Volume 4

— 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.

“And a Great Sign appeared in the Heaven; a Woman who had been invested with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a wreath of Twelve Stars. ”

In studying the Apocalypse, the student cannot fail being impress­ed with a notable peculiarity, frequently illustrated, of its structural ar­rangement. The peculiarity is that of stating in the beginning first, that which is to be executed last. Thus, in the first chapter, the coming of Yahweh in clouds is announced; and his presence is symbolically exhib­ited: but it is not until the preterminal epoch of the sixth vial that He ac­tually appears.

1. “The Time of the End”

The end of the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse conducts the reader into what Jeremiah styles, “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” out of which he shall be saved (Ch. 30:7) — a time in which there are “light­nings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail” (Apoc.