Section II

3. Sealed up with Seven Seals

The words of the scroll rehearsed to Daniel, were “closed up and sealed;” and the scroll rehearsed before John was “sealed up with seven seals.” To seal up a scroll was to “close” it; but with p. 71 how many seals it was closed up, Daniel was not informed. This secret concealed from the “greatly beloved” Daniel, was revealed to the “beloved disciple,” the exile of Patmos.

The allusions and references to seals and sealing are very frequent in the scriptures. We need not, however, do more here than to direct attention to instances in which a book or scroll sealed, is a volume whose contents are hidden so long as sealed. In Is. xxix. 10, is a remarkable instance of this. The prophet had a vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem, but it was to the Jews as a scroll sealed, and therefore while so, unreadable so as to be understood. “The vision of all,” says the Spirit in Isaiah, “is become unto you as a scroll that is sealed, which one delivers to him that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed.” The books of the ancients were not like our books in form or material. They were rolls of papyrus, parchment, or other flexible substance, of various lengths. Zechariah’s roll was twenty cubits long by ten broad; and was written “on this side” and “on that side,” with the curse of consuming judgments—ch. v. 1-4. While rolled up they were sometimes fastened by sticking the edges of certain turns of the roll together; or by tying the same, and appending a seal, or seals, to the ligature. Hence, to read such a scroll it would be necessary to unloose the seals, in their order, when so much only of the scroll could be read as extended from the first to the second tying or sticking; then from the second to the third; afterwards, from the third to the fourth; then from the fourth to the fifth; after this, from the fifth to the sixth; and lastly, from the sixth to the seventh: and when this was untied, the whole scroll, if there were no more stickings or tyings, could be fully extended, and read from beginning to end.

Now, the written spaces, or intervals, from one fastening of the scroll to another, were called seals, or closures. To read them the closures must be loosed, otherwise the contents of the scroll would be forever concealed. They could no more be discerned, or seen, while in the sealed state, than our modern books could be read so long as locked by one, two, or more clasps. Seals, then, being closures, they became symbolical of secrecy. This appears from Apoc. x. 4, where John is commanded to “seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.” The not writing them, which John was about to do before the command was given, was to keep what he had heard to himself, so that no one else might know what was spoken—but the class he represented when they and he, as “sons of thunder” should execute p. 72 the utterances; and this concealment of the mystery of the seven thunders was the sealing of them up. Hence, the unsealing of them will consist in their actual development without previous rehearsal to any but John.

The scroll that John saw at the right hand of Power was sealed, or closed up with seven seals or closures. This signified that there must be seven unloosings enacted before the mystery contained in and on the outside of the scroll of the Divine purpose, could be all performed upon the stage of the “whole habitable” in the sight of all nations.

The apocalyptic drama in being visually rehearsed before John has been verbally rehearsed to us; for the rehearsal he witnessed, he has recorded for the information of the rest of his brethren in all after ages; or, that is to say, until judgment shall be given to them at the appearing of the Ancient of Days. The apostle’s brethren may therefore see from a perusal of the written rehearsal, that the seven seals represent seven parts of the great drama, consecutively developed, and issuing in the establishment of their dominion over all the nations of the earth.

In the apocalyptic drama prefigured in the rehearsal before us, however, these parts are unequally distributed. They pertain to three grand divisions of the performance, which are defined by the nature of the situation. Thus, it is obvious, that the kingdom promised to the saints could not be established so long as the Man of Sin Power were undeveloped; and, secondly, that the Man of Sin Power could not be manifested upon the scene of the fourth beast habitable so long as the constitution of this beast-dominion continued pagan. The former necessity of the situation is thus expressed by Paul: “He that now hinders will hinder until he be taken out of the way; and then shall the Lawless One be revealed.” When Paul wrote these words the Power that hindered the manifestation of the Lawless One he had described in a previous verse, and whom he styles “the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition,” was the same power that exiled John to Patmos—the Pagan Roman. It was necessary that the Pagan Roman power should be “taken out of the way.” This was an important element in the drama to be performed. But how was it to be accomplished? The answer is: By the cumulative force of the events developing in the course of, and culminating in the full exhaustion of, the things written within and on the outside of the first six seals. This is the first division of the apocalyptic scroll; a six act tragedy, resulting in the fall of paganism, and the enthronement of the LAODICEAN APOSTASY, p. 73 called by its devotees, “the Holy Catholic Church,” as the religion of the Roman state.

Now, Paul teaches in 2 Thess. ii. that the Man of Sin-power to be developed after the taking out of the way of the pagan Roman, should continue till the time for its consumption and utter destruction by the glorious manifestation of the YAHWEH NAME—“whom the Lord shall consume,” saith he, “with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy by the manifestation of his presence.” The perdition of this son of the woman (ch. xii. 5), called, therefore, “the Son of Perdition,” and the appearing of the Son of Man are events of the same epoch. All the interval, then, between the taking away of the pagan constitution of the Roman State and the destroying of the Man of Sin-power, is occupied by the development of the latter from its birth to its perdition by the saints. This consummation is the grand issue of the finished performance of the second and third divisions of the seven sealed scroll. The seventh seal is equivalent to these divisions. It opens at the end of the sixth seal, and extends its representations to the end of the Seventh Vial when the wrath of Deity against the Laodicean Apostasy is filled up by its utter and complete destruction, and the victory of the saints over all their enemies—ch. xv. 1-4.

