The Wilderness

The wilderness is where Yahuah first fed Israel with manna and proved them (Exod 16; Deut 8:2-3), and where He bore them to Sinai for the covenant betrothal before the wedding (Exod 19:4-5). Elijah was fed there (1 Kgs 17:3-6), and Hosea hears Yahuah promise, "I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her" (Hos 2:14). In Revelation 12:6, 14 the woman has a place prepared and is nourished there: preservation without prominence through the assembly age. In 17:3 the same wilderness reveals the persecutor, a viewing platform. Futurist teaching shrinks her flight to a final three and a half years, but the Exodus pattern is a long testing journey of forty.