The difference between the ten horns of the Dragon and the ten horns of the Beast of the Sea, consists in the ten upon the Beast being diademed, while the ten upon the Dragon are not. This indicates that the Beast symbol represents things concurrent with the Horns in their exercise of sovereignty; while the Dragon, as far as old Rome is con­cerned, had to do with the sovereignty of the heads before the horns had received their kingdoms.

I have said that behind the head seen by Daniel there were seven other heads which he did not perceive. This is equivalent to saying, that the head seen by him was an Eighth Head. This is the truth. The beast he saw was headed with this eighth head contemporary with its destruc­tion by the saints.

A dragon is a kind of beast, and therefore partakes in the charac­teristics of beasts. These in prophetic writing are the well-known sym­bols of destroying monarchies or powers; and, where the people of the Deity are found sojourning under their authority, the persecutors of the saints. But, though the dragon is a beast, he is apocalyptically distin­

— Overthrown AD 312-313 Rev. 12:3

“Dragon” applied to Eastern Emperors AD 395-AD 1453

opponents who sought her destruction. The Devil was her adversary, who, “as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour;” but she resisted him being steadfast in the faith; nevertheless, though cast down by

“And there appeared another sign in the heaven, and behold a great fiery red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems. And his tail draws the third of the stars of the heaven, and he cast them into the earth” — Verses 3,4.

The woman was pregnant, and therefore, if she lived through the period of her painful gestation, her time would certainly come to bring forth. It is therefore written of her, “she cries being in pangs and strain­ing to bring forth.”

The decorum of the symbol requires that the period of the woman’s pregnancy be analogous to the time during which in nature a woman compasses a child before she gives it birth. Now it is well known, that the time of gestation from conception to birth, is a period of forty weeks or 280 days. This being the “set time”—the time appointed by Deity for the development of children from the womb of humanity — it became a law of nature.

“And being pregnant she cries being in pangs and straining to bring forth” — verse 2

In this “great sign” is seen upon the head of the Sun-Invested Woman “a wreath of twelve stars”. Thus I have rendered in my transla­tion the words Stephanos asteron dodeka. The twelve stars were set in a Stephanos,

This ch. 12:1 is the second place in the general prophecy where a figurative woman is introduced. The first place in which the Spirit speaks specifically of one is ch. 2:20. In his epistle to the Star-Angel presbytery of the ecclesia in Thyatira he charges it with suffering, or tolerating, teachers and seducers within its jurisdiction, whose tradi­tions were destructive of those “servants” who received them. Those teachers and seducers constituted a class of men of which Balaam is a representative.