Light and Dark Images of Apocalypse. Lev Regelson
throwing down of the dragon is so intimate that one is fain to conclude that the child and Michael are one and the same.
But if an angel is born of a woman, that signifies he became human being!
That is indeed a great event in the world of angels!
Henceforth and forever their Head has acquired an own human body, and while retaining the qualities of an angel supplements them with the properties of human nature. Archangel Michael and his angels will approach the new level of their existence. Through him other angels true to God are in some manner endowed with the ability to initiate themselves into the mystery of human life in a body, and, above all, into the mystery of Jesus Christ the man: “things the angels desire to look into” (1 Peter. 1:12). Insofar as Jesus is God who has become man, the angels have via the human body a qualitatively new way for communication with God. We shall yet speak of the role that Michael acts in the Revelation, where he stands forth under another names. But now it is necessary to answer other question: who is the woman who gives birth to him?
Woman robed with sun
This image astounds all who seek to interpret it by virtue of its uncommon cosmic order. The Holy Bible affords a host of stern condemnations of all who worship Sun, Moon or stars, yet here all these attributes are unexpectedly positive. "Next appeared a great portent in heaven, a woman robed with the sun, beneath her feet the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She pregnant, and in the anguish of her labor she cried out to be delivered" 12:1-2.
The air and the earth help her to escape the dragon's clutches:
"But the woman was given two great eagle's wings to fly to the place in the wilds…out of reach of the serpent. From his mouth the serpent spewed a flood of water after the woman to sweep her away with its spate. But the earth came to her rescue and opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon spewed from its mouth" 12:14-16.
If we are to take this vision as a prophecy referring to a real woman active in the apocalyptic epoch, then who could she be?
Woman of the Apocalypse. Mexican painter Cristobal de Villalpando, 1686
Could she be the very soul of nature that had become human being?
May we explain what it means.
Practically all global religious cognition invests the material nature with spiritual features and in this respect the Holy Bible is no exception.
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