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Understanding How to Become a Light to a Dark World! Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 in a series of advanced spiritual Bible lesson on “How to Become a Light to a Dark World”. If you have not read it from the beginning, I would highly recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1“. Today I want to discuss briefly a false teaching that has been around in the church for a number of years. I probably heard this taught 20 years ago and I’m sure that it was not an original teaching, but something that has been around much longer than that. Here is the basic teaching, the minister said that the church represented the symbolic moon in Genesis 1:16. Because we were those who were a light to the others that were in the darkness. He based his teaching on the presumption that Christians had no ability to produce light upon themselves and were dependent upon the light from the Sun in order to reflect His glory to others. He based his teaching on the fact that the Moon is said to rule the Night and the Sun is said to rule the Day. In listening to him, he thought that the moon represented the church based upon these few facts derived from human reasoning. Unfortunately for him, he could not provide any scriptures to back up what he taught and that is where it all fell apart to me. You must let the Bible interpret itself. You must get two or three witness in order to establish any truth and you must follow God’s rules or you will remain clueless.
If you have read this series from the beginning you should understand that the moon does rule the night and that the Sun does rule the day. The Sun is clearly Jesus Christ so far we agree with at least part of the erroneous teaching. But, that is where I depart company. I do not recall any scriptures that I remember reading that tells me that the church rules the night. To be a ruler means to be a king or a prince over those people. That means you have authority and power to control what they do. Clearly the church does not do that. Evil in the world is growing at a rapidly progressive pace. There is terrorism and evil happening worldwide. So is the church doing anything to control it? It sure doesn’t look like it to me. So I want to address the identity of the moon from a Bible perspective and look at the physical qualities of the moon to analyze them to see who we can see that they could possibly represent.
Searching for the Descriptive Qualities of the Moon!
The moon is a small object that revolves counter clockwise around the earth. As you may know, the moon does not produce any light on its own ability, other than to reflect what is coming from the sun. The moon is a dead, lifeless object that has no known great value. I recall when astronauts brought back rocks from the moon. If they had any great value other than being from the moon, I believe that we would already have mining colonies on the moon recovering them. I realize that the moon helps determine tide cycles and things like that and has purposes for existence, but why do some planets have multiple moons and we have only one? Ok, let’s take this analogy a little further, the earth revolves around the sun in annual cycles. The moon revolves around the earth in monthly type cycles. So when the earth completes one cycle around the sun, the moon has completed approximately 12 cycles around the earth. This is what I believe, I believe that God created natural things as views into the windows of spiritual things. So what do we learn from what I have said so far? It is very difficult to see how the moon fits a type of a symbolic representation for the church, the apostles or any believers, based upon this information only. The church is not dead, it is not lifeless and it is not the ruler of the night or of the world. Heck the church can’t even vote to elect a Christian to be president, so we control nothing to very little in the world.
Also note this fact, the moon goes in cycles and goes from a state of total darkness to a state of total wholeness or full illumination and then back again to total darkness. Also, note that the moon has a dark side that is not normally seen by man. You see the moon has a symbolic side that has not been revealed to men. This is the dark side that cannot be seen and this is symbolic of the deception and the hidden evil spiritual qualities of someone. Is that the church? Does the church have a hidden dark side? I do not believe that is the case. No this fits a picture of Satan more than anyone else. Did you know that we would not know anything about the existence of Satan, if it were not for the Word of God? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever seen Satan personally? You see you have not, the only way you know about the existence of Satan, is by the Word of God that reveals him to us. So in order for us to even see Satan, God must give us the light in His Word to reveal him to us. It is only by the light of the Word of God that shines on this symbolic moon that you can see or understand that Satan exists. So that is a very different perspective on what the light represents and the moon represents that God has taught me. You have to realize that there are still many hidden things about Satan, that we do not know, because, God has not revealed more information or given more understanding to us about the information that is written in the Bible. So the dark side of the moon represents the unknown or hidden parts of Satan, the illuminated side of the moon represents the parts of Satan that have been revealed to us by God’s word. The New Moon when the sky is completely dark is representative of the hidden Satan. I struggle with the fact that anyone can think the moon represents Christians, because it reflects the light of Christ to a dark world. The main problem that I have with that logic is the fact when the moon goes into a new moon phase of the cycle, there is no light reflected and thus no moon is seen. Is this what happens to the church? Does the church go through cycles of complete darkness where God is not available to shine on us? If they do, they shouldn’t. Genesis 1:16, tells us that the moon is the entity that rules the vast night sky and this can only be Satan. I guess I haven’t given you very many scriptures about the identity of the symbolic moon, but I’ll fix that soon.
Christians do not live in darkness any more according to what Jesus taught us in John 8:12. So is the moon of the day or of the night? Is the moon seen normally in the light of the day or in the darkness of the night? I know technically speaking, if you can see the moon, then the moon must be getting some sunlight on its face. But, what dominates the moon? Is it the light of the sun or is it the darkness of the night sky? Which is greater? The little bit of sunlight being reflected or the vast darkness of the night sky? According to some people’s logic, the moon reflects the true light of Christ, but yet still lives in and is dominated by the night and the darkness of this world because Christ is not here and therefore, the spiritual sun has set. We can clearly see that this is not what Jesus said and not what other Bible verses teach either. Jesus said you will not be in the darkness anymore, meaning before you believed you were in the darkness and after you believed you were now in the light. Some try to say that the dark night sky are the unsaved people that we are a light to. But, yet the moon is only partially lit and has a dark side that has no light. This just doesn’t fit the church. For the church, a transition is said to have occurred from total darkness to the light of day. This could only correspond to the difference between night and day and no other condition makes any logical sense.
The Same Sun Shines on Both the Good and the Evil People in the World!
Many people have the idea that only Christians have any ability to see the light of God, and this is mostly true. Then they want to take that and try to convince you that only Christian can reflect the light of God. That is where I begin to deviate from that line of thought. But, I guess it does depend upon your definition of what light is. I have already demonstrated to you that Jesus called John the Baptist a light, before there was any Christians. Here is a verse that is also very interesting to this subject. Jesus is speaking and He says something you should see:
Mat 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Jesus said the same Sun shines on the evil as well as the good. Uh oh? If you understand the Bible, you understand that Satan is the originator of all evil. Evil is a synonymous term for the devil. The devil is just another title for Satan. That means if the moon is Satan, that Jesus is telling us it is still possible for the light of God to shine on him. Do you understand that logic? Some people seem to think that Satan is only representative of the darkness and as we can see from what Jesus says, that this is not the case. You see what God is saying, is from our perspective, the sun will shine on everyone equally the same. The Bible says that God shows no favoritism, nor shows any respect to persons. What that is telling us, is that God is a constant and consistent Spiritual being that treats everyone with equal fairness. God is a constant and a consistent source of the light for everyone, that would include Satan also. So using this logic we can see that the light is made available to everyone equally. So there must be another determining factor for who sees the light and which people let this light in. Let’ me give you some scriptures that inform us of Satan’s evil. We do know that Satan is called the “wicked one” in 1 John:
1Jn 5:18 We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.
1Jn 5:19 And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.
1Jn 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
Here are 3 verses that speak a tremendous amount of information about our subject. The devil is called the “wicked one”. The wicked one is another term for “evil one”. In fact if you look up the definition of the Greek work “wicked” you will see that it can mean evil. So Satan is confirmed to be a candidate for the evil that God’s light also shines on. Then in verse 19, God tells us that the whole world is full of wickedness or evil. This is representative of those who are in the darkness. Finally, in verse 20 we see that Jesus has come into the wicked world and given to us an ability to understand and thus to know Him who is True. Then it declares something very profound, we are said to be in Him that is True and it declares Him to be Jesus Christ the Son of God. So let me ask you this, if we are in Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is in us, do we just reflect the true light or does the Bible say we are the true light? That statement will probably rock many religious boaters who are afraid to get out of the boat and walk on the water like Peter did. What we need to take away from these verses is the world is an evil place controlled by the wicked one. However, the church is now” in” the True Son, Jesus Christ. Again we have to conclude that, if Jesus Christ is the One that is True, who is the one that is false? Obviously, this is not a trick question, you can see from these verses that Satan is called the evil one! What we have is a classic Good vs. Evil conflict being presented to us.
Finally, in verse 20, it says that Jesus has given unto us an “understanding”. Is this another reference to the Light of God shining inside of Christians? Those who understand the truth? I believe that it is a direct confirmation to what the light is, who gives the light and where the light lives now.
Why Is It Better For Jesus To Go Away?
I think I want to address another point that someone made in a comment. They seemed to think that while Jesus Christ was on the earth, He was the Light and I agree with that part of the statement. But, then they said when Jesus Christ was taken out of the world we now do not have the direct Light and the Sun has set. Which do you prefer, the daylight or the nighttime? Is it better to work during the day and sleep during the night or what? In other words, it would appear that some people think that it would have been better for Christ to stay in the world so that we could have the True Light in all of its direct intensity and splendor. Now that Jesus Christ is not in the world some seem to think that the sun has set and we only live in the darkness with some reflected light off of the moon. However, Jesus taught something that is very different:
Joh 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
As you can read, this verse says that Jesus thought it was more highly beneficial for Him to go away than to stay on the earth. Why is that important to see? Jesus said if he leaves He can send us the “Comforter” which you should know is the Holy Spirit and He will enter into your spirit and abide with you forever. You can read more about the Comforter in John 14:16-26 and John 15:26. What Jesus is telling us, is that my Spirit will come into you and abide with you forever and this is better than if I stay here physically. So did Jesus ever leave? Or did He return and rise internally, inside of us by His Spirit? For God to be inside of me 24×7 is far better than having 5 minutes of physical Jesus’ time externally.
The True Identity of the Moon and the False Light!
I have tried to give you scriptures that back up my statement of the definition of Light and Darkness, Day and Night! Now let’s shift gears and go to see some verses about Satan and see how he is described to us. What does the Bible say about this “False Light” that I talked about earlier:
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
Some seem to think that Satan has no light, however, here is a verse that would seem to say something a bit different than that. In this verse, Satan is spoken of as a spiritual being that “transforms” into an “angel of light”. What does that mean? If I put on a costume, I could transform myself into a Police Officer, but does that make me a true Police Officer? No you see it clearly does not. It only means I am pretending to be a Police Officer. The word “transform” according to the Strong’s can mean to “disguise”. A disguise is of course a costumed fake or a false appearance. Sound Familiar? You can clearly call it a false appearance for Satan to portray himself as an angel of light. The Bible says that God is Light and in Him is no darkness, so we can see that Satan is trying to present himself as a messenger of the omnipotent God. This would appear to be a picture of the moon who reflects the true light, but yet has no real ability to produce the true light in himself. Someone who appears to be light, but is not really light. Is that a Christian? Or is that a good descriptive terminology for the moon as being a false light? Let’s see another definition to learn more:
2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
Here is that same Greek word for “Transforming” that is used to describe Satan in the very next verse of 2 Corinthians, this time used to describe those that are called “false apostles”. Uh oh? It does sound familiar? Those that are false apostles transform or disguise themselves to appear as true apostles. Isn’t this what Satan was said to do? To transform and appear as an angel of light? You can clearly see that Satan is called the “False Light” by these two verses. Satan is referred to in the Bible as a “deceiver” (Rev 12:9) and a “liar” (John 8:44), both of these terms would describe a spiritual being that is attempting to be something that he is not. You can also see an implied meaning of the moon, being given to us. The moon goes through phases of transformation from total darkness to fully illuminated light and then back again to darkness. To transform means and implies a constant change is occurring. You can see Satan today, tomorrow he will appear to be different. On the other hand, God is Light, and He is a constant never changing source of strength and truth to us. Which one is the church suppose to model our lives after? Is the church suppose to transform themselves constantly like the moon? Or are we to remain constant and consistent, growing into the image of Christ who is the Sun? You see the moon cycle only makes sense for the church on the half of the phase that grows brighter and not the reverse phase where it vanishes. The church is never ever is suppose to go back into the darkness. Here is kind of an interesting verse to see:
Rev 16:13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
Satan is clearly described, being called “the dragon” (Rev 12:9) as someone who is associated with the beast and the “false” prophet”. Again we see Satan being called a deceiver, someone who portrays himself as a prophet, but is full of lies. The words of their mouth are described as being unclean spirits that look like frogs. These spirits would try to consume or eat the true words, by a plague of deceptive words. At least what we see is that Satan is in control and heavily associated with the spread of lies and false teaching and boy is that all over the internet.
Mat 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Jesus gives us a word of warning about people who disguise themselves on the outside but are extremely harmful on the inside. These are called “False Prophets” and that would indicate they are “False Lights”. Who do you think controls these liars? It can only be Satan. Here is another interesting verse of Scripture that describes Satan:
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
So again this verse is talking about Satan our adversary. It clearly calls him the “Ruler of the Darkness” of this world. Who or what are we told, is it that rules the night? According to the Genesis 1:16 it is the “lesser light” AKA the “moon” (Ps 136:9). I do not recall any verse in the N.T. that says the church Rules the Night? Do you know of any? To rule means to dominate, to control, and to exercise authority over. Jesus is clearly the Ruler of the Church, but who rules those that are not Christ’s? It is not Christ and it is not the church, so it must be the moon, Satan. Don’t get me wrong, the church can certainly be a light to them that are in the darkness, but we do not rule them, we just show them the way out of their darkness by preaching the gospel. If they believe it, they are saved and the Sun of God rises in their hearts and now they are no longer living in the darkness either.
Now you can see in 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 and Ephesians 2:2 that Satan is also called the “Prince” of this world. A “Prince” is also defined as a “ruler”, look up the word and see what it means. All this does is tells us who rules the Night and the darkness that is in the world. It is Satan who rules those who live in the darkness and he is the symbolic moon that deceives many into thinking they already have the true light. As long as people believe the lies of the enemy over the truth of God’s word they will remain in darkness and be ruled and controlled by Satan. This is the reality of the spiritual conditions of men’s hearts.
2Pe 2:1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
What we have seen are scriptures and many verses in the Bible that show there are true lights and false lights in the world today. These false lights represents people in the world that teach lies in whole or in part. False teachers, false prophets, false apostles, these are all instruments of darkness , controlled by the ruler of the darkness, used by Satan to deceive those who are easily fooled. People walking in the darkness, easily are tripped up and stumble and they do not know or understand in what it is that causes them to fall.
Perhaps you can find scriptures that back your point of view, however, they will not discount or discredit the verses that I just gave you. God’s word never contradicts itself so if you find verses that says the church is the moon, you will have to change the verses that I just gave you or delete them from your Bible. You can change the meaning of the word of God, simply by changing the definitions of a few words. If you do not use God’s definitions, you are buying into Satan’s definitions. This is what happens everyday in the world and on the internet.
Being the True Light to A Dark World!
So I have taught you that to be a true light to the world you must possess wisdom, understanding and knowledge that others in the darkness need and want to see. It is a well known fact that people do not know, what they do not know and this describes Christians as well as unsaved people in the world. Too many Christians think they know something valuable and try to go give it to others, but end up doing more harm than good. If you have only been saved a short time, guess what, maybe you should go and study and learn something that is worthy for others to know, before you try to be a light for Christ. Here is a verse that speaks volumes about internet bloggers that I compete with.
Heb 5:12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
God says, that everyone should be on a path to be a teacher to others. Everyone should be learning and growing up spiritually. Every Christian should become a light to those who are in the darkness. But, God clearly says it is a process to become this, and it does not automatically happen. Why is that? God writing to the Hebrews said that by now they should have been teachers, but because of their lack of understanding they were clearly not qualified for this task. They needed to go back and study the basics, drinking the milk meant for babies before they could ever attempt to teach anything that had meat in it. Only you and God know where you are and what you are able to do. Check up with Him before you do anything crazy. God Bless!
Understanding How to Become a Light to a Dark World! Part 2
(Ver 1.3) We are studying an advanced spiritual Bible lesson of “How to Become a Light to an Unsaved Dark World”. This is the second lesson in the series and we have already covered many new ways of thinking about this very important subject. If you have not read the first lesson, I would highly recommend that you go and start with “Part 1” since I cannot repeat everything in every lesson or I would never be able to teach anything new. What we have learned so far is that there are two dimensions of spiritual condition. These were called Light and Darkness or Night and Day by God we were introduced to this concept in Genesis 1:16. In this same verse we learned that these realms also had rulers that controlled each. The Sun ruled the Day and the moon ruled the night. I then taught you clear verses that Jesus was the Sun that rules the day and gives us spititual light. We have also uncovered a new Bible definition for what “Light” is in the eyes of God. According to Bible examples, to give light is the method of teaching people the truth. We also learned of the Bible existence of the “True Light” which was just another title for Jesus Christ. However, the existence of any “True Light” reveals the implied presence of “false light” that must also exist in the world by the law of antithesis. We have reviewed approximately 10 verses that confrimed Jesus Christ’s identity as the symbolic Sun that rules the symbolic spiritual realm of the Day, giving you more than enough references to Him in this capacity. Today I want to continue the lesson with information about other lights that exist in the world besides Jesus the true light called the Sun of Righteousness. In knowing this truth, you will suddenly realize that you have a cmpetition to teaching the truth.
Understanding There is More than One Source of Light!
Getting the correct Bible interpretation of the Truth of God is highly dependent us upon getting God’s definitions of the words spoken in the verses being studied. Given our new definition of what light is (teaching others God’s knowledge and giving them true understanding), only God had all light until He started sharing it for others to learn by Jesus teaching them. Now, whoever, hears the truth and understands it also has the same light from God in them in a very limited capacity. So at one time God had all of the light in Him, but each of us who has heard and believed now has a little bit of His light in us right now. I believe I have just introduced you to how to become a light to the world. There is a concept given to us by God in this lesson that if you do not know anything or understand anything in the Bible then you would be classified as someone who is in the darkness (lacking and true light) and I will give you several verses in the Bible to confirm this later. But, when you believe in Christ and have made Him the Lord of your life, you now have heard the Gospel and let that light shine inside of you.
