Revelation 12:14

14. Two wings of a great eagle… wilderness There seems to be a double allusion here: to Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness, and to the flight of the blessed mother of Jesus through the same wilderness to Egypt, as driven by Herod. Of the former, Jehovah said to Moses, approaching Sinai, Exodus 19:4, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.” The woman came down from her high place in heaven, but it was on Jehovah’s wings, in order to be borne to a place of security as well as humiliation. Not that she is carried by the eagle; but the eagle’s wings are put on her, and she flies with them of herself, eagle-winged.

That she might fly in regard to the flight of the woman into the wilderness we may note, 1. That it was under fear of paganism, even after the pagan dragon was overthrown. Even under the Christianized empire, therefore, there was a powerful pagan influence repressive of a pure Christianity. This arose from two sources: First, The remains of pagan principle and practice in the national Church assuming the various forms of Mariolatry, wafer-worship, saint-adoration, pope-worship, and ritual. Second, The paganism of the nations of Northern Europe, who filled the atmosphere of the world with a pagan malaria. 2. The wilderness is at once the repressed power of the Church at home and her difficulty in struggling with the pagan nations of Europe for their conversion. 3. But her flying is mentioned twice, Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14. The first is a fleeing in fear, and refers to the humble and persecuted, yet spiritually-prospering, obscurity of the Church before the pagan downfall, and in anticipation of her 1260-day period. The second is a divine flying, with God-given wings, into the wilderness, with a divinely-provided nourishment. This alludes to the missioning of Christianity, especially northward, by which she not only, with obscure perseverance, converted the tribes that settled in Italy, but spread her power through the forests of central and northern Europe. Thus she fled from the dragon in fear; she flew to the wilderness, both spiritual and literal, of Europe with hope; she was divinely sustained, and was helped to prosperity and even victory by the very pagan earth. Yet the spirit and power of paganism contrived to overlie the Church, even after these victories, and her wilderness state remained through the “dark ages.” Though thus borne on eagles’ wings, yet her home is the wilderness. For Rome is still Babylon. Even after a Christian emperor was seated on the throne, a quasi-paganism was still able to struggle for ascendency, and at court a semi-pagan Christianity but too much prevailed. The pure Church, therefore, retired like raven-fed Elijah to the mystic wilderness.

For a time, and times, and half a time That is, for a season, (or year,) two seasons, and half a season; that is, three years and a half; or (Revelation 12:6) 1260 days. This 1260-day period appears five times in the apocalypse. The origin of this use of this period seems to be found in the famine in Israel in the time of Elijah, which our Lord in Luke 4:25, and James 5:17, fix at three years and a half. But this could only be an approximation; for a famine neither begins nor ends on an exact day. And similarly, when adopted as a measurement in prophecy, the events will be found in their nature equally gradual in their commencement and termination, and the number must be viewed as simply an approximation. A similar period is adopted by Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7.

Elliott and others maintain that these five passages in the apocalypse designate the same time and train of events. But plainly two of them (Revelation 12:14-15) designate the period of the dragon’s terrene troubling of the Church, and three of them (Revelation 11:2-3; Revelation 13:5) the supremacy of the beast.

This dragon-period is the time after the firmamental overthrow of the dragon in which he oppresses the Church, Revelation 12:13; Revelation 12:17. That is, it includes the time of the power of paganism in and over the Church, after paganism had ceased to rule imperially supreme. And certainly, measuring from the downfall of paganism under the reign of Constantine, we find that an approximate 1260-year period will bring us to the Reformation. And the Reformation was the establishment of an anti-pagan Church. The Roman “beast” still sustained a paganism in his own domain, for his period of domination was yet continuing. But the reformed Church completely expelled paganism from her limits. Christianity became established beyond all danger in the Roman empire about A.D. 325; and in 1588 the defeat of the Spanish armada placed the permanence of the Reformation beyond question. Constantine published the edict of Milan, by which Christianity was freed from persecution, in 313; and 1260 years bring us to 1573, when Protestantism was in full possession of all those States that became permanently Protestant.