Again, we see a piece full of signs and symbols. There is a pregnant woman who is about to give birth to a child who will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre. That child is Jesus. The woman, however, rather than representing Mary represents the chosen people, the Church, from which the lineage of Jesus comes. The next image is Satan. In the Old Testament Satan is part of the complement of heaven. Satan means ‘adversary’ and for example when Satan states that Job is faithful to God only because he has had such a good life, Satan is sent by God to earth to challenge Job and make him suffer. However since then Satan has changed and through pride wants to challenge God. Satan is now depicted as a 7 headed dragon, with complete power over a Kingdom of chaos opposed to God. He goes to earth to destroy the child, but Jesus is snatched back to heaven, and the mother is transported by God to the desert for safety. Satan pursues the Messiah to heaven but the archangel Michael, who is the defender of mankind, defeats Satan and banishes him from heaven forever.Satan returns to earth full of vengeance to punish the child by attacking the mother, the church. He does this by delegating to 2 entities represented by beasts. The first, the beast of the sea, is the Roman Empire and all it offers. The second, the beast of the land, is the requirement for Romans to declare Ceasar as Lord once each year under pain of death. However, if Christians remain faithful to Jesus, even if the consequence is martyrdom, then they cannot be harmed because Satan has been defeated by Jesus on the cross.What does it mean for the church today? The adversary has been defeated by Jesus on the cross for all time and we need no longer fear being challenged by the accuser as long as we remain true to Christ. Or as Charles Wesley so elegantly put it, “No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in Him is mine”.(Revelation 12-14) Ian Olver