If you look at the night sky, you might realize that most of those star lights in the sky are far greater in size and intensity than our Sun? The only reason they appear so small and insignificant to us, is because of the distance from our planet. There exists well over a billion suns in our universe and most of them are many millions of light years away from the earth. So obviously God did not create a universe with only One True Light source as an example to get us to think differently. This however, does not mean there are many ways to God or many religions that can give you the true light. We just have to learn there are many sources of light in the world, at least one of them is called the True Light, but yet the others still exist and some of these might qualify as even being a false light. If you understand the Bible, the “stars” in some verses can be a symbolic term used to describe “angels” (for example stars in Rev 1:20 , Rev 12:4). These little lights in the sky can be symbolic of angels and guess who Satan was? Satan of course was one of the chief angels. Oh, well maybe we’ll get into that more later. What I want you to start to see, is that Satan can be called a light producing spiritual being. It is very much like the old saying that goes “God taught Satan everything that he knows, but God didn’t teach him everything that He knew”. If Satan holds some knowledge and understanding of spiritual things, then he is by definition a light carrier or spreader. We will talk more about that later.
What I will now attempt to do is show you scriptures that will inform us of the existence of other stated lights in the world. By establishing the existence of other types of lights in the world other than Jesus Christ, we can begin to see how we can become one of the true lights to a dark world that can counter those that are false lights. I will start this part of the lesson with a description that Jesus gives us when speaking about John the Baptist:
Joh 5:35 He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.
Jesus was speaking about John the Baptist using the terms that he was a witness to the truth. Notice that John the Baptist was not an apostle of Jesus. John was not even a member of the church, since the church does not exist yet. Still, John the Baptist is spoken of in terms that were rarely seen to describe anyone in the Bible up until this point. If you study the Bible closely you should discover that John the Baptist was in the ministery category of a “prophet” of God, but yet he was still just a man like you and me. Jesus calls John a burning and a shining light! That sounds a lot like a description for a sun, but it could also represent a torch type of fire light, or maybe even a description for a candle. We know John is not the Jesus the Sun of Righteousness, but yet he is described using similar terminology. What we can clearly see is that he is never described using any of the characteristics of the moon. The moon shines, but it does not burn. I find that very interesting don’t you? So what made John the Baptist a burning light? I believe it was because he went about teaching people to “Repent and be baptized” ? John is said to be the one that was to prepare the way for the Christ. When John was born, his father was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to prophesy about John and Jesus. In this discourse in Luke 1, you can read that John is called a Prophet of God. Then you can see this statement and it tells us why Jesus called John a light:
Luk 1:77 To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,
John’s father prophesied that John would “Give the Knowledge of Salvation” unto the people of Israel concerning “the remission of their sins”. Wow that is some strong information being given to us. John was a light, because he taught people about the coming works of the Messiah. Jesus came to Save His People from their sins and this was very good news for everyone to hear. What we have just learned, is that John was a light, before Jesus Christ was a light to the same dark world. Interesting, isn’t it? You can obviously see that Jesus is not speaking physically or naturally, so Jesus was definitely speaking figuratively and symbolically about the forerunner and this witness of Christ. John brought the knowledge and understanding to the people that the Messiah was coming, so Jesus called him a bright light to the people. John brought the truth and taught the people and Jesus said it was very good.
Mat 5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Jesus also confirms, that we the church are now the light of the world. Here we have Jesus speaking to the apostles, the founders of the church of Jesus Christ, calling them lights, before they were even born again. I find that very interesting to study. This verse in Mat 5:14, is an exact duplication of the same Greek words and phrasing that Jesus used to describe Himself in John 8:12. Jesus said “I am the light of the world”, then in Matthew 5:14 Jesus says “You are the light of the world”. So is Jesus trying to teach us something new? Both of these verses describes us in the same terms of being “Light” as He is the “Light”. This Greek word means to “shine” as with “rays”. It also has an inferred meaning of “fire”. All of this sounds like the sun light and not the reflective moonlight.
Rom 2:19 And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,
We can clearly see that we are the light to them that are in darkness. I guess you could wrongly conclude that means we represent the moon. The moon is in the night sky being illuminated by the sun and that makes good logical sense. However, this verse does not say we reflect the light of Christ, it says we are the light of Christ. Do you understand the difference? This is almost exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 5:14 that we read right before this verse. Have you ever thought or seen where the Bible says “We are the Body of Christ”? Have you ever given that much thought? To be the body of Christ would indicate that we have the same Spirit in us that Jesus Christ had in Him. If that is true, then we are the True Light and we are not just a reflection of the True Light. Maybe you should go and read, Romans 12:5, 1 Cor 12:12-27, and Ephesians 5, where it describes the Church to be the actual body of Christ. That is actually a very important truth to know. Where you go, Christ goes, because the Spirit of Christ is in you. Here is another very relevant scripture that Jesus describes Christians in terms that we need to understand:
Mat 13:43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The church is called those who are righteous(Rom 10:10). Therefore the church is spoken of in terms of being the true light from the sun and not just a reflection of that light. If the church is the moon, this would have been a good opportunity for God to tell us that. Instead of saying the church will shine like the moon, we are described in terminologies of the direct sun. I find that very relevant to our understanding of who we are and what we do.
So what does it mean to be called a light of the world? To be a shining light of the world means to be a deliverer of the knowledge of God and a teacher of the Gospel of Christ. The word of God is the Light of God. If you understand it, you can teach it to others. So far in the Bible, I have not discovered any scriptures that describes the church or believers in terms of just being reflections of the light of Christ as the moon does. What you actually see in the Bible is more terms that describe us to be like the sun, than the moon.
Where is the Location of the Light and the Darkness?
Now let’s describe where this light and darkness is located. By understanding the location of the light and darkness, we can better understand what they really are. We of course know that the sky above us is the domain of natural light and natural darkness. But, since I am talking about spiritual things instead of natural things, where is this spiritual light and spiritual darkness? You see if Jesus says we are the light of the world, that could imply that we just glow in the dark in the night, but clearly that is not what the Bible is talking about. Given my earlier definition of light as being “knowledge” and “understanding” where does this exist? You could say in your brain, or in your mind or within your intellect and that would be very closely related to the truth. Your mind is not your spirit and your spirit is not your mind. However, your mind is in contact with your spirit. I have not given a direct lesson on the human makeup, but I have alluded to it in other blogs. People are spirit beings, that have a soul, who live in a body. That just so happens to be a triune being, made in the image and likeness of God. The soul of man is comprised of your mind, your will and your emotions. Your mind/soul exists between your body and your spirit. Sound waves of spoken words enter your physical ears, and are transferred into your mind by your inner ear, which can allow these words to enter into your spirit, if you choose to believe what you hear. These are just basic Bible truths that I hope that you understand already. So let’s continue to locate the spiritual light using the Bible:
Joh 11:10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.
Jesus tells us something very profound here, Jesus says a man that walks at night without the light “IN HIM” stumbles. Where is the Light suppose to be? The light is said to be internal, inside your body, this is the location of the spirit of the man. So where is the Night? It is also inside a man in their spirit? How do you stumble in your spirit? That again is a question that you should ask yourself. Obviously this is not a physical light source, if you cut open a Christian’s body you do not see light rays shooting outward. So what is this internal light a symbol of? The internal light is simply a symbolic representation of spiritual knowledge and understanding that we possess. In actuality there are two types of spiritual light that are related, the light that is in us, is the light we possess internally, because we see and understand parts of the Bible. Being a light to the world is taking this light that is in us and sharing it with those who live in the darkness so that they might also know and understand.
So do Christians have this Light IN them always and forever? Jesus gives us very explicitly the location of the light, to be in our spirits. We can see that a man who has no light in him is in darkness and said to be in the Night and he stumbles. Why does he stumble? Because of his mind and his thinking and his lack of knowledge and understanding. What Jesus is talking about are the differences between those that understand the Bible and those who do not understand the Bible. If I understand the Bible, or at least a part of it, I have some light inside of me. This light came from God, and from His Word. There are tons of people in the world who do not have a clue what the Bible says or means and these people all live in the darkness of the night, because of their ignorance and lack of understanding. Here is a very valuable scripture to see in our discussion:
2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
What is darkness and how is it related to Blindness? Both of these are the absence of light or the inability to spiritually see the light. No Light, then you have No Sight! Satan has blinded the minds of ALL of them that believe NOT, this verse says. Because of this blindness in their SOULS/MINDS, they are unable to see the light of the gospel of Christ in THEM (their spirits). Did you notice that the Gospel of Christ is called the LIGHT of GOD? What is the Gospel? It is the good news of what Jesus Christ has freely given to every man, woman and child. So we can conclude that those who do not believe in Christ, do not understand the Gospel, because Satan has deceived them into believing something else and therefore they do not see the light of the Truth in their spirits. The Light is again spoken of in terms of being spiritual knowledge and understanding of God’s Word. Knowing and understanding God’s word would be the ability to see the True Light. Jesus is said to be the giver of the Light, but Satan is at work diligently to block the light. How does Satan do this? He presents false teachings, false religions, false gods, false prophets, and false apostles to deceive you into a lie. Also, Satan can place thoughts, ideas and suggestions in your mind to cause you to be distracted from the truth.
So I have given you two major scriptures that inform us where the light is suppose to be. This location is said to be in the spirit of man. Also, keep in mind where the darkness is located, it is in the spirits of men and women. So to be a light to them that are in darkness is a practice to tell people the truth of the Word of God and pray that they believe it and understand it. If they choose to believe the truth, the spiritual Sun can rise inside of them also, then they will be born of the Day and no longer live in darkness.
Defining Spiritual Night and Day!
We have been talking about the subjects of darkness and light and I have mentioned that these are clearly synonymous terms for night and day. Correctly understanding the Bible means, finding and understanding God’s definitions of the Bible terms and symbols presented. God many times uses these types of natural symbols to teach hidden things that men think they already understand. But, because we do not get God’s definition for the subject, we are usually confused and live with what we think the Bible says. But, if we can get God’s definition for the words, then we can have greater assurance of a more accurate interpretation for what God wanted us to know in the first place. We have already read many scriptures in this lesson so far on this subject, but let’s go find new scriptures that help us to define what Night and Day is to God using His Word.
1Jn 2:8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.
As you can read again, Jesus is referred to as the “True Light”. But, it also says that to those who have accepted Him, the darkness has passed. Meaning Christians no longer live in the realm of darkness or in the spiritual night. Therefore if the light is present in us, the spiritual sun (Jesus) has not set, He has only risen internally in our spirits. Day and light and night and darkness are synonymous symbolic terms. Therefore from this verse we can see by implied antithesis that the day has appeared in us. The term “True Light” infers the existence of “False Light” as we have already discussed. People can of course dispute this or explain it away by their human reasoning and their definition of the word “True”. However, in my way of thinking if something is said to be true it would have to be something that was the opposite of a lie, or the opposite of that which is false. Any cleaver lie can appear very real on the surface and be taken by many to be true. It is very much like watching a Hollywood, movie. Everything in the movie is usually based upon lies, but they are presented in a format that appears to us to be so absolutely real. This is exactly how deception is presented in the world by Satan.
What you need to do is see what the Bible says. In this verse in 1 John 2:8, there is a direct connection to the Word of God and the light that shines in us. John writes a new commandment to us, yet this new commandment is more directly called the Word of God which gives us the light. These words are said to be True in Christ and now also in us! All of these words are in direct relationship to the spiritual light that is now shinning in us, because we have heard and accepted it. We have already seen the location of the light as being “In Us”. So we can conclude that the reason for the light that is now shinning in us, was given to us from us hearing, knowing and understanding the Word of God.
2Pe 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
Reading this verse carefully, it describes a spiritual process that has occurred within every believer. Our hearts use to be called a” dark place” without Christ, that would indicate that we were of the night and did not understand the Word of God. However, now it says that the “Day Star” has arisen in our hearts and the Day has Dawned within us. Do you understand that the sun rises every day and that begins the daylight hours? Jesus is called the “Day Star” and this is representative of our closest star that we observe during the daylight hours. So does the spiritual Day Star ever set in Christian hearts? I have not found any verses that say that occurs, in fact we just read a verse that said the darkness had passed. So the light is always present, when it arises in us, it is there for good. This is just another reason to see that we are not the moon who goes completely dark. The Christians are now described as being of the spiritual Day, because of the “Day Star” that has arisen within us. That would indicate that wherever we go Christ the Day Star goes also. It would also mean that we now have understanding of the Word of God in our sprits that it is permanently resident there.
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
As you can see in this verse we (the Church) are again confirmed to be of the Day and not of the night. The moon only shines at night and not normally during the day so we have to fit what we believe to what we read in the Bible. I hope that you are seeing and understanding these verses. This verse says that we are the children of the Light, which infers there are also children of the night, but these are not Christians. You can clearly see that there is an established division being stated. This separation between Day and Night is very explicitly defined. The day is a 12 hour period of light, the night a 12 hour period of darkness. These are two separate and distinct spiritual conditions. I believe that the earth symbolically represents both those who are saved and those who are lost. You can understand how I got to this conclusion by studying the parable of the Sower in Mark 4. Jesus tells us that the earth or the soil represents the hearts of people. Now think in terms of the earth and the earth’s counter clockwise rotation. Those on the dark side of the earth that have turned away from the Sun, represents those who are lost. Those who have turned to the Light they are the ones that are saved. Those in the night are ruled by the moon who they can occasionally see at night. The moon appears to be a reflection of the True Light, but yet it has a dark side that is not revealed to people. However, the Sun represents God and His light radiates in every direction lighting the good, the bad, the pretty and the ugly at the same time. The Sun rules the Day and those who are in the light and they do not see the moon, only the Sun. The Sun shines during the day and the moon is seen mostly in the night. It is just so obvious to me, that I can see it so very clearly. I guess I can understand how difficult it is to see for others who are new to these Bible verses.
Rom 15:21 But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand.
Here in this verse we can see that it is prophesied about a people who will begin to see. That would be the opposite of blindness and those in darkness. But, it also declares that they will hear with their ears and understand what is said. So we have a people spoken of that were spiritually blind, but now understand and know the truth. Those that see because of the Light of God and those who do not see because they live in darkness.
Eph 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Here is another witness to what the light is representing symbolically. In this verse the “eyes of your understanding” is spoken of as being something that is spiritually able to see or perceive the knowledge of God. Just as your body has natural eyes that observe physical light rays, the spiritual eyes have ability to perceive the truth or lies presented to it. All I am trying to do is to get you to see why I described what light and darkness meant in the symbolic usage that we have clearly observed in the Bible.
Eph 3:4 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ
What we observe in the N.T. is a repeated pattern, that the Bible contains mysteries and things which are difficult or impossible for the natural man to see and understand. This information is concealed from them that do not believe for a purpose. But, to them that are open, God grants light to see and understand these hidden mysteries.
Eph 4:18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
There are just so many verses in the Bible that speak of this spiritual situation of darkness and the inability to understand, that I cannot give you them all. I hope and pray that I have given you enough to see them for what they are. Spiritual blindness is a condition of the heart/spirit whereby men are incapable of understanding anything that is spiritual. In this verse in Ephesians, knowledge is spoken of in terms of a beneficial way to the life of God. It is also reported that ignorance or the lack of knowledge is a determining factor that keeps people from the life of God. All of this is spoken of in terms of the ability of the spirit of man to see and to understand. I’ll just do one more scripture and I’ll quit trying to get you to see the definition of light and darkness, day and night.
Col 1:9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
God’s Word and His Spirit are again implied to be the Light that is rising within the hearts of these people to bring them wisdom and all spiritual understanding. That is an awesome prayer to pray for yourself and those that God sends you to. What you must realize is that if there is “spiritual understanding” that it must be different than “natural understanding”. People want to look at natural things and use human logic to determine the meaning of life. However, God says these people are just blind and they do not know where they are going or why they stumble and fall.
So we have seen a number of verses that inform us that there exists two spiritual dimensions. One is called the Day and one is called the Night. These two dimensions of light and darkness represents two groups of children. Those that are children of the day are the children of God. Those who are children of the night are children of Satan. You can theoretically pass from either state or dimension to the other simply by choosing to believe or disbelieve. I hope this is has been an informative lesson and that you have learned a lot. In the next lesson on this subject I will specifically talk about the symbolic identity of the moon. God Bless!
If you like to continue reading this series, you can go to “Part 3” now.
Who Sinned This Man or His Parents? John 9 Part 3 Understanding the Spiritual Heart of Man!
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 3 in this Bible series on understanding the subjects of Night and Day and the spiritual heart of man and this will be different than anything that you have ever heard before. If you have not read from the beginning of this series I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“. Today’s lesson wa a revelation that God taught me almost 20 years ago, when I was working for a small software company. I had a co-worker that had graduated from a large seminary and he was a very confused individual. For someone who could quote a large part of the Bible, he understood practically none of it. He even studied the Hebrew and the Greek and still knew nothing of who God was or what He said in His Word. He was a prime example of a man with two good eyes that could read but who couldn’t see what the words meant. God and I tried to help him and teach him the truth, but he did not want to see it. It is funny how God does things, especially for people who trust in their own ability or their own wisdom. God will most of the time send some lowly nobody that does not fit the pattern that they esteem or hold as valuable. You can recognize this was the same problem that the Jewish leadership had when Jesus walked among them. Most of them looked down on Jesus as a nobody man from Nazareth and he certainly did not fit their inner circle of self appointed importance. So what did they do? They crucified their God and their creator. They did not recognize the one that gave them their Holy Book of the law. Even though this book contained so many verses that pointed them to Jesus, they did not see it. I hope you are not like any of them. Look for foolish things sometimes as a source for the greatest wisdom and you will more than likely see it is from God.
