Saturday, October 26, 2019

Alexander Fraser (1802) on Revelation 12 and the Church in the Wilderness


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)