One plausible interpretation:
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/bb000415.htm
The Woman Clothed with the Sun
When Brother Branham was asked, "Is Revelation 12 speaking of the Bride?" He replied, "Revelation 12 does not pertain to the Bride . . . it's Israel, the church" (C.O.D. 1145:Q137). Please open your Bibles to Revelation 12. This chapter outlines the earthly journey of the believers in Jesus as Messiah. The woman clothed with the Sun is the church in the sense of those who have separated from the world and identified with Jesus Christ. The woman symbolizes the elect. Since the revelation in this chapter will be received by the 144,000 elect Israelites during the tribulation, three and a half years after the first resurrection and the translation of the living Bride, we should view this chapter through the eyes of those Hebrew believers. Revelation 12 spans Matthew 1:1 to Revelation 11:19. From the birth of Messiah, His confirmation of the Abrahamic Covenant for three and a half years, His rejection and crucifixion as foretold in Daniel 9:27, His ascension, and fulfillment of the Promise -- from the Day of Pentecost and the redemption of the Gentiles during Israel's apostacy and spiritual blindness -- to Israel's revival and the consummation. In this time the sixfold purpose of Gabriel's visit to Daniel (9:24) will be fulfilled under the Seven Seals, Seven Trumpets, Seven Vials and Three Woes, bringing-in the Millennium. "And there appeared a great sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and screamed in the anguish of delivery." This woman represents Israel, the mother church who brought forth Messiah and has crossed from Orthodox Law to the Christian Gospel. The Moon is a reflection of the perfect light of the Sun in its absence and becomes superfluous once the Sun has risen. The Sun types the Word or Light of God; Jesus is the Light of the World made flesh. The Moon types the Law, reflecting good things to come. In an eclipse, the world comes between the Sun light and the Moon, bringing darkness upon the earth as in the total eclipse (December 30, 1963) before Pope Paul VI visited Jerusalem (January 4-6, 1964). The woman is under the headship of the glory of twelve stars which are the twelve apostles who crown the New Testament. Ephesians 2:20, "The church is build on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone". No other foundation can be laid (I Corinthians 3:11; Matthew 19:28). Like the Sun, true stars are on fire (or full of the Spirit) and generate their own Light (Matthew 5:14). Although the Law is still glowing, it has fulfilled its purpose and is no longer needed. She has risen above it, clothed in the Light of the PRESENT Truth (I John 1:7). Joseph, a type of Jesus Christ, was Spiritual and loved by his father but hated of his brethren. Both Joseph and Jesus married a Gentile Bride. When Joseph's father blessed his two sons, God crossed Israel's hands so that the greatest blessing passed to the younger. This heavenly sign shows the blessing is crossing from Israel the elder to the younger Gentile Church (Genesis 48:11-22). Jesus came first to Israel, commissioning His disciples, "Go not in the way of the Gentiles or into any city of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel" (Matthew 10:5-6). The S-O-N Light was anointing the woman because He came to His own and an election received Him. Because "Israel knew Him NOT", she is travailing under Roman and "Jewish" persecution, to bear the Gospel church, and pass the blessing FROM Israel TO the Gentiles. Acts 15:14-17, "Simon Peter has just explained (in verses 7-9) how God visited the Gentiles in the House of Cornelius at the start of the Church (Acts 10), to call a people for His Name, a Gentile Bride. To this agree the Words of the prophets; as it is written, 'After this I will return, and will rebuild the House of David, which has fallen down; and I will rebuild its very ruins and I will set it up again (or restore them to the Promise I made with the Fathers): So that the rest of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My Name has been invoked', says the Lord, Who does all these things'." First God would call out a Gentile Bride for His Son (Genesis 9:27; Isaiah 11:10; 54:1-5; Amos 9:11), then He will return to Israel during Daniel's Seventieth Week and reconfirm the Abrahamic Covenant their forefathers had rejected (Daniel 9:27). Revelation 12:3-5, "And there appeared another sign in heaven; a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail gathered a third of the stars, and cast them to the Earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man Child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her Child was caught up unto God, and to His throne". The red dragon is Satan, here working through Rome, the fourth Gentile empire of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2). We know this is Imperial Rome (before the Roman Catholic church organized) as the crowns are on the seven Emperors who deified themselves, whereas Revelation 13:1 is Papal Rome and it is the ten kings of the Holy Roman Empire who are crowned (Revelation 17:9-12). The tail of the fiery red dragon signifies the "tale" by which he deceived Israel, causing Shem, the third part of man to reject his very Messiah. The deceived "stars" were blotted from the Book of Life (Isaiah 9:15; Psalm 69:26-28). When Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus, who from his accession called himself "son of the divine Julius", ruled Rome, and the Edomite king, Herod the Great, ruled Rome's colony of Judea. The insignia on the pennants of the Roman armies was a red dragon. When Satan heard Jesus was born, he tried to kill all boys two years and younger as he had tried to destroy Moses when Pharaoh ordered Israelite boys killed at birth. Moses also typed Jesus. God warned Joseph in a dream and he fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt where he remained until after Herod's death. Herod knew the