These days we tend to think of "roads" as smooth swaths of pavement and judge them by how fast we can drive cars on them. A "path" is something different, suitable only for walking or maybe bicycles, and a "way" has more to do with giving directions than any physical reality. When we get "lost" it usually means we're in a car on an unfamiliar road -- a far cry from being in the middle of a trackless wilderness with no idea which direction to go. The ancient world was very different, with isolated towns and endless square miles of trackless wilderness. Then a "way" was a set of landmarks to follow to get from one place to another through the wilderness. A "path" was a way used enough to leave a visible trace on the ground, and a "road" was a heavily used path, easily followed and walkable. So it makes sense that when used in the Bible, all three terms represent guiding truth, ideas that lead us where we want to go. This is pictured in the modern use of "way" -- when we talk about the "way" to do something or the "way" to get somewhere. We're talking about the correct, best, most efficient method of doing something or getting somewhere. And it's good information -- truth -- that helps us find that best way.

576. 13:3 And I saw one of its heads appearing as though fatally wounded. This symbolically means that this point of doctrine, which is at the head of all the rest, that a person is justified and saved by faith alone apart from works of the law, does not accord with the Word, in which works are so often commanded.

One of its heads symbolizes the principal and fundamental point of the entire doctrine of the Protestant Reformed Church; for the beast had seven heads, which symbolize irrationality resulting from absolute falsities (no. 568), thus also all their falsities in their entirety, inasmuch as the number seven in the Word symbolizes all (nos. 10, 390). And because their doctrinal falsities regarding salvation all depend on this one, that a person is justified and saved by faith alone apart from works of the law, that is the one symbolized here by one of the beast's heads.

Its appearing as though fatally wounded means symbolically that it does not accord with the Word, in which works are so often commanded. For every tenet of the church's doctrine that does not accord with the Word is not sound, but is sick with a deadly disease, inasmuch as the doctrine of the church must come from the Word and from nowhere else.