So today I am going to talk about spiritual blindness from a familiar story found in the Bible in John chapter 9. In this story Jesus is said to heal a physically blind man. My seminary co-worker told me that this chapter proves that God causes some people to be sick, so that Jesus could heal them. That was a very confused interpretation and from what God showed me a clear misunderstanding of what this chapter was about. People read and see what they want to see. The seminary graduate was looking for verses that proved God caused some people to be sick for His glorious purpose. It was very sad to see people treat God with such disrespect. According to him, God would do something so perverted and illegal in the eyes of our court system that if tried, He would have to be found guilty and thrown into jail as a child abuser. Let’s start reading this story starting with verse 2:
Joh 9:2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
In this verse the disciples asked Jesus a difficult question. It is apparent that the disciples believed that sickness came as a result of someone’s sin so they asked Jesus as they passed by a blind man, who sinned? This man or his parents to cause him to be born blind? So here is the answer that Jesus gives to their question:
Joh 9:3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
Here is where you need to start to pay attention to what is said very closely, for Jesus does answer their question, but not the question that they had in their mind. Jesus told them “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him”. You may recall that the Bible says in Roman 3:23 that ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God, so we know Jesus is not saying these people never sinned. You see Jesus answered the question that He heard in His mind and not the question that come from their minds. Do you understand the difference? If you do you are doing better than most. The answer was from God’s perspective on the situation. God’s perspective is always a spiritual perspective first and foremost. This is an extremely valuable lesson in correct Bible interpretation. God tells us in His Word, “My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways” (Isa 55:8). So Jesus, who was God in the flesh was not thinking naturally like they were. The disciples were seeing a naturally blind man and asking a question about what caused his physical blindness. But, Jesus was looking at the man’s heart and what caused his spiritual blindness. The disciples asked a natural question and Jesus gives a spiritual answer. My co-worker from the seminary never saw it either. Jesus told the disciples that his spiritual blindness was not caused by anyone’s sin and then starts talking about working the works of God. Verse 3 is where the seminary graduate said it proved that God made him blind so that Jesus could work and heal him. But, look at what else Jesus teaches us as he continues to answer their question. Notice Jesus did not stop talking, but says the following:
Joh 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
Jesus starts by talking about working God’s work and we will look at that in a second. But, you see in this verse Jesus starts talking about the spiritual day and night. This is not the natural day and night that Jesus is talking about. If you start to realize that Jesus is speaking symbolically of the spiritual day and night then you will begin to understand the rest of this chapter. Again in this verse Jesus mentions the “work of God”. Automatically preachers and readers (as well as the disciples of Jesus) think naturally and see the work of God as being a physical healing. But, let’s continue to the next verse and the final statement in the answer to the question of who sinned?
Joh 9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
This statement is an incredibly informative verse that is a combination of natural and spiritual things. You see Jesus was in the natural physical world. God made manifest in the flesh. But, then he says “I am the light of the world”. Did Jesus tell the disciples that he was our Sun that lights our natural day? Or did Jesus continue to show them a spiritual truth. I believe Jesus was speaking that He was the spiritual Sun light of the world. This is exactly why the Bible is so tricky to correctly interpret. We have a verse that combines natural things and spiritual things and we are given the assignment to figure it out. This is an example of rightly dividing God’s Word. Thank God, He helps us.
If you continue reading in the next few verses in the chapter you see that Jesus spits and makes mud from the ground and then rubs it in the blind man’s eyes. Jesus tells the man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam and the man did and it says that the man came back seeing. So was that all of the story? Is that where the story ended? Of course it is not and that is the problem with trying to take one Bible verse and trying to say God made him blind so that Jesus could heal him. People need to do a much better job of studying and seeing what the Bible says. According to a lot of preachers I heard this is where the story should end. They were focused in on Jesus healing the natural man’s blindness and did not see the rest of the story. What if Jesus healed the man physically and 35 years later the man dies and goes to hell? Would Jesus have been pleased with giving this man sight for 35 years and him still going to hell for an eternity. No you see Jesus was focused in on people’s spiritual blindness. Jesus cared more about the man’s spiritual eyesight than He did about healing the man’s physical blindness.
So what was the work of God that Jesus was interested in doing? Was it healing the people’s physical bodies or was that just an introduction to help them to see who they were dealing with. Jesus gives us a definition for the work of God in this same book of the Bible. So instead of making a wrong assumption by thinking we know what the work of God was that Jesus was here to accomplish, let’s go find out what God said about why He was here. If you can find it, this will be an absolutely critical piece of the puzzle. In order to correctly interpret the Bible you must get God’s definitions for every subject. Let’s go and find that definition and see what Jesus said was the work of God that He came to do:
Joh 6:28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?
You see the disciples ask Jesus another question and this time they want to know how to work the works that Jesus was here to do. Jesus is about to give us the definition for the work of God in his answer and it is not the answer that most are expecting to hear:
Joh 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
Here is God’s definition for work and it is not healing people physically. Jesus tells his disciples that the work of God that He was here to do was to get people to believe in the one that God had sent. This of course was Jesus speaking of Himself. Learning this truth alone changes your perspective on the entire story of the blind man in John 9. Once you see that Jesus only heals the man physically to get him to see spiritually you can begin to see the true meaning of the chapter. Now we know what to look for. We also can begin to understand how Jesus did what he did and why. Jesus said that the Work of God was to get men to believe in the One that God sent. So why didn’t Jesus just open the eyes of the blind man and ask him if he believed? You see the man would not have had any opportunity to believe anything. Jesus spit and made mud and rubbed it into his eyes to get his attention. When Jesus told the man to go and wash. The man had an opportunity to say “what are you crazy, I’m not going to waste my time”. The man obviously believed something by traveling to the pool of Siloam. The pool was not that close and the walk to the pool would present many opportunities for the man to question what he was doing. If he would have doubted and not gone to the pool he would have never been healed. The blind man had exhibited some level of faith by just obeying Jesus’ instructions. That is believing in something that you haven’t seen yet.
Let’s quickly review spiritual blindness. We know from the New Testament that Satan is the source for spiritual blindness.
2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
You see in this verse God tells us that Satan who is called the god of this world has blinded the minds of everyone that refuses to believe on Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus is again called a light in this verse that will shine into the hearts of men who let him in. But, we can see that is why Jesus could answer in John 9 that neither this man sinned or his parents to cause the man’s spiritual blindness. It was Satan that caused the man not to see spiritually. Jesus was answering their natural question with a spiritual answer.
So what happens in this story of the man that was born blind? How does it end? The blind man goes and washes in the pool and comes back seeing. Everyone is amazed and there arises a great debate of the religious minds and leaders of the day. They question the man repeatedly and bring in his parents and question them. They have tremendous curiosity of what happened and they are focused in on the fact that Jesus did all of this on the Sabbath. They call Jesus a sinner for working on the Sabbath and not keeping God’s law. If they only could see who they were talking about. Well the conversation and questions continue for many verses and they eventually end up with them casting the formerly blind man out of their church. I guess it was technically a synagogue, but I just wanted to get your attention. What did Jesus do immediately after all of this? You notice Jesus did not show up to defend the blind man or to testify to the religious zealots. Jesus in effect knew they were not reachable and he did nothing to defend himself either. Jesus finds the formerly blind man and asks him this question:
Joh 9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?
Did you see what Jesus was interested in? Jesus didn’t ask him about how do you like seeing the world. No, Jesus said “Do you believe in the Son of God?” Jesus is dealing with his spiritual blindness and solving the problem of the man’s eternal destiny. We can finally see the real work of God being performed. Jesus was interested in getting the man to believe that He was sent from God. The man immediately asks who is this Son of God that I might believe and Jesus tells him it is the one that you are looking at right now and talking with. So the man says “Yes Lord I believe” and worships him. This was a man whose spiritual eyes were opened to know the One True Living God of Creation. His eternal destiny is established and I plan on seeing him in heaven some day.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were spiritually blind, but Jesus couldn’t help them to see. Real seeing is an act of the human spirit. Believing in someone that you have only heard about and have never seen. This is God talking to you right now. Do you believe? I’m not God, but He is using me right now to say something to you. Believe in Him!
Luk 8:12 Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
Choose to be a believer!
The True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12! Pt 2
(Ver 2.9) This is Part 2 in a series of advanced Bible lessons on the essential subject of knowing and understanding “The True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12”. In the last lesson on this subject, we were introduced to several potentially new Biblical ideas and concepts. One was the revelation of God’s usage of “dependent truths” in the Bible This is where understanding one truth is completely dependent upon understanding one or more associated truths. This could also be viewed as a type of parent truth related to their child truths. Without first understanding the identity of the parent truth the children truth is not easily found or understood. We learned this was a type of inherited or passed down association of attributes from one generation to the next. I believe in the concept of finding truth as learning from a paradigm of increasing layers of building blocks of truth. The foundational layer of truth are the basic fundamental blocks that must be acquired and laid down, in order to build (grow) higher layers of more complex truths. We will never understand the top layers of complex (meat) truths without first building up the essential elementary (milk) layers first. That is what is meant by the label “Dependent Truth Relationships”. The definition of the word “dependent” simply means something that is “determined”, “influenced” or controlled by something else. Hopefully that brings us clarity to why there are so many different theories to who the woman in Revelation 12 represents.
A common error of many interpretations of the identity of the “Woman” in Revelation 12 is based upon a lack of first identifying the basic fundamental truths that are necessary for us to understand the identity of the higher level dependent truths. These basics greatly change and influence our way of thinking to see things we had never seen before. By not first understanding the very basic symbolic truths of what she is wearing, why she is wearing this, what she is standing upon, why she is standing upon it, what she is crowned with and what she is doing we will not understand correctly her identified name. However, by understanding the correct meanings of these symbols, we can easily eliminate who she cannot represent which is helpful to change our focus upon who she actually must be.
Therefore we used this concept to begin to learn listing the main featured symbols associated with the woman. We then began our search for these symbols using the crown of 12 stars from three perspectives. These were the the number 12, the stars and the crown. We then moved on to the most important symbol to identify the symbolic “Sun” as being the Lord Jesus Christ. We learned the physical sun as being the closest star to our planet earth as well as the primary natural source of warmth, light and life. We then used these natural qualities relate to spiritual Jesus. There are an overwhelming number of confirming verses in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that called and described Jesus to be our spiritual Sun. Sometimes He was called “the Sun of Righteousness”, the “Day Star”, “the Bright Morning Star”, the “Light” of the world and other similar descriptions, but all of these were synonymous terms for the sun.
The first lesson ended with verses confirming how we (the Church) are instructed by God to be clothed with “Christ Jesus”. There are other verses that we did not go over that further this claim. For example, without this spiritual clothing of Jesus we are spiritually uncovered and naked and could be viewed in an open state of shame (sin). One great verse like this is found in 2 Corinthians 5:3. I recommend that you go and study this part of the discussion for yourself. What is essential to know beyond the identity of the Sun, is to next understand why the woman must be clothed with this symbol. God could have selected and described the Sun’s relationship to the woman to be many things. But, He chose to select Him to be clothing.
Let us reverse two of the main symbols. How would the viewpoint meaning change if the woman was standing on the sun and clothed with the moon? As we gather knowledge on this subject we will begin to see how that change would cause the woman to be a completely different person. In fact I believe Satan would love this woman and not be in a war with her if she was standing upon the Sun. Remember what Lucifer said in Isaiah 14:13? He said “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God”. This statement contains many of the same elements found in Revelation 12:1. For example, the mention of a throne implies a crown. The mention of stars is a direct comparison and we know our sun is just the closest star. The location in heaven is the exact same place where this woman in Revelation 12 appears in verse 1. Finally the term “above” is the identical concept of “standing on”. We know the woman in Revelation 12 is “above” the moon. Therefore, it was Lucifer’s desire to be standing on all of God’s stars with their position being under him. Wow, this is not how it is going to turn out as we will soon discover in Revelation 12.
If you have read through the first lesson you already know where we are going next in the dependent symbolic truth relationships. I realize that there are new readers constantly to this website. Therefore if you have not read the first lesson in this series, I would strongly recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1“. We will not be able to repeat that entire lesson again today. So you need to understand foundational basic things from the beginning to better understand the new things that will be discussed today.
GOD’S SYMBOLIC MOON IDENTITY
The next focus will be to ask God to reveal to us who the identity of the symbolic moon in Revelation 12:1 represents. We will also ask Him what it means to have this object under her feet. We do this by allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us into the Bible to define and interpret itself on this subject. This approach eliminates extra-Biblical bias, assumptions and prejudicial interpretations. But before we dig deep into the Bible to explore the moon’s identity, let’s begin to understand this subject with a general overview of our naturally created moon. God teaches us in Romans verse 20 that the invisible qualities of God can be known by observing things that were created, even these declare His eternal power and Godhead. Therefore by understanding naturally created realities we should be able to learn of hidden spiritual characteristics and truths. This is true of the sun, the moon and the stars. For example, notice the photograph in this paragraph of the moon. This photograph shows us the ever changing phases of the moon. The fact that the moon can be in a full visible phase and a completely invisible phase with varying stages in between is profound. According to Malachi 3:6 God says “that He is the LORD and He does not ever change”. Therefore the moon cannot represent a symbol of God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit. The moon also has a dark side that is never seen from earth regardless of the phase revealed to our view. These are just some of the basic natural facts concerning the moon.
Another basic fact is that the moon has NO light or life of its own production. This is also very revealing to us. This knowledge further confirms that the moon cannot represent God who is LIGHT (1 Jn 1:5) and LIFE (Jn 14:6). We have just learn from features given to us by natural observation that it is impossible for the “moon” to be a symbol of God. Therefore, we have eliminated one main Bible possibility.
I have heard more than one preacher claim that the moon represents the church in Bible symbolism. They attempt to say a Christian in of themselves has no “light or life” apart from Jesus who represents the Sun. Therefore, as long as a Christian stays in the light of Jesus they will be the Light within the Dark unsaved world. While that logic could be viewed as partially correct, I do not believe we understand what it means for a woman to be standing on the “church” means. If the moon is a symbol of the church, we are in serious trouble in Revelation 12. We will find out more about it means to be “under foot” later to clear up and learn that the moon cannot be the representation of the church.
The fact that the moon primarily revolves around the earth monthly can also be a clue. If the earth is a symbol of humans, God could never revolve around us. The earth is a symbolic type of the human condition as we learned about in lesson 1. If the earth represents humans we can turn towards God and allow Him to get brighter or by the same choice turn away from God to live apart from Him, on a daily basis. When we turn away from God we are departing from the light and moving back into a realm of darkness where God is not seen. When a Christians realizes their drifting away from God they can choose to repent and turn away from darkness and then move back towards the Light (Jesus). Christians are the ones that must focus on Him (Jesus, our Sun, Light & Life). These are just further confirmations to who the moon cannot represent.
The fact that the moon is normally only viewable at night is also an important fact of truth. This is just another applicable fact that informs us the moon cannot represent God because God is Light and in Him is no darkness. Also we learn from reading 1 John 2:8 that as long as a Christian remains in Him and Him in us we are in the True Light and the darkness has past. Wow, that is an amazing conditional promise, but it is a daily choice to remain in Him and permit Him to be Lord in Us. By us discovering who the moon is not this can greatly help us determine who the moon really represents.
SUN, MOON & STARS – LAW OF FIRST MENTION
Where in the Bible are the sun, the moon and the stars first mentioned? This will help establish by God’s design what is needed to understand the subject of the sun, the moon and the stars found in Revelation 12:1. God consistently reveals fundamental truths and definitions the first time a subject is mentioned in the Bible. Many Bible teachers searched their Bibles and found the sun, moon and stars mentioned in Genesis 37:9.
This verse teaches us about a divinely inspired dream that was given to Joseph. We were introduced to this dream in lesson 1. In this dream many teachers believe that this verse in Genesis 37 proves and confirms that the woman in Revelation 12 must represent the natural nation of Israel using the 12 sons of Jacob. This dream contains a symbolic sun, a symbolic moon and 11 symbolic stars that bow down to Joseph (the 12th Star of the family). However, this interpretation is in error and does not fit the remaining patterns of descriptions for what the woman in Revelation 12 is doing with these objects on and around her body. We have already seen several problems with this application. There are only 11 stars bowing with the moon and the sun. Jacob interpreted the dream and informed us that the sun represented him, the moon Joseph’s mother and the stars were Joseph’s brothers. As we saw before, wearing Jacob, standing on Rachel and a missing star are three of the most profound conflicts.
However, this is one of the main reasons why Bible teachers believe the woman in Revelation 12 represents the natural nation of “Israel”. Many people believe this way. But before you pick up stones to cast at me for being a false teacher, realize that this dream to Joseph is NOT the first mention of the sun, moon and stars in one verse in the Bible and that disqualifies it for usage from the law of first mention interpretation rule. Let’s explore the actual first mention of the sun, moon and stars and learn what God teaches us from it.
The very first mention from God of these created objects is found In the book of Genesis chapter 1 verses 13 through 18. This is the account that describes the 4th day of creation. We can learn some very important applicable truths to Revelation 12:1 by applying the interpretation law of first mention using Genesis 1 and not the assumed Genesis 37 reference. When we do this we will discover that God gives us very specific information and clues to the spiritual identities of the symbolic sun, moon and stars. Of course the first challenge is to realize that these heavenly objects are not called by the obvious names “sun” or “moon” like they are in Revelation chapter 12. This fact has been the reason why so many Bible teachers, students and commentators have not seen these relationships before now.
In Genesis 1 the sun and the moon are hidden, by God by labeling them with alternative names of “the greater light” and “the lesser light”. This was an intentionally designed method of God to conceal them and to reveal them to when He desired us to connect them to Revelation 12. In Genesis 1:16 God declares the existence of two great lights. The first He called the “Greater Light” and the second He called the “lesser light”.
We can all understand that the “greater light” represents another name for the sun and the lesser light represents another name for the moon because they are used with the direct named “stars” that are also heavenly created bodies. But, through God’s usage of “greater” and “lesser” lights we get a direct comparison to hidden spiritual truths of the greater light is described as being much more significant and powerful than the other. We can easily understand how this is found in the natural descriptions of the sun versus the moon. The natural sun is a huge ball of consuming fire and the moon is a smaller object than the earth and is a pile of dead rocks. Wow, that description should turn several lights on inside of our minds.
I believe this Greater and lesser light descriptions correspond to a verse of information given to us by God in 1 John 4:4. This verse is where God says to the church “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world”. This is another major corresponding parallel comparison of one spiritual person being on the inside of us that is called “greater” than another “lesser” spiritual being that is in the world. That should begin to turn more lights on in our minds to see things that we may have never read in the Bible before from this perspective.
I am a firm believer that the Greater Light represents Jesus Christ as we learned in the first lesson. As 1 John 4:4 teaches us this One that is called Greater is in a Christian. However, there is someone else implied as the lesser light that we are told is in all the people in the world. Wow, isn’t that amazing that this lesser light could be on the inside of someone? This is definitely a New Covenant spiritual reality that must be understood.
