Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

12:17
for the action of Pharaoh, who (1) commands Israelite
children and especially Moses to be washed down the
Nile, (2) comes out after escaping Israel with a host,
and (3) counts on the Red Sea to shut Israel in.” 40 The
Biblical imagery was familiar: a menacing river seeking
to overwhelm God’s people, flowing from the mouth of
her enemies (Ps. 18:4, 16; 124:3-6; Isa. 8:5-8; 59:19; Jer.
46:7-8; 47:2; Hos. 5:10).
But again, as in the Exodus, the Dragon’s plan is foiled:
The Land helped the Woman, and the Land opened
its mouth and drank up the river which the Dragon
threw out of his mouth. 41 The picture is partially
based on the incident recorded in Numbers 16:28-33,
when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the
instigators of a rebellion against Moses. Milton Terry
summarizes the point of St. John’s Old Testament
allusions in this passage: “The great thought in all these
images is that divine power is put forth to deliver and
sustain the New Testament Church of God in the day
of her persecution – the same power that of old wrought
the miracles of Egypt, and of the Red Sea, and of the
wilderness.” 42 That is indeed St. John’s emphasis here.
The Church is divinely protected and preserved
through all her tribulations. No matter what the
Dragon does in his attempts to destroy the Church –
even bringing about the Jewish Revolt, causing the
Edomites and the Romans to slaughter the inhabitants
of Israel – the Church escapes his power. By the time
Rome attacks, the Woman is long gone; the Land of
Israel swallows up the river of wrath, absorbing the
blow in her place. The destruction of Jerusalem left the
true City and Temple unharmed, for they were safe
with the Woman under the shadow of the Almighty.
17 The Dragon had only “a short time” (v. 12) to
destroy the Church, and he failed again. Frustrated in
his attempt to destroy the Mother Church, he was
enraged with the Woman, and went off to make war
with the rest of her seed, the Christians who were
unharmed by the Dragon’s war with the Woman. How
is the Church symbolized by both the Woman and her
children? “These distinctions are easily made and
maintained. The Church, considered as an institution
and an organic body, is distinguishable from her
children, as Isaiah 66:7-8 and Galatians 4:22-26 clearly
show. . . . We accordingly observe that the Church is in
one point of view the totality of all her members of
children; in other ways, familiar to the Scripture, her
individual members are thought of as related to her as
children to a mother.” 43
Having been thwarted in his designs to destroy both
the Mother and her Seed, the Dragon turns in rage
against the rest of her seed, the (predominantly
Gentile) Christian Church throughout the Empire. Let
us note well St. John’s description of these brothers and
sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ: They keep the
commandments of God and hold to the testimony of
Jesus. The definition of the Christian, from one
perspective, is that he is a member of the organized
assembly of the people of God; just as importantly, he is
defined in terms of his ethical conformity to the law of
God.
And by this we know that we have come to know Him,
if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have
come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments,
is a liar, and the truth is not in him. (1 John 2:3-4)
For this is the love of God, that we keep His
commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.
(1 John 5:3)
As St. John has already informed us, the saints
overcome the Dragon through the word of their
testimony and their faithful obedience, even unto
death (v. 11). The following chapters will detail several
crucial stages in the continuing war between the seed of
the Serpent and the seed of the Woman. The passage is
not meant to be chronologically accurate, as if the
Dragon turns against the rest of the Church only after
the failure of the Jewish War. Rather, the flight of the
Judean Church is only the culmination of a series of
deliverances throughout the Last Days, symbolized by
the flight of the Woman. St. John is describing in
images the various stratagems devised by Satan for
destroying the Church, and he shows them all to be
complete failures. The Dragon is fighting a losing
battle, for he has already been defeated at the Cross and
at the Tomb. There is not a square inch of ground in
heaven or on earth or under the earth where there is
peace between the Serpent and the Seed of the
Woman, and Christ has already won overwhelmingly,
on every front. Ever since Christ’s ascension, world
history has been a mopping-up operation. The Church
Militant, so long as she is the Church Obedient, will be
the Church Triumphant as well.
40. Farrer, p. 148. Farrer also points out the astronomical imagery involved here:
“There is the great Eagle of the starry heaven, with his two wings, and the
Lady of the Zodiac may well receive their help in fleeing from the pursuing
Scorpion; for we all hope to escape the baleful omen of his name by accepting
the Eagle in his place, when we reckon the four faces of the sky. . . . It is after
the woman has received the Eagle’s wings that the Dragon shoots a river at
her. This is astrological, too; the great river of the sky, the Milky Way, goes
up from the Scorpion and sweeps over the Eagle” (ibid.).
41. Interestingly, both Christ and the Dragon are pictured in Revelation as
spitting people out of their mouths: Christ vomits out the apostates (3 :16),
and the Dragon throws out floods of armies (12:16-17) (just as he had thrown
the stars to earth in 12:4). In a related figure, the Land vomits out Canaanites
and apostate Israelites in Leviticus 18:28, but here it swallows the river spat
out by the Dragon.
42. Terry, p. 390.
43. Ibid., p. 391. A related example is the Biblical use of the expressions Zion and
Daughter of Zion (cf. Ps. 9:11, 14; Cant. 3:11) and children of Zion (cf. ps.
149:2).
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