A Treatise on the Millennium Author:George Bush Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EXPLICATION OF THK SYMBOL OF THE DRAGON The Binding of Satan or the Dragon the main feature of the anticipated Millennium—Necessary to determi... more »ne the Import of this Symbolical Action—This cannot be done without first filing the import of the Dragon himself as a Symbol— With this view the Vision of the Dragon, Rev. xii., minutely considered—The sun-clad and star-crowned Woman explained— The Dragon shown to be a symbol of Paganism— The War between Michael and the Dragon explained—The remaining Circumstances of the Vision explained—Objections answered—Reflections. The grand characteristic of the Millennium described by John is the binding of Satan or the Dragon. " And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the Dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years." Now as the whole book of the Apocalypse is marked by a sustained unity of character, imparting its revelations not in literal but in figurative language, this is to be regarded as a symbolical action, forming a part of the tissue of visionary scenery running through the book, every portion of which is to be interpreted in consistency with the structure of the whole. In this sense, that may be said with peculiar propriety of the Revela- tion of John which is elsewhere said of the whole Scriptures, that no prophecy is of any private interpretation ; i. e. no prophecy is of an isolated interpretation ; but is to be regarded as a constituent portion of a general system of prophecy, and therefore unsusceptible of a just and genuine interpretation when viewed apart from its peculiar relations and dependencies. If, then, we would establish the exposition of the scriptural doctrine of the...« less