Since we already have learned that the “Greater Light” = the “Sun” and these symbols represent “Jesus” who was, and is, and is to come (Rev 1:8). Ask yourself “who is greater than Jesus”? The obvious answer is no one except God the Father. Therefore, we have not narrowed the scope of the possible identity of the moon the lesser light, in the least. Unless we know who God is speaking of in 1 John 4:4. We learn this from reading the contextual verses. There are two opposing spirits being described in verses 1 through 3. One is the Spirit of Christ and the other is the spirit of “antichrist”. These are opposites like the spirit of Christ whois Good and God and the spirit of antichrist is evil and the devil. What we should begin to see is that the moon (lesser light) appears to represent Satan based upon 1 John 4:4. But, let’s continue to study the rest of this subject in Genesis 1 to confirm these truths.
Remember that Genesis chapters 1 through 3 are vastly connected to the book of Revelation. I like to call them the Book Ends of the entire Bible. What God initiates in Genesis, He completes in Revelation. Let us look at a Genesis 1 quick overview. On Day 1 of creation God creates light to shine on the earth and establishes two separations or divisions of natural and spiritual opposition. One He called “day” and the other He called “night”. These are opposites just as we learned from 1 John 4. We could call this “Day” and anti-day.
We can understand from this statement in Genesis 1:3-5 that the sun and moon must have already existed on Day 1 for any of these days and nights on earth to exist. Think about this statement from God logically, the earth rotates completely every 24 hours to fulfill a one day cycle, that cycle consists of both daylight and darkness. It takes approximately 365 of these revolutions to complete one complete cycle of the earth around the sun. This completed cycle causes the fulfillment of one year. Without the sun’s presence providing light and gravitational pull upon the earth it could not participate in a single day cycle. Again it is the earth’s consistent rotation around the sun that causes each night and day to occur.
Therefore, the sun, moon and stars must have been created in Genesis 1:1 when God’s Word said “In the beginning the A-Z God created the heavens and the earth”. The beginning represents the realm of created matter, space, and time. It is very interesting to see what I just quoted from Genesis, that you may have missed. Did you notice that I said the “A-Z” God created? That is what the original Hebrew literally says using the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. When we go and read Revelation 1:8 we will find Jesus saying I am the Alpha and the Omega (A-Z) again. God used the first and last Hebrew letters in Genesis and the first and last Greek letters in Revelation about the same person that we call Creator. Again we discover more parallels within the bookends.
I also read in Genesis 1:5 “that there was evening and morning the first day”. The fact that God specifically describes a dusk evening event occurrence and a dawn morning event occurrence proves the sun’s existence. Without a physical sun with a turning earth evenings do not occur nor do sunrises in the morning . There are other Bible lessons that are found on this website to learn more reasons from the Bible for why we should believe this way.
Now continue by reading Day 4 of creation and Genesis 1:16. We can see that God introduces a new concept of “ruling” with two “rulers”. In this verse God says that the created sun (the greater light) will rule the Day division and the created moon (the lesser light) will rule the night division that were previously established on Day 1 of creation. It is very interesting to note that these two divisions can be further divided into 12 unique measurements of time commonly called hours. I believe that it is not by accident or coincidence that God has done this. I believe that this is a purposeful, intentional act of God that reveals some new hidden spiritual things to us.
In the last lesson on this subject I introduced you to a potential new controversial Bible topic division with there being the natural nation of Israel and the spiritual nation Israel (James 1:1, 1 Peter 2:9). Each of these two nations also consist of twelve distinct divisions like day and night. These 12 divisions or sub-divisions are called tribes (Gen 49:28, James 1:1). There were 12 tribes which originated from the man Jacob renamed Israel and there were 12 apostles chosen by the man Jesus a type of Jacob. These are all prophetical patterns of night (darkness) and day (light). Two nations one natural, and one spiritual with both having 12 divisions. Adding them together we get 24, the total hours in one day which consists of the dark and light periods of a day. Do you see how this might apply to the church? Do you remember what Jesus said to the Jewish leaders of natural Israel? He said “Search your scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life but these are they that testify of me”. Wow, Jesus was informing them He was on every page of their scriptures but they could not see Him because they were in darkness. But, we in the church if we have the Light of Jesus on the inside of us can find Him everywhere if we are looking in the same verses. This is probably something new to think about and where we go from here may be even a greater challenge for many to receive.
Day and night are natural symbolic references that present spiritual realities revealed to us in the New Testament. Both of these conditions represent the spiritual state of the hearts of men and women on the earth. Day and Night are two distinct and unique kingdom divisions, one of light and one of darkness. The church is said to be in the day and the light and the rest of the world is said to be in darkness. If you use your Bible search program you will find many references to these facts in both the Old and New Testaments. Search for key words like night, day, light and darkness to start with. I also have an entire Bible series on this specific subject called “Understanding Night and Day“. I would highly recommend that you read and study this subject series to better understand the spiritual truths of the existence of two separate spiritual kingdom realities. When you do this you will find that Jesus came into the dark world as a light to be the spiritual ruler of the spiritual day (Kingdom of Light) and Satan became the ruler of the night (kingdom of darkness) after Adam sinned.
There are two spiritual kingdoms and by default all humans are born in the darkness until the Light of God shines in their hearts. Humans can’t be in both kingdoms at the same time. By default we are all born into Satan’s kingdom of darkness until we receive Jesus to be our Lord and then we are translated and reborn spiritually into the Kingdom of Light (Col 1:13). I will try to give you some of the key verses for those that want an overview or review of the subject:
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
God informs the church that we are now of the Day and of the Light. The church is actually called children of the Light. We learned and should now know from other verses in the Bible that God is Light and in Him is no darkness (1 Jn 1:5). Therefore, the saved members of the church are called the spiritual children of God. Here in 1 Thes. 5:5 is a very clear reference that anyone that is not spiritually reborn into the church (not a child of God) is in the night and in the darkness. We also can see that since God has no darkness in Him, these unsaved people in the darkness are completely separated from God. Wow, by default we are not in God and God is not in us. That should concern us if we have never invited Jesus into our heart.
So again we see two parallel truths, one natural truth and one spiritual. These truths represent divisions and separations. Again we should call these divisions “two kingdoms”, one called day and one called night. We also should learn that kingdoms normally have sovereign rulers. Who are the rulers of day and night? We know from studying the Bible that Night and Day are symbolic representations of the conditions of the hearts of men and women on the earth. Therefore, who the ruler of the kingdom within our hearts is either the ruler of Light or the ruler of darkness depending upon who we allow in our heart. But by default it is Satan when no choice has been made. Let’s go through the Genesis 1 day 4 account of creation and determine how this information fits into God’s spiritual pattern found within created natural truths of day and night:
Gen 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Gen 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Did you notice God said that there were lights, plural that were going to divide the day from the night? What did Day and Night represent? Day and night are symbolic states of the spiritual condition (kingdom) of the hearts of humans. These lights were created to provide humans light and life upon the earth. Earth (soil) represents symbolically the spiritual hearts of men and women. Earth is where the sun shines to cause plants, trees and fruit to grow. The church is instructed to produce fruit (John 15). Where does spiritual fruit grow in man and what causes it?
Here is a quick overview of the process taught by Jesus in the Parable of the sower. Jesus taught us that spiritual fruit comes from spiritual trees and spiritual plants that grow in the spiritual ground (the hearts of mankind) by receiving spiritual Seed which is defined to be the Word of God (Mk 4, Lk 8). I could spend a lot of time familiarizing us with these basic Bible concepts, but hopefully we understand them. If not, please go read the Bible series dedicated to the subject of Understanding the Parable of the Sower. Let us continue in Genesis and see what else God says about these two different dominate lights:
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
We can clearly see that God declares two lights to be the rulers of these two divisions called day and night. These represent exact times of personal choice. Either day or night, there is no third option or realm of existence. If you are saved you are in the Day and if you reject Jesus not believing in Him you are automatically walking in the blindness of darkness.
The Hebrew word translated as “rule” is H4475 is defined to be someone who is in a state of powerful dominion to rule over a kingdom or a government. This cannot be talking about created planetary bodies in the sky. This is so important to understand the parallels being taught to us by the Holy Spirit. These two ruling lights are representative and symbolical patterns of a much greater hidden spiritual truth.
Here again we can observe one of God’s methods of hiding truth being utilized. In this verse God refers to the “sun” by a completely new and different name, called the “greater light” and the moon, He calls the “lesser light“. This verse contains all of the essential elements found describing the symbolic woman in Revelation 12:1. We can see the Sun, the moon and the stars all being mentioned for the very first time in the Bible. Since it is the first time these celestial objects are all mentioned in the Bible, these verses will help us to understand what these objects represent in Revelation 12. This spiritual law is called the law of first mention and is a common practice that God uses to establish and reveal truth to us. So who rules the day, we found out in lesson 1 that it is Jesus Christ the Sun of Righteousness.
SATAN THE MOON/LESSER LIGHT RULER OF THE DARKNESS
We are now going to begin to search and find scriptures in the Bible related to the ruler of the kingdom of darkness. God chose to conceal Satan as the moon ruler using different techniques in the Bible. But, even if these do not use the literal name or title of the “moon” or “lesser light” that does not mean that we will be unable to see that this is what God is speaking of using different references both direct and indirect. For example, here is a good scripture that is certainly related to our current moon subject indirectly using unstated antithesis truth laws:
1 Jn 2:8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.
John writing to the church tells them that the “true light” is now shining in them. They have come out of the darkness and the night because they have seen the True Light (Jesus) in the internal spiritual realm. But by the law of inverse truth, if there is a true light, then there is also an antithesis unstated “false light” truth. This is an interesting consideration to ponder. You see the moon who rules the darkness does not produce any light of itself or have any ability to shine light without the existence of the greater light called the sun. The sun as we now know is Jesus Christ and we are beginning to learn the moon is the symbol of Satan the ruler of the spiritual darkness (a kingdom without God). The moon is a false light and a lesser light and the Sun is the True Light and the Greater One. Satan must be the ruler of the darkness; Satan must be the ruler of the night by inference. The concepts of a True Light and a false light is very similar to the saying of the Christ and an antichrist. Jesus is the Christ and Satan is the antichrist. These are just basic Bible patterns and principles of opposites being demonstrated to us. Jesus is good and Satan is evil. But, let us confirm all of this in the Bible:
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
What we see in this verse directed to the church is a fact that declares our enemy to be the rulers of the darkness of this world. Remember that darkness is a spiritual condition of the hearts of unsaved people that are in the spiritual state of night without light (God). This can only be Satan and his demonic cohorts. Just note the direct reference to someone ruling and where they are said to be the ruler of; this of course is the darkness. Also remember that darkness is simply the nonexistence of light (No God). If we take light (God) away, people will be living in darkness.
It is very important to remember that darkness is a synonymous term for night. If Jesus is the spiritual Light of the world, then those who do not know Christ are people that are in a state of spiritual darkness (night). We should also consider the fact that night is the normal time for good people to rest and evil people to do evil. According to Ephesian 6:12 Satan is the ruler of those individuals without Christ living in darkness. If you noticed in Ephesians 6:12, it said the enemy of the church was a spiritual force that consisted of “principalities” and “powers”. If we again go back to Genesis 1:16 and review the Hebrew word H4475 translated as “rule”, it means to govern and have power over. So we can see that God has given Satan the legal right to seize power over everyone still living in his realm of the darkness. But, then we could also say that for those who belong to Christ, they are now ruled by Jesus, the Light of Day and Satan does not have any legal power or authority over us unless we give it back to him and sometimes we do too easily. Let’s look at another New Testament verse about Satan:
1Co 2:6 Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought:
This verse is again speaking about Satan being called the “prince” of this world. The Greek word translated as “prince” means “ruler”, the one that is above the rest. This is not speaking of a natural or physical kingdom in this verse, but it is speaking of the order within the spiritual realm of darkness. This world is a hidden reference to the spiritual dark world that we do not perceive with our 5 natural physical senses. What we realize from this verse is that this present world is ruled by an unseen spiritual force that will come to nothing eventually. So let’s expand our knowledge with another verse:
Eph 2:2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Again we see a very clear reference to a “prince” as being a spiritual ruler of the dark world system. Paul writes that we who are now in the church use to obey this prince, but now we should not. The implication is given that we (the church) are now and should remain on the outside from under the control of this dark ruler of the dark world, even though he still is working in those who are not Christians. This Greek word translated as “prince” or “ruler” is clearly stated to be a spiritual being that we cannot perceive with our 5 senses. There is a clear division being stated between two groups of people; one group in the light and one group in the darkness. Here is another witness to exactly what we need to learn today:
Col 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
We can again clearly see a distinction and division being stated between two groups of people. These are clearly stated to be two distinct and different kingdoms and the rulers of the kingdoms are stated to us indirectly and directly. You can clearly see that it directly names Jesus the Son of God to be the ruler of the kingdom that the church now exists within. Indirectly we have to make the association that the “power of darkness” is a reversed and opposite ruler to Jesus (True Light) and he must be the “false light” of the moon. This indirect ruler with power reference can only be Satan the moon we learned in Genesis 1.
We need to understand a new quality of the moon light called deception. The true light of the sun, is so intensely bright that we can see no other lights in the sky normally. But at night the moon can be in any phase or totally dark. This represents the concept of deception. Since we can clearly see the moon at night and it does reflect a light that is not its own, that makes it a type of a deceiver. We learn from reading Revelation 12:9 that Satan is described to be the one that has deceived the whole world. How does he accomplish this? He does it by presenting deceptive thoughts, ideas and suggestions into the human’s mind and if we believe them he has taken us captive. We may talk more about this later.
So we have seen several good Bible references for Satan being called the prince, ruler and power of this present spiritual world of darkness. But, we will see another related scripture found in 2 Corinthians:
2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Both an explicit and an implied truth is given to us in this verse. We should be able to see that Jesus Christ is recognized to be the spiritual (implied Sun) light, that is trying to shine into the darkened hearts of men and women who believe not the truth. We can logically deduce from this verse that those who believe, are those who the Light of Christ has risen within their spirits and those who are not saved are those that don’t believe in the Light thus still remaining in darkness. This verse implies that those who do not see the light (Jesus) of truth do not see either by 1) their own choice or 2) they have been blocked from seeing the light by Satan’s choice. This inability to see the light can be caused by Satan due to an implied cloud like situation, shadow or other type of blockage within the human mind that causes Jesus (The Word) not to be received internally. These unseeing people are literally spiritually blinded by their own carnal thoughts, ideas or mental distractions. There is an implied spiritual reality that must be casting a shadow internally so that they are unable to see His glorious light. This verse is describing two contrasting spiritual kingdom views between those who are in the darkness versus those that can begin to see daylight.
God also reveals who is blinding those who do no believe in Christ and he is called the “god of this world”, who is again Satan. It is Satan that has blinded their minds so that they cannot see (which literally means to perceive or understand) the light (Word of God) Jesus Christ. Physical blindness is the inability to see natural light clearly, spiritual blindness is the inability to see and understand the spiritual Word of God internally. Blindness can be external or internal according to this verse. Remember Satan who rules the night is said to be the one that keeps the light from shinning into their hearts and he uses thoughts placed in their mind to defeat them.
We are learning that Satan is the symbolic moon who rules those in the darkness and keeps men and women from seeing the True Light through a concept of blocking the light. Because some people see a little false light named Satan (moon) they believe his lies, tricks and deceptions. Our physical moon in the night sky has no life or light in itself. So it is analogous to Satan who is a deceiver with no life or light in him. But do not forget about the natural concept of eclipses that do occur in our natural realm. When this happens the sun’s light can be partially or completely covered or blocked by the moon. This causes humans not to be able to see the true light of the sun for a duration. This happens even though the moon is significantly smaller than the sun. But, since the moon is so much closer to the earth it does not take an object as great as the sun to block the sun. We can learn this by holding up our hand in front of our eyes while looking at the sun. The light from the sun can by blocked by our hand the same as the much larger moon. I hope and pray that you understand these simple natural truths and are transferring this information into the parallels and patterns of the spiritual realm correctly. It would be very helpful to read these lesson more than once.
CONCLUSION
Gen 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
You see in Genesis 1:17 and 18 the reiteration of the truth of God’s word, the sun will rule the day and the moon will rule the night. God prophesies that He will cause two separate spiritual divisions to manifest and one will be called the kingdom of light and the other will be called the kingdom of darkness. Within these kingdoms they will be ruled by two different rulers, one significantly greater than the other. We know that God is light and in Him is no darkness. Therefore we know that God is of the day and that is where the true church now is also, because He is inside of us. These are very powerful spiritual truths that every Christian needs to thoroughly understand and I hope I have helped you to see them.
I’ll leave you in this lesson, with this final bit of information. The fourth day of creation was a prophetic event within human history. God declares that a day with the LORD is as a 1000 years and a 1000 years are even as one day (2 Peter 3:8). If you do the math you will find that Jesus was born 4000 years after Adam was created. In other words Jesus came to the earth on the 4th day of creation as foretold by Genesis 1:16 to bring a spiritual Light to rule men and women and to provide an option out of Satan’s kingdom of darkness. When Jesus came into the dark world as a light He established a spiritual division of rulership that God called Day, meaning He left Satan out in the darkness. This is why the Bible says if Satan would have known what was going to happen, he would not have crucified the LORD of Glory.
Now we have established the identity of two of the major key dependent symbols in the book of Revelation and we should now be able to see clearer the identity of the woman suspect being described causing the other women suspects to move further away from clear focused possibility.
Rev 12:1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman (????) clothed with the sun (Jesus Christ), and the moon (Satan) under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
Are you becoming a great detective and seeing the clues provided by God? So far I have just filled in two of the main dependent symbolic clues and already we have a greatly reduced set of possible suspect candidates for the true identity of the woman in Revelation12. In fact in my mind she can only be one woman in the list of suspect candidates. But, we will continue the study of the identity of the woman in Revelation 12 and hopefully we can all be united and all come to the same conclusion after viewing all of the facts of evidence provided by the Word of God. In my next lesson I will explore further evidence in the Bible for who the moon represents and we will hopefully begin to understand why the woman in Revelation 12 is standing on this moon symbol. We will learn that this is a major clue establishing the moon’s (Satan’s) prophesied position to be under the feet of the Church.
