(Ver 1.3) This is now Part 7 in the series of advanced Bible study on the subject of the True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12.  I hope and pray that you have been following it from the beginning.  If not please go to the beginning and start with Part 1, before you try to read this part of the series.  The message should make much more sense, if you take them in the order provided.  In the last lesson we scripturally pursued evidence for if the Bible says anywhere that Jesus could be a spiritual father and have a spiritual family with spiritual children.  You see if it says in the Bible anywhere that Jesus doesn’t have children or simply does not say that He can, then we would have no real foundational basis for the woman in Revelation 12 being the church covenant wife.  I believe we found a few good scriptures that Jesus can and does have a spiritual family and that this spiritual family can or is implied to have spiritual children.  One of these scriptures was a popular Christmas card verse about Jesus, with Him being called the “Everlasting Father” in Isaiah 9:6. This verse brought up a new good question.  Why would God need to qualify the noun “father” with the type of father adjective “everlasting”?  Here we have a noun (father) being limited in scope, modified or qualified using an adjective called “everlasting”.  Didn’t most of us always think that God the Father, was the Everlasting Father?  Everlasting means eternal or the one that lasts forever.  The only logical implication from that qualification is that God the Father is not the Eternal Father, Jesus is.  Is this true, or are we missing something?

This is what we will be addressing in today’s Bible lesson. Please remember that no one knows everything, except God. It is best, that we just read and study, the Bible the best that we know how. Then trust the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth as He said He would do in John 16:13. Please stay open to the Spirit of God, and if He wants to teach us something about the Bible, we do our best to listen.  Therefore, try to stay open and pay close attention to every word that is written.

In the last lesson we were also focused on the existence of patterns found in the Bible.  As you should recall a pattern is nothing but a model from which repeated occurrence can originate. This is truly a very significant topic used by God in the entire Bible.  God writes about real historical facts that did occur in human history but then He uses them to teach us about Jesus.  Remember what Jesus said to us in John 5:39, “Search the scriptures for in them you believe you have eternal life, but these are they that testify of me”.  Jesus just taught us everything in the Bible is focused upon Him directly or indirectly.  Jesus just claimed the Words on every page had something that would be a witness about His Life.  Wow, that is an awesome concept.

INTRODUCTION

I want to take a turn and explore this subject of a woman in Revelation from a completely different and fresh angle of perspective.  So many times, God when He answers prayer, He does so in a way that we were not expecting.  God gives us the answer to the prayer, but usually in a new way that was different than what we would have done, or the way that we would have like it to be done.  This is a lot of the time, the trouble with our Bible study techniques.  Instead of studying a subject from God’s perspective we want the Bible to fit our idea of the way we think it should be.  But we soon discover that God if He wanted us to know everything clearly could have written the Bible that way.  However, since God wrote the Bible in a concealed manner with a hidden O.T. Jesus we must learn to work with what He has given to us.  In doing this we soon learn that we need to change how we think.  God is not like us, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa 55:8).  But that does not mean that we cannot change to learn His ways and think His thoughts.  It just takes a transforming and renewing of our mind to know and understand the spiritual things of God (Romans 12:2).

 I will start this lesson by saying that the child in Revelation 12 is God as we learned in Part 5 of the series.  Every male child in the spiritual family of God is always God.  Every female in the spiritual family of God is always the people in covenant with God.  So, if a spiritual woman has a spiritual male child it can only be God.  I just gave you some very basic concepts of spiritual things that are very important.  If you do not understand these, that does not mean they are not true, it only means you may need to learn something that you do not yet know. If you keep reading the lessons, we will eventually all get to a united knowledge of the truth, but it will take time and commitment for us all.

