“Behold upon the stage of the Christian theater the two women-the woman of God and the woman of Satan, the bride of the Lamb and the harlot of the dragon; behold the virtues of the first and the vices of the second; observe the true blessedness of the one woman who gave birth to the man-child and was persecuted by the terrible dragon, and mark the false happiness and glory of the other woman, who has clothed herself in all the earthly, ephemeral, and outward glory of the dragon and now goes to eternal perdition along with him. Let the reader consider and compare the two women and the two unions, and let him freely choose the woman, the mother, and the mother country whose loving, devoted, and loyal child and citizen he would be. The revelation of the two women and the illuminations of the soul is of God, while free choice is the privilege of the free will of every man. Those who desire to become children of the virtuous woman and to be moulded by her moral virtue and beauty, realize their ambition; while those who wish to remain children of the harlot inherit both her dishonor and her ugly sores.
The two rival women of the Apocalypse are symbols of the two Christian Churches-the Eastern and the Western. The woman clothed with the sun, carrying upon her head the crown of twelve stars and having the moon under her feet, is the symbol of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which, after giving birth to the man-child, took refuge in the desert, fleeing from the face of the dragon enraged against her; whereas the woman seated upon many waters and upon the seven heads of the beast and appareled like an earthly queen in purple and gold, precious stones and pearls, is the symbol of the Latin Church with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication and with the wine of the wrath of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth were drunk. He, then, who wishes to know the essence and the nature of each church and the existing difference between these two Christian Churches may look at the pictures and images by which the Holy Spirit has described and characterized both the nature and the achievement of each. We challenge the Latins of today to prove before the Christian world what woman’s children and offspring they are. Are they the children and the offspring of the woman clothed with the sun, who gave birth to the man-child and took refuge in the desert where she was sustained in her place for “a time, times, and an half,” that is, one thousand two hundred and sixty days? Or are they the children and progeny of the woman in purple sitting upon the seven mountains and ruling over the kings ‘of the earth? Which of the two lambs are they the followers of? Are they the followers of the true Lamb standing upon mount Sion, or of the apparent lamb sitting on the Capitol of Rome? The two women, the two lambs, and the two rival unions distinguish the kingdom of God from the kingdom of Satan. Satan has reigned over mankind through a woman, and so has God (…).”
– From “Interpretation of the Revelation” by Apostolos Makrakis (Dec. 1881)
NEO-Historicism - End Times Eschatology From An Eastern Orthodox Christian Historicist Perspective 