Revelation 12:15: And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.

The serpent (Satan)¹ cast out water from his mouth as a destructive flood of death that surged toward the Jews like a massive wall of water in 70 AD² when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and slaughtered millions of people.³ Daniel used the same image of a flood in his Seventy Weeks Prophecy⁴ to describe the Abomination of Desolation that befell Jerusalem in 70 AD.⁵ Daniel 9:26 identifies the Romans as "the people of the prince that shall come [and] shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood."⁶

Waters symbolize wickedness, evil, and death.⁷ The symbol of water as a flood⁸ represents an evil enemy that strikes with overwhelming power⁹ like a flood-swollen river.¹⁰ In Revelation 12:15, the Roman armies were cast out like flood waters primarily against the Jews. Satan inspired and influenced the Roman legions to come against the Jews as a flood¹¹ to destroy Jerusalem. However, since the early Christians were Jewish and they lived among the Jews, the Roman flood was a threat to them as much as it was to the non-Christian Jews. Therefore, the woman who represented the ancient church¹² was in danger both spiritually and temporally by this rising tide of Roman aggression.¹³ Satan's mouth¹⁴ symbolically gaped wide open against the Jews¹⁵ but the woman stood in the path of the Roman flood that could likewise cause her to be carried away to destruction.¹⁶

Many scholars correctly interpret the symbol of Satan's flood waters as a threat to the woman who is the ancient church, but they often misplace the timing of that threat to a date much later than 70 AD.¹⁷

Revelation 12:16: And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.

In the face of the deadly Roman flood in verse 15, the earth opened her mouth and helped members of the ancient church escape Jerusalem before its destruction in 70 AD by providing them refuge on earth east of the Jordan river¹⁸ at a town called Pella.¹⁹ Before Christ died, he warned faithful church members to flee Jerusalem,²⁰ but they had to hearken to his words and rely on earthly means to escape.²¹ Those that ignored the Lord's warning became victims of the Roman flood waters that destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish nation as a whole.²² Those that gave heed to the words of Christ were preserved by their own earthly means, thus fulfilling the words that symbolically say, the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood.²³

The words in Revelation 12:16 are metaphorical, but they could also have a literal meaning.²⁴ Natural disasters²⁵ are part of this living earth²⁶ and the Lord has repeatedly used such disasters to help the righteous by destroying the wicked.²⁷ He will do so again with increasing frequency and magnitude as the Second Coming approaches.²⁸ The closest examples of this from the past include Israel's passage through the flood waters of the Red Sea on dry ground while the Egyptians were swallowed up and destroyed.²⁹ Similarly, a chasm in the earth swallowed wicked Korah and his followers in the days of Moses.³⁰

There is no record or tradition that the earth swallowed a pursuing Roman army when the Christians fled Jerusalem before 70 AD.³¹ However, it is possible that the flood waters of the Jordan were swallowed up so that faithful Christians crossed the river on dry ground during their exodus to Pella.³² There is scriptural precedence for this when the Israelites crossed the Jordan river on dry ground as they entered the promised land after their 40-year exodus in the days of Joshua.³³