If you want to continue reading this series go to Part 3.
The True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12! Pt 1
(Ver 3.8) This is the Part 1 of a series of extremely advanced spiritual Bible lessons that will reveal and help us to understand the “True Identity of the Woman in Revelation 12“. It is intended for spiritually mature Christians that are not easily offended at learning things that they have not seen before in the Bible. There are many opinions on who this woman is in Revelation 12. Is she a natural physical woman or a spiritual symbolic woman describing someone else? We can go and search the internet and find various approaches to the interpretation of this chapter. However, the vast majority of these interpretations that I found are based upon limited scriptures and more on significant human reasoning and personal opinion of the subject. These sound like they are private types of invalid interpretations of the scripture based upon 2 Peter 1:20. In 2 Peter we are told very clearly that no scripture is of a “private interpretation”. What we learn from Peter is that the Bible will interpret itself. In other words the Author God will explain the passage somewhere else in the Bible! Otherwise, the interpretations is just an opinion which is always trumped by a known fact of truth. A factual truth will always take precedence over any opinion. Which is always overruled by God’s Truth. Therefore we must seek to learn what God says on the subject. That is our goal in this Bible study series!.
INTRODUCTION
Let us recognize a basic law of solid Bible interpretation. What God has declared in His Word about a subject will always take precedence over any natural fact, theory, or opinion that is known and believed to be true by a human. So in this lesson series we are going to focus primarily on what does God say in His Word about this woman. In doing this we will also search the Bible for God’s definitions of the words and symbols used in chapter 12 of Revelation.
We will also analyze some predominate theories that have been widely taught in the church about this woman to either confirm or show them to be less than truthful using the Bible only. Following this Biblical approach to interpretation by allowing the Bible to interpret itself, we will ultimately conclude our beliefs to be based upon the best scriptural evidence that we are able to find with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. While doing this we must ultimately put aside human doctrines, traditions, opinions, biases, prejudices and presumptions to allow the Word of God to overrule.
Finally, if you are a true believer and have been born again, you have the same Holy Spirit inside of you that the Apostle John, Peter, Paul, etc. had in them. You are in the same church that every writer of the Bible was in and this included Paul. Often times I think that we forget this, or don’t know this or just ignore this fact. The same author of the Bible that was on the inside of the writers is on the inside of us to help us to understand the words. But because we may not know this we may not realize that what God did for all the Bible writers, including Paul, He will do for us also. The Bible clearly says that God is no respecter of persons (Act 10:34). Therefore, if He does not do what He did for someone else He has become unjust. However, please understand we must do the things of those that received this ability or we would fail to qualify to receive. This is what Paul said about what he taught:
Gal 1:12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
So where did Paul claim to get the information that he was teaching? Apparently it was not from any seminary, synagogue temple or human teacher on this earth. Neither did he attempt to privately interpret the Old Testament with his own individual effort of reasoning. Therefore, this information that he has written for us did not originate on the earth, but rather came directly from the O.T. author, God.
So when I read through some of the lessons on the subject of the identity of the woman in Revelation 12, I was very surprised to see how many quoted sources that came from some external Bible human reference or commentary. Many of the lessons simply said “I think this woman is __________. What do you think?” Few could provide significant Biblical proof or evidence for the identity to the woman, and much of what was taught was based upon ignorance, human reasoning, presumption or speculation. I do not believe that is a valid approach to the interpretation of the Bible.
I cannot emphasize enough the complexity of the Bible and the infinite knowledge of the Holy Spirit Author. He has written the Bible in a fashion that conceals vast amounts of spiritual information, making it very challenging for natural thinking humans to understand. However, we should begin to learn to see and think in spiritual terms as He thinks. We can begin to do this by learning the methods and techniques that God has used in writing the Bible to conceal information in plain sight. As we continue to grow spiritually, we will soon begin to understand much more of the Bible. If you would like to study some of the techniques that God uses for “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight” then please read that first.
Finally, I would like to reemphasize one key to understanding any part of the Bible is to first learn that the Bible ALWAYS interprets itself. Knowing this we must then learn that there are divinely designed spiritual laws of interpretations that must be known and applied with the Holy Spirit’s help in order to begin to understand any subject. The woman in Revelation 12 is no exception. Please, let us keep this in our minds as we study this subject. Also ask questions while we read the chapter and then look for the answers to the questions in the Bible and I believe the Holy Spirit will lead us to the truth (John 16:13).
STUDY STRATEGY
ASKING GOOD QUESTIONS AND FINDING GOD’S ANSWERS
In this lesson we will be going over several key subjects found in the chapter. These topics will lay the foundation for all of the lessons that will follow. We will address numerous described descriptions and issues that will be key to understanding this woman and her true identity. Here are the sections that will be covered in today’s lesson:
- WHO CAN THE REVELATION 12 WOMAN POSSIBLY BE?
- WHEN DOES THE EVENTS IN REVELATION 12 OCCURR?
- WHAT ARE THE SYMBOLS RELATED TO THE WOMAN?
- WHAT DO THE GIVEN SYMBOLS MEAN TO GOD?
- WHAT IS THE CROWN OF 12 STARS? – “THE NUMBER 12”
- WHAT IS THE CROWN OF 12 STARS? – “THE STARS”
- WHAT IS THE CROWN OF 12 STARS? – “THE CROWN”
- WHO IS THE SYMBOLIC SUN?
- WHO IN THE BIBLE IS TOLD TO WEAR THE SUN?
This will be a lot of questions to answer and new information to learn. I would recommend that you break this lesson into sections and take one at a time. Read what is written and revealed by the Holy Spirit and then go look up all the scriptures in your own Bible to verify that this is what the Holy Spirit inside of you says (Acts 17:11). Let’s get started.
WHO CAN THE REVELATION 12 WOMAN POSSIBLY BE?
Let us start with an identification of the possible candidates for the identity of the woman in Revelation 12. I would strongly suggest that you go find your Bible and open it and read the entire chapter 12 of Revelation. There are only 17 verses in the entire chapter and we will find it begins with the woman’s description and it ends with radically new descriptions of the same exact woman. However, there appears to be a paradox given to us. The woman in verse 1 appears in Heaven and the woman at the end of the chapter is clearly on the earth. That is a very important fact to remember and who this woman must be able to conform with being in two dimensions simultaneously, one being the natural earth and the other being the spiritual heaven.
Everything in chapter 12 between verse 1 and verse 17 is a description of a warfare that is taking place between the woman and Satan. Write down all of the symbols and descriptions in a list to help you organize your thoughts. There is only one woman listed in this chapter and she is our focused priority. However, there are many other symbols and descriptions that are used by God to describe her and all of these are very important.
What does “identity” means? Here is one definition that I found; “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is”. Ok, when a crime is committed in modern times a video camera usually captures images of a suspect. The police detective is charged with the assignment of evaluating the images to determine the “identity” of that suspect. In other words, the suspect is initially labeled as “unknown” and this is how the woman in Revelation 12 should be classified to begin our study. Please do not bring any preconceived bias into this process of identifying the woman. These types of biases will normally only hinder us from finding the truth.
Many times the police detective will use facial recognition software to compare the images with other known criminals from the past. If that does not give them an answer, then sometimes I have seen them post the picture on the news to allow others to call in and help identify the suspect. Well that is a similar paradigm for us to follow in determining the identity of the woman in Revelation 12. We will become Bible detectives charged with discovering her identity by examining previous Bible suspected women.
Like the detective of a crime the suspect woman in Revelation 12 might be a brand new never identified woman or she is more likely a known woman that has been described before in the Bible. I am a believer that this woman in Revelation 12, is someone who occurs in the Bible and has been previously identified using another name or description we could call her alias or really her true identity. Therefore, I will start by providing a list of possible suspect women that I have found in the Bible.
However, it is a good time to ask another logical question to begin our search. We should ask “Is this woman in Revelation 12 a literal previously named or unnamed physical Bible woman or is she a symbolic representation for a known or unknown spiritual woman?” These are the only two categories of valid types of women I have found in the Bible. We all know that God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24) and He created the natural realm (Gen 1). Therefore, this woman could be a single spiritual female being (Zec 5:9), or a physical naturally created female (Gen 2:22), or she could be a symbolic woman for a group of people either natural (Jer 31:32) or spiritual (2 Cor 11:2).
Hopefully you have already read chapter 12 of Revelation and can see as I do that this woman being described must be a symbolic woman representing a larger group of individuals either natural or spiritual. However, there are people who believe this woman is the single physical virgin woman named “Mary” that gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. Therefore, we will at least consider her as one of our suspects.
From everything that I have studied so far in the Bible, here are the possibilities with the greatest probability to be a suspect in our attempt to find the identity of the woman in Revelation 12:
- The Earthly Jerusalem, the natural nation of Israel, the Old Testament Covenant Wife of God Jehovah (Gal 4:25, Jer 31:32). This would be a symbolic woman that represents a completely natural nation of people named Israel in the O.T.
- The Heavenly Jerusalem (Heb 12:22), the spiritual mother of Jesus, the church (Gal 4:26) and all those born from the dead (Col 1:15-18, Rom 8:29). This would be a symbolic woman that is a representation for a completely spiritual group of beings.
- The New Jerusalem, the Church, the Bride, the New Covenant Wife of Jesus Christ and the Lamb (Rev 21:2). This would be a woman that represents a new spiritual nation of believers in Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:9).
- Finally, the physical natural woman named Mary, the natural virgin mother of the naturally born Son of God/Son of Man named Jesus (Mat 1:16). This would represent a woman that is an individual created female.
No doubt there will be many that will read this list of 4 possible suspect candidates and not understand it. Possibly you have other women in the Bible that you can think of that this woman in Revelation 12 could possibly fit the suspect profile for. If you would like to leave a comment and share her with us, I will read what you think. I would however, ask that you please give us Bible verses that help to confirm what you are saying.
Perhaps you noticed from the list of suspects, three symbolic women were all named “Jerusalem“. However, they were made to be individual and separate by the qualifiers, “earthly”, “heavenly” and “new”. I believe that if we study the Bible very carefully to observe what is said, we will discover that there are 3 completely different covenant cities in the Bible which are all called by the exact same name Jerusalem. This is just one technique that God used to conceal truth from us in the Bible (Prov 25:2). God calls multiple separate things by the exact same name and this causes us to ask which one is He referring to in every occurrence of the singular name “Jerusalem” with no qualifier.
We should already realize that there are natural things and spiritual realities that can and do co-exist simultaneously and these can be called by the same name, title or description. I’ll give you a very important example from the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 8:4-5 God writes to teach us the difference between earthly priests and the temple and the spiritual same. God very clearly says that Moses was given “patterns” of things that pre-existed in the heavenly temple to build here on earth. This is tremendous knowledge to learn from and has vast implications attached to it. This implies the Heavenly Temple had a Heavenly High Priest and that what was made on temporary earth for the natural nation of Israel was made in the image of the existing spiritual reality.
In other words Heaven exist first, then came the natural later. Who could this Heavenly Priest been before Jesus came into the world? I believe it was Satan. Remember Satan is described having a breastplate like a High Priest in Ezekiel 28:13. We do know from reading Hebrews 8 that Jesus is our High Priest in the New Covenant. Wow, do you see the repeated patterns being transitioned from the Heavenly to the Earthly and then back to the Heavenly in the New? This is one reason why I believe in 3 cities named “Jerusalem”.
I believe every one of these cities named Jerusalem (Heavenly, Earthly and New) represents a symbolic female (nation of individuals) in a separate covenant relationship with God. I know this is brand new information to most of my new readers. But please do not discard it very quickly without studying it in full. Something new does not mean it is something untrue.
Also, I have found verses that all four of these suspect women in my list are described in the Bible as having children and being mothers. For example, the Heavenly Jerusalem is called a spiritual mother of the church in Galatians 4:26. The virgin Mary is obviously called a mother in Matthew 1 and Luke 1. The natural nation of Israel which is also called Earthly Jerusalem is called a mother in Matthew 23:37 and Galatians 4:25. We will hopefully get to the verses about the New Jerusalem being a mother later in the series as we learn. But, any of these suspected women could fit the pattern description of being the pregnant woman in Rev 12. I do not have the time to completely explain all of this in one lesson, so please go and study it for yourself or be patient to see what else will come next. I also have multiple other Bible lessons on this website that will help you.
WHEN DO THE EVENTS IN REVELATION 12 OCCUR?
There are 5 basic “W” questions to ask when studying any Bible subject. This is for us to ask God “who”, “what”, “when”, “where” and “why”. I would like us to address these questions in this Bible study series. We will start this lesson on Revelation 12 with the basic and very important question “when does these chapter 12 events of Revelation occur?” I believe that when we understand the timing given to the events being described we can better understand which suspected women can be eliminated because of their potential alibies of being at some other place at some other time with some other people. Ha ha! It should be obvious that Revelation 12 is either:
1) a past historical event,
2) a present day current event or
3) a future coming event.
This may be a very new approach for many Bible students. I have never seen anyone attempt to explain this woman in this way before. We also will begin this study from a very different scripture than what you might expect. Since we are studying about chapter 12 of Revelation, I would like for us to back up and begin reading with Revelation chapter 1 and verse 19.
Rev 1:19 Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;
Notice how Jesus gives John the outline for the entire book of Revelation here in this verse. Jesus instructs John to write about things that he has seen in the past first. Then write about things he is seeing currently now in the present tense. And finally, to write about things that will happen in the future tense LAST! Wow, that sounds important to know. Jesus certainly understood what was going to be written. Therefore, we just learned how the information should flow and be organized.
Now we need to read chapter 4 to learn something very important that God says concerning the timing of the events in Revelation 12. Determining the correct timing will help us tremendously to understand which interpretation is applicable and valid and which interpretations are easily excused or dismissed as suspects. I pray so sincerely that this is understood? Let us read Revelation 4:1 to find out the timing of the Revelation 12 events:
Rev 4:1 After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
Some obviously read scriptures and just ignore them, don’t understand them or fail to apply them later. With any o these we are going to fall short in our understanding of the Bible. Here in this verse we have God in Heaven telling the apostle John “after this” to “come up” to heaven so that He can be shown the things that will occur after what was previously discussed and written about. What was previously written in chapters 2 and 3? We should all know that these were the 7 letters to the 7 churches. We may or may not know that these represent 2 perspectives.
First, the 7 letters to the 7 churches were literal physical churches that existed at the time this book of the Bible existed in 90 A.D. Second these 7 churches represent 7 periods of time within the entire 2000 year time of the church age. If these churches were not listed in this specific order and described in these specific ways, there would not be an accurate ability to apply them to this time period. What is my point? The point is Revelation 4:1 begins with “After this” and this can be used to inform us that what is happening next in the Book of Revelation is after the church age has ended.
This would mean that from this point in time forward of Revelation 4:1 everything is after the church has been raptured into heaven. We know this by studying the Greek word “metah-taupah” that was translated as the English word “after this” and “hereafter” in Revelation 4:1. This is the exact same word that used in Revelation 1:19 where Jesus gave us the outline of the book of Revelation to John saying “write what you have seen (Past Tense), the things that are (Present Tense) and the things that will come hereafter (Future Tense) “metah-taupah”. Revelation chapter 1 is the past tense division of the book. Revelation chapters 2 and 3 were the present tense division of the book being applicable to the church age. Then beginning in Revelation 4 and following these are ALL the things that had not occurred during the church age and are a designated division of future tense events.
Therefore, we should realize that from chapter 4 forward, whatever was written by John, God says has NOT occurred at the exact time of the words being written down. If you disagree with this please just leave a kind comment and explain why. Otherwise, let us all please take the Bible literally at every opportunity that is permissible. One good law of basic Bible interpretation is that “when the plain sense makes good sense, apply no other sense, or we can stumble into nonsense”. That would be different than takin the woman in Revelation 12 literally as she is described to be wearing the Sun, while standing on the moon. That makes no plain sense, therefore we must apply the new sense of symbolism to understand what is being communicated.
I think what potentially confuses some, is the fact that God uses future symbolism in Revelation which describes previous scriptural people, events, things and individuals. All of these new symbols existed prior to this writing of Revelation and were written about in other books using different names, titles or descriptions. Therefore, some of these future symbols will reflect historical and existing spiritual and physical realities like Jesus, Satan, angels, the church, the nation of Israel, and other spiritual entities that must already pre-exist before Revelation 4:1. We can see and learn this very clearly by reading Revelation 12:9. We are introduced to a key figure in Revelation 12 called the dragon and God defines who this symbol represent in verse 9 very clearly. Here God says the “dragon” represents the “old serpent” called the “Devil” and “Satan”. Wow, that is a major revelation of how God defines symbols in the Book of Revelation and chapter 12 specifically.
Therefore, what is prophesied to happen to these historical or existing entities in the future could be easily confused with past event occurrences that have already occurred because of the similarities and patterns that are given to us in these future descriptions of new events that happen to existing spiritual beings like Satan. God makes it so clear by calling the “dragon” the ancient serpent from Genesis 3:1. He then connects these two symbols, the serpent and the dragon to be one named spirit being named “Satan”. This information is vital to learn and know and it teaches us so much about interpreting the woman in Revelation 12 also.
Please understand there is a difference between something that is prophesied to happen to someone that already exists and something that has already happened to someone a longtime before. The first conforms with the declaration of Revelation 4:1 about future events and the second is , is a major conflict and a problem. We must change our perspective to say the prophesied birth of the woman’s child has not occurred when the book of Revelation was written. Because that would violate the definition of a prophecy and conflict with the scripture we just read in Revelation 4:1 where God says everything that is stated from this point forward has NOT yet occurred. I pray that this brings us clarity and agreement.
What we are going to soon discover is that there are statements found in Revelation 12 that will cause most people to gravitate to a specific pre-drawn conclusion of the identity of the woman in Revelation 12 because she is described to be 1) pregnant, 2) her child after birth is said to be caught up (raptured) to heaven and 3) because her child is said to rule with a rod of iron. Therefore, we all have automatically been drawn to and concluded without studying or taking into account Revelation 4:1 that the child must be the birth of the naturally born Jesus described in Matthew 1 and Luke 1, born in the town of Bethlehem. I use to think this way. But, I learned this thinking forces the woman in Revelation 12 to either be 1) the one physical woman Mary or 2) the collective symbolic woman of the natural nation of Israel (aka Earthly Jerusalem).
