“She hath a place which has been prepared of the Deity, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days” — verse 6.
In the fourteenth verse, this is equivalently expressed by the words, “where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time out of sight of the Serpent.” This parallelism shows us that “1,260 days” is a form of words importing the duration of “a time, times, and half a time”. Whatever the word day may signify, it requires 1,260 of them to equal three times and a half. In common time, 1,260 days are forty-two months, or three years and six months. But in dramatic prophecy, where the things predicted are acted on a small scale, by the persons of the drama, the time is proportioned, and therefore expressed in miniature. Hence, when a piece is performed on the boards of a theatre, its incidents, which are spread over a long series of years, are all brought in the acting before the spectator’s eye in the short space of an evening. This is a practical condensation of the time of the piece performed. If the acted timeoi the piece were dramatically expressed by the performer, according to the real time, an evening theatrical entertainment would be impossible. He has therefore, in his acting, to reduce the literal, or real, time of the incidents he represents, from years to minutes, which all the audience, from pit to gallery, easily perceives.
Now, upon the same principle of condensation is time exhibited in the apocalyptic drama. It is condensed from real time to acted time, the latter being proportioned to the former, and to the agents dramatically engaged. Thus, if the real time be 1,260 years, it is proportionally represented by 1,260 days, or forty-two months, or three times and a half. It is also made proportional to the agents acting in the time. Thus, in the dramatic prophecy before us, the woman and her feeders, or nourishers, are the agents. She dwells in her place as a woman, the cycle of whose natural existence is threescore years and ten. Now, to affirm of her that they nourished her 1,260 years, would be in violation of the decorum of things. It would be a monstrosity in the picture, because out of all proportion, seeing that, naturally, women do not live 1,260 years. But the fitness and suitableness of things are observed; and the language descriptive of her pregnancy and subsequent life, does no violence, but is in strict accordance with, the laws of a real woman’s natural existence. The remarks of Daubuz upon symbolic time, are to the point in this place.
“The way of the symbolic language,” says he, “in expressions determining the spaces of time may be set in a plain light from the manner of predictions, or the nature of the prophetical visions. For a prophecy concerning future events is a picture, or representation of the events in symbols; which, being fetched from objects visible at one view, or cast of the eye, rather represent the events in miniature, than in full proportion; giving us more to understand than what we see; and, therefore, that the duration of events may be represented in terms suitable to the symbols of the visions, the symbols of duration must be also drawn in miniature. Thus, for instance, if a vast empire, persecuting the Church for 1,260 years, was to be symbolically represented by a beast, the decorum of the symbol would require that the said time of its tyranny should not be expressed by 1,260 years; because it would be monstrous and indecent to represent a beast ravaging for so long a space of time; but by 1,260 days. And thus a day may imply a year; because that short revolution of the sun bears the same proportion to the yearly, as the type to the ‘ e.”
e anti-catholic community was to be sustained, out of the sight of the Serpent-government, in the two wings of the Great Roman Eagle, for one thousand two hundred and sixty years from the epoch of its legal condemnation as heretical, its exclusion from high places, and its banishment from the sunshine of imperial favor, A.D. 312-315. The three years intervening between these dates, constitute the initiatory epoch of the Woman’s flight. The individuals who composed the party of the woman were not all saints; they were all, as we have seen, exceedingly hostile to the State Church: but it was only a particular class of the woman’s seed which was entitled to be regarded as consisting of the saints. Her seed was composed of remnants, hoi loipoi, not, as in the Common Version, of a remnant. She was providentially placed in the wilderness, that she might be fed and nourished; for without food and nourishment she could not exist in such a world as this. The “faithful men” who were within her pale, “who were able to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2), fed her with knowledge and understanding (Jer. 3:15); and “the earth,” with whom she found an asylum, “helped her” with the nourishment of protection, without which she would have been carried away of the serpent-flood. A remnant of her seed, and the common people of the Eagle’s wings, “the earth,” coalesced. They became political allies against the party in power; and were upon emergency prepared to withstand their oppressor by force of arms. These were the vanguard of the other remnant of her seed, whose principle is passive endurance of injury “unto death;” and trusting for vindication to Him who saith, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” These were the saints sealed in their foreheads as the especial servants of the living God.
Now, to what in our own times shall we liken the civil and ecclesiastical arrangement of things existing at the crisis of the woman’s flight? The following constitution of things with which the reader is familiar, will answer the purpose of bringing vividly before his mind what was presented before John’s in the dramatical exhibition of the woman in the wilderness. The British Imperial Unicorn is an element of the Serpent-power of the world. It is enthroned in all the splendor of the heaven; and sheds the rays of its glory and power upon all the constituted authorities of the state. Invested with this brightness is a Harlot, diademed with the jewels of the British crown. This woman is a daughter of “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and all the Abominations of the Earth;” and is constitutionally styled, “the Church of England and Ireland, as by law established.” In the palmy days of the Tudors and the Stuarts, there was another woman, who fled from the face of the British Serpent. This was the woman of nonconformity and dissent. And to this fugitive were given the wings, or extremities, of the Great Unicorn; that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished until the coming of the Ancient of Days. These wings are now known as the United States and British America. Here the Puritan Woman exists out of the sight of the British Serpent, fed by her spirituals, and nourished by “the earth,” which is remarkably inimical to everything British. But, are the sects of which this Anti-British State-Church Woman is composed, “the remnants of her seed which keep the commandments of the Deity, and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus?” Far, very far, from it; they are as far from it as the British Harlot herself; nevertheless, there will be found within the pale of Anti-British Harlotry a remnant, styled Christadelphians, whose intellectual and moral characteristics are answerable to the last clause of Apoc. 12:17.
