By Revelation 12 the sequence of the trumpets seems to have ended in Rev. 11, with "the kingdom of the world" becoming "the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ [Messiah]" followed by celebrating by the victors in the kingdom. Then a little farther on at the end of Rev. 11 there are flashes of lightning, thunder, earthquake, hail - imagery that repeatedly appears in Revelation. Is it meant to get our attention, to alert us to something significant?
What comes next is Rev. 12, beginning with a description of "a great sign" in the heavens. The star-woman is a reference to the constellation Virgo, the virgin, a constellation in the 12 constellations of the zodiac. The stars and constellations of them in the zodiac are the ultimate time-keeper for humanity. In the days of mechanical watches, Elgin watches were popular, from Elgin, Illinois. The factory was walled and at one corner there was a small observatory for viewing the night sky for time-setting. The constellations depict 12 ages of about 2160 years each, determined by the earth, spinning like a top and precessing on its spin axis. To tell which age we are in, on the spring equinox before the sun comes up, whichever constellation is seen to the east identifies the age. We are currently in a transition between the age of Pisces, represented by fish, and of Aquarius, the water-bearer. In the parched Middle East, water was a symbol of life, and in the age we are now entering, it is the Messiah who brings life to humanity through his rule of "the kingdom of our Lord". As it is known today, astrology has been taken over by the Babylonian Mystery religion, the source of all extant paganism and distorter of pre-babylonian astrology, which was a witness of the stars to the message from God about the ages. With electronic watches and atomic clocks by which to set them, what sets the atomic clocks? It is still the stars.
In Rev. 12, John answers the question as posed in contemporary language (Rev. 12:17): Who are the true Christians? He broadens the language to refer to the "offspring" of the woman chased by the dragon into the wilderness, and the definition of them has two properties: they "keep the commandments of God" and they also "hold to the testimony of Jesus". For emphasis, this definition of the people of God is repeated later, in Rev. 13:12, where they are refered to as "the saints", "those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus".
The description beginning in Rev. 12 is that of the configuration of stars that dates an event, the birth of the Christ. It was not until the 20th century that someone applied sufficient rigor, aided by modern astronomical knowledge, to determine when this birth occurred. Ernest L. Martin in the 20th century was first known to have identified the timing of the event as depicted in the skies to a multi-hour period within September 11, 3 BC. This timing is consistent with all that is known from written history about when Jesus was born, which had to be, given conditions in the Middle East, between 4 BC and 2 BC. The dragon, who is identified in Rev. 12 as the Devil, attempts to suppress what the woman has produced and chases her into the wilderness. The woman must represent Yahwist Israel from whom Jesus came. The Israelite church bearing the gospel was chased into the wilderness of Europe by the Roman and Greek world order.
Most of the Christians in Rome in the first century escaped persecution of Rome by excercising the third of their three options on how to respond. These three alternatives have applied wherever a minority is persecuted by the State, whether it be first-century Christians, dissidents in the Soviet Union, or 21st-century Christians in the West. The three alternatives are 1) overthrow the current social order, by violence or popular influence (the gospel, social engineering); 2) hunker down, go underground (as some did in Rome; there is life under the surface of the earth, especially in large cities); 3) leave. Most Christians in Rome fled to the north, bringing the gospel to the barbarian tribes of Israelites. In time, Europe was Christianized - alternative # 1.
The woman - the church given birth by Israel through Jesus - flees to the wilderness for "1260 days" where she grows stronger. The historic eschatology of centuries in Europe that is now referred to as Historicist eschatology sees the biblical revelation spanning from the first advent of the Messiah and the first century when some of it was fulfilled until the "last days" at the end of the age when more of it will be fulfilled. The two popular alternative eschatologies both trace back to Spanish Jesuits trying to deflect attention during the 1500s from the Reformation teaching that the Pope was the Antichrist by placing the villain either in the past, in the first century (Preterist) or in the future at the end of the age (Futurist) but not at the time of the Reformers, who with unified voice, were convincing many that the Pope was this villain. How long was the reign of the "Holy Roman Empire" under the papacy, the last empire, represented by the feet of the statue of Nebucandnezzar's dream interpreted by Daniel and made of iron mixed with clay? The papacy first gained control of the last of the barbarian tribes under Clovis of the Mergovingian line of kings in about 538 AD (or CE if you prefer; some date it at 536 CE) when power was consolidated under the Pope. Then 1260 years later, based on Daniel's day-is-a-year scale, Napolean's General Berthier in 1798 took the Pope captive in Rome, formally ending the rule of the papacy over Europe. The papacy was identified by the Reformers and Isaac Newton with the "little horn" of Daniel, who is defeated, only to rise again later. Benjamin G. Wilkerson's church history book _Truth Triumphant: the Church in the Wilderness_ gives details on the wilderness church of Rev. 12, a history that is glossed over in leading church history books that still trace back to Vatican sources, a history that never was reformed by the Reformers. The Reformation was a good start, but as the Reformers recognized, was only a beginning which has yet to be completed. The Reformation was more accurately a Semi-Reformation.
We are now at the end of the age of Pisces. The early Christians used a fish as their symbol, and now we are at the end of the fish age and are entering the life-bringer age that will involve the reappearance of the Christ to rule during this new age. The Devil is not creative; he is imitative. His neo-pagan followers also talk about a New Age, but it does not take much reading of New Age literature to find that the pseudo-scientific irrationality and disconnection with reality in it is but an attempt to imitate pre-babylonian astrology. Chronology is at the center of the quest of eschatologists, to date the events given in scripture. We can begin to appreciate that the end of the age or "the last days" of the age require observation of the celestial clock, telling us that we are at the end of the age. Where exactly the demarcation between the ages of Pisces and Aquarius is spans a transition of decades, and maybe a century. Yet we are now in that interval of time.