PATTERNS OF JESUS FROM THE BOOK OF RUTH

In this lesson we need to explore the Book of Ruth.  There is a Bible series on this subject that has more detail, but we will go through an overview to see how it applies to the woman in Revelation 12. The book of Ruth in the Old Testament has some absolutely fascinating information given to us in it.  If you have never read this book perhaps you should do that now, before you continue with my blog.  It is a short book, only 4 chapters so it will not take long to read through it and to gain a quick overview of it.  To those who have read it and think they know what it is about, let me briefly recap.  The primary subject of the book is a woman named Ruth.  This woman is a gentile woman, not in covenant with God, not born into or of the nation of Israel.   Ruth was a gentile woman not in covenant relationship with God or the Law.  This is very important to understand.

The book of Ruth starts with the story of one family that came from Bethlehem.  Already we can see some parallels being developed.  Where was physical Jesus born?  Jesus was of course born in Bethlehem.   The story of Ruth starts with this family from Bethlehem leaving their home because of a famine.    Famine is a state of or the absence of natural food to eat. Natural food parallels spiritual food and gives us insight into a greater spiritual problem, but I won’t go there right now.  Any way this family consisted of the following family members:

1. Elimelech, the father
2. Naomi, the mother
3. Mahlon,  a son
4. Chilon, a son

This family of four members, rises up and moves to a place called Moab to live because of a severe famine in Israel.  There in that land the father Elimelech dies, and the two sons marry gentile women, but they also die.  Now we have a family that consists of nothing but three women who were left as widows.  These three women were one Jewish mother-in-law with two daughters-in-law.  One of the daughters-in-laws leaves and goes back to her gentile family, but the other daughter-in-law made a much wiser choice.  This woman was named Ruth, and she said to her Jewish mother-in-law, where you go, I will go, where you live, I will live, and your people shall be my people and your God will be my God.  Ruth made a great choice and God honored her decision tremendously, by allowing her to become a great-great-grandmother of King David.  Please notice that there are only 4 women directly mentioned by name in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Ruth is one of them.  God bestowed a great honor upon this gentile woman named Ruth for her faith in trusting in Him and His Word.

We can see a great story unfolding of a gentile woman not in covenant with God, speaking covenant words to be joined into the family of God.  These words spoken are a pattern of another future spiritual woman that was to come.  In fact, all of these characters in this story I believe represent an allegory of a much higher spiritual reality.  God is giving us a look into the spiritual realm by analyzing this story.  This story is primarily about a gentile woman named Ruth and this woman is a model, type or pattern of the church.

Her mother-in-law Naomi is a type or pattern of the Nation of Israel.  Her Father-in-law is a type or pattern of God.  Earlier I told you that males in a covenant family normally always represent God, and the females represent women in covenant with God.  In this story of Ruth, we see that the father as well as the sons all die.  When Jesus died on the cross who really knew what this meant?  Obviously, Satan didn’t know (1 Cor 2:8).  I believe that when Ruth’s first husband died that this was a type of physical Jesus’ death on the cross.  Now as we read in Romans 7 her husband’s death allows us to legally be remarried without being called an adulteress.  But we have been introduced to this topic previously.

Now let me go into what the Book of Ruth is primarily about.  You see everything that God said up until this point is just the introduction to the main subject found in the book of Ruth.  The primary story line concerns God’s law of the “kinsman redeemer”.  If you read chapter one of Ruth, you saw Naomi make a statement to Ruth that she was too old to have children for Ruth to wait around and marry.  You see in Jewish families if a son married a wife and died without children it was the responsibility of the nearest relative, a brother to marry the widow to raise up heirs for his dead brother.  This is the foundational basis of the story of Ruth.

What hope does Ruth have by hanging around her mother-in-law?  Where does Ruth place her trust in for her destiny and future?  Ruth is placing all of her trust in the law of God.  God’s Word declared that a near relative was responsible to come into the picture and marry the widow to have children.  Notice what God just said?  The reason for the marriage was to have children for their dead relative.  This is so significant that we cannot even begin to imagine what it all means.  Ruth the widowed wife is a type of the church. Boaz is the kinsman redeemer, and he is a type or pattern of Jesus Christ, our near kinsman redeemer. This of course is the risen firstborn from the dead Son of God. It is very interesting typology to see how and where Ruth meets her Redeemer.  If you read the story, you know she meets him in a harvest field.  Jesus taught a lot about grains and harvests in the Gospels.  Jesus even teaches us to pray the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into the harvest field.  Wow, that is not a coincidence.

