17.  And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

V. 17.—­In this verse we have the last effort of the enemy, to destroy the woman’s offspring.  It is the third attempt, and, as we suppose, is yet future.  We cannot therefore, of course, be so exact or certain as to the nature of this contest.  Some things, however, are plain enough.  The dragon, disappointed in his efforts hitherto against the woman, so far from ceasing the warfare, is only thereby the more exasperated.  “The dragon was wroth with the woman.”  Malice overcomes reason.  He knows that he cannot finally prevail,—­that “no weapon formed against her shall prosper;” yet he continues to vent his rage.  The mode of attack is to be different from what it was in the second struggle.  He is said to “make war,”—­to resort to open violence, to employ the agency of the civil power, the beast of the bottomless pit, (ch. xi. 7;) for this third and last war, waged by the dragon agrees in time with the slaying of the witnesses.  This third onset agrees also with the “third woe-trumpet,” the “vintage” and the last “vial;” and immediately precedes the introduction of the millennium.  “The remnant of the woman’s seed” are so called with reference to those of her offspring who had suffered death under pagan and papal Rome, (ch. vi. 9.) Perhaps also we may suppose the number to be comparatively few at the time of the last war with the dragon; as during the whole period of the 1260 years, it was the aim of the dragon, through his instruments, to wear out the saints of the Most High. (Dan. vii. 25.) The character which the Holy Spirit gives of these sufferers proves them to be the woman’s seed.  They “keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”  This is the special ground of the devil’s hostility towards them.  A more comprehensive and definite description of true believers is not to be found in the whole Bible.  In matters of religion they adhere strictly to the commandments of God.  They will not introduce, nor permit to be introduced, any corruptions into the doctrines of grace or into the matter of God’s worship.  The temple, altar and worshippers must stand the measurement of God’s word in their fellowship.  No human traditions or innovations are to be tolerated.  But besides their conscientious care to have all the laws of the house of God duly observed, these remaining witnesses sustain and propagate the testimony of their predecessors, with such additional facts as they may have collected in their own time, for the personal glory, the offices and work of Jesus Christ.  This testimony will necessarily bring them into collision with the children of those who killed their fathers in the same quarrel.  Like their fathers, “they have the sentence of death in themselves, that they should not trust in themselves, but in God which raiseth the dead,—­not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.” (2 Cor. i. 9; Heb. xi. 35.) For as already hinted, this remnant is to “overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,” as others did; and in death to gain the final victory over death by vital union to their living Lord, “being made conformable to his death.”  (Heb. ii. 14, 15.)