Revelation
12:
A Gentile woman travailing
by Jen Shroder
May 22, 2011
I
wrestled with writing the following, I finally wrote it this morning
but knew I couldn't post it. So I went to church where the
pastor kept emphasizing that whatever God tells you
to speak, SPEAK! Whatever God tells you to do, DO! Moments later after
the sermon, someone said
LOOK UP! Directly over the church and behind the cross was the only
other halo I've ever seen. I had written about the first halo that
morning (below). It was a supernatural halo 25 years ago, one that I
am now very concerned was "a crown of twelve stars. "
A second halo when I was in such
prayer for direction about the first halo...it's
enough. It's time to post.
***
It’s not my job to convince people. All I’m required to do is admit
it. If it’s God’s purpose to do anything with it, He will. It’s all in
His hands and timing.
Something
happened to me 25 years ago and in the years since that remind me of
what the Bible describes.
I was "clothed in the sun." You have been too if you ever "bathed
in the sun." Imagine a woman with barely anything on with the hot
sun reflecting tanning oil. It's a modest description by a Biblical
man from a time when a modern woman sunbathing would be a shocking
sight. But that's not all. A distinct oval-shaped halo appeared and
stretched out over the sky. I mentioned it to the girl laying next to
me and we wondered if scientists were "freaking out somewhere," it was
so distinct and amazing. I tried to go back to reading a booklet about
Jesus but I couldn’t stop staring at it, it seemed to be calling to
me. I kept thinking, "What? WHAT?" and then I felt drawn to the
reflecting lights dancing on the water just past my feet calling me
into the water.
I fought it. My mind was on completely worldly things except for
reading this booklet about Christ, a booklet I picked up that day
without knowing why. But the calling was irresistible and I finally jumped in, feet
first, angry at myself for doing such a thing. If someone took a
snapshot, there was a moment frozen in time when I was "clothed in the
sun", a circle framed in the sky over my head and the moon under my
feet...for what is the moon but reflecting lights of the sun? The
Hebrew definition even describes it that way.
My head was under water
for only a split second and when I came out, the sky was blackened
with bees. I forgot about everything that was happening up to that
point and defensively sank back into the water at eye-level as people
were diving and scrambling for cover. Bees were everywhere! I didn’t notice a
single one before jumping in, not one.
I felt horribly ashamed and stunned. Ten years later,
I wrote about it in The Mammoth
Times just because I had an overwhelming sense I was supposed to
do something with it. (more
details & source)
Time passed. I’d like to say I was changed that day, but for a time
I continued with my "modern feminist lifestyle," which is
more like the woman-at-the-well than anyone pure and
holy. But notice the woman in Revelation 12 has no commendation of
holiness or pureness. In fact, I think it's a sign that it's a
representation of this generation to come as we are because in Christ
we are forgiven and saved. The miracle isn't anything that the woman
does, it's about what God does and offers to all of us. I was in the
thick of our culture at that time...it wasn’t until this divorced single mom was dragged to a Bible
study that God exploded into my life and I was restored.
Years passed. God became so important that I felt drawn to start a
footwashing
ministry. We shared the Gospel, gave away Bibles, prayed for
people and washed and perfumed feet at various events. Then one day my
son missed a day of school and I picked up his in-class
assignment. It invited him to weave his life into other religions. I
started
researching his textbook and was struck by the
misrepresentations of Christ and Christians while inviting my son to
participate in other religions and worshipping gods. Outraged, I
started BlessedCause. Through the website and news media, parents were
alerted, CEOs lost their jobs, a corporation lost millions and
textbooks were changed. Only God could do all that, only God.
Then one day I asked, "What now Lord? What’s next?" and He told me
to pay attention to my family even though my sons were now teenagers
with little time for me. It was in these days that I read
Revelation
12, "clothed in the sun…moon under her feet…crown of twelve stars" and
for some reason, the halo in the sky, the reflection of that light at
my feet, bathing in the sun…that day almost 25 years ago came to my
mind.
I wrestled with it. None of my sons were "caught up unto God" so I
had nothing to worry about. After all, the Revelation 12 woman
apparently misses the rapture and her family is targeted, who could
hope for that fate? But over time I looked up some of the Bible words
in the original Greek and it fit in so many ways.
Rev. 2:25-29 and
Genesis 41:40 knocked my arguments down and Paul wrote about his own
"travailing in birth pains." It didn’t necessarily mean what I
imagined and what everyone assumes. The word for "birth" commonly used
is "gennesis" or "genete," but the word used in Revelation is "odino,"
and Paul used it to say, "My little children, of whom I travail in
birth again until Christ be formed in you…" (Gal 4:19)
So I prayed, "Lord, I’m not travailing. I am not pained.
This can’t be me because I’m just not." And then it hit me, what is my
website, BlessedCause, if not my travailing?
(shock) I have hundreds of pages of outrage over blasphemies taught
to our children. For years I was unable to stop writing about so MANY
affronts even though I was threatened, hacked and my home broken into.
