The Lord, for His own glory, created a people group – a nation called Israel – and gave them a specific location… a specific territory of land that would be theirs. The nation of Israel was created for the glory of the Lord and the promises that He made to Israel are for His glory.

As I read the book of Revelation, I am so excited that the Lord is going to keep His word to Israel.

This excites me, because, the same God who keeps His word to Israel will keep His word to me.

I can read what He says anywhere in the Bible and know that He means what He says. He is holy and good and just and wise and will do what He knows is best.

Not everyone reads the Bible this way though, and in my lecture I will give an example of a modern Christian teacher who believes that the church is represented by various “symbols” in the book of Revelation. She includes the woman of Revelation 12 as one of the symbols that refers to the church.

As you can tell from my image above, my understanding of the woman in Revelation 12, according to a literal-grammatical-historical hermeneutic, is that the woman represents Israel. Not the church.