Although the term “church” did not yet exist, we can speak of God’s people in the OT as the church. What is wrong with that? Revelation shows the same woman both before and after the birth of the Child.


I think Uriah Smith’s explanation is good: the woman is a symbol of the church, and the seed of the woman is the number of believers in any generation. Therefore, “the remnant of her seed” means the last generation of the church.


Part of the prophecy will be fulfilled in the future. Rev. 12 says Satan will persecute the last generation of the church, and Rev. 13 reveals how this persecution will be carried out by the beast – Satan’s representative on earth.

It the Old Testament, Israel (the OT church) is presented as a woman, so John, in Revelation, is simply carrying over the symbolism which began earlier (as in so much of Revelation).

It looks a bit revisionist to me, but if that is no problem...Hmm, interesting. Though that would exclude Uriah himself from being part of the "remnant" since his generation obviously was not the last. Using the definition you provided above, it is acctually impossible for us to know today wether it is the remnant generation or not.

Well, we could add an "s" to his definition - "the remnant of the seed means the last generations of the church," since the remnant are identified as those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.

This is kind of interesting. It really should have been just one generation, but because of unbelief, it has become generations, just like it should have been one generation that went into Canaan, instead of wandering around in the wilderness.

It's really only the last generation that fully fulfills the prophesy. When that happens, we have the visible body and the invisible body fusing into one.

I know there are some who believe that true followers of God will have to leave the SDA church to remain faithful, but I don't believe that will be the case. Of course, with all the chaos happening, it's hard to know what the "organized" church will look like, but I don't believe the church as a whole will ever apostatize so that one would need to leave it to be faithful to God.

(I'm just making some observations here. I'm not responding to your post in the sense of disagreeing or commenting on what you wrote, which I agree with. I was just using your thoughts here as a springboard.)

That would make it 4+ generations of remnant without any specific attenion by the dragon... And 4 generations of what for all the other christians? Doesnt add up to me..

And there are some who believe that true followers of God will have to join the SDA church to remain faithful, an opinion which looks more like fanciful to me.

Why do you say it was without any specific attention by the dragon? Just because there wasn't an open persecution against them? I don't think there was an open persecution to the children of God in every single generation since the beginning of the Christian church, but the dragon has always been enraged with the woman. Two main persecutions are portrayed in Rev. 12 - that of the 1260 days (v. 6) and that of the final war against the woman's offspring (v. 17). The woman and her seed, however, did not exist only during the 1260 days. In the same way, it's not imperative that the rest of the offspring exists only during the open war the dragon will wage against them.

With specific attention by the dragon I mean attention on the adventist church not equally given to other christian churches. There is scarce evidence that adventists would have more trouble than any other comparable church group. The dragon planing war against these children of the woman are 1 full 3rd of the identifying information. Not to be disregarded.

When the Sabbath becomes the issue over Sunday, then Seventh-day Adventists will be a persecuted people to the point of being put to death, which will be cut short by the 2nd Coming of Christ.