Boaz takes Ruth the gentile woman to be his wife with a covenant of marriage for the purpose of having children, and they become the great-great-grand-parents to King David.  This is amazing stuff if you are understanding the implications.  All of these pattern concepts are found in the law, in the book of Numbers and if you read through them closely you should begin to understand some of the spiritual implications to these words:

Num 27:6  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

Num 27:7  The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.

Num 27:8  And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter.

Num 27:9  And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren.

Num 27:10  And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father’s brethren.

Num 27:11  And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses.

You can see how God goes through a long discourse of how to distribute the inheritance of a family when the father dies.  Who is our spiritual Father?  Oh well I am sure I will have some say God the Father cannot die and I will not argue with you.  You either see it or reject it, you choose.  Any way in the law, if the father dies the inheritance begins to go to the children starting with the firstborn.  Then if there are no children it is interesting to note that we start with the nearest relatives, uncles and then cousins.  We can see a hierarchical order of inheritance being established.  God is establishing a law of precedence in the natural realm to demonstrate how He will do something later in the spirit realm.  I would like to ask those skeptics out there this question.  Did you ever notice in the New Testament that we, in the church are called the joint heirs with Christ?  What is an heir?  An heir is someone who inherits after someone else died.  Get it?  Uh oh?  Who died to leave us an inheritance?  What was it, that we inherited?  How did this inheritance follow the law in Numbers that we just read?  There are just so many questions to think about, isn’t there?

So, the story of Ruth is a natural pattern to a much greater spiritual truth.  We can see Ruth, who is the pattern of the church, marries the redeemer named Boaz a pattern of Messiah.  She does this in order to raise up children for her dead husband and his father’s name should not vanish from the face of the earth.  Let me briefly give you some scriptures in Ruth that may help you to understand this story better:

Rth 4:3  And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech’s:

Rth 4:4  And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it.

It was the responsibility of the nearest relative to buy back the land that belonged to and in their family name.  In this verse, Boaz approaches a nearer relative first to ask him to buy the land of their brother Elimelech.  But as you read down you find this nearer relative refuses, because it would mean that it would ruin his inheritance.  You can see in verse 4 that Boaz tells this other relative that if he didn’t buy the land that he would do it, because there are no other relatives that can legally do it.  But did you notice the term “redeem”.  “Redemption” is a New Testament term and one of the key works of Jesus Christ.

Rth 4:5  Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.

You can see in this verse of Ruth the problem that the other relative is faced with.  In order to redeem the land of Naomi, he must marry the gentile woman widow named Ruth and have an heir for his dead relative.  This is the law of God given to the nation of Israel and it is very significant to the story of Jesus and the church.

So how does all of this relate to other scriptures in the Bible?  I’ll end this lesson with this related reference found in the New Testament:

Rom 7:1  Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?

Rom 7:2  For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.

Rom 7:3  So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

Rom 7:4  Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

Here we have a passage related to God’s law of marriage.  These verses have widespread spiritual implications written all over them.  Did you notice who they were written to?  Paul writes these verses to those under the law.  He actually says those that “know” the law (Rom 7:1).  To “know” something is a statement related to a covenant relationship.  I’ll try to do a lesson in the future explaining that statement in more depth.   We can see that Paul is writing these verses to his natural brothers of the nation of Israel.  So, while the book of Romans was written to the church, these verses pertain only to the natural Jews.  It is very important to see this.

