Colladon sees Apc 12 as fulfilling the
function of an interlude between the various visions of disaster. However, he
stresses that the events depicted there are not to be seen as coming
sequentially after Apc 11 (the two witnesses) but simply as a clearer
description of what has already been said elsewhere in the book, (Methodos,
1584, 255) especially as regards the celestial orientation of the true church
and its struggles with the satanic powers. Apc 12 is thus, in his view, a
recapitulation of ideas and images scattered throughout the first eleven
chapters.
Like Meyer, du Pinet, and most other
commentators, Colladon takes the woman to symbolize not the Virgin Mary, but
the Church. . . . he thus makes a point of saying that the woman’s flight into
the desert in verse 13 is no more than a repetition and an elaboration of the
same flight described in verse 6, and he notes that as Satan is supposed to
have fallen from heaven, a problem is posed by his appearance there with the
woman. Colladon solves the problem by saying that just as the woman (i.e., the
church) is on earth and yet looks toward heaven as her true location, so
conversely Satan was an angel in heaven before his downfall in verse 7. (Irena
Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and
Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000], 77)