The Abomination of Desolation - St. Marys Coptic Orthodox Church

SIGNS OF HIS COMING II 47
Hippolytus of Rome sees this flight of the elect as foretold in the Old
Testament, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut
thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until
the indignation be overpast.” (Isa 26:20)
The three and half years is, as we said earlier, a symbol and should
not be taken literally. It means a time that shall be shortened,
according to the promise of the Lord, “But for the elect’s sake those
days shall be shortened.” (Matt 24:22)
Revelation 12:14-15, tell us that when Satan saw that the woman
fled, he, “cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that
he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth
helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up
the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.” Water, in the
apocalyptic language refers to people. This means that when Satan
tries to attack the Church, using the multitudes at his command, she
will be miraculously rescued by God. “He signifies by the water which
the serpent cast out of his mouth, the people who at his command
would persecute her.” 1
The problem we have with Revelation 12, is that it speaks of two
flights of the Church, the one is mentioned in verse 6, and the other is
mentioned in verse 14. Both flights are to a “place prepared by God,”
and both are of the same duration, three and a half year; the
apocalyptic symbol of the duration of the Great Tribulation. The
difference between the two is that one happens before the battle in
heaven and the casting of Satan and his angels into the earth, and the
other happens after this. That means that the first flight is before the
manifestation of Antichrist, and the other one after it. I could not find
any satisfactory interpretation for this in the writing of the Fathers, but,
allow me to offer my own interpretation.
I think the two incidents described represent two phases of the flight
of the Church. The first one is a leisurely emigration of the Church,
where the Church flees to the “wilderness.” The second, however, is an
urgent flight, where the Church is given the two wings of a great eagle
that she might fly into the wilderness. In the first phase, the Church
flees, while in the second phase she flies. It is this second phase that the
1 Victorinus: Commentary on the Apocalypse