The Woman & the Dragon

The possibility

The Timing, as a Test of the Theory

Revelation gives numbers. A reading that matches events to chapter 13 has to say how they fit, and if it cannot, it fails.

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Where this page standsThis page sets no date and computes none. It names no one as the final Antichrist. Its reading of the timing is Fr. John's proposal, graded possible, offered for testing and not as the Church's teaching. “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36).

Why timing is the hardest test

A reading of Revelation can sound convincing while it stays general. Timing is where it meets the text most exactly. Revelation gives numbers, and a reading that matches events to chapter 13 must say how they fit. If it cannot, it fails; if it fits them only by bending them, it is weaker for that.

So this page tests the proposal in three steps: first the Church's reading of the numbers, which stands on its own; then the main ways other Christians fit them to a literal reading; then Fr. John's conditional reading, graded possible, with the questions it leaves open.

The numbers

Three figures name the same span. “A time, two times, and half a time” (Daniel 7:25; 12:7), which Revelation gives as “a year, two years, and a half-year” (Revelation 12:14). Forty-two months: the beast “was given authority to act for forty-two months” (Revelation 13:5; compare 11:2). And 1,260 days, during which the woman is “taken care of” (Revelation 12:6; compare 11:3).

Daniel adds two longer counts: “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the desolating abomination is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days. Blessed are they who have patience and persevere for the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days” (Daniel 12:11–12). Behind them stands the “week” of years of Daniel 9:27: “For one week he shall make a firm covenant with the many,” and “Half the week he shall abolish sacrifice and offering.”

How the Church reads them

A broken seven. Three and a half is half of seven, the number of fullness. The NABRE note on Daniel 7:25 says, “As seven is the Jewish ‘perfect’ number, half of it signifies great imperfection.” The time of evil is real, but never complete.

A short, limited trial. The Fathers commonly took the three and a half years as the Antichrist's reign and stressed its shortness. St. Augustine wrote that anyone reading Daniel, “even half asleep, cannot fail to see that the kingdom of Antichrist shall fiercely, though for a short time, assail the Church before the last judgment of God shall introduce the eternal reign of the saints” (City of God 20.23). St. Jerome held that the Antichrist “is going to persecute the saints for three and a half years,” and of the extra forty-five days said only that the reason “rests in the knowledge of God” (Commentary on Daniel).

Numbers that cannot be dated. The NABRE note on Daniel 12:11–12 says the numbers “represent attempts to calculate the precise duration of the three and a half years,” and that “the contradictory numbers were allowed to stand in the text; this is a reminder that it is not possible to calculate a precise date for God's judgment; cf. Mk 13:32.” Scripture itself keeps the reader from making a calendar.

The Church's caution. “Since the Ascension Christ's coming in glory has been imminent, even though ‘it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority’” (CCC 673). Before he comes, the Church “must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers” (CCC 675).

What the Church has not taught. Catholic tradition has never taught a literal seven-year tribulation. That framework comes mainly from dispensational premillennialism, held by many devout Evangelicals, which reads the last week of Daniel 9:27 as a future seven years, separated from the first sixty-nine weeks by the whole Church age. Those who hold it take Scripture seriously and long for the Lord's return. But the gap, the timetable and the hope of being taken out before the trial are not Catholic teaching; the Church expects to pass through the trial (CCC 675) and rejects even “modified forms” of an earthly kingdom before the end (CCC 676). St. Irenaeus did join Daniel's half-week to the Antichrist's reign (“Now three years and six months constitute the half-week,” Against Heresies 5.25.4), but built no schedule on it.

Three ways to fit the numbers to a literal reading

Suppose, for the test, that the forty-two months are a literal span in one sequence.

A. The forty-two months follow the healing. Chapter 13 reads in order: the beast rises (Revelation 13:1–2); one head “seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed” (13:3); the world worships (13:4); then come the forty-two months (13:5). Strength: it follows the text most simply. Weakness: it leaves the rising and the wound unmeasured, and sets Revelation apart from Daniel's week, though Daniel is plainly behind it.