Now, the Puritan Woman, styled by her enemies and persecutors “the Donatists;” but by the children of her body, Cathari, or the Pure Ones; for the first 1260 years of her existence was Providentially settled in the wings of the Roman Eagle. Her remnants were not to be found in Persia, India, China, or America: but after the discovery and settlement of America, the persecutions and massacre of her seed by the Serpent- Powers of Europe caused her to seek refuge in the American wilderness, whereby the help of “the earth,” which styles itself “the unterrified democracy,” she is fed and nourished to the full.
It is now over 1550 years since her flight began in the days of Constantine, or A.D. 315. In Apoc. 11:3, “the remnants of her seed” are specified by the names “the Holy City” and “The two Witnesses. ’’The former, consists of those “who keep the commandments of the Deity,
A copy of the Edict of Nantes, which was promulgated by Henry IV in 1598, an important date in Apocalyptic prophetic chronology. This edict granted Protestants a degree of toleration. Its benefits, however, were terminated by its revocation in 1685 by Louis XIV, which resulted in the political death of the Witnesses (Rev. 11:9). However, as predicted, after their “dead bodies” had remained unburied in “the street” (France) of the Great City (Babylon the Great) for 3V2 lunar “days” or 105 years, their political “resurrection” followed in 1790 through the French Revolution, Rev. 12:14 also requires a period of 1260 years during which time the “woman” finds refuge in the “wilderness” or in various parts of the Roman Empire. Commencing from A.D. 312 when the Donatist controversy divided the Church, 1260 years terminates in 1572 and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. This commenced the “war” of Rev. 11:7, and whilst the Edict of Nantes gave temporary relief to the Protesting communities, this terminated its revocation. See comments opposite, and compare with the time periods epitomised in Vol. 2, p. 282 — Publishers.
and hold the testimony of the anointed Jesus:” the latter, the Politico- Religious Democracy essentially and constitutionally hostile to the “Mother of Harlots” and her Harlot Daughters, in all the countries where they are “by law established.”
Now, the times of these two classes are differently arranged. The duration of the symbolical formulas is the same number of years with respect to each; though the symbolical formulas themselves are differently expressed. Thus the symbolical formula of “the Holy City” is written “forty-two months, ” while the symbolical formula of the woman with especial reference to the remnant, “the witnesses,” is written “one thousand two hundred and sixty days. ” This is also expressed in the form “a time, and times, and half a time:’’ and the reason why these two various formulas are given in the sixth and fourteenth verses of this twelfth chapter is, that this form, which is reproduced from Dan. 7:25, and 12:7, might be shown to consist of 1260 symbolic days. The form in Daniel indicates a period reaching to the epoch when judgment is given to the saints of the Highest Ones, which implies the manifestation of the Ancient of Days and the subsequent resurrection of the dead; because, there can be no judgment until they are raised; and no resurrection till he comes.
But the time when the 12601eon commences is not the same in all its relations. In Dan. 7 and 12, it has special reference to “the Holy City,” or saints, in the highest sense; and begins with their delivery as heretics into the hand, or power, of the Roman Blasphemer, styled in Dan. 11:38,49, “a foreign god” and “a god of guardians.” The “forty-two months” of Apoc. 11:2, begins at the same time. Not so, however, the 1260 of the Two Witnesses, and the times of the woman in ch. 12:6,14. These all begin with the commencement of her flight in the Constanti- nian epoch. In these times she was to be fed and nourished; and fire was to proceed out of the mouth of her dualized witnessing remnant, to devour her enemies and theirs. During these times they had power to shut the heaven, that it might not rain in their days of the prophecy, or the 1260. But when they may “have finished their witnessing,” which they accomplished at the end of that period, or 1260 years after their banishment by Constantine, that is, in the epoch of A.D. 1572-75, war was made upon them, and they were overcome, and put to death politically: they were “killed” in a like sense to the killing of “the third of the men” in ch. 9:18 — a death which said third sought, but could not find, because the time Divinely appointed to extinguish the eastern Roman dominion had not yet come.
But, though the 1260 years of the sackcloth-witnessing of the anticatholic remnant of the woman’s seed ended in A.D., 1575; the other class of her seed, '‘the Holy City, ” still continued to travail in the affliction of its down-trodden condition; and to press on through the weary years assigned to it in the “forty-two months,” or “the reed like to a rod” with which it was measured (Apoc. 11:1). The finishing of the witnessing by the secular element of the woman in A.D. 1572-’5, marks the lapse of nine hundred and sixty-eight years of the forty-two months; in all of which time “the Holy City” had been in the hand of the Roman Blasphemer. At the end of the witnessing in A.D. 1575, there still remained two hundred and ninety-two years of the forty-two months to be traversed by the Holy City. These elapsed, and she attains the A.D. 1867-’8; or, having traversed and completed an ceon or cycle, of forty- two months of years from A.D. 607, she is justified in looking for a speedy deliverance from the down-treading she has been subjected to in all that terrible and sanguinary time.
