Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Martin L. Braden (LDS) On Revelation 12

  

Revelations [sic] 12:6, 14

 

6 And the woman (the true Church and Bride) 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 )JST said Years instead of Days)

 

14 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 feeling into the wilderness is symbolic of the ancient Church being driven into the wilderness by Satan, which began the Great Apostasy, where the authority of the priesthood was taken from the earth following the deaths of Jesus Christ and His apostles. The religious leaders serving the seven churches or congregations established at the time of Paul and the early apostles, also died off and were replaced over-and-over again with flawed men, leading without a ‘prophet head’ receiving revelation for the entire Church. In time the result was men, who were without direct authority and revelation, calling other men to lead the Church, so that the doctrine Jesus taught soon became diluted and corrupted as the years went by Apostasy soon gave way to the false doctrine that there was no longer a need for revelation not for prophets or apostles to lead the Church, which doctrine took away the Church’s foundational rock upon which Christ built His Church. No longer was the Church firmly fixed on ‘Jesus and His rock of revelation’ and the leadership Jesus Christ Himself had established. (Martin L. Braden, An Atheist’s Delusion: A Latter-day Saint’s Perspective on Richard Dawkins’ Anti-Theist/Anti-Christ Book the God Delusion [MLB Publications, 2022], 191)