"The woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place that had been prepared of the Deity - verse 6: And to the woman were given the two wings of the Great Eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness into her place" - verse 14.

The fourteenth verse, in certain particulars, is explanatory of the sixth. In this it is said that "the woman fled;" but nothing is hinted about "the two wings of the great eagle." The sixth verse testifies that "she fled into the wilderness," in which wilderness a place hath been prepared for her of the Deity. But where was this wilderness to be found? The Roman habitable was well stocked with wildernesses. Was it simply an uninhabited solitude, a desert waste? or did the word eremon, indicate her isolation and exclusion from the ecclesiastical pale recognized by the powers that be? She fled into the wilderness-state, in which she did not stand in the presence of the Serpent. The Serpent was in the heaven, from the sunshine and splendors of which she was caused to fly. It was the woman Jezebel that stood before the Serpent, and gloried in his embrace. The Serpent had beguiled her, and enthroned her in the heaven; but those of her party, who were proof against his enticements and subtitles, he banished from his imperial presence, that they might dwell alone in the solitude of social isolation.

But the woman fugitive was not an abstraction, of a mere idea. She was a multitude of dissidents from the new and established order of things. Like Israel after the flesh, they were to dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations; still, like Israel, they required some place, or country, in which to dwell. Where did the woman dwell in her wilderness-state? This question is answered in the fourteenth verse in the words, "The two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman." These were the sections of the habitable Divinely appointed for her, that there she might be sustained in her wilderness-state.

But, what was represented by this great bird of pray? The original is quite emphatic - ho aetos ho megas, the Eagle which is the great one. There was but one eagle contemporary with the woman's flight that could be styled emphatically, ho megas, the large, spacious, ample one. This was the Roman territorial jurisdiction. Rome was the eagle's head; Italy, its body; and the Roman Africa and the regions of the Alps, Pyrennees, Britain, Bulgaria, Thrace, Asia Minor, and Armenia its wings or extremities. The eagle is the well-known symbol of the Roman Power. Moses alludes to this power in connection  with the eagle in Deut. 28:49,50,63,64, as, "Yahweh shall bring a nation against thee from far ,from the end of the earth, which as (kaasher) the eagle shall fly; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance.. . and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates. .. and ye shall be plucked from off thy land whither thou goest to possess it; and Yahweh shall scatter thee among all peoples." This cannot refer to the Eagle of Nineveh and Babylon; because these eagle powers did not come "from the end of the earth" against Israel; and because they understood the tongue spoken by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. "The end", not ends "of the earth" in regard to Palestine, was Chittim, or Italy; whose ships came against Asshur, when Antiochus, king of Assyria, invaded Egypt (Dan. 11:30). Israel did not understand the tongue of Chittim, which is known as that of the Roman Eagle, the Latin, between which and the Hebrew there is no family likeness. This eagle nation was to come against them as a bird of prey to devour their body-politic, and to scatter them among all peoples, because they did not fear ~that glorious and fearful name, YAHWEH ELOHIM." This was accomplished by the Roman legions under Titus, A.D. 70; predictive of which, YAHWEH ELOHIM, in fleshly manifestation, said, "wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the Eagles be gathered together" (Matt.24:38).

But, in relation to the woman's flight into the wilderness, the two wings of the great Roman Eagle, spreading along its northeastern and southwestern regions, were not for destruction, but that she might find safety and protection in obscurity; upon the principle of being "out of the Serpent's sight" (apo prosopon) she might be out of his mind also. The two wings" is regarded by some as a more correct reading than .two wings". They say that it reads thus in certain manuscripts - hai duo pteruges. They are, no doubt, right. Daniel's leopard had four wings; but there is nothing in symbolic prophecy to indicate that the great Roman Eagle had more than two. The mountains, glens, fastnesses. and more open valleys of these wings of the empire, would be but little cared for, or regarded, by the priests of the Catholic Church, who would crowd to those centers whence wealth and honors were distributed. The more interior locality of the eighteen hundred temples, endowed by the munificence of the emperor, would be the arena upon which they would, as Arians and Trinitarians, Iconoclasts and image-worshippers, disputatiously exhaust their zeal for the ensuing five hundred years. The violence of these all-absorbing disputes within the pale of the Serpent's communion, would so occupy him that he would have but little time or ability to hunt for "heretics" and "chismatics" in the two wings of his dominion. In this way was Providentially "prepared a p/ace," or country, for dissenters and nonconformists of whatever names their enemy, the Seed of the Serpent in church and state, might, in the plenitude of ignorance and malice, think proper to call them. It is not to be supposed, however, that in all sections of the Eagle's Wings they would be always nourished in peace and safety. The woman's seed could not evade the common lot of mankind, which is born to trouble. They are an afflicted people, clothed in sackcloth, until the end of their appointed time, when they will be invested with white raiment. But till then, affliction is more or less the rod of their condition; and necessarily so. for 'whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth;" that, by this wholesome, but unjoyous, discipline they who are exercised by it, now partaking of the Divine holiness, may hereafter reap the peaceable fruit of righteousness - Heb. 12:6; Apoc 11:1-3.