The Prophecy of the Fleeing Woman

When God’s people are under attack, those who trust Him will find ultimate safety, says Gary Kent.

The Snowy Mountains were a winter paradise, Wednesday evening, July 30, 1997. A white carpet covered the landscape. The Alpine village of Thredbo, NSW, was bedding down for the night. The soft lights of the chalets formed a halo around the mountain settlement. But beneath the tranquillity, all was not well.

Silently, the saturated slope above the village was becoming increasing unstable until at 11.37 pm it broke loose under its own weight and slid downward, with a sudden thundering roar. The massive landslide completely demolished two chalets, Bimbadeen and Carinya, leaving them a tangled mass of timber and concrete slabs.
Under all that rubble of mud, building materials, upturned cars, trees and boulders were 19 people.

The site of the slide was steep and difficult, and still extremely unstable with the possibility of a further collapse. It was declared too dangerous for any rescue attempt by the team of police, firefighters and medics that arrived on the scene soon after. Temperatures continued to drop as the night hours slowly passed, until it reached -8°C.

It’s hard to imagine anyone surviving, thought Paul Featherstone, a senior paramedic, as he surveyed the scene of devastation.

Experts say there’s little hope of surviving more than 24 hours in freezing conditions. When someone is exposed to extended subzero conditions, body core temperature drops, blood flow to vital organs slows, organs shut down and the victim dies of hypothermia. There’s little hope of survival unless you have few injuries and a good pocket of air.
At 10.30 am, some 11 hours after the slide, a team of 200 emergency workers and other rescuers were finally allowed onto the site and began the tedious task of removing the rubble by hand. Their calls in search of survivors met with a deathly silence.

By dawn on Friday, August 1, just one body had been recovered. But then, in the cold of the dawn of the third morning, around 5.30, rescuers heard a faint sound somewhere in the rubble. Someone was alive! Almost 65 hours after the tragedy, Stuart Diver, a fit 27-year-old ski instructor, was finally eased to the surface. He was the only survivor of the landslide.

enduring qualities
Stuart Diver’s story of faith, courage, patience and endurance is a lesson to us all. And toward its end, the Bible predicts a “landslide” of a different type, but just as deadly, with its victims, if they are to survive, requiring those same qualities. It’s a landslide of terror that takes place in the spiritual realm, enveloping the church and smothering God’s truth.
You read about it in the twelfth chapter of Revelation. Symbols are used to paint a graphic word picture. Beginning with verse one, we see “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.”

The woman is about to give birth, and a dragon stands ready to destroy the child as soon as it is born. The woman gives birth to a male child who is caught up to God and to His throne.

It isn’t difficult to get the picture here. This beautiful woman represents God’s people—His faithful church (compare 2 Corinthians11:2 and Ephesians 5:25-32). Satan is the dragon (see Revelation 12:9). He stands waiting to destroy the child. But he fails, and Jesus—the Man Child—is caught up to God and to His throne.

Jesus is now out of the dragon’s reach, so he turns his hatred toward the church. He would hurt Jesus by destroying His people, nullifying His sacrifice. Heaven may be safe, but the earth is in great jeopardy: “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” (Revelation 12:12). Satan is bent on destroying the followers of Christ.

flight to safety
Next, the woman—the faithful of the church—flees into the “wilderness,” where she is relentlessly pursued and persecuted by the dragon, Satan. There, for 1260 years—more than 12 centuries—God protects her from extinction (see Revelation 12:6, 13-18).

This persecution of the church is so overwhelming that it is described as a “flood” in verse 15. But the earth—the natural world—helps the woman (verse 16) with high mountains and remote places providing protection and shelter.
Thus God’s church survives, for in verse 17 she appears again, in more contemporary times and still under attack. But she still clings to the faith of Jesus, and is still loyal to the commandments of God.

This prediction of Christianity was made during the time of the apostolic church (the first century), so do we find it recorded that way in history books? The answer is, yes, we do!

faithfulness, its own reward
Powers of evil, in the first instance the Roman Empire, unleashed a storm of persecution against God’s people, putting to death some of the apostles themselves. All but one of Christ’s disciples died a martyr’s death: Paul was beheaded outside the walls of Rome. Christians were tortured and imprisoned. Great numbers were thrown to wild beasts or burned alive in the amphitheatres. Some were crucified. They were hunted like wild beasts of prey. Thousands found shelter in the catacombs or by fleeing to isolated situations.

But even under the fiercest persecution, these Christians remained faithful. Others equally loyal replaced those who gave their lives. Satan saw he couldn’t destroy the church by violence. He resolved now to work from within the church instead of from without. Now the church was in fearful peril.

Compromise proved a more effective weapon than persecution. The church, desiring to be popular, courted the pagan world. Pagans in great numbers came into the church and brought their superstitions and pagan
ceremonies with them. The institutionalised church became corrupt. No longer could it be represented by the beautiful and pure woman of Revelation 12.

God’s heroes
The woman of Revelation—the small nucleus of Christians who held firm to the faith of Jesus and the apostles—could never accept the landslide of heresy and corruption that had enveloped it. She had no choice now but to go underground, to flee to the “wilderness.” There, in isolated pockets throughout southern Europe and the Middle East, she remained hidden from view through the long, dark centuries, more than 1200 years.

Only God knows how many were martyred during those times, for there was little record keeping.

Amazingly, the persecution didn’t come from without. It was so-called Christians persecuting fellow Christians along with the peoples of the New World. Unfortunately, through all history some of the worst atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, including the Crusades. It seems that there is no terror so fearful as terror in the name of God.
But through the Dark Ages, the light of faith, the light of truth, never went out. Hidden away somewhere in the wilderness, somewhere in the high mountains, God had His faithful ones. The Waldenses, Albigenses, Huguenots and other faithful Christians fled to the Alps in northern Italy and southern France, hiding in secluded valleys, remote caves, and high mountains. They were hunted like criminals and many were slain. Their crime was to present the teachings of Jesus directly from His Word.

Finally, in 1798, after 1260 years, this persecution that had begun in 538, ended. In most of Europe, persecution itself had largely ceased a quarter of a century earlier as the Reformation had taken hold and Bible translators and printing presses made the Scriptures generally available, and persecution pointless.

Satan, in his fury, had unleashed a landslide of terror upon the church in wilderness isolation. Buried beneath it, clinging to life like Stuart Diver, she was almost dead. But, like Stuart Diver, she didn’t die. She emerged from the accumulated rubble of centuries to stand up for her Lord, proclaiming the truth that triumphed with her.

This truth—found in the Bible—kept safe in her hands through centuries of darkness, remained intact so that today it is available to all in a troubled world still in need of its promises and prophecies.

persecution of christians continues

Photographs smuggled out of Communist China and handed to the Voice of the Martyrs (VM) in June document physical abuses endured by members of the underground Christian church at the hands of police.
They show a woman being jabbed in the face with an electric prod, another forced to kneel on bricks with her arms raised in the air, a third having a shoe-cleaning rag stuffed into her mouth, and a man being forced to drink water to make his stomach swell.
The harrowing photographs, by a photographer who has since gone into hiding, had told the arresting officers that the pictures would be sent to their superiors to show their “conscientious work.” The arrests and torture took place in Hunan province.
The ministry’s report tells of a female house church leader beaten to death in custody, and others burned with cigarettes.
VM has also reported that a Christian arrested in Zhejiang province and charged with "illegal printing" has been sentenced to five years in prison. During interrogation, his fingernails were torn out, the ministry said.
—ReligionToday