V THE OF DIVINE (Chapter 14) The fact necessary to remember and observe in perusing the book of Revelation is that the entire Revelation was a visional pageantry of the oppressions of the church by imperial heathen persecuting powers during the time of the then existing powers and the life of the then existing churches. The verbs employed in its terminology are such as was and saw, but that is characteristic of both visional and prophetic expression. An exact example is found in Isaiah 9:2 : “ The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them the light hath shined.” This prophetic passage is quoted by the Lord in Matthew 4:16, as being fulfilled by his coming into the world, yet it was spoken seven hundred years before his earthly advent. This is so throughout the book of Revelation; it was composed a decade or more prior to the destruction of Jerusalem; before several other epistles of the New Testament were written; and was a description of the events of the ten emperor period from Nero to Diocletian, yet its language was largely in past and present tenses, as though the events were current. The fourteenth chapter appears to be an intentional prolepsis--the dating of events out of chronological order --in that the scenes of judgment indicated the end of conflict and tribulation, whereas the following chapter reverted to the war against the church in accentuated fury. Thus the entire fourteenth chapter was of a proleptic character. The development in order of the progressive descriptions of successive events was abandoned for the in-between scenes of the outcome in the victory of the saints and of judgment on the persecuting powers. The chapter’ s imagery is that of the defeat of the three great foes of the church --the dragon, the sea-beast and the land-beast; followed by scenes of victory for the woman (the church), and of judgment on her foes.