The Great Sign - A Woman Clothed with the Sun

While I was compiling this book, I ran the manuscript by a friend, a retired priest. Most of the clergy I tried to get to read it smiled and begged off. They knew the topic was controversial. This priest read it and told me he thought it was correct. He especially said he agreed with Steven Paul on the identity of "The Woman Clothed with the Sun." 

A sticking point for many is the insistence by some clergy that the woman is the Virgin Mary. What little time I've had to research this claim, it seems to be a modern one, made in the last 100 years or so.

Consulting the Douay-Rheims Bible, footnote Chapter 12, Verse 1: "A woman. The church of God. It may by allusion be applied to our Blessed Lady. The church is clothed with the sun, that is, with Christ: she hath the moon, that is, the changeable things of the world, under her feet: and the twelve stars with which she is crowned, are the twelve apostles; she is in labor pain, whilst she brings forth her children, and Christ in them, in the midst of afflictions and persecutions."

I, and not the author have made the point that by unerring and eternal Church dogma, Mary, by the Immaculate Conception was born free from original sin. She therefore was born free of the penalty of such sin specific to Eve, all women and all mankind. Therefore she did not see death but was assumed into heaven body and soul. In Genesis Chapter 3 Verse 16 God is speaking to Eve and all women when He says, "I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee.

This has always been taken to mean that the pain of childbirth is a consequence of original sin. Yet in the Apocalypse Chapter 12 Verse 2 it says, "And being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered."

The most important point that could be missed if one is looking to Mary is that the Woman is a SIGN, The Great Sign. And the Great Sign has not yet occurred. It fits in a specific time that the Apostle John called "things that are still to come" and therefore, since he wrote the book around 100 A.D. these events happened after that. That means that it is something visible, bigger in either size or importance than all other signs for some reason, and easily discerned so the faithful know how to act. The sign is itself but points to something else, the events that come after.

To find out the author's take on The Great Sign, purchase a copy of the book.