The meaning lies open on the face. Israel gave birth to the man Jesus, who foiled all the attacks of Satan and ascended to heaven. The old prophetic characteristic of connecting events far apart without reference to intervening time is marked here. The long interval between the break-up of the Jew nation and its taking shape again as a nation, which has lasted nineteen hundred years roughly, comes between the last word of verse five and the first word of verse six. The prophetic writing takes no reckoning of Israel, except as a nation. The woman fleeing into the wilderness is Israel organized again as a nation suffering persecution. She is so persecuted for twelve hundred and sixty days, but divinely protected and preserved. Such is the first act of the drama pictured here.[146] Then we are told _why_ the woman flees, that is, the explanation of this special persecution of the Jew this time.[147] Satan has had his headquarters somewhere in the heavens, below God's throne, but above the earth. Now, after a conflict, he is cast out of heaven, down to the earth. Here is a third event that comes approximately at the beginning of the tribulation time, Satan is cast down to the earth. The Holy Spirit is withdrawn from the Church up to heaven, so removing the restraint upon evil. Satan is cast out of heaven and comes down to earth. Thus there is a double intensifying of evil on the earth, the withdrawal of restraint, and the presence of the evil one himself. And as the witness of the Holy Spirit is withdrawn the special witness of the two men in Jerusalem begins. The defeat of Satan in this heavenly conflict draws out a burst of praise from the upper hosts. It is because of the great victory of our Lord Jesus in His death that this victory is gotten. They overcome because of the blood of the Lamb, _and_ the word of their testimony, _and_ they loved not their lives unto death,--a threefold cord that could never, and can never, be broken or successfully resisted. This explains the special persecution at this time of the reshaped Jewish nation. It is the outburst of the rage of the freshly defeated Satan. But the Jew is protected. The armies that would swallow the Jew up are swallowed up by the great earthquake that closes the tribulation time. The length of this persecution is put in two different ways, twelve hundred and sixty days, and "time, times, and half a time." This latter phrase seems to be an old Oriental or Hebrew way of saying a year, two years, and half a year. The same length of time is expressed in yet another way in the eleventh chapter, forty and two months. The time is thus put in three different ways, that we may know surely that it means just plain three and a half years of our common time. It is significant that the dragon makes war with "the rest" of the woman's seed. This can only mean the Church, which of course was born in the Jewish nation. This is the first run of events in this view.[148]