However, I believe that this rapid jump into a premature conclusion interpretation that potentially causes God’s Word to appear to be confused. God would seem to be someone that does not know the truth. I do not personally believe that God is confused or that this event of the child’s birth has already occurred as we know from Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels! Therefore, we should begin to understand that this interpretation of the child in Revelation 12 being naturally born Jesus causes a major conflict with scriptures. We would have to ignore Revelation 4:1 or explain it away to mean something it does not say.
This type of pre-drawn fast conclusion in Bible study would be like a police detective assuming a suspect’s identity without first examining all of the evidence that has been found at the crime scene. Because a few facts point us to one assumed main suspect that is easily remembered does not produce evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction. This is often times called “circumstantial evidence”. The circumstances being described to us in Revelation 12 appear to be only 1 suspect that does not make it the truth. Like I said before maybe this person has an alibi and this would cause an injustice to be initiated for our suspected woman’s identity.
Let me try to say this a different way. Just because one man fits a partial description of someone we think is Jesus Christ does not mean the suspected mother identity should should be arrested and found guilty without examining all of the rest of the substantial proof and evidence of every known truth in the rest of the chapter.
What if our suspect candidate that was arrested had an unknown twin sister and she committed the crime? What if that twin that did not commit the crime became the identified and assumed suspect and got arrested, tried and convicted based upon just the video camera recordings? Is that fair to her? Why then is it fair to this woman in Revelation to claim that she is the virgin Mary or natural nation of Israel when all of the evidence has not been found or analyzed?
Clearly in Revelation 12 God is now revealing new information to John a long time AFTER the physical birth, death, resurrection and the ascension of Jesus into heaven. I also would like to point out that Revelation 12 says the “child” is “caught up” and that does not match the description of the ascension given in Acts 1 of the man Jesus rising slowly into heaven. Also, Jesus was a full grown mature man of at least 33 1/2 years of age and Revelation 12 says her son that is caught up as a child. We also need to know that this word translated as “caught up” in Revelation 12, is G726 (harpazo) and it literally means to “seize suddenly by force”. The ascension of the man Jesus in Acts 1 uses a different Greek word G1869 (epairo) and this does not match the type or method of Jess going up. The evidence is just not in complete alignment and agreement for this child to be Jesus, even though there are some similarities. I think we are getting off of our main line of thought so let’s wrap this part of the lesson up and move on to the next topic.
What I believe is that God is trying to get us to see, is the fact that the prophecies going forward from Revelation 4 are all about coming future events and not about historical past events that have already occurred. We can easily disagree with God, if we would like to but that is probably why our Bible interpretations seem to conflict with other scriptures.
Forgive me for saying this again, but if God says that He will show us things to come in Revelation 4:1, we know that chapter 12 comes after chapter 4 and must have not occurred. If this is true there is a major problem with the majority of interpretations of the woman in Revelation 12 that I have heard and read being the natural nation of Israel.
I believe that too many teachers have jumped to a quick conclusion that the child born must describe the birth of the physical natural child named Jesus in Bethlehem and therefore the woman must be the natural nation of Israel or the physical woman Mary. And we know they teach this way even though this birth of physical Jesus took place even before the church age began. This is ignoring critical scriptural evidence that must be applied in this lesson series to help us understand that she must be a different pregnant woman suspect than the obvious one that everyone believes.
Maybe this will help us to ask this, when did John write this book? Was it after Jesus was born or before Jesus was born? Most Bible scholars will agree that the book of Revelation was written a long time after the birth of Jesus and could have been written somewhere around the year 90 to 96 AD. Obviously it should be clear in our minds that Revelation was written well after the physical birth of Jesus. Therefore, we must conclude that the baby described in Revelation 12 can NOT be physical Jesus using this information, and logical application of the factual truths of Revelation 1:19 and 4:1.
I know that this may upset a great number of readers that have already predetermined who the woman and her child represents. But yet we are just reading and studying the Bible and seeing what God says. If God would have said in Rev 4:1 come up here and I will show you the things that have already happened and the things that will come hereafter, then that changes our prospective view of the possible interpretations significantly. Since that is not the case, what we must conclude based upon the Word of God is that the pregnancy of the woman and the birth of the child in Revelation 12 are both future events that will happen after the minimum of 90 AD.
I personally believe that God says what He means and means what He says. Therefore, let us continue to study and move forward asking more questions so that the Holy Spirit on the inside can help us resolve these conflicts that we are seeing in the scriptures. We have spent enough time trying to answer the “when” question. But, I could spend a lot more time on this topic but I will conclude this section with asking you when do the other events of Revelation 4 through 22 occur? Please go study and read them and ask have any of these other events occurred yet? Has the anti-Christ been revealed? Has the judgments of God been initiated? Are there two witnesses standing in the city of Jerusalem preaching to the nations? Are there a 144000 with 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel being used by God yet? Has the whore Babylon been destroyed? Has the star wormwood hit the earth and turned a lot of water to an undrinkable condition? On and on we could go. I know that some say that these have already occurred but they are clearly wrong. Don’t be deceived to believe these events have occurred already. They are ALL about to happen in a very short time from now. Amen.
WHAT ARE THE SYMBOLS RELATED TO THE WOMAN?
In order to identify the woman in Revelation 12 correctly, I found that it was critical to accurately identify the woman’s associated symbolic characteristics and descriptions first. This is us asking some of the “what” questions about the woman. What is she wearing, what is she standing on, what is she doing? What does it mean to be wearing a crown? What does it mean to be clothed with the Sun? What does it mean to be standing on the moon?
What we will discover when we study to find the answers to these question concerning the given symbolic descriptions of the woman’s features, these clearly point us to ONLY one possible valid truthful identity in our suspect list. It is what I call “dependent truth relationships”. Until we identify the “parent” truths, we will never understand the “child” truths. I am not really sure if you understand this concept that I just introduced you to. But, please give me a chance to explain and please be patient to learn.
This concept of truth dependency is found in the Bible, and naturally created patterns like computer programming and other paradigms. For example we view this truth in the natural world when speaking of children born from their parents. But, in object oriented computer programming languages this feature can be called “inheritance”. This is where one computer object (class) inherits or takes on the qualities and features from another pre-defined dependent object (class) that existed prior to the creation of the new object. We can not fully understand the new child’s object capabilities without first fully understanding the source of inherited parent’s object characteristics. If you do know anything about object oriented computer programming you still may be struggling with this concept applying to the Bible. So I’ll try to apply this concept by teaching about the parent symbols found in Revelation 12 to help us understand the woman’s dependent characteristic identities and this will help us narrow the woman’s identity eliminating everyone else that she can’t be.. Most of these dependent parent symbol truths start with information found in Revelation 12:1:
Rev 12:1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
We can see immediately in verse 1 that this referenced woman is “clothed” with a very significant object referred to as a symbolic “sun”. Then we are informed that she is “standing with her feet” upon another very significant specific object named to be a symbolic “moon”. Finally on her head she is “crowned” with another symbolic item of a crown containing “12 stars”. What we should start with, is to realize that this information dictates facts of truth that this described woman MUST be a symbolic representation of a greater spiritual truth because of the nature of the symbolic descriptions selected and their placements on her physical body which are used by God to describe her.
Normally God gives us symbolic information using natural objects that we can understand to help represent spiritual truths that we have never seen or understood. Jesus used this technique numerous times in the form of parables like the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, etc. By us understanding these natural object identities we can then transfer this knowledge into understanding the dependent unstated and unseen spiritual truth dimension. What are the given key symbols from Revelation 12:1?
- A Woman
- Clothed with Sun
- Standing on the Moon
- Crowned with 12 Stars
The most important things to take away from what we have read so far is to understand that there is a woman, the sun, the moon and the 12 stars and these must ALL be symbolic references using naturally created God objects pointing us to much greater hidden spiritual truths. We know this fact of truth because it is impossible to physically wear the literal “sun” as clothing. We could place a picture representation of the sun on our shirt, pants, robe or whatever we were wearing but that is not what God said. God literally says she is wearing the sun not a picture. Therefore, this is a word description and association containing a hidden definition that God must provide their meanings to us somewhere in His Word.
I’ll try to go further with the objected oriented programming concepts because this does apply to understanding the Bible and our specific subject. If you are not a computer programmer you may want to jump to the next paragraph. But in computer programming any named object (class) can possess pre-defined data members and member function methods. These can be inherited by a new dependent object type of a similar kind with new or modified data and feature methods. Let’s go a bit deeper. For example, the Sun can synonymously also be called a Star. Therefore, the Sun object could inherit specific characteristics from the more generic (general) Star object. But the Sun implementation can contain new specific data, information and methods that pertain only to our closest star object we call our sun. If you are struggling with this concept, I understand.
Maybe this will be more understandable for non-programmers if we view it in the terms of a new child born to any human woman. This new child will obviously inherit DNA characteristics from the contributing parents (mother and father). These DNA characteristics will include possible hair color, nose shape and size, eye color and shape, height, weight and on and on we could go. I know people when they looked at my son, they knew I was his father because of the passed down resemblance of his characteristics and features. This is called a type of inheritance. My son inherited features from me and my wife. Hopefully, this knowledge will help us as we continue to study because it is taught relates to what we are seeing in the Bible about Revelation 12.
I’ll give you a quick Bible reference to inheritance in the beginning of the Bible to assist us how this applies. For example, go and read Genesis 1:26 when God said “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness…”. The Hebrew word translated as “image” means a “resemblance” or “a representative example”. This would be like a model of a car or an airplane. The small model is not the real airplane but viewing the model we can discover the real’s main characteristics and features.
Believe it or not that describes the Object Oriented programming type of inheritance also. We can look at the Originating God Creator (class/object) and begin to understand the created model man (class/object) because of man’s similar inherited features, abilities, etc. I hope and pray that this knowledge does not complicate your ability to understand this study. If you are struggling, that is OK. Just keep reading and it will come into focus as we continue. Let’s move on to explore the dependent symbols given to us by God.
These symbols of the woman clothed with the sun, standing on the moon and crowned with 12 stars are six of the most important dependent parent to child truths that I was referring to earlier. These 6 must be understood accurately in order to correctly identify the dependent woman in Revelation 12 with confidence. In other words, if we understand these symbolic object in detail, we will be more assured of who the woman truly represents.
This is where many Bible teachers and students have started to miss it in their interpretations. Many have focused in on the woman and her child predominately and only 3 of her dependent object relationships, while ignoring the other 3 key symbols given to us by God that are very significant. They usually focus only on the existence of a sun, a moon and the stars and do not attempt to explain what wearing the sun means, standing on the moon means or to be crowned with 12 stars means. Uh oh, that sounds like a very significant problem of partiality or fact and truth omission. This would be like taking 3 facts that you believe you understand and ignoring the other 3 because you don’t understand them.
I will briefly teach concerning the predominate reasoning given by the majority of Bible teachers for the identity of the woman in Revelation 12. The majority of modern Bible teachers believe the woman is Israel because these 3 objects (sun, moon & stars) were found in Genesis 37 given to Joseph by God in the dream. In this dream Joseph was shown that the sun, the moon and 11 stars bowed down to him. Therefore, these teachers have concluded that this dream is close enough to be used to claim these objects collectively represent only the nation of Israel. The key word is “ONLY” in that last sentence. Joseph’s father Jacob interprets the dream and he informs us the sun is him, the moon is Joseph’s mother and the 11 stars are Joseph’s brothers. But, let us ask this question, is that all these objects represent and is this the first time they are mentioned in the Bible? The correct answers to both of these questions is essential to understanding the truth of Revelation 12.
So let me ask you how do we resolve these apparent conflicts? Did you see the conflicts between applying this dream and our application to the woman in Revelation 12 her associated symbol placements? One set of symbols are bowing uniformly in the dream and the other corresponding symbols in Revelation are spread out all over her body from head to toe. Then there is the problem there are only 11 stars and not 12. To this the common answer is Joseph is the 12th star and 11 is close enough to the number 12.
So how do we apply Jacob’s interpretation to Revelation 12? If we did this the woman (Israel) would be clothed with Jacob, standing on Rachel and being crowned with Rueben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin. Does any of these placement make any common or plain sense to you? The most significant problem of conflict would be for the nation of Israel to be standing on Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife. Being stood upon is not a position of respect or honor. I believe this is a very major fact that is being completely misunderstood or ignored by modern Bible teachers. We will look at this subject in more depth later in this series, but for now let us continue forward to complete this section of our lesson.
Our approach in studying these symbol subjects will be radically different that the approach to other good Bible teachers. We will examine the woman and the child with less focused priority to begin with and shift to focus in on these other three object symbols first. Specifically we will attempt to discover the meanings of how these 3 objects are mentioned by God with their direct functions of being clothed, standing on and crowned with. I believe that when we do this, we will obtain the keys to unlock the identity of this woman in Revelation 12 more precisely. I believe that this is a transformational departure from natural human logic and reasoning. We will soon discover how this new approach will benefit us tremendously in our understanding of truth, while eliminating other women suspects that do not fit with this method of study.
WHAT DO THE GIVEN SYMBOLS MEAN TO GOD?
What does the sun, the moon and the stars all have in common? 
They are ALL heavenly created bodies that can be seen and observed from the earth. That information right there ought to start us thinking in a different way. What does the earth represent in other symbols given to us in the scriptures? Jesus taught us in the parable of the sower that earth represented the hearts of men. I believe that is very relevant to know so keep that in mind. Then consider this, these objects exist in varying distances from the earth. Also know that the earth revolves around one main object called the sun. Second, the moon revolves around the earth primarily and the sun secondarily and this is very important to understand. Third, the stars are just very distant suns that are too innumerable to count in the heaven. This is just basic cosmological information that we can gather on the internet. But, I believe very sincerely that all of these natural objects have much greater spiritual significance by God’s divine wisdom and design. I believe this based upon Roman 1:20 where God informs us His invisible qualities can be seen being found in the things that He has created in our world. I believe this included the sun, moon and stars.
Let us begin our detail symbol analysis of these objects individually by digging into the crown of 12 stars first and then we will move to the sun clothing next and finally her position of standing on the moon object last.
WHAT IS THE CROWN OF 12 STARS? – THE NUMBER 12
Let’s start briefly with the crown of 12 stars and the number 12. I believe that many Bible teachers focus with too much emphasis of the woman’s identity without noticing the significance of the number 12. We should know from Bible study that the number 12 has a lot of significance throughout the entire book from Genesis to Revelation. This number could apply to the natural nation from the man God named Israel who progenerated his 12 sons (Gen 35:22) to produce the 12 tribes of Israel. But the number 12 could also apply to the spiritual church (a spiritual Israel according to Galatians 6:16, 1 Peter 2:9 and others) that also produced 12 spiritual tribes (James 1:1) that originated from the 12 called apostles of the Lamb (Mat 10:2). There are also other twelves in the Bible that I find very interesting. For example, did you know that Ishmael the first son of Abram by Hagar had 12 sons (Gen 25:16)? I wonder why God put that in the Bible? There appears to be a connection to Hagar and the Earthly Jerusalem from reading Galatians 4. However, that is a new problem for a different Bible study. Did you know that the Levite High Priest wore a breastplate with 12 stones with the names of the 12 tribes on them? Did you know that Satan’s breastplate only had 9 stones with one row missing from the Israel Hight Priest breastplate? That too is another problem for another lesson. Did you know that the foundation of the New Jerusalem had 12 layers of similar stones like the High Priest and will contain the names of the 12 Apostles of the Lamb (Rev 21:14)? Did you know that the Tree of Life at the end of Revelation produced 12 kinds of fruit 12 months of every year? There are just a lot of patterns that are in parallel. Did you know that there are 12 gates into the city New Jerusalem? Also in the New Jerusalem we find it is 144 cubits tall which is twelve multiplied by twelve as well as being 12,000 furlongs square? We could go on and on with the number 12 study.
The Number 12 in Biblical numerological terms typically represents a perfected governmental foundation. For example, a jury in a court of Law normally is comprised of 12 Jurors in the U.S. There are over 180 references in the Bible to the number 12. There are 22 references found in the book of Revelation alone. We could spend days on this study of the number 12. It is also important to note that the number 12 is very specifically related by God to be a descriptive quantifier for the number of the “stars” on her head and does not specifically address or identify the woman directly. Even though this number 12 does appear important it is not specific enough to anyone that I have found in the Bible as to establish one possible candidate suspect individually.
What I am trying to teach in this section is that the number 12 is; in and of itself not sufficient evidence to determine which possible candidate could be selected. However, it may be sufficient to exclude or eliminate at least 1 possible candidate. Using this number “12” information alone we could interpret that the woman is potentially either 1). natural Israel or 2). the spiritual church because of the 12 tribe son association. Currently I do not know of any Bible number of 12 that God has associated with the physical natural woman Mary. Therefore, based upon this information we can almost guarantee that the woman is not the physical virgin Mary. However, if you search the internet you will find many people that believe this woman is Mary and they have created pictures of a woman that they call Mary wearing a crown of 12 stars. Personally, I do not agree with them because of what we will learn very soon. But we will explore Mary more as we continue our search and confirmation.
WHAT IS THE CROWN OF 12 STARS? – THE STARS
Let’s now go through a brief discussion of the Bible subject of the “stars”. From my study I have found that there are many references in the Bible that directly or indirectly identify stars to be symbolic references to angels. We can see one very important example of this directly in this chapter 12 of Revelation in verse 4. In verse 4 God describes the tail of the dragon sweeping 1/3 of the stars down to the earth from heaven. Most Bible scholars believe this is a clear reference to the number of angels that fell with Lucifer in time past. I do agree with that interpretation completely.
