_A WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN, TRAVAILETH: THE GREAT RED DRAGON STANDETH BEFORE HER, READY TO DEVOUR HER CHILD. WHEN SHE IS DELIVERED, SHE FLEETH INTO THE WILDERNESS. MICHAEL AND HIS ANGELS FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON, AND PREVAIL. THE DRAGON, BEING CAST DOWN UNTO THE EARTH, PERSECUTETH THE WOMAN._ _Ann... [ Continue Reading ]
_REVELATION 12:1_.— We come now to a second representation of the same third period of prophesy; that is, a state of the church and world, in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, or while the _woman,_ who fled into her place in the wilderness, was nourished there for a _time, and times, and h... [ Continue Reading ]
AND SHE BEING WITH CHILD CRIED, &C.— _And she crieth in sorrow and travail, having a child to bring forth._ The metaphor of a mother blessed with a fair posterity, is very proper to represent the public happiness, by an increase both of numbers and strength. It is an easy figure to consider the chur... [ Continue Reading ]
AND HER CHILD WAS CAUGHT UP, &C.— Grotius, with great probability, thinks that these expressions allude to the preservation of Joash, in the time of Athaliah's usurpation, when she put to death all the rest of the royal family; 2 Kings 11.... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THE WOMAN FLED— Bishop Newton, explaining this and the foregoing verses, observes, that St. John resumes his subject from the beginning, and represents the church, Revelation 12:1 as a _woman,_ and a mother bearing children unto Christ. She is _clothed with the sun;_—invested with the rays of Je... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THERE WAS WAR IN HEAVEN, &C.— It might reasonably be presumed, that all the powers of idolatry would be strenuously exerted against the establishment of Christianity, and especially against the establishment of a Christian on the imperial throne; and the struggles and contentions between the Hea... [ Continue Reading ]
AND WHEN THE DRAGON SAW, &C.— When the dragon was thus deposed from the imperial throne, and _cast unto the earth,_ 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 after... [ Continue Reading ]