Thank you for this post!
It reminds me of the following information gathered for a previous Bible Study.
Regarding Mary Baker Eddy’s place, Rev. G. A. Kratzer has some very interesting notes in connection with the book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 6.
Verse 6. “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three score days.”
“Coincidently with the disappearing of pure spiritual truth from the activities of the visible world, the love of pure truth, divine love, the ‘woman,’ disappeared, for the most part, from the world of men. Such sense of truth and love as they had was adulterated, after the second or third century, with belief in material powers, love thereof, and with reliance upon material means for healing the sick, etc. When Jesus, near the commencement of his ministry, was not active in the visible world, preaching and healing, but was absent from the stage of active affairs for a period of forty days, he was spoken of as being ‘in the wilderness.’ There is no probability that he was in an unpopulated place during this period, but he was simply ‘withdrawn from the world,’ withdrawn from material sense into spiritual sense. Likewise this ‘woman,’ this spirit of divine love, is represented as being ‘withdrawn from the world,’ and so ‘in the wilderness’ from the standpoint of the world’s activity, for ‘a thousand two hundred and threescore days.’ As before mentioned in these Notes, this is the period or length of time repeatedly spoken of by St. John as the period during which the dragon, or evil, is to have marked and undoubted ascendency in the mental realm and in the world, so far as men are concerned.*
“*It is interesting to note that one Bible commentator has described this period as a period of 1,260 ‘years’ lasting ‘from A. D. 606, when the Pope of Rome was, by Phocus the Emperor, constituted the universal Bishop of the Christian church, to A. D. 1866’ (The Self Interpreting Bible.) This commentator does not call attention to the fact, and probably did not know, that 1866 was the date when Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science, that reappearance of pure spiritual truth in the world, which undoubtedly presages the early fall of the dragon and of all those human institutions, organizations, and forms of government which derive their power largely from the dragon. Coincidently with the reappearing of the pure spiritual truth among men, the ‘woman,’ the love of pure truth, divine love, comes out of the wilderness, out of the ‘place prepared of God’ for her temporary protection, and becomes active again on the stage of human affairs.”
(Taken from pp. 254-255, Revelation Interpreted by Rev. G. A. Kratzer)