The law stated that a woman who was married could not be married to another man as long as the first husband was alive, or she would be called an adulteress.  But the woman whose husband is dead is free to marry another (Rom 7:3).  So what does God say to those who were under and in covenant with the law?  God told them that they are now free to marry another, and this one that they should marry is the one that God raised from the dead, Jesus Christ.  Are you following the reasoning and logic of these statements?  Because Jesus Christ was crucified, these verses claim that their former husband was killed or died.  That is what Romans 7:4 is telling them.

The crucifixion of Jesus has now freed them from the law to be in covenant with the risen from the dead man Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  A marriage to the Son, and not the Father.  We can clearly see that these verses do not apply to gentile believers because they were never under the law, or in covenant with God.  The gentiles were never in or under the law and therefore were free to be married to whomever they choose.  However, the natural nation of Israel was given the law on Mt Sinai through Moses and this law established many boundaries that they are forced to abide with as long as they refuse to accept their Messiah.   Let me briefly go back to the book of Ruth and tell you about a statement that Ruth makes that reveals to us the principal of these statements in Romans 7:

Rth 1:17  Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

Ruth makes a statement of truth that has widespread implications.  You can see from the statement that death represents a dividing line.  Death causes a separation of one connected person from another person.  Only death can separate us, Ruth said.  This is an incredible revelation if you apply it correctly and understand it fully.  Ruth gives us a secret to how God will separate himself from Satan.  Only by Husband’s death will the wife be freed from the law of her husband.  Death represents a division between two connected in covenant individuals.  Through death a legal and permanent separation occurs between two people who were in an eternal marriage covenant.  It is important to know that God does all things in a legal, orderly and just manner.

There is so much more that we could discuss about these verses, but I wanted to show you another set of verses that speak about God experiencing death for us.  The death of Jesus has so much more meaning than we have ever imagined.  That means we have an inheritance that must be distributed according to the law.  Ruth is a story that has so many great truths in it, that I did not get to them all in this lesson.  Hopefully you will continue to study the book and see the other details that God reveals to us.   For example, Boaz must go to a closer relative and ask him if he wants to marry the gentile woman.  The closer relative refuses to marry Ruth because it will mess up his inheritance, so he thinks.  Who is this closer relative representative in the spiritual realm?  How does this pattern fit into the redemptive work of Christ?  Then there is this fact found again in the genealogy of Jesus.  I told you earlier this list only contains the names of 3 or 4 women, and they all have significance and meaning to Jesus.  Boaz was a type of Jesus.  Who is Boaz’s mother?  Boaz is the son of Rahab the harlot.  That is also very significant in the typology analysis.  Who was Jesus born of?  Jesus was born of the natural seed named Mary, that came from the tribe of Judah of Israel. The nation of Israel is also called a harlot in Old Testament books like Hosea.  There are so many more things to consider.  If you dig really deep you can find so many valuable truths.

CONCLUSION

So, I have attempted to give you scriptures that show why the woman in Revelation 12 is pregnant, and who this child is and why He must be delivered.  The child in Revelation 12 has widely been taught to be Jesus Christ, but the typology and symbolism found in the Old Testament, and in the rest of the chapter 12 does not fit the natural birth of the Messiah.  So, we have to look for spiritual truths and spiritual reasons to identify the male child and hopefully I have pointed you in the right direction.  We have discovered is that the reason for every covenant marriage between a husband and wife is for the purpose to have an heir.  This heir is the person that will continue the family’s named. God commanded this in Genesis 1 when He told them to be “fruitful and multiply”. This too was a divinely designed pattern of creation.

I know I did not cover everything in its entirety, and I know there is absolutely no way that I could do that even if I wanted to.   Only God knows everything, and we only see things through a glass darkly and only truly understand what God wants us to understand, when He wants us to understand it.  I believe that we have so much more to learn.  Thank you for reading this series of lessons and studying the Bible with us.  I appreciate your prayers and your diligent Bible study faithfulness.  God Bless you.

If you would like to continue in this study series, please go to PART 8 now.