[Iscool]

The Church depicted as a woman?? Would this be the same woman as in Rev.12? That suffered persecution?

Not even close...That woman in Rev 12 is the Nation of Israel...The woman you are referring to is in Rev. 17...

[The Grammarian]

Not even close...That woman in Rev 12 is the Nation of Israel... Looks like the Virgin Mary to me. After all, she is the one who fled to Egypt with her newborn son, the Christ--not Israel. And the Whore of Babylon in Rev. 17 looks more like the Roman Empire than the Roman Church, to me.

[nonsporting]

The woman in Rev 12 is not the “nation of Israel.”

Galatians 4:26 says that Sarah, symbolic of the Jerusalem *above*, is the “mother of us all”. (Yes it does). Paul explains that Jesus Christ is the child/seed of promise (Gal 3:16). And those who believe in him are also children by virtue of “being in Christ.”

Not Mary; not Eve (though a good guess), and definitely not the rejected “children of the bondwoman”. But faithful Sarah.