The Greek word G792 translated as “star” is the word that we are currently discovering. This is the Greek word found in Revelation 12:1 and 4. It is used by God in the New Testament 24 times in 21 verses. Wow, 12 + 12 = 24 and there are 12 stars on her head. I wonder if that is significant? Revelation chapter 1 verses 16 and 20 also provides some very relevant star information and definition. In verse 16 of Revelation 1, Jesus is described to have seven stars in His hand. Then in verse 20 Jesus Himself defines what this symbol means by saying the 7 stars are the 7 angels of the 7 churches.
Now we are really getting much deeper into this star subject than I really wanted to, but we will continue. The Greek word G32 is this word translated as angel widely in the New Testament. However, God does occasionally use this word to mean a “messenger” and even a “pastor”. We know heavenly angels are widely used as messengers for God, sent to people on the earth. We can find this in the Old and New Testament several times. In the KJV Bible, translators chose to translate G32 as “messenger” in 7 verses. For example, it is used this way in Matthew, Mark and Luke to describe John the Baptist and his disciples. It is translated as “messenger of Satan” in 2 Corinthians 12:7 in reference to the thorn in Paul’s side that he prayed for God to take from him three times. Finally, in the book of James it is written and used to describe the two spies that were sent into Jericho for Rahab the harlot’s salvation.
Ok, this word translated as angel, angels, messenger or messengers is also used in the seven letters written to the 7 churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Remember Jesus said in Revelation 1 the 7 stars in His right hand were the 7 angels. But, I believe that these references should also be messengers or more specifically “pastors”. You see Jesus said in the letters “Unto the angel of the church of ….”. Why would Jesus write a letter to an heavenly angel when He can simply call them over and talk to that angel in heaven at anytime He wants. That just doesn’t logically make sense to me.
No, I believe these 7 angels in Revelation 2 and 3 should be referred to as the 7 pastors that bring the message of God to His people in the church. Jesus is bringing us information for the benefit, edification, correction and warning to church people here on the earth. These 7 letters were written for all of our benefit. We in the church are the ones that require the help that is offered.
What I have concluded is that the 12 stars on the head of the woman in Revelation 12 represents the 12 Apostles of the Lamb who were shepherds (aka Pastors) to spread the good news of Jesus to others in the world. Through them this good news spread and the church grew. On the Day of Pentecost there were 120 that were filled with the Holy Spirit (12 times 10 equals 120 an interesting 12 relationship). While the number of 12 Stars does not specifically confirm the church it certainly does not eliminate the church either to be the woman. I can see how some could believe the 12 stars could possibly represent the 12 tribes of Israel. However, why they are found on a crown should raise a lot of new questions If you are able to see things differently you are welcome to share your verses with me. Let us move the study to that of the “crown” found on her head. This symbolism represents greater priority based upon its direct contact and physical positioning. Which woman does the Bible claim is to be crowned?
WHAT IS THE CROWN OF 12 STARS? – THE CROWN
I will now go over the specific “Crown” symbol to determine who can qualify Biblically to be this crowned woman in Revelation 12. We are going to do this by studying the Greek word G4735 that was translated as “crown”. This Greek word is defined as an “intertwined or woven wreath worn on the head as a symbol of royalty, or as a symbol for the prize for winning the victory in the public games, or as a symbol of honor. I think all of these are great descriptions and helps to narrow the focused candidates very significantly. Think about the definition and then think what else we know of the Bible. If nothing comes in your mind immediately I’ll give you a few important things to consider.
The Greek word translated as “crown” (G4735) is used by the Holy Spirit in 18 N.T. verses. That is a fairly narrow number to study them all but I will be selective to limit the size of the lesson. I would suggest that you go and read them all when you have the time. We will begin with an overview of the Gospels first.
In the Gospels, this Greek word is found 4 times in association with the crucifixion of Jesus. However, in this example it was not used as a crown of victory, honor or royalty but rather as a crown of mockery because it was made of “thorns”. It caused Jesus great pain and great humiliation and caused His head to bleed. Roman’s used this symbol as a mockery to laugh at him crying “Hail the King of the Jews”. Wow, that is the opposite of how the woman in Revelation is described.
Ok, next is the letters to the church and the first time this Greek word is mentioned is in 1 Corinthians 9:24-25. Here we have a very applicable description for the church obtaining this crown. Verse 24 speaks of people running a race and in verse 25 Paul wrote of them seeking for a “corruptible crown”. A corruptible crown is one that will not last, in other words it represents a temporary honor given from a temporary victory. You see in these types of games they never end. It is like the Olympics where runners run every 4 years to compete for the same prize. Someone will obtain the victor’s crown for that race but they know that there will soon be another contest that may be won by another faster, stronger, and younger competitor. It is a very fleeting recognition and victory.
Now Paul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit compares this temporary crown to a crown that the church is seeking to obtain. This crown he called an “incorruptible crown”. This is a lasting type of honor rewarded from a victorious ending from a life-time of victories. Incorruptible means this crown will not decay or fade to nothing. It will be one that endures eternally. This is a spiritual reward from a spiritual contest. You see the church is told to “Fight the Good Fight” (1 Tim 6:12). The Church is told “Run the Race” (1 Cor 9:24). The church is told “we wrestle not with flesh and blood….” (Eph 6:12). All of these admonitions are types of Olympic events and contests to whom the winner gets the reward. Wow, I think that is amazing. This crown of victory worn by the woman in Revelation 12 sure sounds like the description of a victorious church and we will learn a lot more about who this victory is over very soon in this lesson series.
I am not going to go over any more verses, because of the amount of information, space and time it would take to write about it in full and the time increase required for you to read about it. I will recommend again that you go and search your New Testament for the Greek word G4735 and study them all. I believe you will find overwhelming evidence that this woman in Revelation 12 is only confirmed to be the church based upon this symbol. I have not found a direct reference to it being anyone else using this divinely chosen Greek word. If you know of any verses that describe natural Israel to be a woman with a crown please shared them. I will tell you that there is another woman in Revelation 17 called the “Mystery Babylon the Whore” that claims that she is a queen in Rev 18:7. This certainly does appear to indicate she has or had a crown at one time or the other on her head. She is also called a mother in Rev 17. Wow, we can’t go any deeper in this lesson about this woman, but it is noteworthy to mention.
I will end this section on the crown with 1 Peter 5:4 “When the Chief Shepherd (Jesus) shall appear you will receive a crown (G4735) of glory that will not fade away”. Wow, Wow and Wow. Praise the LORD! Let’ change subjects and learn the most important dependent subject, the Sun.
WHO IS THE SYMBOLIC SUN?
What we need to do now is to address the easiest and most profound symbol concerning the identity of the woman in Revelation 12, the “Sun”. There are literally more confirmations in scripture to the identify the Sun symbol than any other Revelation 12 symbol topic. It is also essential to understand that this woman is said to be “clothed” with the sun and this means that she is literally “wearing” this object. We understand that like any natural clothing this sun must have been “put on” in order for it to be worn. This demonstrates a voluntary act of freewill choice. In other words, a woman goes to her closet and chooses which garment to place on her body on purpose. Therefore, this “sun” clothing is a highly dependent qualifier that MUST be understood in order to determine her identity correctly. Also what it means to be selected as clothing is another major dependent qualifier for determining identity. There are just so many questions that should come to mind if given any thought. For example:
- Who or what is this sun? Is the sun literal or symbolic?
- Why is she wearing the sun?
- What purpose or benefit would it be to be clothed with this object?
- Why is this object described as clothing and not some other relationship?
- What does a woman do with clothing?
- How does a woman choose her clothing?
- If she is wearing the sun, she is wearing light. Who should be a light in the world today?
There are so many questions that could be asked with the need to be understood and answered using the Bible. Let’s get started learning about the “sun”.
The Greek word translated as “sun” in Revelation 12:1 is G2246. This word is used by God in 30 N.T. verses. Strong’s definition is the “sun” as in “a ray”. Thayer says this word means “sun”, “rays of the sun” and “the light of day”. These are just basic facts, but they may not directly help us in understanding God’s symbolic definition of this object enough to identify the object. However, I believe the object’s characteristics will become very relevant, very soon. It is recommended that you go and read every verse where this verse is found, but for time sake we will not list or study these all in this lesson.
The Greek word translated as “clothed” is G4016 and it means “to put on” or to “invest with clothing”. This is an absolutely fascinating concept. The sun is very bright, very warm and hot, the source of life and light for our planet earth. Without the sun’s exact distance from the earth our planet earth would be as all the other planets without life. The sun is also the closest star to our planet and the center of our solar system that everything else in this system revolves around. These physical attributes actually give us parallels into the spiritual realm and help us to identify who this symbolic spiritual sun is. Let us list the physical qualities of the sun again for any that may have missed them. The Sun is:
- The Source of Natural Day Light
- The only Bright Light of Day
- One Major Source for Life on Earth
- The Source of Natural Heat and Warmth
- Only Visible during the Day when we normally work
- Not Visible at Night when we normally sleep
These might seem very obvious, but yet we still may not understand the significance to what they could mean. We just read 6 descriptive characteristics of the natural sun that the woman is clothed with. In knowing these we could describe that this woman is wearing, life, light, brightness, warmth and the day. Her clothing is described in these very specific terms. Keep these in mind as we go forward with this study because they are all very important. Also begin to ask yourself who should be clothed with these types of features in the Bible?
So what or who does this symbolic sun represent? I will not keep you in suspense any longer because the “Sun” according to many verses found in the Bible is one of the key symbols for “the Lord Jesus Christ”. It is always good to just search the entire Bible for the word “sun”. Then read all of the verses. I did this to find the word 160 times in the KJV Bible in 152 verses. The vast majority of verses God is speaking of the literal created sun object in the sky. But there are a number of verses where God uses the term in a figurative or symbolic way to describe a greater spiritual truth. We do not have the time to address every verse, but, I found one quickly that literally should shake our internal spirit being. After I read this verse I knew in my spirit that must apply to our subject search. Let us read a direct verse reference example of a figurative “sun” found in the book of Malachi:
Mal 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
Here we see a verse that God speaks directly about Jesus Christ, but without using His direct name. God in this verse does not call Jesus His “SON of Righteousness”, but rather He names Him the “SUN of Righteousness”. God says “Sun” not “Son”. If this was me speaking it could have been a typo, because I am human and have done that kind of mistake before. But, because it is God speaking, I believe He said what He meant and meant what He said. Surely everyone can see this and understand who God is talking about? If not, take note of the fact that something or someone is named as the Sun and that he or it will be rising somewhere to bring healing to someone through the gift of righteousness. Also, note that God says this sun rises and this must be a symbolic spiritual prophecy of someone or something that will bring healing.
Finally note the beginning statement from this prophecy that claims this is ONLY for them that “fear His name”! Who can that be? That is one of our first major clues because we should all claim to be “IN” that classification. Please pay attention to what I just said using the word “IN”. Could this a factor for identifying who is wearing the sun in Revelation 12? Isn’t being clothed with something the same as saying she is “IN” it? Could these people be those that possess the “fear” (honor, respect, and awe) of God’s name? Now with all that in mind, let’s research, find and confirm who this Sun of Righteousness represents:
2Pe 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
In this verse we can see some amazing parallels to what we just read in Malachi 4:2. Here we can see another reference to Jesus being a light that rises and shines in the hearts of us believers. We can also clearly see that He is called the “Day Star“. This is just another way to describe the closest star to our planet that shines during the daylight hours and is normally called our “Sun”. Do you get it? Remember when we learned that the “Sun” object could inherit from the parent “star” object to contain additional new features with specific new data types, methods and descriptions. God created the sun as a “day star” and it is usually the only object that is visible until the sun sets. The other stars are not normally visible until the darkness of night. These are very important created facts that teach us things in the unseen spiritual dimension of truth that we may have never learned.
Calling and describing the exact same object by different symbols, names, titles and descriptions is a very wise method that God uses to hide the meaning of the sun. Using these differing symbols, names, titles and descriptions permits Him to conceal it while simultaneously placing it in plain sight. This methodology of composition makes the information more challenging to search and find. But, it also gives us new descriptive qualities to learn about in every different example.
Jesus is clearly again called the spiritual Sun (Star Shinning during the Day) that rises in the human heart. The reference to dawn is a description of sunrise when light first breaks in the morning and the darkness has to vanish. Notice how the earth is the one that turns and not the sun. Notice how this turning of the earth reflects symbolically a position of repentance moving out of the darkness and into the light of day! God’s wisdom seen in the creation of these natural objects is amazing.
These are all spiritual truths reflected using natural symbolism. Who in this verse is God referring to that the “Day Star” should arise within? Again, this should be those people that have repented to turn into the “Light” of Jesus Christ. I claim to be guilty of receiving this light of life and I pray you are also one in this group.
But, wait, We are not done yet. For those who still may be skeptical we will continue to go through more spiritual witnesses to the truth to see the TRUE identity of the symbolic Sun. This time our witness will be the LORD Jesus himself talking:
Rev 22:16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.
Here we have the same implemented method that is used by God, of calling the Sun by still another new name. This time Jesus claims that He is the Sun being called the “Bright Morning Star“. This is another reference to the “dawn” when the Sun rises. We understand this through God’s usage of the term “morning”. We can easily understand that Jesus is claiming to be the spiritual “Sun” that rises in the hearts of Christians to bring us light into our previously very darkened spirits. If this is not understandable this might be a great time to ask Him to come into your heart and save you. After you do this He will rise up on the inside of you to help you to see things like this to be true. Just stop and pray ask saying “LORD Jesus I repent and turn to you, please be my LORD and bring me light to see you and your truth, Amen”.
Have you ever looked into the physical sun accidently and noticed how bright it is? The woman in Revelation 12 who is clothed with the sun would also be called to be this bright. This verse in Revelation 12:1 is referring to this bright star (Sun) that rises in the morning of human hearts that have turned. These are radical new and different terms and ways of thinking. But these should be helping us to understand who this woman in Revelation 12 could only represent.
The reason some people have not seen this reference before, is because they think this morning star is a reference to a planet like Venus. But, that interpretation ignores the fact that God says this is a “star” and not a planet. Venus is clearly not a star. These are also the words of Jesus telling us personally who He is, Jesus is not a dead planet, but rather He is the life giving star of our planet (hearts). Let us continue to go to another new title for the same Sun. This time it is in the prophecy of John the Baptist’s father when speaking of Jesus:
Luk 1:78 Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,
So Jesus is prophesied to be the “Dayspring”. If you look up the definition of this Greek word G395 in the Strong’s it means “a rising light”. Isn’t this what the sun does every day? You can also see that this is the same synonymous meaning of “dawn” when the sun rises in the east. What we can see is another clear reference to the coming of Jesus into the world as being liken to the rising of Sun to bring light to those that were in darkness. When Jesus was born into the world He brought the light from heaven with Him. Remember what or who light is in the Bible? Read 1 John 1:5 where we are clearly informed “God is Light and in Him is NO darkness”. Uh oh, that sounds very important to me. Remember what Jesus said in John 9:5 “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world”. Jesus was claiming to be a spiritual sun and not a natural light. Jesus did not walk around glowing in the dark. Let us go to another reference for the identity of the Sun from the mouth of Jesus. We will stay in the book of John and read from chapter 8 and verse 12:
Joh 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
WOW! You do understand the source of the light and life for our planet, yes? The natural sun produces the light on our planet and is the primary source of life also. In this verse in John, Jesus reveals himself to be the spiritual light of the world and the source of spiritual life. This is a direct parallel to the physical nature of the sun light of our world. We can clearly see that Jesus informs us if we continue to follow Him, that we would NOT walk in darkness. Wow, can we see the message? If we were walking IN darkness that is a very similar concept to being clothed in this substance of darkness. But, if we choose to walk IN the light this appears to say we could be be clothed with His “light” (the Sun). Wow, we are getting ahead in the next section of the lesson. But that should have just produced some new light in our hearts.
Jesus is referring to the heart of man in this verse and tells us that He will light us internally, or spiritually by us believing in Him. Since the physical sun is one key for the source of natural life on this planet, we can understand that the spiritual Sun of Righteousness is the spiritual source for our spiritual eternal life. What we have is a natural pattern being given to us for a far greater and much more significant spiritual reality. We can see the same physical qualities being described of the natural sun to be found in Jesus. Jesus is calling himself the “Light of Life”, these are clearly types of the symbolic sun. Jesus is calling himself the light of the world, that again is by nature the sun. Jesus says we will not walk in darkness or the night, because again we have or choose to be IN Him the source of our life as our personal Sun.
There are many verses in the Bible that we could include in this lesson to illustrate the truth of the identity of the symbolic “Sun” clothing being Jesus Christ. We will only go with one more that repeats some of the basics that we have already learned from other verses. Here is a verse written directly to the church about the church and our Savior:
2Co 4:6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
This verse is very informative. It first confirms that the Genesis 1 account contains hidden spiritual prophetic statements within it. God who on day 1 of creation, commanded the light to be, declares that this was a prophesied future spiritual event that would occur when Jesus came to manifest on te earth. The location of this shining or enlightenment is clearly given to be the hearts of mankind. This is the inward spiritual location of our eternal spirit being. Then the verse ends with how this occurs. It is through knowing Christ. Finally, there is a reference given to the “face” of Jesus Christ. I found that this is fascinating and informative also. We can see this concept in the book of Revelation describing the “face” of Jesus:
Rev 1:16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
You see in this verse of Revelation, God is describing some spiritual qualities of Jesus Christ. I’ll skip the first two and go directly to the last part of that verse that says “his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength”. Isn’t that an interesting way to describe Jesus? The word “countenance” can be translated as “face”. So the “face” of Jesus is said to be symbolically shining like the sun at noonday. This I believe is highly significant and just further confirms that Jesus Christ is the symbolic Sun found in Revelation 12. Here is a list of scriptures that all refer to Jesus Christ in terms describing Him to be the Sun. Some of these I have given you already and some are new:
- The Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2)
- The Greater Light that Rules the Day (Gen 1:16)
- The Day Star (2 Peter 1:19)
- The Bright and Morning Star (Rev 22:16)
- The Morning Star (Rev 2:28)
- The Dayspring (Luke 1:78)
- The True Light (John 1:9, 1 John 2:8)
- The Light of the World (John 8:12, John 9:5)
- The Light of Life (John 8:12)
- The Sun (Rev 1:16, Rev 12:1)
This should be overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ is the Sun. Therefore, I have concluded from all of these verses that the Bible informs us this symbolic sun in Revelation 12 must be the LORD Jesus Christ and not Jacob. Now we must confirm who is instructed or commanded to wear this symbol in the Bible? We have already seen some great clues in this section that should have raised our expectation level. This is where we will go next. Afer you expecting to receive anything else new? I hope so.