B. A seven-year frame broken by the wound. The first half of Daniel's week runs before the wound, the second half after, and the forty-two months are the second half. Strength: it joins Daniel 9:27 and Revelation 13 closely, with the wound at mid-week, where Daniel puts the end of sacrifice. Weakness: it rests on a framework the Church has not taught, and Revelation never mentions a first half.

C. Symbolic. The forty-two months are the broken seven: the Church's time of trial, measured and limited by God. Strength: it is closest to the Church's reading and cannot become a date. Weakness, for a tester: it neither confirms nor refutes the proposal.

Fr. John holds C as the Church's reading, in which every Catholic may rest. His proposal is offered only on the condition that the numbers are also meant literally.

Fr. John's proposal (graded: possible)

Fr. John proposes, as possible, that the beast's seventh head is the forty-fifth American presidency and its eighth the forty-seventh. This section tests that proposal. It does not affirm that anyone is the final Antichrist, and Fr. John sets no date.

Where the count ends. Fr. John agrees with Arminjon that the Antichrist, being a man, has a beginning: he rises and gains power before his forty-two months begin (The End of the Present World, pp. 50–51). The forty-two months are counted back from his end. They are the last forty-two months before he is destroyed, when “the beast was caught” with the false prophet and both were thrown alive into the fiery pool (Revelation 19:20).

If the numbers are literal, the sequence would run:

  1. The first half of Daniel's week, about which Revelation may say nothing, corresponds to the first part of the first term, the seventh head.
  2. The beast rises and receives power. The first part of the first term corresponds to Revelation 13:1–2: “the dragon gave its own power and throne, along with great authority.”
  3. The forty-two months begin partway through that term, at the middle of the week.
  4. The mortal wound is the end of the first term (Revelation 13:3).
  5. A pause follows while the wound heals; the head is out of power and the count stops.
  6. The eighth head completes the count. The second term is the beast that “is an eighth king, but really belongs to the seven and is headed for destruction” (Revelation 17:11), and in it the forty-two months are completed.

Two possible ways the count could run. Fr. John keeps both, each graded possible; both end with the beast's destruction (Revelation 19:20).

Seen, unfolding, and not yet named

Revelation itself shows this way of testing. “Here is a clue for one who has wisdom. The seven heads represent seven hills upon which the woman sits. They also represent seven kings: five have already fallen, one still lives, and the last has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain only a short while” (Revelation 17:9–10). For St. John the Evangelist, who received this vision on the island of Patmos (Revelation 1:9), five kings were history, already seen. One was living, unfolding in his own day. The last had not yet come, and John gives him no name and no date. This page keeps the same order. What has already happened is named and dated, so that it can be tested against history. What is unfolding is watched on the scorecard. What is still to come is left, as John left it, without a name or a date, in God's hands.

The years, as a test (graded: possible). If Daniel's week is meant literally, and if the first way of counting is right, its steps fall on events that have already happened. The week would begin with the first inauguration (January 2017). The forty-two months would begin in the last half-year of that term (2020). The wound would be the loss of office (January 2021), and the healing the re-election (November 2024) and the return to power (January 2025). These years are given because a reading of history must be tested against history. Like everything on this page, they are graded possible. This page counts backward to test, never forward to predict. It does not say when the forty-two months would end, and it asks readers not to work it out: “It is not for you to know the times or seasons” (Acts 1:7). Whatever the count, the date that matters most is the one each of us will face: the day we are asked to accept the mark or refuse it.

If the literal numbers fit the sequence without bending, the theory survives one hard check; if not, it is weakened. It is graded possible because it depends on a literal reading the Church does not require, a seven-year frame she does not teach, and a pause the text does not mention.

Daniel 12:11 and its starting point

Daniel counts “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the desolating abomination is set up.” What are these?

The daily sacrifice. The one sacrifice of Christ is made present in the Mass (CCC 1367). Fr. John reads its abolition as the suppression of the Mass, and on when it ends he follows Fr. Charles Arminjon. Arminjon holds that the Antichrist will win the world only gradually, and that once he “has obtained universal dominion,” “only then will the unbloody Sacrifice of the Altar cease to be celebrated”; until then, “the Sacrifice of the Mass will continue to subsist” (The End of the Present World, p. 51). The suspension of public Masses during the pandemic was, in Fr. John's view, a foreshadowing, a taste of such a suppression, not its fulfillment. It has not happened: the Mass is offered every day across the world.

