See Ch. 12 – The Women and the Dragon

Suddenly the scene changes from one concerning mainly the events of the physical earthly world to that which is universal and spiritual. John again begins recording the prophecy, now in a different light, as he was told he must do in Chapter Ten.

There appeared to John “a great and wondrous sign … in heaven” of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feel and twelve stars on her head” (REV 12:1). The figurative description here seems clearly to indicate the city of Jerusalem. While it seems contradictory to many teachings, that woman represented the true church, this fact is, in actuality, quilt complimentary of that theory.

Found in the midst of nearly every major, and oft times minor city in the world is the home base of some religion or religious denomination; sometimes even several denominations or religions can be found to have sprung from one metropolitan area. Though some may not be obvious to the untrained eye, others are quilt prominent. Mecca is the central holy city for Islam, The Church of Christ Scientists’ home base is in New York City. The Roman Catholics, of course, are ruled from a Rome suburb. The Church of the Nazarene’s base of operations is in Lenexa, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri while, in another of Kansas City’s suburbs, Independence, Missouri, is a denomination called The Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints; while another of this metropolitan’s suburbs called Unity Village is headquarters for the Unity Church. The list could go on for pages but the fact is that the base of true Jewish and Christian faith has and shall continue to be in Jerusalem which is depicted in Scripture as a virtuous woman. (JER 6:2; ISA 54:5; HOS 2:19; JOH 3:29; 2CR 11:2)

Citing people like Seiss and Davis, Anderson points out how important it is to recognize that there is but one true church; that being the one derived from the ancient Israeli nation which was spoken of by Luke as “the church in the wilderness” (ACT 7:18) which contained twelve kingdoms (or churches) made up of all the nation’s twelve tribes. “The whole Bible,” says Anderson, “has but one story: the story of the conflict between Christ and his enemy: between the seed of the woman and the dragon” (UTR pg 113).

But, without warning, another “sign” appeared: that of an enormous red dragon. Anmianus Marcellinus reported that there was a dragon affixed to the purple standard (flag) of Rome (TRH bk. 16, ch. 12, par. 39, pg. 116) which dragon Anderson reports to having been red when quoting from Marcellinus’ History of the Roman Empire. Rome, having been built on a group of seven hills, or mountains, from which it conquered the then known “civilized” world and divided it into ten governmental sub regions fulfills the description of the dragon described by John completely.

This dragon, through its “prophecies” and promises, drew a third of the stars, or that is four of the tribes which were of Israel, and flung them into the foundational teaching of of their faith. These teachings of the Pharasees and Saducess caused much grief to be laid upon the true followers of the faith and thus did the dragon stand “in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born” (REV 12:4).

That this was truly the case can be shown by the order given by Herod for the extermination of all male infants in Bethlehem after Jesus’ birth. But add to this extermination the fact that Saul (Paul) of Tarsus had himself belonged to one of these groups and later repented of his erroneous ways to become a chief witness as to the Messiahship of Jesus throughout the rest of his life.

The moment Jesus was born he was swept away by his Earthly parents into a safe place where little is known of him until the beginning of his ministry when he was about thirty. Years later, after the dragon thought it had put an end to this man’s threatening position, Jesus arose from the grave in which the dragon had placed him. Soon he was “snatched up to God and to his” place in heaven (REV 12:5). This was seen by eleven of the disciples and many other persons who were with them and recorded by Luke in his book of the Acts of the Apostles (1:9).

In following the instructions of her Lord, the Church “fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God” (MAT 24:15-21). Where this place was never revealed possibly because if, perchance, this writing were discovered and understood by the dragon’s people it would not have been wise to record where the church was hiding.

However, in 70 A.D., when the Roman soldiers tramped into Jerusalem and destroyed the temple; those who heeded Jesus’ words to “flee into the hills and mountains” (MAT 24:16) were spared their lives. The headquarters of the church was, at that time, moved into Antioch temporarily and, according to Anderson, other secluded places, such as the Piedmont valleys and the Alpine mountains, even the friendly young America, all became havens of refuge for the persecuted people of God” (TUR pg. 119).

At the same time that Jesus was winning the hearts of men and women on Earth, giving evidence that he was, as Peter pronounced, “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (JOH 6:69), there was also occurring a “war in heaven” (REV 12:7). Michael, the archangel of Might who took over the battle between Gabriel and “the prince of the Persian kingdom” when Daniel had asked God for answers concerning prophecy (DAN 10:12-14), had gathered the good angels against Satan who, along with the fallen angels, were in battle in order to maintain their place in Heaven. “But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven” (REV 12:8). Jesus said, concerning this battle, as he gazed into the night sky near Capernaum one evening as the seventy-two disciples which he had sent out in the surrounding area to preach returned, “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven…” (LUK 10:18)

Michael had successfully “hurled down that ancient serpent … who leads the whole world astray.” The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible says that at this moment Satan and his angels were “cast out into the earth” (REV 12:9). That is he was cast into the midst of Earth, never again to return to the heavens. The places on Earth like the Bermuda Triangle seem to indicate that such a place as this Scripture speaks of does exist on this planet. Innumerable times have ships and planes disappeared while navigating over these negative vortexes never again to be seen. There must, is seems, be a reason. Is it not reasonable that these disappearances occur basically only when these negative vortexes are “turned on” for either the entrances or exits of the negative universe’s occupants; they being the demons, or fallen angels of Satan?

The idea that the demonic world is largely aquarian and reptilian in nature can be seen not only in the fact that it was a serpent-like creature which seduced Eve from the truth originally; but in the various forms of religious literature throughout the world, from Syria to Egypt, from India to South American it is recorded in the artifacts that the “wisdom” between the knowledge of what is good and what is evil has come from the “underworld” or out of the “waters of the deep” (SGM pg 75, 79; see: REV 4.10.0; 3.1.6). Some have said that these were the remains of the creatures of Atlantis which legend claims to have sunk. But it did not sink at all. Rather it was flooded by God in Noah’s day never to be drained again even to this day. These creatures, of which the Loc Ness Monster could possibly be one sample, are not the beings who evolved into amphibious creatures due to their continent being flooded as some occultists believe. Instead they are fallen angels who left their “first estate” (JUD 6) in order to follow Satan, their god. They made this decision long before man was created but now they had been forced into the planet, Earth, once and for all time.

The angels which remained in the heavens rejoice, saying:

“Now have come the salvation and the power and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens and them who inhabit them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”
(REV 12:10-12—NIV)

John says that, “When the dragon saw he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.” He did this by first entering into one of Jesus’ own disciples, Judas, and causing him to betray his Lord to the Roman soldiers and the Hebrew Sanhedrin. This, in effect, caused the eventual crucifixion of Jesus. But when Jesus did not remain in the grave, as Satan had hoped, the devil then set out to pursue and attempt to destroy the church which bore Christ’s name.

The church heeded the warning Jesus had given her, as mentioned before, and beginning in 70 A.D. until 1330 A.D. (exactly 1260 years) she was hid in obscurity in the desolation of the remains of the Roman Empire. Then, in the decade of 1330-1340 the Catholic University of Paris found itself in the midst of a struggle with a group called “nominalists” which censured fifty-one points of the teaching of a man named Ockham who was of the Franciscan order (WYC pg. 8). His book, De Ecclesiatica et Politica Protestate and books by one of his contemporaries, Mrsiglio, who wrote both Defensor Paris and Diagolus became widely read during the mid-fourteenth century and became strong influences upon John Wycliff who was born in 1320 (JWT pg. 71,72), the prophet who stood up against the Catholic Church and translated the Bible into English.

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