Revelation for the Head and the Heart

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Norman McNulty

P. Gerard Damsteegt

Revelation 12 and the Accuracy of God’s Prophetic Time

Precious Heavenly Father, help me to find the right words and the right concepts so that we'll be effective, not only in our mind, but also in our hearts.

This study is a result of 1 of our tours on the Great Controversy, because the more you see and read about it, the more things come alive.

And this topic, Revelation 12, and the accuracy of God's prophetic time deals specifically with giving you confidence that whatever God says in prophecy can be trusted and is solid and accurate.

Here is a quote that has stimulated me much in my life, search the vast resources of the Christian church.

It's the Revue and Herald, December 23, 1890, where it says, the infinite treasures of truth have been accumulating from age to age.

No representation could adequately impress us with the extent, the riches of these vast resources.

They are awaiting the demand of those who appreciate them.

These gems of truth are to be gathered by God's remnant people, to be given by them to the world.

But self-confidence and the obduracy of soul refuse the blessed treasure." So what is this?

A rebuke that God has revealed light, vast resources, they are rich, and they are waiting now for God's remnant people to do what?

And if people only knew the accuracy of those prophecies, they would have a totally different experience.

Well now, of course, the remnant people are questioning many of those things because we are so influenced by the world, by worldly scholarship, that we have developed an inferiority complex of the past.

Friends, let us look here at the early Christians, because my interest in church history, I generally reveal if I share this prophecy with others, Christians, I don't say, now that is it, this is it, this is it, you know, and then afterwards he said, my, you know, those Seventh-day Adventists, they have unique and strange views.

No, I connect myself with the past because those are the rich sources that God has revealed.

And so Here then, the early Christians interpreted Revelation 12, the woman there represents the church, the child represents Christ, the dragon represents the Roman Empire, pagan Roman Empire, and the rulership of the 1260 days or times and a half a time represents literal days or 3 and a half years of persecution.

And that has been held by most Christians over the centuries.

The early Christian writers, Justin Martyr, second century, Irenaeus, second century, Tertullian, third century, Victorinus, fourth century, he was the first 1 who wrote the whole commentary on the book of Revelation.

And so here you see then the understanding and the message that he was sharing.

Now let us now continue the heritage of the Christian church.

Views throughout the centuries continue to be similar until you come to the Middle Ages.

And here in the 12th century, you get then that the 12th...

The time periods there that normally were seen as 1260 literal days are now going to be interpreted in a symbolic way.

So we are now 1, 200 years after the death of Christ.

So you can see here how normally this could come to fruition over 1, 200 years, and here it talks about 1, 260.

Maybe in symbolic prophecy, Time is symbolic.

And so what happened now in the 12th century?

The application of the yearday principle to Revelation 12 by Abbot Joachim of Fiore, an abbot in southern Italy, Calabria.

And he was quite an influential individual.

He wrote extensively about prophecies, and after his death, the papacy declared all his writings heresy, heresy, because he felt that the present church, as it is in this corrupt state, will be superseded by something better.

And of course that is not the platform of the papacy.

So from Christ's birth, which was the thought of AD 1, you add 1260, so in the year 1260, he expected a new world order, A pure world order, a monastic world order, a world that is full with Christ and evangelism.

Then, when that doesn't work out, his followers interpreted, says, maybe we should take the death of Christ in 33 AD.

And so the other 33 were 1260 and they came to 1293.

Then the next phase, you know, they're going to look at something very important at the beginning.

So the next phase then could be the fall of Jerusalem, 70 AD.

So you add 70 to 1260, and you come to 1330.

You see, with prophetic interpretation, time period, you need 2 periods, 2 events, a beginning and an ending.

But it's easier to focus on the beginning and then hope that the ending will be your correct interpretation.

And this happens for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And this happens now with your chemophore in the 12th century.

So you have to come then 600 years further until you come by the view that we understand.

And why did we accept it and why still adhere to this view?

Because we had now 2 events that fit exactly into the prophetic scheme.

So What happened then during the Reformation?

Reformers then saw the 1260 years as years because the idea of Joachim has caught on, and so Wycliffe, Jehoshaphat and Jerome, Luther.

Luther, you read the prophetic faith of our fathers, and you see that many of the reformers had exactly the same understanding as we.

So when we talk about the 1260 years, we are not alone.

We said this was the view by most Protestant Christians.

So again you connect yourself to the past, to historicism, and not something new that Seventh-day Adventist developed and are really strange.

And if you have your Bible studies with those people, they say, you know, why did we not hear about it?

Why did our pastor never talk about those things?

And then you can say, yes, Protestantism has changed.

And so we are the instrument to bring them back to the Protestant reformers, to the pioneers.

And I tell you we are much closer to the Protestant reformers in the past than today the Protestant world.

See there is the bridges we are building bridges in Bible study and some dated at 1260 years from Constantine, others from Pope Leo I, Justinian, etc.

So all those things happened throughout the centuries.

And the view, its end of the 1260 years in the 16th, 17th, or 18th century.

And all it was now here from the Protestant had to do with the papacy.

Because it was clear that the monster in Revelation 12, the persecution, had to do with the papacy.

And so here we have a tremendous bridge with other people.

And so what is now the situation in the 18th century?

The French monarchy had become absolutist.

Here you see Louis XIV and those who have gone to Paris and have seen Versailles know the decency of all the mythological schemes and the immodesty that is on display in Versailles.

Clergy was closely associated with royalty, widespread immorality among the ruler classing, Abundant wealth of morality, of royalty, nobility, and clergy.

And suppression and poverty among the middle class and the lower classes.

This was the total distorted society during the 18th century.

Then, in 1755, Lisbon earthquake had a profound impact on the world.

Today we don't think about it but it was an enormous effect.

In fact, the tsunami destroyed large parts of Africa, and yet its epicenter was in Lisbon.

The next year, in 1755, the Church of England put to...proclaimed and published a book showing what happened in every European nation as a result of the earthquake.

Including North America, the Caribbean, all of this tsunami.

And as a result, the rise of deism, a rejection of the traditional biblical view of the Almighty God, the Father of the human race.

And so you get here now A whole new philosophy developing and affecting profoundly the world.

Reacting, you get a reaction against Christianity and clergy and Voltaire and Rousseau were 1 of the leading lights at the time.

The birth, then, of the French Revolution in 1798 and the fruit is of the suppression of the Reformation, a moral and political and social earthquake.

You can see it in the history of all the philosophies at the time.

Elimination of the royalty was now the goal.

The elimination of nobility, the elimination of the clergy.

So if you eliminate all the ruling classes, you have gained your goal, a total new world order.

The establishment of a new world order and now it is on atheistic principles because the Christianity of that time was the papacy.

Revelation 12 and the Accuracy of God’s Prophetic Time

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