words) given to her (the church) to walk with her feet (including her heels) on Satan.  I know some of these are indirect references yet they are there if you can see them.  Let me give you another valuable scripture found in the New Testament that will shed significant additional light on the subject.  In the book Romans, God makes this statement that is truly  another outstanding prophecy:

Rom 16:20  And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

Again we have the primary subjects and nouns including verbs found in Genesis 3:15 and Luke 10:19, but using slightly different terminology and perspectives.   We see God speaking to the Church, the bride of Christ a spiritual woman saying to her that He (God) will bruise Satan (the serpent) under her (our) feet (heel) very soon.   You see there is a major problem if Jesus has already put Satan under His feet.  Why would God still need to crush Satan’s head again using the church’s feet later in the future tense?

God gave Paul the book of Roman’s many years after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and at the time of this writing, according to the inspired Word of God the bruising of the serpent’s head had not yet occurred.  Did you also notice the very parallel specific term “bruise” in Romans 15:20?  Isn’t that exactly what God said would happen to the serpent in Genesis 3:15?   Again, we can see a spiritual woman, her feet and Satan the serpent being bruised.  All of this is mentioned in relation to a pending future action that was to soon occur.  We can see in God’s timetable that the time of this crushing of the serpent’s head has to occur very soon.  From prophetic words that we studied in Genesis 1, we can see that the church age only lasts two days, or 2000 years.  So if it is going to happen it has to happen very, very soon.  Here is one more verse that I will end this lesson with.  In this verse we again see the pending status of God’s enemies:

Heb 1:13  But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?

Here we have another verse that states Satan, the enemy of God is not yet completely under the feet of Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is now seated at the right of the Father and He waits for His enemy to be made His footstool.  A footstool is a place you rest your feet, yes?  If the church is the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), where are Jesus’ feet right now?  I believe that we are the feet of Jesus walking on the earth and Jesus is now seated in heaven waiting for the God of Peace to bruise Satan under our feet.

How is the church supposed to do this?  Read Ephesians 6:13-18 for God’s clue to how this bruising will soon occur.  We will find in these verses God’s command to the church to be clothed with the whole armor of God.  What was included in this armor?  There are two main parts of the armor that I believe are the most important parts for our current study.

The first armor necessary for victory over Satan is found in Ephesians 6:15 where the church’s feet should be shod with preparation of the gospel of peace.  Wow, isn’t that interesting?   Wasn’t it the God of Peace that was going to bruise Satan under our feet shortly?  Then notice and learn the Greek word G5265 translated as “shod”.  This word literally means to bind on sandals under your feet.  Wow again.  Can we put on and tie God’s sandals on our feet so that we can walk on Satan?  It appears to me that we can.

The next armor piece that I want focus upon and include here is the Sword of the Spirit found in verse 17.  We are told that this is the Word of God.  Wow again.  Isn’t that the Seed of God?  Doesn’t that sound familiar between our two enemies found in Genesis 3:15?  God said I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between her seed and your seed.  Now in Revelation 12 we have a woman clothed with the Sun (the armor of light) with the moon (Satan) under her feet.  Remember what God said in Romans 13:12?  God said to cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Wow, wow, wow!

CONCLUSION

I believe it is time to demonstrate the defeat of Satan under the feet of the spiritual woman.   So what I have attempted to do today is to demonstrate scriptural precedence that establishes a woman that has Satan under her feet.   By establishing this in the Bible it helps us to better understand the woman in Revelation 12.  The woman is clothed with Jesus Christ and has Satan defeated under her feet.  Who else can it be?  I have not found any witnesses to these truths being Mary or the natural nation of Israel.  So far it appears to only fit the church accurately.

Thanks for taking the time to study the Word of God.  If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons you can continue with “Part 4“.