If we compare Dan. 7:25; 12:7, with Rev. 11:2,3,9,12, and 12:6,14, we will find that these prophecies measure the same length of time. In symbolic language, a “time” is composed of twelve months, of thirty years each (a day symbolizes a year). A symbolic year is 360 literal years, and 3½ of these years, or 3½ times 360 is 1260. Also 42 months multiplied by 30 days to a month is 1260 symbolic years. There is abundant proof that this is the way God intended us to calculate symbolic time.
For a long time God’s Word, the two witnesses of the Old and New Testament, was lightly esteemed. The Bible was chained to the altar and was in the sackcloth of dead languages. Rev. 11:3 People were forbidden to read the Bible under penalty of death. God’s wonderful truths of justification by faith and a ransom for all were dead.
The flight of the true children into the wilderness, from the face of the false church during 1260 years is dated from 539 A.D. to 1799 A.D. During this period, the church of Rome tortured and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of true Christians.
Revelation 11:8-11, “And their dead bodies (the Old and New Testaments) shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and a half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them (during the French Revolution)… And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.”
In 1797, Napoleon ordered General Victor to invade the Papal States, and the army of the Pope was scattered. The Pope begged for mercy. A provisional treaty was established which required the Pope to cede a part of his papal territories and to pay over ten million dollars to France in gold and silver, and other valuables like statuary, paintings, etc. This treaty was concluded on February 19, 1797.
On February 15, 1798, the French general, Berthier, entered Rome, organized there a Republic, and five days later carried the pope a prisoner to France. (This pope died imprisoned the following year.) From that time until the present, Papal dominion over the kingdoms of earth has been merely a shadow of its former self.
Thus the Roman church’s persecuting, civil power was ended. God’s Two Witnesses (the Old and New Testaments), which had so long been bound, and under the sackcloth of dead languages. Rev. 11:3 gradually ascended to heaven, the place of honor and power, symbolically represented in Revelation 11:3-12.
In the early to mid-1800s, hundreds of thousands of Bibles were published and Bible societies flourished. Today, over 6 billion Bibles are in print. People may study and read God’s holy word without fear.
