Revelation 12:13-17

And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth: &c. When the dragon was thus deposed from the imperial throne, and cast unto the earth, (Revelation 12:13,) he still continued to persecute the church with equal malice, though not with equal power. He made several attempts to restore the pagan idolatry in the reign of Constantine, and afterward in the reign of Julian; he traduced and abused the Christian religion by such writers as Hierocles, Libanius, and others of the same stamp and character; he rent and troubled the church with heresies and schisms; he stirred up the favourers of the Arians to persecute and destroy the orthodox Christians. But the church was still under the protection of the empire, (Revelation 12:14,) and to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle As God said to the children of Israel, (Exodus 19:4,) Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, &c.; so the church was supported and carried, as it were, on eagles' wings: but the similitude is the more proper in this case, an eagle being the Roman ensign, and the two wings alluding probably to the division that was then made of the eastern and the western empire. In this manner was the church protected, and these wings were given, that she might flee into the wilderness, into a place of retirement and security, from the face of the serpent Not that she fled into the wilderness at that time, but several years afterward; and there she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time That is, three prophetic years and a half, which is the same period with the twelve hundred and sixty days, or years, before mentioned. So long the church is to remain in a desolate and afflicted state, during the reign of antichrist; as Elijah, while idolatry and famine prevailed in Israel, was secretly fed and nourished three years and six months in the wilderness. But before the woman fled into the wilderness, the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood, (Revelation 12:15,) with intent to wash her away. Waters, in the style of the Apocalypse, (Revelation 17:16,) signify peoples and nations; so that here was a great inundation of various nations excited by the dragon, or the friends and patrons of the old idolatry, to oppress and overwhelm the Christian religion. Such appeared plainly to have been the design of the dragon, when Stilicho, prime minister of the Emperor Honorius, invited the barbarous heathen nations, the Goths, Alans, Sueves, and Vandals, to invade the Roman empire, hoping by their means to raise his son Eucherius to the throne, who from a boy was an enemy to the Christians, and threatened to signalize the beginning of his reign with the restoration of the pagan, and abolition of the Christian religion. Nothing indeed was more likely to produce the ruin and utter subversion of the Christian Church, than the irruptions of so many barbarous heathen nations into the Roman empire. But the event proved contrary to human appearance and expectation: the earth swallowed up the flood, Revelation 12:16 The barbarians were rather swallowed up by the Romans, than the Romans by the barbarians; the heathen conquerors, instead of imposing their own, submitted to the religion of the conquered Christians; and they not only embraced the religion, but affected even the laws, the manners, the customs, the language, and the very name of Romans. This course not succeeding according to probable expectation, the dragon did not therefore desist from his purpose, (Revelation 12:17,) but only took another method of persecuting the true sons of the church, as we shall see in the next chapter. It is said that he went to make war with the remnant of her seed, who kept the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Which implies that at this time there was only a remnant; that corruptions were greatly increased, and the faithful were diminished from among the children of men.