The desolating abomination. The main readings:

Fr. John's reading. He proposes that the abomination is the mark of the beast on each person who accepts it. The second beast forced all “to be given a stamped image on their right hands or their foreheads, so that no one could buy or sell except one who had the stamped image of the beast's name” (Revelation 13:16–17). “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The mark would be the desecration of that temple. See his reflection The Temple of His Body.

With St. Jerome. In reading the holy place spiritually, Fr. John stands closest to St. Jerome. Commenting on Matthew 24:15, Jerome first gives three literal readings: the Antichrist, the statue of Caesar that Pilate set up in the Temple, and the statue of Hadrian on the site. He then adds that “we may also understand by the abomination of desolation, any bad doctrine,” and that when it gets a standing “in the Holy Place, that is, in the Church,” pretending to be God's revealed truth, we should flee (Commentary on Matthew, Book IV, in the English of the Roman Breviary). Jerome places the abomination in the Church and in false doctrine; Fr. John places it in each person, in the mark.

A rebuilt Temple? Fr. John finds no real basis in Scripture for a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. Some Fathers and later writers expected the Antichrist in a Jerusalem temple. St. Irenaeus expected him to sit in the temple at Jerusalem (Against Heresies 5.25.2); St. Hippolytus held that as Christ spoke of the temple of his body, the Antichrist would raise a temple of stone in Jerusalem (On Christ and Antichrist 6); St. Cyril of Jerusalem expected the deceiver to pose as “the man of the race of David, who shall build up the Temple which was erected by Solomon” (Catechetical Lectures 15.15); and for St. John of Damascus, Paul's temple was “not our temple, but the old Jewish temple.” Fr. Charles Arminjon, following Cornelius à Lapide, reads St. Paul as implying that the Antichrist “will rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, utterly destroyed by Titus,” and for a time restore its sacrifices (p. 64); he also expects Jerusalem to be the Antichrist's capital (p. 60). St. Jerome, answering Algasia, allowed that it might be Jerusalem, as some thought, but judged the Church the truer reading (Letter 121, q. 11). The Church has not decided.

Why this means no date. A mark accepted person by person is not set up at one moment in one place. Daniel's count then has no single, datable starting point. On its own terms, the proposal cannot set a date.

Questions a careful reader will ask

1. Revelation 13:5 places the forty-two months after the healing and worship (13:3–4). The proposal puts part of them before the wound. This is the strongest objection. Fr. John's answer: the forty-two months are the beast's last forty-two months, ending at his destruction (Revelation 19:20); his rise comes before them, as Arminjon also holds (pp. 50–51). The objection weighs against the first way of counting and not against the second, which is why he keeps both as possible.

2. Daniel's week is usually taken as continuous. Where is the pause? The text does not mention one. Fr. John draws it from Revelation 13:3 itself: the loss of power is the wound that only “seemed” mortal, and the return to power is its healing. St. Hippolytus also divides Daniel's last week into two halves, the witnesses preaching in the first and the abomination standing in the second (On Christ and Antichrist 43, 61–62), though he describes no interruption between them.

3. The seven-year frame is not Catholic teaching. Why use it? Only as a test, not as an endorsement. If the frame falls, this test falls with it, and the Church's reading stands untouched.

4. Does the model not imply an endpoint? By construction, yes: a count with a start and a length has an end. This page does not state it and will not compute it, and Daniel 12:11 on this reading has no single start. “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). A date a reader works out from this page is the reader's, not Fr. John's, and the Church would tell him to set it aside.

How to live it

The numbers say one thing above all: the trial is measured, and God holds the measure. Watch without fear: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival” (Luke 12:37). Treasure the Mass while it is freely offered. Go to adoration and to confession. Pray the Rosary. Love the people in front of you, including those who read these chapters differently. See Stand Firm.

Daniel's blessing falls not on those who count the days but on those who “have patience and persevere.” And the Lord's word is the last word: “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).

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