Section 21: "The Great Sign In The Heavens"
The Word Of God Vs. The Lady Of Fatima's Words
Section 21: "The Great Sign In The Heavens"
The Word Of God Vs. The Lady Of Fatima's Words
The Holy Spirit included in scripture quite a detailed chronology of events that would take place in the time of the end, and He did this for the sake of the elect. He used Old Testament writers as well as Christian writers of the New Testament, each of whom gives more facts concerning the last days. The prophecies of each book lines up with, and verify or add to, the prophecies of others. Using all of these advance notices, the Church is able to form a recognizable picture of the time of the end, and use this picture as a frame of reference in discerning the source of supernatural signs or "messages from heaven" concerning the end. This is the same pattern God used when prophesying the birth of Jesus. Those who awaited His coming, and recognized that this Jesus fulfilled the detailed prophecies, accepted Him as their Messiah and were saved. Those who rejected Him were also awaiting the Messiah, but they made a wrong interpretation of the prophetic Scriptures, based on their preconceived notion that He was coming to form a temporal earthly kingdom. Jesus of Nazareth didn't fit this mold; therefore He was rejected as a false Messiah and put to death.
The same danger to our spiritual lives exists today. We all await Jesus' second coming, but unless we are familiar enough with the details to recognize Him and the events which precede Him, we in the Church can be deceived. It's especially important to rid ourselves of preconceived opinions that are not based on Scripture, because counterfeits will appeal to these very notions. Those who believe that "the mother always precedes the son," or expect Mary to triumph over the serpent, are vulnerable to any number of deceitful appearances and messages.
Before Jesus went to the cross, His disciples asked Him,"what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?" (Matthew 24:3, RSV). In answer, Jesus took great care to describe first the birth pangs, and then what Revelation 7 calls "The Great Tribulation." His description of this time period indicates its ultimate severity:
"For then there shall be great tribulation - affliction, distress and oppression - such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now; no., and never will be [again]" (Matthew 24:21, AMP).
The birth pangs and the Great Tribulation will include famines, pestilence, natural disasters, hatred of Christians and Jews in "all the nations," the seven year reign of antichrist, enforced acceptance of the mark of the beast, and finally the great battle of Armageddon. But there's no Scriptural hint of a sign in the sky before or during this period. Then Jesus describes the events that follow this time:
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not shed her light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken" (Matthew 24:29, AMP; see also Revelation 6:12-17).
Up to this point, there's still no mention of a "sign in the sky." Robert Gundry, author of "The Church And The Tribulation," comments on the timing of the breaking open of the sixth seal of Revelation 6:12:
". . . . the wrath is at the beginning of its breaking forth (ingressive aorist) or on the verge of doing so (dramatic aorist) - [It] 'has just arrived' or 'is here.' The celestial phenomena under the sixth seal are those which Jesus said would occur immediately after the tribulation and just prior to His return (Mt. 24:29,30). If, then, the sixth seal brings us to A point of time between the tribulation and the second coming, the seventh seal must deal with the second coming itself"(1).
In Matthew 24:30, Jesus finally speaks of a sign in the sky, which directly follows the great cosmic shaking:
"Then the sign of the Son of man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and beat their breasts and lament in anguish, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory - in brilliancy and splendor" (Matthew 24:30, AMP).
The sign is Jesus Himself, signifying by His return that the end of the age has come. W. E. Vine defines the Greek word for "sign":
"Semeion, a sign, a mark, indication, token, is used . . . of tokens portending future events, e.g. Matt. 24:30, where 'the sign of the Son of Man is Himself the sign of what He is about to do"(2).
It is obvious that the "great sign in the sky" in 1917 was not placed in the end-time chronology inspired by the Holy Spirit. Yet Jesus plainly stated all the things that would take place before the sign of the Son of Man (Jesus Himself) appears in the sky. According to the Scriptural timing, Jesus' coming is the sign that this age has come to an end and a new age is beginning.
Although Mary has been proclaimed as the sign which precedes the coming of the son, we see that this cannot be so. Therefore, it appears that she has nothing to do with the days leading up to Christ's second coming.