Hebrew prophecies and feared his Hasmonaean House might forfeit its kingdom to the House of David. Rome has been the enemy of God's church under both Old and New Covenants. The prophet said it would be (Daniel 2). America is the image of Rome in the political as Protestant denominations are the image of the Roman Catholic church in the spiritual. As Rome has persecuted the church from the beginning, killing scores of millions who refused to receive its mark of the beast, it will martyr the foolish virgin and 144,000 elect Hebrews when Israel receives the Gospel in the end. Revelation 13:11-15, "And I saw another beast coming up out of the Earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke like a dragon, exerting all the power of the first beast on his behalf, and causes the Earth and all who dwell there to deify and worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He does great wonders, making fire fall from the sky to the Earth in men's sight (the first Atomic bombs). By these signs he is permitted to perform in behalf of the first beast he is able to deceive everyone on earth, commanding them to make an image to the beast, which was fatally wounded by a sword, yet is alive. And he was empowered to give life to the image (a world confederation of Protestant churches), so that it could execute all who refuse to worship the image of the beast". Imperial Rome was mortally wounded, her Empire in decline, when Emperor Constantine united the nominal Christian church with the State at the First Nicea Council of AD325, transforming Rome from a natural to a spiritual empire. In AD337, Constantine founded a new Capital in the city of Byzantium in Asia Minor, away from the troubles of Italy, modestly renamed "Constantinople", (now Istanbul, Turkey). This change created rivalry within the administration, eventually splitting the empire and later the Roman church, between East and West as symbolized by the legs of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2). Emperor Theodosius who was the last ruler of a united empire, outlawed the old gods, and made conversion to Roman Catholicism compulsory. At his death in AD395, the Empire was divided between his two sons -- the East and West legs. The Gothic and Germanic tribes effectively conquered the Western Roman Empire in 410, leaving a ceremonial emperor on the imperial throne, and half the Empire was occupied by the warring barbarian tribes of Gaul, the Germanic Visigoths, and the Hun. As the non-Germanic Hun were the Dragon's seed, these powers embodied forces from which Western Europe has never been free. Pope Leo's intervention to persuade Attila the Hun not to invade Rome was crucial in augmenting the power of the Roman church and laying the foundation of the temporal power of the popes. It was thus that the primacy of Rome's bishop was asserted over all other bishops. As the Council of Chalcedon stated in 451, "Peter has spoken by Leo; let him be anathema who believes otherwise". From this, the doctrine that papal power was granted by Christ to Peter, and that power was passed on by Peter to his successors, began to take firm root. But the Western Empire had merely become a ceremonial show for various Germanic generals. That ended in AD476, when the final emperor was deposed, leaving Germanic kings governing every portion. Effectively the Western Empire had fallen, but forces were already at work to mold a new Roman Empire out of the ruins. In 554, the Emperor Justinian succeeded in that restoration. He saw himself as God's agent, destroying barbarian heretics, winning back the lost provinces of the West, and healing the divisions inflicted on Rome by the barbarian invaders in 476. He acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope in the West. At Justinian's death in 565, the resources of the restored Empire had been depleted and subsequent invasions once again divided East and West for a further two centuries. But the principal focus shifted to the West, as Papal Rome turned its eyes to the powerful Frankish, German and Austrian kings at the heart of Europe. The transformation of Rome from Imperial to Papal power healed her mortal wound, and today Rome rules a universal Empire with greater power than ever she had under the Caesars. Rome and America in the natural, and the Roman Catholic church and her Protestant image in the spiritual, are type and antitype. Through her (once) Protestant image, Rome will ban and persecute the end-time Bride, as she sought to eliminate the early Church under martyrdom. Her image will do Rome's bidding, and they will kill the foolish virgin and other classes of the "saved", but the Bride will be translated. The true Church is feminine in designation. In Revelation 18 to 22, Jesus calls her His Wife and His Bride, whereas in Revelation 17, He calls the Roman Catholic church a whore, the mother of harlots (her Protestant daughter churches) and abominations of the earth (her creed and rituals). Rome's military enforcer and image in the political realm is America, which is also feminine in designation. Brother Branham called America "the prostitute of the nations" because she broke her Constitution and hybrid her people as Jesus called Rome "the prostitute of the churches" because she broke her vow to Christ and hybrid His Word with Satan's wisdom to make a creed. America is the headquarters of Protestantism and the image of the "First Lady" that sits on seven hills. The degradation of women began in Eden when Eve disbelieved God's Word. Satan has been working on women ever since, causing those he can deceive to ruin men, and causing the spiritual woman or second Eve, the Roman Catholic church, to destroy billions of souls. From Eden the degradation of women went to Babylon, then Rome. Now it's in America where the women have invaded the pulpits, cut their hair, put on garments pertaining to men and divorced their husbands. Hollywood leads the world in filth. And there it will be judged (Revelation 18:21-24). Continued at the link.