What comes next is Rev. 12, beginning with a description of "a great sign" in the heavens. The star-woman is a reference to the constellation Virgo, the virgin, a constellation in the 12 constellations of the zodiac. The stars and constellations of them in the zodiac are the ultimate time-keeper for humanity. In the days of mechanical watches, Elgin watches were popular, from Elgin, Illinois. The factory was walled and at one corner there was a small observatory for viewing the night sky for time-setting. The constellations depict 12 ages of about 2160 years each, determined by the earth, spinning like a top and precessing on its spin axis. To tell which age we are in, on the spring equinox before the sun comes up, whichever constellation is seen to the east identifies the age. We are currently in a transition between the age of Pisces, represented by fish, and of Aquarius, the water-bearer. In the parched Middle East, water was a symbol of life, and in the age we are now entering, it is the Messiah who brings life to humanity through his rule of "the kingdom of our Lord". As it is known today, astrology has been taken over by the Babylonian Mystery religion, the source of all extant paganism and distorter of pre-babylonian astrology, which was a witness of the stars to the message from God about the ages. With electronic watches and atomic clocks by which to set them, what sets the atomic clocks? It is still the stars.
In Rev. 12, John answers the question as posed in contemporary language (Rev. 12:17): Who are the true Christians? He broadens the language to refer to the "offspring" of the woman chased by the dragon into the wilderness, and the definition of them has two properties: they "keep the commandments of God" and they also "hold to the testimony of Jesus". For emphasis, this definition of the people of God is repeated later, in Rev. 13:12, where they are refered to as "the saints", "those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus".
The description beginning in Rev. 12 is that of the configuration of stars that dates an event, the birth of the Christ. It was not until the 20th century that someone applied sufficient rigor, aided by modern astronomical knowledge, to determine when this birth occurred. Ernest L. Martin in the 20th century was first known to have identified the timing of the event as depicted in the skies to a multi-hour period within September 11, 3 BC. This timing is consistent with all that is known from written history about when Jesus was born, which had to be, given conditions in the Middle East, between 4 BC and 2 BC. The dragon, who is identified in Rev. 12 as the Devil, attempts to suppress what the woman has produced and chases her into the wilderness. The woman must represent Yahwist Israel from whom Jesus came. The Israelite church bearing the gospel was chased into the wilderness of Europe by the Roman and Greek world order.
Most of the Christians in Rome in the first century escaped persecution of Rome by excercising the third of their three options on how to respond. These three alternatives have applied wherever a minority is persecuted by the State, whether it be first-century Christians, dissidents in the Soviet Union, or 21st-century Christians in the West. The three alternatives are 1) overthrow the current social order, by violence or popular influence (the gospel, social engineering); 2) hunker down, go underground (as some did in Rome; there is life under the surface of the earth, especially in large cities); 3) leave. Most Christians in Rome fled to the north, bringing the gospel to the barbarian tribes of Israelites. In time, Europe was Christianized - alternative # 1.
The woman - the church given birth by Israel through Jesus - flees to the wilderness for "1260 days" where she grows stronger. The historic eschatology of centuries in Europe that is now referred to as Historicist eschatology sees the biblical revelation spanning from the first advent of the Messiah and the first century when some of it was fulfilled until the "last days" at the end of the age when more of it will be fulfilled. The two popular alternative eschatologies both trace back to Spanish Jesuits trying to deflect attention during the 1500s from the Reformation teaching that the Pope was the Antichrist by placing the villain either in the past, in the first century (Preterist) or in the future at the end of the age (Futurist) but not at the time of the Reformers, who with unified voice, were convincing many that the Pope was this villain. How long was the reign of the "Holy Roman Empire" under the papacy, the last empire, represented by the feet of the statue of Nebucandnezzar's dream interpreted by Daniel and made of iron mixed with clay? The papacy first gained control of the last of the barbarian tribes under Clovis of the Mergovingian line of kings in about 538 AD (or CE if you prefer; some date it at 536 CE) when power was consolidated under the Pope. Then 1260 years later, based on Daniel's day-is-a-year scale, Napolean's General Berthier in 1798 took the Pope captive in Rome, formally ending the rule of the papacy over Europe. The papacy was identified by the Reformers and Isaac Newton with the "little horn" of Daniel, who is defeated, only to rise again later. Benjamin G. Wilkerson's church history book _Truth Triumphant: the Church in the Wilderness_ gives details on the wilderness church of Rev. 12, a history that is glossed over in leading church history books that still trace back to Vatican sources, a history that never was reformed by the Reformers. The Reformation was a good start, but as the Reformers recognized, was only a beginning which has yet to be completed. The Reformation was more accurately a Semi-Reformation.
We are now at the end of the age of Pisces. The early Christians used a fish as their symbol, and now we are at the end of the fish age and are entering the life-bringer age that will involve the reappearance of the Christ to rule during this new age. The Devil is not creative; he is imitative. His neo-pagan followers also talk about a New Age, but it does not take much reading of New Age literature to find that the pseudo-scientific irrationality and disconnection with reality in it is but an attempt to imitate pre-babylonian astrology. Chronology is at the center of the quest of eschatologists, to date the events given in scripture. We can begin to appreciate that the end of the age or "the last days" of the age require observation of the celestial clock, telling us that we are at the end of the age. Where exactly the demarcation between the ages of Pisces and Aquarius is spans a transition of decades, and maybe a century. Yet we are now in that interval of time.
