Some Latter-day
Saints (e.g., Terryl Givens) have argued that Joseph’s understanding of the
apostasy, restoration, and language of the Church coming out of the wilderness
(D&C 5:14; cf. Rev 12) was influenced, at least in part, by Alexander Fraser’s
1802 book, A Key to the Prophecies of the
Old and New Testaments. Here are some excerpts from the book when it
addresses Rev 12 that LDS reader should find interesting:
Of the Woman Hid in the Wilderness
A third view of Christ’s faithful followers
is given us in Rev. xii.6. and 14. “And the woman fled into the wilderness,
where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a
thousand two hundred and threescore days.”—“And to the woman were given two
wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place;
where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of
the serpent.”
The woman represents the Church of Christ,
considered as a community or collective body; as the seed of the woman
represents the individual members of that community. Her flight to the
wilderness is an allusion to the departure of Israel out of Egypt. When they
were delivered from the oppression of Pharaoh, called the great dragon, they
were led into the wilderness, of which God says, “I have carried thee as on
eagles wings, to myself.” So the church, after her deliverance from the
persecutions of the Pagan Raman empire, called the red dragon, set out for the
wilderness, that is, as the visible church declined from the doctrines and
precepts of Christianity, the true church of Christ gradually retired from the
view of men, till at length, when the visible church had avowedly submitted to
the government of Antichrist, the true church of Christ, considered as a
community, wholly disappeared. She remains in that state 1260 days, and these
are the same in which the witnesses prophecy, and the beast reigns . . . The
Christian church was formed not only a pure but a spiritual society, set free
from those types and shadows which veiled the truth in the Jewish church,
expressly told, “That God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth.” Yet notwithstanding these advantages, the spirit
of religion began to decline, from an idolatrous veneration for the outward
ordinances, which were only the vehicles of it. In process of time, there were
multiplied by ceremonies of human invention, till at length they formed that
mass of impieties, puerilities, and absurdities which constitutes the Popish
worship; a mass which may be fitly compared to an overgrown body, dressed out
with ornaments of human invention, without one spark of the vital spirit.
Seeing then how prone mankind have been in every age to mistake the body for
the spirit of religion, withdrawing the body or the ordinances of religion for
a season, must appear to mean worthy of divine wisdom to counteract the
disorder. Another advantage refuting from the state of the church in the
wilderness is, that “she is safe from the face of the serpent.” The grand
adversary represented by the serpent, first directed his fury against the
progress of the gospel, left Christianity should be spread in the world, and
exerted for this end the force of the civil and military government, by his deputies
the Pagan Roman Emperors . . . The church at this period shall be united in the
use of the government and ordinances, in doctrine and disciple, so as to
constitute one body. In proof of this assertion, observe, such union actually
subsisted betwixt the several parts of the primitive church, through extensively
diffused over the earth. In consequence of this union, the church is
represented by the metaphor of a woman, Rev. xii. 1. During the reign of
Antichrist, this woman is “hid in the wilderness;” that is, the church as a community
is invisible in the world. But the period of her state in the wilderness, being
limited to 1260 years, this implies, that at the close of that period she shall
again be visible as a community, consequently united in the use of the same
government and ordinances. (Alexander Fraser, A Key to the Prophecies of the Old and New Testaments, Which are Not
Yet Accomplished: Containing, I. Rules For their Arrangement. II. Observations
On their Dates. III. A General View of the Events Foretold in Them [Philadelphia:
D. Hogan, 1802], 156-57, 159-60, 423-24)
