Revelation 12:17

17. Dragon was wroth Paganism long maintained an angry and desperate struggle for supremacy.

War with… seed Who maintained the testimony of Jesus himself over wafer-worship and Mariolatry during the beast-period.

Dusterdieck denies that the woman is symbol of the Church; maintaining that this whole scene of chapter 12 is a picture showing who are the true adversaries of Christ, namely, Satan and his hosts. The woman, he argues, cannot be the Jewish Church, for, besides her apostolic twelve stars she laps over into the Christian ages even to the time of Constantine. Nor can she be the Christian Church; for who then are the remnant of her seed? To this argument Alford seems to succumb, and accept Dusterdieck’s view, and thereby enfeebles and disconcerts his whole scheme of interpretation.

Our answer to Dusterdieck’s dilemma is, that the woman is the anti-dragon or anti-pagan Church; the remnant of her seed is the anti-bestial or anti-papal Church. The woman, therefore, inclusively represents the ancient Jewish Church, from which Christ sprung, continued into the Christian Church in all its anti-pagan history and character. While the pagan dragon hoped, in his own undisguised person, to conquer her, he fought; but when he saw defeat before him he evoked the sea-beast (chap. 13) to be his substitute, and through him to war with the remnant of her seed the opponents of the pseudo-Christian beast until he reappears in his own person, Revelation 20:1. The Church, the woman, is, in successive generations, truly her own seed. The Church of to-day is the Church’s seed, and the Church of a later day is the remnant or rest of her seed. The seed against which paganism warred through the beast were the anti-papal successors to the anti-pagan Church.

We have a striking proof that the dragon was paganism in the opinion of Constantine himself. Eusebius gives us Constantine’s words: “That dragon has been expelled from the government of the world by the good providence of the supreme God and my instrumentality.” And before the vestibule of his own palace the emperor placed a cross over his own head, and the dragon beneath, thrust down into the abyss.