WHO IN THE BIBLE IS TO WEAR THE SUN?
Let us now approach this subject from a different angle to give us some additional perspectives on this topic for determining the identity of the Sun in relation to the identity of the woman. I want to specifically focus on any commandment in the Bible given by God for anyone to be clothed with Jesus. Is the church ever told to wear this symbolic sun? As you recall, the woman in Revelation 12 is said to be clothed with the Sun. Of course the church must be commanded to wear the Sun in order to be qualified to be the woman in Revelation 12. But realize that this command may not just be in so many direct obvious words as we have already learned. This again is one way that God hides the truth for a given time to reveal it. We have to look for it, study it and allow the Holy Spirit to show us. We started this discovery by allowing the Holy Spirit to bring us through a process for understanding who the spiritual Sun represents. By now I believe that you can see that the spiritual Sun is Jesus Christ. Now let us direct our focus upon verses applying the new knowledge of who the Bible says is the symbolic Sun looking for verses that instructs someone to wear Jesus Christ directly (Jesus, Lord, Christ, etc.) or indirectly (light, sun, etc.). Here is one verse that found that is amazing:
Rom 13:14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
The Greek word G1746 that was translated as “put on” here means to “invest with clothing” or to “be clothed” with. Interesting, is it not? Isn’t this what God was talking about, to be clothed with the Sun in Revelation 12? If Jesus Christ is the Sun, and we have clearly seen that He is, then the church is instructed to wear this Sun like clothing in this verse. This verse in Romans tells us to wear Jesus Christ like a physical garment, robe or a coat. If Jesus is the Light and the Sun, then we would be wearing the correct symbol describing the woman in Revelation 12, right? Please relate only this news with being a Christian.
What does it mean to “put on ” Christ? We know that God is Light. Therefore, if we are required as Christians to put on Christ’s Light this should cause Him to become visible outwardly as we live our our lives on the earth before those that are still walking in darkness. I believe people need to be able to see Christ’s light in our actions, our morals, in our choices and life styles long before they hear our words about Jesus. Remember what we learned about when Jesus spoke to us in John? He said “as long as I am in the world I am the light of the world”. He is not physically here on the earth now, but we are. Therefore, Jesus said this in Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world, a city on a hill that cannot be hid”. Wow what an amazing choice of words. If we lived as if were clothed with His righteousness and feared His name would this cause us to live Holy in the world so that they could not do anything but notice how different we were from them?
This is God’s major participating power that is being used in developing the identity of the woman that appears in heaven in Revelation 12. Can you as a Christian see yourself clothed in His light? Can others in the world see this light? Here is another witness to this revelation:
Gal 3:27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Again we clearly see a new synonymous reference of the church being clothed when we were baptized into Christ. To be naturally baptized represents a complete immersion and the covering of the body by water. This is clearly a symbolic type of reference for a person wearing something like a robe. The parallels of jumping into water completely is very analogous to jumping into a piece of clothing.
In this verse we are wearing symbolic water and in Revelation 12 we are wearing the Light of the World (the Sun). We must understand that water and light are both key elements of the source of natural life on our planet. Without either of these life would not exist. But we must also understand that Water is a symbol of the Word of God (Eph 5:26). Then can further confirm this connection because Jesus is called by the title of the “Word of God” in Revelation 19:13. Therefore, we can logically conclude that if we are told that we were baptized into Christ this means were clothed with His Word. I know this is all different than what we may have been taught and very new deep revelations. But, this is what God is teaching us from the Bible.
Now if that is true then according to this verse we also have “put on” Christ. Put on again means to “be clothed” with Christ. The church should be going around wearing the garment of Jesus Christ, right here, right now. Let’s look at a new verse:
1Co 15:49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
In this verse it compares two opposing states of human existence. One is in the physical with the other one being in the spiritual. The words “borne” and “bear” are the same Greek word that means to “wear”. God is telling us that we (our spirits) previously wore only our flesh bodies, but now we have been circumcised to remove this flesh nature (Rom 2:29, Col 2:11) and to be re-clothed with a heavenly new nature of the Spirit. This is what is means to put on Christ and we are required to turn from our previous state of behavior in the darkness.
This will become very obvious to what God is talking about as we continue to learn and grow in knowing Him. I hope and pray that everyone is beginning to see this. When the Light comes in, the darkness will no longer have the ability to blind us from seeing the truth. Let us briefly go over an Old Testament prophecy that goes into a bit of relevant information on this topic of wearing the “Sun”.
Dan 12:3 And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
So as we read this prophecy in Daniel it should be self evident that it is talking about the church. The church is the only group that is attempting to turn anyone from their darkness into the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But, notice the terms that are used. It declares that we will “shine” with a “brightness”. The firmament is another word for the sky. This is the earth’s atmosphere when it is lit by the sun and it can be very intensely bright. This is a clear reference to the “day”. This could describe someone that is wearing the sun? This chapter in Daniel is an end time prophetic message. It describes many things that are occurring right now. In context with that we see the righteous being hailed as light bearers. Jesus made several statements in regard to this also. In calling Himself the light of the world in John, He also said “ye are the light of the world” in Matthew as we looked at earlier. How can the church and Jesus both be the same light object? It is only possible and makes sense if we have put Christ on and wear Him around for others to see. This is the same revelation of letting Jesus be seen on the outside in the visible world that we have on the inside of us. Too many Christians want to keep Jesus on the inside and never let Him be seen outside of a physical church building. This is not what the Bible says to do. We are to wear Jesus Christ like a garment so that everyone can clearly see Him. Here is another very relevant scripture on the subject of wearing the Sun.
Isa 61:10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
God has clothed the church with the garment of Salvation first and then the robe of Righteousness second. After we believe in Jesus we are saved an then we were reborn in the Spirit to be made His righteousness. Remember who the Sun of Righteousness was. It is Jesus Christ. So we have very clear evidence that the church is to be clothed with the Spiritual Sun of Jesus Christ our Redeemer. So the primary clothing in Bible days were not jeans and t-shirts, but were then robes. So we can understand that to be clothed with the Robe of Righteousness means everyday clothing and not just a special one time wedding garment.
The Hebrew word translated as righteousness is the exact same word found in Malachi 4:2 describing Jesus as the Sun of Righteousness. So Isaiah 61:10 describing the church clothed in the Robe of Righteousness is definitely related to the verse in Malachi 4:2 describing our Savior the Sun of Righteousness. This is not an accident nor was it placed in the Bible by chance. This is God’s designed plan to reveal this information at the right time of the end of the church age. I’ll end this Bible lesson with just one more reference since this has become a long Part 1 lesson.
Rom 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
So we can see another very similar word association being made by God the author. This time the church is told to put on the “armor of light” by first taking off the works of darkness. Since it does not take a rocket scientist or a doctorate degree to figure out where we get our daylight from we can see the connections being made very easily, I think it is clear that we are being told to put on the Sun as our protection against our enemy Satan. This clothing that we are commanded to put on, is now described in a military design as the “armor of light”. Armor is what a soldier would wear for protection against an enemy in battle. Modern body armor is common place for Police, law enforcement and military personnel. These are all people that have enemies of evil trying to kill them. We will soon learn from the meaning of other symbols given in Revelation 12 that this is true for Christians and this symbolic woman. This “light” armor should have the same protecting affect for us as Christians. By a Christian wearing light we are walking in the light and we should never be found in the darkness again. The clear reference in this verse is to the spiritual day versus the spiritual night condition of our hearts.
Notice that in putting on this armor we are commanded to remove the works of darkness. That is amazing confirmation that us wearing the sun means for us to act as though Jesus was walking on the earth in the flesh in front us, on the side of us and behind us watching over everything we do. By doing this we will present His thoughts, His Words and His actions to everyone living in the night where we use to be.
So there are many verses that instruct the church to shine and put on Christ removing the influence of past darkness. I’ll end with the words of Jesus himself that also speak prophetically about the church at the end of the world:
Mat 13:43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The Words of God, from the mouth of the True and Faithful One declares the righteous will be the ones that will shine forth as the sun at the end of the world. Doesn’t that testify and witness to your heart that the righteous church will be the woman wearing the “Sun of God”? It sure does to my heart.
CONCLUSION
We have been going over numerous topics concerning the woman in Revelation 12. We analyzed the symbols in verse 1 and made a list to study. We then went though the three items associated with the crown. These were the number 12, the stars and the crown itself and the meanings of each. It would appear that this evidence pointed us to the identity of the woman in Revelation 12 pointed us to the suspect of the Church or Israel with more evidence leaning towards the Church.
We then moved to the most significant symbol called the “sun”. This symbol was and is the easiest to identify because He is the central figure and theme of the entire Bible. We were provided numerous key scriptures that pointed us to the identity of the symbolic Sun as being Jesus Christ. This was us, allowing God to interpret His own symbols.
We were then able to allow God to reveal several other verses that either instruct, prophesy or declare the church to be clothed with this Sun Light. We can learn and confirm this truth further in many other verses in the Bible that were not covered yet, but we will end now with this question:
What woman in the Bible must be clothed with Jesus Christ (the SUN of RIGHTEOUSNESS) in order to enter into the Kingdom of God?
We can certainly eliminate a lot of the 4 potential suspect candidates for this woman in Revelation 12. I do not know of any other woman in the Bible that can be clothed with His Righteousness. She cannot be natural Israel also known as the Earthly Jerusalem because God says the righteous that is of the law will not or cannot be saved (Rom 9:31).
This woman cannot be the heavenly Jerusalem because this woman is called a widow not being in covenant with God anymore in Isaiah 54:4. We know this woman in this verse represents the barren allegorical Sarah by reading back up in Isaiah 54:1 to know and understand that this verse about the rejoicing barren woman is quoted in Galatians 4:27. And in Galatians 4:26 we discover this woman is the Jerusalem that is Above in the heavenly realm and she is the mother of all that will be born again unto salvation. Wow, we did not cover any of this in today’s lesson because that would take a lot of revelation and explanation. But, that is a taste of things that should be coming to eliminate this woman as being the one mentioned in Revelation 12. I would recommend that you do some reading and digging on your own and ask the Holy Spirit to show you why this city in heaven is called as “widow” and what that means in the subject of covenants. Never forget Hebrews 12:22 where God defines the Jerusalem Above to be called the “Heavenly Jerusalem” that is comprised of an enumerable company of spiritual beings called angels. This had to consist of Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel and the rest of the heavenly host. We learn from our chapter study of Revelation 12 that 1/3 of these beings were swept down to earth having fallen by the tail of the dragon (Satan). Wow, that is enough of a taste of what should be talked about in subsequent lessons.
This woman in Revelation 12 cannot even be natural woman Mary because she needed salvation to enter into the Kingdom of God the same as everyone else that will believe. Just figuring out the identity of the single dependent symbolic “Sun” and how and who can be clothed with Him, changes the meaning of the woman in chapter 12 of Revelation dramatically.
This lesson number 1 has only introduced us to the subject and yet we still have a lot more to learn. In the next lesson the Lord willing we will talk more about the other key symbols, especially the moon, who it represents and what it means to stand on this object. This should help us better understand this woman’s true identity. I believe the second most important symbol in this dependent truth relationship is the “moon” under her feet. God Bless you and I pray that you have the spiritual eyes and vision to see and to understand GOD’S HOLY WORD WHOLY.
If you want to continue to Part 2 of this series, click HERE!
6 Days of Creation – Genesis Chapter 1 Review
(Ver 1.2) In my Blogs the last couple of weeks I have been exploring an overview of the 6 days of creation and teaching how each day fits a prophetical view into God’s timeline for the 6000 year period of human history. I know this is a controversial viewpoint and it is probably brand new information to many. However, it is there if you research it and studyit from a prophetic perspective. Some have probably wondered how did I come up with the idea that the 6 days of creation were prophetic windows? I beleieve that it is just what the Bible says and therefore it is not my opinion or my personal interpretation of what God says. What we must do is to allow the Bible to interpret itself, so we must look for God’s definitions, His commentary and explanations and we must put these together with the words written in Genesis to understand them. Look at this verse and see what it says for yourself:
Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things which are not,…
You see from this verse God says I have declared or stated the end from the beginning. In other words God has prophesied the ending from the beginning. Genesis chapter 1 definitely declares the beginning of our current world system. So somewhere in that description is information about what is going to occur in our history and its final conslusion. To declare something that has not occurred is clearly a statement of prophetic proportion. The only to verify that a prophecy is from a real prophet is for us to examine the words and see if they have been fullfilled, have transpired or are coming to pass presently. Here is another scripture that speaks to us along these lines:
Ecclesiastes 1:9 The thing that has been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done,….
Again in this verse we see a powerful reference of something to look for when reading and studying the Bible. We can use these words to imply that God declares that what He has done during creation is that which will occur again. You see as I have read the Bible I have discovered a series of repeated patterns that have occured over and over. That is why that I believe that we should study the book of beginnings like it was a raod map to our future. Of course since we are at the very end of the 6th day or 6000 years, we should realize that we do not have very much time left. This actually makes our research more sure, since the majority of recorded history has already occurred and we are nearing the end now.
We started the chapter analysis by looking at the fact that the earth as stated in the Bible is much older than 6000 years, but we are not specifically told how old it is anywhere. It could very well be millions or billions of years old. We looked at scripture that speaks to us about a pre-Adamic civilization or world that existed prior to our current world system. We found scriptures that indicate that this world was completely destroyed and apparently God started over with us, or for us.
We looked at the work of God during creation and identified God’s first act as being division. God divided Light from darkness. We can imply from this that prophetically speaking God is breaking away or dividing himself from something that He does not want to associate with. At least 3 times in the chapter we can see that God divided something from something else. I can tell you right now that most Bible teachers and preachers don’t have a clue to the significance of these words of God so they ignore them. I’m sorry that I just don’t have time to teach you all of that right now.
The next significant point about creation is how God created. I might have alluded to the fact that God looked at the problem and always spoke the answer or the solution. As it is written in the New Testament, God is a God who calls those things that be not as though they were and as we can see from creation, they become exactly what they are called. Since man is made in the image of God this implies that man operates the exact same way that God operates. Of course not at the same level or capacity that God is, but you would be amazed at what the Bible says about our spoken words and the Bible is very strong in this area and says many things that are very hard to accept by many Christians.
During our study we identified some of the key symbolic elements and researching them in the scriptures discovered what they meant and how they are applied within creation. Light is symbolic of God. Seas are symbolic of people. Day and night are symbolic of the conditions of men’s hearts. Some have allowed the sun of God to light their hearts and then others have been kept in darkness because they have allowed Satan to blind their minds. We have identified the symbolic Sun as being Jesus Christ. Then we have identified the symbolic moon as being Satan, the ruler of the darkness.
In the creation of Adam on day 6 I took you through an analysis of the Hebrew words for man and Adam as being the same word. I then showed you from scripture how Genesis 1:27 should have been translated as Adam instead of man, because God calls both the male and the female by the same name. The inference of and application to marriage is of course easily seen.
Finally we looked at the coming into maturity of the body of Christ. We also looked at the delegated authority of the body of Christ. We are at the end of Day 6 of God’s established timetable and God has the planned return of Jesus Christ next on the agenda. I believe very strongly that Jesus’ return is not very long from now. I know I did not attempt to cover everything that the chapter speaks about. My goal was to give you some new perspectives and things to think about that you hadn’t seen before. Things that can be tremendously important to understanding a large portion of the Bible. I hope you have enjoyed Chapter 1 of Genesis and we will move into Chapter 2 next. I probably will not go verse by verse but I will change to a larger what are the key concepts given to us level of study. There are some awesome things in Chapter 2 and 3 if you can see them. So continue reading in Genesis and see what else God has to reveal to us.
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 Part 3
I knew this day would take a lot to explain and even more effort on your part to understand. But I’ll do the best that I can in a limited space to teach you as much as I can. In the last lesson we concluded with the revelation of the identity of Sun as being Jesus Christ. Before we move on to the moon, let’s back up and address the purpose of Day 4 from God’s perspective. We saw that Day 4 was an emphasis of a division occurring. I believe the divisions already existed back from at least Day 1 when God said let there be light. The implication of Day 1 was light did not reach the surface of the planet and therefore darkness prevailed upon the face of the earth. When God said let there be light He allowed the light to penetrate into the darkness. This is probably a mixture of my personal opinion and the implied references found in the word of God. Unless I find some scripture to back that statement I really don’t expect you to believe it.
Back to the subject of Day 4. We can see in the scripture the reference to the existence of two distinct realms or dimensions. One is called “Day” and the other is called “Night”. I think it would be good to look at the symbolism of these two divisions. Let’s start with the obvious, the day is the time where we experience the presence and warmth of the sun and it’s light. The night is the period of time when normal people sleep and the sun is not present. One division has the sun light and the other does not. From what we have seen Jesus Christ represents the Sun. Scripture also tells us that God is light. We can already begin to see a spiritual reality being stated. The day is for those who are in the light of the Sun of God, the night is for those who are without God. Do you understand this? This is the division that took place when Jesus died on the cross and after He arose.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:5 God writes to the church and says to them “You are all children of the light and children of the Day…”. I already mentioned this next verse in the last lesson, but I’ll show it to you again in 2nd Peter 1:19, God writes that “The Day will dawn out of the darkness and the Day Star will shine in our hearts.” I know I paraphrased that verse a little bit but I didn’t change the meaning. God is saying that Christ will dawn in our dark hearts and light them up with His light and cause us to be the children of the light. Let me give you one final scripture from Romans 13:12 God tells the church “the night is far spent and the day is at hand, let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light”. All of the key elements are mentioned, day, night, darkness and light. Where do you stand today? The Day and Light symbolism goes through out the New Testament. You are welcome to study it and find out how the physical characteristics of the night and day are symbolic of the spiritual conditions of men’s hearts.
So we have established the identity of the symbolic night and day as being the spiritual condition of men’s heart. In our next lesson we will continue to expand the identities of the other symbolic elements that we have found in these verses.
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