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Sunday, 15 December 2013

Revelation "symbolic, rather than personal or historical"


Much is written about ‘the woman of the ‘Apocalypse.’  (Chapter 12)  Wikipedia has much on the Roman Catholic teaching that the woman is the Virgin Mary.

Wikipedia also gives the definition in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 561:22-25): “The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man, the spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea.”

Science and Health says further: “As Elias presented the idea of the fatherhood of God, which Jesus afterwards manifested, so the Revelator completed this figure with woman, typifying the spiritual idea of God’s motherhood” (p. 562:3-7).

In Mrs. Eddy’s Message to The Mother Church for 1900 we find, “The Revelation of St. John in the apostolic age is symbolic, rather than personal or historical” (p. 12:27-28).

How important this twelfth chapter of Revelation is!  I think I can comprehend to a small degree what Mrs. Eddy says: “The twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse typifies the divine method of warfare in Science, and the glorious results of this warfare.  The following chapters depict the fatal effects of trying to meet error with error.  The narrative follows the order used in Genesis. In Genesis, first the true method of creation is set forth and then the false.  Here, also, the Revelator first exhibits the true warfare and then the false” (p. 568:5).

 

Joyce Voysey

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