A great portent
appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in
birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appears in
heaven, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems
on his heads. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the
nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God
and his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place
prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two
hundred days. (Rev 12:1-6 NRSV)
In the Doctrine and Covenants, there are allusions to Rev 12:1-6, with the “woman” being interpreted as the Church, a corporate
identity:
And to none else will
I grant this power, to receive this same testimony among this generation, in
this the beginning of the rising up and the coming forth of my church out of
the wilderness-- clear as the moon, and fair as the sun, and terrible as an army
with banners. (D&C 5:14)
And verily, verily, I
say unto you, that this church have I established and called forth out of the
wilderness. (D&C 33:5)
And after they have
fallen asleep the great persecutor of the church, the apostate, the whore, even
Babylon, that maketh all nations to drink of her cup, in whose hearts the
enemy, even Satan, sitteth to reign-- behold he soweth the tares; wherefore,
the tares choke the wheat and drive the church into the wilderness. (D&C
86:3)
That thy church may
come forth out of the wilderness of darkness, and shine forth fair as the moon,
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners; (D&C 109:73)
Many LDS interpreters have understood such
as a reference to a corporate identity, too. Consider the following:
The 12th chapter of
Revelation indicates that the Church was to be driven into “the wilderness” and
the Priesthood taken away. (Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern
Revelation: Being a Course of Study for
the Melchizedek Priesthood Quorums for the year 1947 First Series [Salt
Lake City: The Deseret News Press, 1946], 12)
The earliest interpretation of the “woman”
in Rev 12 was that of the Church:
By the woman then
clothed with the sun,” he meant most manifestly the Church, endued with
the Father’s word, whose brightness is above the sun. And by the “moon under
her feet” he referred to her being adorned, like the moon, with heavenly glory.
And the words, “upon her head a crown of twelve stars,” refer to the twelve
apostles by whom the Church was founded. And those, “she, being with child,
cries, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered,” mean that the Church
will not cease to bear from her heart the Word that is persecuted by the
unbelieving in the world. “And she brought forth,” he says, “a man-child, who
is to rule all the nations;” by which is meant that the Church, always bringing
forth Christ, the perfect man-child of God, who is declared to be God and man,
becomes the instructor of all the nations. And the words, “her child was caught
up unto God and to His throne,” signify that he who is always born of her is a
heavenly king, and not an earthly; even as David also declared of old when he
said, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at my right hand, until I make
Thine enemies Thy footstool.” “And the dragon,” he says, “saw and persecuted
the woman which brought forth the man-child. And to the woman were given two
wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, where she is
nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the
serpent.” That refers to the one thousand two hundred and threescore days
(the half of the week) during which the tyrant is to reign and persecute the
Church, which flees from city to city, and seeks concealment in the wilderness
among the mountains, possessed of no other defence than the two wings of
the great eagle, that is to say, the faith of Jesus Christ, who, in stretching
forth His holy hands on the holy tree, unfolded two wings, the right and the
left, and called to Him all who believed upon Him, and covered them as a hen
her chickens. For by the mouth of Malachi also He speaks thus: “And unto you that fear my name shall the Sun
of righteousness arise with healing in His wings.” (The Extant Works and
Fragments of Hippolytus, 61).
The woman who appeared in
heaven clothed with the sun, and crowned with twelve stars, and having the moon
for her footstool, and being with child, and travailing in birth, is certainly,
according to the accurate interpretation, our mother, O virgins, being a power
by herself distinct from her children; whom the prophets, according to the
aspect of their subjects, have called sometimes Jerusalem, sometimes a
Bride, sometimes Mount Zion, and sometimes the Temple and Tabernacle of God.
For she is the power which is desired to give light in the prophet, the Spirit
crying to her: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord
is risen upon thee. (Methodius, The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; or
Concerning Chastity, Chapter V).
Consider, too, the following from non-LDS scholarly
commentaries:
Woman. In Revelation
“woman” or “women” occurs nineteen ties: 12:1, 4, 6, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17:3, 4,
6, 7, 9 f., 18 and elsewhere in 9:8, 14:4, 19:7, 21:9. It might be said
therefore, that the woman symbol is almost as important as the Lamb. This
woman and the new Jerusalem are the antithesis of the harlot . . . [such is
a symbol] of the faithful community. (J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation
[AB 38; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975], 188).
The heavenly woman,
rather, is an image of the end-time salvation community, a symbol of the
church. She is the heir of the promises of the Old Testament a people of God;
pointing to this is the reference to the twelve stars (cf. Gen. 37:9), which
symbolize the holy twelve tribes in their end-time fullness and perfection (cf.