Somehow my website has had
dozens of search words on the first pages of Google that I can’t
explain but for God. I have been travailing and heard
worldwide through this website, averaging more than 120 different
countries per month in those days. I was heard on Fox News and dozens
of radio outlets and newspapers. But if what I know about that day 25 years ago has
anything to do with prophesies… okay, I admit it, I am petrified. So I
block it all out and lead a quiet life but when I sit down to write,
it’s back again. I can’t escape it, this is what I am given to write.
That this generation of Gentiles do not understand the magnitude of
our sins and yet it is to this generation, so deeply entrenched in
Sodom, that Christ offers hope, an escape. The "great wonder in
heaven" is not a woman clothed in the sun, the
miracle is Christ and what He does!
So I spend endless hours listening to respected Bible Scholars
with far different ideas and conclusions, few agreeing with each other
but so many make sense. I try to convince myself that I'm wrong but a
scripture keeps nagging at me. In Revelation 2, who is Jesus talking
about when He says,
"26 He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end,
to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule
them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to
pieces, as I also have received authority from My Father"
And whenever I ask God who Jesus is speaking of, somehow I keep
thinking of Jesus' answer to questioning Sadducees in Luke 20
"41 Then He said to them, “How is it that they say the Christ is
David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms,
‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Until I
make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”’ Therefore David calls
Him ‘Lord,’ and how is He his son?”
It's like an echo in my mind.
All I know how to do these days is pray and wait. Be still and know
He is God. I have great comfort in that, because if any of this is
true, I'm going to need to live and breath that. I'm not thrilled with
the idea of my sons being persecuted, and as I write this, one of my
sons has even began to believe what public education has been forcing
on him, to question that God even exists!
So I pray and wait and read the Scriptures. Everything is in His
timing. But I can't help but also notice, I see so much that supports
the rapture but it doesn't look like the Revelation 12 woman gets to
go with the church? Ever notice that? She's provided for but she's
still here for quite a lot...
But whatever God wills, I just pray that my family, all of my
family, my sons, my nieces and nephews, I just keep praying for them,
that they all come to know Christ and are born again. And if you don't
know Jesus Christ, you really need to...oh how we need to know Him and
be His!
"Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to
the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation
of Jesus Christ;" (1 Peter 1:13)
"To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of
this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of
glory." (Col 1:27)
Part II: After church
Before finishing the above, I left for church. After an hour of
listening to an
amazing sermon all about doing what God tells us
to do and clinging to my reluctance, I just about fell over
when I saw another halo so close and hovering over this little church. A woman near me took a
couple of pictures of it with her cell phone from the
side and emailed them to me. This kind of halo is said to be created by ice
crystals and light, (still God's paintbrush) but the halo I saw 25 years ago was in a cloudless
sky, it was oblong and white without all the colors so it cannot be explained away. But
today's halo
was enough. How could I write this but now, how could I not?
I believe I am the Revelation 12 woman, not because I deserve it,
far from it. But
because I know it's not from anything I ever did, it's all about
Christ and what He has done for us all. It is His mercy poured out for
any of us that receive Him. He is the Good Shepherd that laid down His
life and picked it up again. He redeemed us, He cleanses us of all
unrighteousness and gives us a robe of righteousness and a ring of
authority though none of us deserve it, but because of His great
mercy, grace and agape love. All glory and power to the Lord most
high! God came down in the flesh and paid a debt we could not pay!
The prophesies of Revelation are true. I'm not saying He is coming
tomorrow for no one knows the day or hour. But if you have been misled
by our public schools into believing this nonsense that all faiths are
equal, that there are many ways to God, then you believe Christ
suffered the cross for nothing. It's a lie straight out of hell!
Christ suffered, died and rose again in three days and three
nights. He went through it because there is no other way to be
reconciled to Him. It is not intolerance, it is the mercy of God!
Christ came for you. Don't miss Him. His arms are open wide!
"For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn
the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that
believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is
condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the
only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is
come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil." (John 3)
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service."
(Romans 12)
Seek God while you still can.
Receive Jesus Christ and live.
May God protect our children.
Jen Shroder
free to repost
[update: people are asking where this little church is. I think
it's way blessed. "At The Cross Ministries",
http://atcministries.net/
Paul Sisemore III]
[updated 10/20/13
See also
Revelation 12 Series
I looked up halos in the sky. They do happen. There are some
amazing pictures, but nothing like what I saw. The articles say there have to be
clouds or fog. There wasn't a cloud in the sky the day I saw it 25
years ago, it was a hot, dry day in San Jose, that's why the pool was
so crowded. And it was a long, complete oval around the sun, not a circle,
not an arch, a perfect oval that stretched across the sky right over
us.
***
That's it. That's all. I don't accept donations. I don't want any
attention. I have one purpose to write this and that's to point at Jesus
Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life. Stay close to the Good
Shepherd and be wary of false prophets, pray for your pastors and for
Israel. Water your soul by reading the Bible. God bless you and keep you, always. In Jesus' name, Amen.