Because the Marian interpretations of the second coming of Christ revolve around the Woman of the Apocalypse, it would be helpful to kn ow the intended identity of this woman. Referring to the "woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with twelve stars on her head for a crown," the study notes of the Catholic Jerusalem Bible read, in part:
"The woman is essentially an image of Israel as the mother of the messianic saviour, cf. Mi 4:9-10; Is. 66:7. . . . The woman's pain in travail may recall the curse of Eve, whose offspring would ultimately wound the serpent, so that Israel is seen as representing all humanity. It does not seem plausible that John had Mary in mind or intended any allusion to the physical birth of the Messiah in the incarnation"(3).
Because of the preponderance of Marian imagery based on the woman of Revelation 12, one would expect to find a seed of this interpretation in early Church writings, but there is none. The task force of New Testament scholars who produced "Mary in the New Testament" reported:
". . . . A primary objection [to the suggestion of a reference to Mary] is that early Church writers did not interpret Revelation 12 in a mariological sense; indeed our first known mariological interpretation dates to the fourth century"(4).
The footnote to this statement cites the fourth century writers Epiphanius and Andrew of Crete, who "state that some individuals (unnamed) were identifying the woman with Mary." It continues:
". . . . The first known writers to make this identification were Oecumenius and Pseudo-Epiphanius (sixth century), and these were followed by Ambrosius Autpertus (died 784) and Alcuin (died 804). It was by no means the majority opinion. . . . A. Trabucco (1957) investigated the history of Roman Catholic interpretation from 1563 to 1954 and found only two interpreters who equated the woman exclusively with Mary"(5).
So a study of the interpretation of the Woman of the Apocalypse as Mary brings out the historical fact that this concept has never been widely accepted; the widespread modern belief seems to be the result of Marian writers using each other's works as sources. These zealous authors often misapply "feminine" scriptures to Mary(6), and in the process write themselves into a bind. For instance, those who stretched the concept of Mary's virginity to include a painless delivery of the Christ Child caused themselves some pain in their attempt to explain the birthing travail of the "Marian" Woman of the Apocalypse. Another set of conflicting beliefs consists of the tradition that Mary will "crush the head of the serpent" (Genesis 3:15), and the concept of the Woman fleeing from the serpent (Revelation 12). In contrast to Mary's saving the earth from Satan, the earth itself saves the Woman of the Apocalypse. Other problems with the Marian interpretation of the Woman are reviewed by John J. Pilch in his book, "What Are They Saying About The Book Of Revelation?":
"Examining the contextual details of Revelation 12 suggests they are ill-suited to identifying the woman as Mary. The word describing the pains of childbirth (v. 2) is used nowhere else with such a meaning, but does describe the kinds of anguish and suffering believed to accompany the coming birth of the messianic era (Is. 25:17; 66:7-14). Nothing in the life of Mary indicates that she was the object of persecution, driven into the desert after the birth of her child (though imaginative interpretation would probably point to the flight to Egypt). Finally, Mary was not persecuted through her other children (v. 17). The child, in John, is clearly Christ-Jesus, but the woman is more likely the community of believers from which he originated [Israel]"(7).
(1) Robert H. Gundry, "The Church And The Tribulation," CEP ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977), p. 76.
(2) An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words with their Precise Meanings for English Readers, Vol. IV., s.v. "Sign" (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940), pp. 29-30).
(3) The Jerusalem Bible (Doubleday), Rev. 12:1, footnote.
(4) Raymond E. Brown, Karl P. Donfried, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and John Reumann, eds., "Mary in the New Testament: A Collaborative Assessment by Protestant and Roman Catholic Scholars," (Philadelphia: Fortress Press and N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 235.
(5) Ibid., footnote 512, citing J. Michl, "Deutung," 305-306.
(6) For example, the "bride" in Song of Songs and the feminine designations for "Wisdom" in the book of Wisdom.
(7) John J. Pilch, "What Are They Saying About the Book of Revelation?," (N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 80.
