091. Chapter VI (Revelation 12)
CHAPTER VI Of the book-prophecy, that begins at the 12th chapter.—An account of the general design of it. The state of the church, from Christ’s time until the kingdom of Christ, may be divided into two:—1. The state of the church during the first four hundred years after Christ, usually called the primitive times. 2. The state of the church during the times of Antichrist, whom Jesus Christ is to destroy with the brightness of his coming.
1. The state of the church, during those first four hundred years, may be divided into its condition until the time of Constantine, the first Christian emperor; and the state of the church from his time, under the Arian emperors, and others Christian, until the rise of Antichrist, about a hundred years after the beginning of Constantine’s reign. These were the two eminent various conditions of the church in those first four hundred years.
2. For the state of the church during the times of Antichrist, namely, the Pope, who succeeded the western emperor here in Europe,—for of the state of the church in the eastern part of the empire, especially under the Turks and Saracens, you formerly heard in the seal-prophecy, chap. 7, and therefore this book-prophecy speaks little of it, but, in a manner, only of the western church, which now indeed was made the more eminent stage, as for Antichrist, so for Christ to play his part upon;—this state of the church in the west, I say, was either—
(1.) That of the false pretended church, whereof Antichrist is and was the head; or—
(2.) The state of the true church under Antichrist, and during his time, whereof Jesus Christ is the head.
Now, answerably to this division are the ensuing chapters to be divided. The 12th chapter shews you the state of the church under the first four hundred years; and Revelation 13, 14, &c., shew the state of the church afterwards, during Antichrist’s times. These are the divisions of the state of the church from Christ’s time hitherto.
And, first, this 12th chapter shews the face of the church in these primitive times, and that under those two forementioned eminent conditions:—
First, As under heathenish Rome until Constantine’s time, when the empire turned Christian; from the 1st verse to the 13th, under the vision of a woman bringing forth a male child to rule all nations,—that is. a Christian emperor,—wherein she is opposed by a dragon, the devil, in the power of a heathenish emperor, endeavouring to devour her child. The vision and appearance of this woman is such, and so glorious, as it fits no state of the church but that pure and glorious church of the primitive times. She is a woman, weak, yet glorious, as being clothed with the sun, (the righteousness of Christ;) crowned with a crown of twelve stars, (the twelve apostles;) her head, the first part of that church, having been honoured with their preaching, and holding forth the light of their doctrine. She had the moon under her feet—she was above the world, and the rage of heathenish persecution, for ‘they loved not their lives unto the death;’ and, as a woman, all that while labouring in sore travail, under ten sore throes of persecution, yet labouring with God, day and night, in hopes and prayers in the end to bring forth and obtain Christian emperors, that should set Christ in the throne to rule with them, and throw down heathenism from the imperial throne, in which the devil ruled; the empire being all that while under the heathenish throne of Satan, and is therefore represented under a ‘dragon having seven heads and ten horns,’ which are ever in this book the character of the Roman empire. And it is now called the dragon, because Satan did openly and visibly act it. Now the throwing down the dragon from the throne, which was his heaven, and where he was worshipped as God, doth this woman in the end obtain, and prevails through the help of Michael (namely, Jesus Christ) and his angels, (the apostles and preachers of the gospel.) And then, secondly, the state of the true church, when the Roman world was now turned Christian, for the first hundred years after Constantine; which church was also persecuted by Arian emperors, though Christians, and was like to have been ruined by the multitude of carnal professors; insomuch as she is presented as ‘hasting to fly into a wilderness,’—that is, into a hidden, retired condition,—and in her flight, hath a flood of Arian persecution sent after her, to drown her, but that the earth, the Goths and Vandals, whom you heard of under the first trumpet, came in accidentally, by God’s providence, and helped her, by breaking the Arian faction; which is the ‘swallowing up the flood.’ The Arians, though they professed Christ, yet they denied him to be God; into which heresy the whole empire fell, and persecuted the church for professing the contrary, as much as ever the heathen emperors had done. And this state of the church you have described from the 13th verse to the end of the 12th chapter.