7:4-8; 14:1). (Jürgen Roloff, Revelation [Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993], 145)
On the woman fleeing into the wilderness
(v. 6):
Meanwhile the
woman—the people of God of the Old Testament who, having given Christ to the
world, thereby became the Christian Church—found refuge in the desert where God
cared for her for 1,260 days. This is the equivalent of forty-two months or
three and one-half years—the earthly duration of the Church. By “desert” John
seems to have in mind more than an unspecified traditional place of refuge; v.
14 surely has the Exodus in view. Wilderness suggests the Sinai wandering: the
desert was the place of freedom and safety after Egyptian bondage, the
oppression of the dragon/Pharaoh. Besides, God’s care, described as
sustainment, or nourishing, recalls the manna. . . . 6. the woman fled
into the desert: In the Old Testament, wilderness is a traditional place of
refuge for the persecuted (Exod 2:15; 1 Kgs 17:2–3; 19:3–4; 1 Macc 2:29–30);
more immediately, John has the Exodus in view (see v. 14). “Desert” is an
excellent example of the ambivalence of symbols, for it too regularly has a
negative significance. (Wilfrid J. Harrington, Revelation [Sacra Pagina 16;
Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2008], 129)
Verse 6
is saturated with a rich diversity of OT, Jewish, and early Christian
background. The woman flees from the dragon after the deliverance of her son.
She flees so that the dragon will not annihilate her. This is not a mere
literal escape, whether of Christians fleeing the Roman siege of Jerusalem in a.d.
66 and going to Pella (Eusebius, H.E. 3.5) or of a remnant of Christian
Jews being protected from the future Great Tribulation. As in vv 1 and 2, the
woman represents the community of faith, though now it is not that of the OT
epoch, but the messianic community after Christ’s resurrection. The woman is
now on earth and not in heaven because she now represents the true people of
God on earth. (G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text
[New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1999], 642)
On the meaning of ἔρημος erēmos (“wilderness”):
BDAG
ἔρημος
(1) "pert. to
being in a state of isolation [a] of an area isolated, unfrequented, abandoned,
empty, desolate"
(2) an uninhabited
region or locality
TDNT
Emphasis on the
saving aspect of the wilderness period creates in Judaism a tendency to ascribe
to it everything great and glorious. The characteristics of the last time,
e.g., that the Israelites see God, that the angel of death has no power etc.,
are carried back into it, and its special features are also linked with the
Messianic age, e.g., the blessing of the manna. There thus arises the belief
that the last and decisive age of salvation will begin in the ἔρημος, and that
here the Messiah will appear. This belief led revolutionary Messianic movements
to make for the ἔρημος (Ac. 21:38). It also explains Mt. 24:26: ἐὰν οὖν εἴπωσιν
ὑμῖν· ἰδοὺ ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ἐστίν, μὴ ἐξέλθητε, and the flight or rapture of the
woman into the ἔρημος in Rev. 12:6, 14. The community of Christ is to remain
hidden in the wilderness until Christ comes again and ends the assault of
Satan. (Gerhard Kittel, “Ἔρημος, Ἐρημία, Ἐρημόω, Ἐρήμωσις,” ed. Gerhard Kittel,
Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the
New Testament, volume 2 [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964–], 658–659)
According to this pericope:
(*) The Woman (the New Covenant People of God/the Church) flees into the wilderness
(*) This is not a partial "fleeing." The Woman, in all her parts, flees.
(*) The Woman is not available or accessible at all for a lengthy time period.
Finally, there is no room for the thesis, common among some Protestants, that a remnant of true believers persisted but were so minuscule in number, one cannot name any or provide positive evidence from documents (say, from AD 100 to 1520) about their belief that baptism not being salvific, forensic justification, and a variation of eternal security as well as formal sufficiency of the 66 books of the (Protestant) canon, etc.
Instead, the Woman is not available until
she is released by God from the wilderness.
While allowing for the use of apocalyptic
imagery, Scripture would never use, even in a metaphorical context, something
that is sinful/errant/heretical to hold to. To use an extreme example, not only
is Sodomy a sin, God would never allow for an enactment of Sodomy in a
“positive” context. Also, the “wilderness” is not something depicted as
being positive or representative of “the church-age” (a A-millennial
interpretation [cf. Ephesus AD 431]):
"And the
woman fled into the desert." It is with reason that by this desert we
mean this world, where Jesus Christ governs and leads the Church to graze,
until the end of the centuries, desert where the Church itself, with the help
of Jesus Christ crowd at the feet, and crushes like the scorpions and vipers
the proud, the impious and all the power of Satan. (Caesarius of Arles [470-542
AD], Exposition on Revelation)
As we see, the Doctrine and Covenants is
correct in understanding Rev 12 to be a prophecy about the Church coming out of
the wilderness (of Apostasy).
On the Marian interpretation of the “woman,”
see: