WRONGLY DIVIDING by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1889

WRONGLY DIVIDING.

By Editor

REV. L. C. ROGERS, in the Sabbath Recorder of December 13, on the woman as the symbol of the Church (see Revelation 12), says:—

“Her child is to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and is caught up to God and to his throne; but the church is persecuted by the dragon, until, in the professed conversion of Constantine, the Roman emperor, in the fourth century, the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood of pagan persecution; then the wrath of the dragon made war upon the remnant of the seed, the faithful few, who rejected the union of Church and State, and refused to become Papists. Rev. 12:15-17. Chapter thirteen marks the rise of Pagan and Papal Rome, and their concurrent prevalence, under the symbol of a beast with seven heads and ten horns.”

But Mr. R. takes no account of the 1260 days which intervene between the time of the child being caught up to God and the time when the earth opened her mouth. In fact, the 1260 days or years cover the period of persecution. But this was not by the Pagans, but by the Papists. Or does Mr. R. make the days literal? If so, when do they apply? And what about the remnant persecuted after the 1260 days? The fact is, the prophecy relates not to the beginning of the Christian dispensation, but to the entire career of the church. If this fact were recognized, that part of the word of truth could better be “rightly divided.”