But though the 1260 years of her sustentation in the two wings of the Roman Eagle were fulfilled, it must not be supposed that, because war was made upon her seed, and they were overcome and politically killed, she was therefore dead, and had no further part in the history of the papal world. So long as she has a remnant upon the earth, she lives in it; though she may no longer be found in her original place of abode. Exterminated in one section of the Habitable, her seed reappear in another, on the principle of being persecuted in one city, they flee to another. In the first 1260 years of her sojourn out of the Serpent’s sight, her fugacious migrations were confined to the wings of his dominion. For three hundred years after her flight she was fed and nourished in the Roman Africa, and the Cottian Alps. At the end of these centuries, she disappeared from the African Wing of the Great Eagle, and manifested her presence in Armenia and Asia Minor; and when she could no longer find food and nourishment there, she migrated in the course of a hundred and fifty years into France, and thence into Bulgaria, and up the Danube westward and northward through Hungary and Bavaria. In the ninth century, the witnessing of her seed was no longer heard in Armenia, Asia Minor, and Thrace; but was more particularly limited to the Alpine regions of Italy, Switzerland, and France. In the twelfth century, the witnessing of her seed in these countries became so hateful to the Roman Catholic Church, that its malice against her became unbounded. “The rivers and fountains of waters,” or those who ruled among the mountains and valleys of the Alps, were stirred up by the spiritual head of that communion, to shed their blood without mercy (Apoc. 16:4-7): nevertheless, the food and nourishment afforded her, enabled her to endure, and to continue her witnessing in these Alpine regions until the expiration of her 1260 years. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the power of the strong governments of Europe was brought to bear upon her seed. The two wings of the Great Eagle no longer afforded her protection; so that her witnessing against Catholicism, and THE Antichrist, whose power had now reached its greatest altitude and breadth, was suppressed in all the kingdoms, or Horns, of the Beast of the Sea (Apoc. 11:7; 13:1).
This was the death of the witnessing of the politico-ecclesiastical remnant of her seed. The war upon her that ultimated in this result, continued over a century after the termination of her aeon (aion) of 1260 years. From A.D. 1685 to A.D. 1790, her seed’s voice against the Roman Antichrist was death-stricken in all the Ten-Horns of the Beast of the Sea. During this period of three lunar days and a half of years, her anti-catholic communities lay voiceless in the streets, or kingdoms, of the Great City, very much to the joy and mirthfulness of the priests and rulers of the Horn-Powers, especially of the Vice-God of “Christendom” and his Cardinals, whose sanguinary domination is now tottering to its fall. These priestly and besotted tyrants “rejoiced over them, and made merry,” because the tormenting testimony of her seed was, as they thought, effectually and finally silenced (Apoc. 11:4-10). But they knew not the purposes of Him who doeth all things after the counsel of His own will. They knew not that a great revival of this tormenting witnessing had been decreed; and that their joyous mirth was doomed to set in mourning, lamentation, and woe. For, after the expiration of the three lunar days and a half of years, that is, of 105 years; marked also by the termination of 1260 years from the epoch A.D. 530-533, in which the Dragon-Power “acknowledged” the bishop of Rome as “a god” over all the spiritual affairs of his dominion (Dan. 11:39): after the end of his cycle, “the Spirit of life from Deity was to enter into them, and they were to stand upon their feet. ” In the epoch of A. D. 1789-’93, this came to pass in the birth of what the terrified “foul spirits” and “unclean and hateful birds” of the Roman “cage,” denomihate “The Revolution.” This fearful power, which is now sternly and threateningly glaring in the face of the trembling demon-and-idol-worshippers of the Roman “hold” (Apoc. 18:2), is the organized witnessing of the politico- ecclesiastical remnant of the Woman’s Seed..Created A.D. 315, slain A.D. 1685, it rose again A.D. 1789-’93; and,- in the last epoch “it ascended to the heaven,” where it is now working through the Frog-like influences of the French, Italian, and Prussian powers which will not cease to operate until they shall have unwittingly “gathered the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable to the war of that great day of God Almighty — a day which is near, even at the door, and waiting only the expiration of the forty-two months of the down-treading of the Holy
Above: Constantinople (modern Istanbul) occupies a comanding position on the Bosphorus that links Europe with Asia Minor. The widespread territory ruled by Constantine demanded a more convenient centre than that of Rome. Below: Coins depicting Constantine, and the dedication of the city of Constantinople on 11 May 330.
City ; that is, of 1260 years from the giving of the Saints into the hand of “the Foreign God,” A.D. 607-’8; or 1335 from his “acknowledgment” by the King that did according to his will in A.D. 533; which gives for a glorious epoch to the believer, A.D. 1868-’9.