Mama Always ~ L.A. Brown, Author

I was reading my morning devotional today, and a book of Revelation just jumped out at me, indeed, wouldn't leave my head. It was Revelation 6. When I taught high school Sunday school, which feels like eons ago, we did a study of the entire book of Revelation. I will tell you, that even though I did all of the prep work and study to prepare for this class, I learned more in that series of classes about that book, God, Jesus, my students, this world and myself than anything before that. Since then, I've been through many Sunday School classes and studies about the book of Revelation, and each one has taught me something new that I may have missed or was revealed to me. Today, I was reading chapters five and six. Breezed through chapter five, but came to a screeching halt on the next chapter. Why? I'll show you.                                             ...

As we begin Revelation 12, we see that the Apostle John gets to the history lesson portion of the Book. Actually, he also kind of gets back to the future, too. Verses 1-6 introduces the characters. The woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a garland of twelve stars. The great fiery red dragon with seven heads , ten horns and seven crowns or diadems who, with his tail, swept one third of the stars from heaven and threw them down to the earth. And finally, the Male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. Let's start with the woman. Many Biblical scholars point to this woman as the Universal Church, and in fact incorrectly connect her to the Whore Babylon or even the Bride Church. A select few feel that the association is with the Nation of Israel itself and back up the association with Genesis 37:9-10 (Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, and said, "Look, I have drea...