But while this three-fold division of the scroll is that into which it is resolved by the necessity indicated by Daniel and Paul, the roll is nevertheless the subject of minor subdivisions resulting from considerations affecting the parties concerned in the development of the Man of Sin-power, their apostasy from the truth, their warfare against the saints, and their overthrow by the Ancient of Days in “the hour of judgment.” These are subdivisions of the second and third general divisions, or Seventh Seal. This exhibits the whole performance from its opening, A. D., 324, until the judgment given to the saints shall have been completely executed upon their enemies. The Seventh Seal ends with the total and complete abolition of the Sin-powers represented by Nebuchadnezzar’s image, Daniel’s Four Beasts, and the Little Horn of the Goat, or Absolute King; and the Stone-power that smites them becoming a great mountain dominion, and filling the whole earth. Hence, although the seventh seal had been opened it has not yet been entirely unrolled so as to be read historically. When the Seventh Seal prophecy shall be all fulfilled, it will be said, “Behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest;” for then the spirit of Yahweh Elohim, apocalyptically styled, “the Seven Spirits of Deity burning before the throne,” will have been quieted in all countries of the earth. The mission of the Christ personal and mystical will have been fully p. 74 accomplished. The tribes of Jacob will have been raised up; the desolations of Israel will have been restored; the nations will have been enlightened; and Yahweh’s salvation developed to the ends of the earth—Isai. xlix. 6.

But before this consummation so devoutly to be wished, there were to intervene many centuries, and generations of men “believing a lie,” with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness, in which they would take great delight. History teaches us of this generation, that over fifteen hundred years have elapsed since the opening of the seventh seal. In all this time the arena of the seal has been the habitable of two belligerents—“them that perish;” and the saints; upon the former class, “a strong delusion” came from God, that they might believe a lie and be damned, as a just punishment for not believing the truth, and taking pleasure in unrighteousness. This class began to show itself in the days of the apostles; and, as we have seen in our exposition of the apocalytic epistles, acquired the position of CLERGY, or, “Lords over the Heritages”—κατακυριευοντες των κληρων; shepherds of the flock who had become unfaithful ministers of the word, and seducers, and wholesale subverters of households for filthy lucre’s sake. These had not only acquired ascendancy over the heritages of the Deity, “which he had purchased with his own blood,” not sparing them, but rending them as grievous wolves; but they had become before the opening of the seventh seal, a formidable political antagonism to the Roman government. They were political christians who had the form of a godliness opposed to the paganism of the state, but not the power of that godliness originally delivered to the saints by the apostles. They were the Radicals, Democrats and Dissenters of the time, cordially hating, and being hated of the governing classes who possessed and sought to retain power and official spoil. These anti-pagan politicians assumed to be “THE HOLY APOSTOLIC CATHOLIC CHURCH;” and were prepared, when a leader should be found ambitious and daring enough, to make war upon the government of Cæsar, and to dispute with him the sovereignty of the world. In the beginning of the fourth century the crisis came, and with it the leader they required. Under the leadership of Constantine, whom they styled “The Great,” they fought, and conquered the power which from the time of the apostles had been pouring out the blood of their “fellow-servants and brethren,” good and bad; who all passed current as “Christians” with their pagan accuser, though differing widely among themselves.

In the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman Earth was p. 75 full of “Names and Denominations of Christians,” inspired with very bitter feelings against each other; but united in hatred of “THE ACCUSER,” who harassed them all with continual prosecution to imprisonment, confiscation and death. These constituted in the aggregate the Laodicean Apostasy—an e pluribus unum as heterogenous and motley as this “christian” nation in congress, when, before the war, it appointed an unbelieving Jew to lead it in its prayers to God.

But apart from this Holy Apostolic Laodicean Catholic Apostasy, there was a community, comparatively small, that hated the deeds and doctrines of these Nikolaitanes and children of the woman Jezebel. It repudiated “the depths of the Satan as they taught;” and with “a little strength,” kept the word of the Spirit, and did not deny his name. This community of faithful ones was preserved from the hour of temptation which came upon the whole habitable to try them. These who stood aloof from the Apostasy, protested alike against “Catholics,” Jews and Pagans. They were zealous for “the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” and contended earnestly for it, both against their own “fellow-servants” and nominal “brethren,” who were fraternizing with the liberal non-professing world, and conspiring with them against the government; and against Pagan and Jewish clergies and their blasphemous and profane traditions with which they “destroyed the earth.” This Philadelphian community was in all things opposed to the Laodicean. Its members “walked after the Spirit,” or the truth; and through that spirit mortified the deeds of the body; while the Laodiceans, who had an overweening conceit of their own piety and spiritual intelligence, “walked after the flesh,” in the fashion universally illustrated in the practice of the pietists of all the “Names and Denominations of Christendom,” and of the “christian politicians,” “liberal christians,” and the political wire workers and pullers, of our day. The Philadelphian party had no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but reproved them. They had escaped from the corruptions of the world through lust, and devoted their energies to the making of their calling and election sure. They came out, therefore, from among the Laodiceans, that they might not be defiled by the uncleanesses of these unfaithful “fellow-servants and brethren,” and constituted what the Laodicean Catholics termed a Schism or Heresy.

Now, in the apocalyptic drama, the Philadelphian and Laodicean parties of the Antipagan Body are represented by a Woman in two several and different conditions. The woman apart from the relations p. 76 of each condition, represents the Antipagan Community as a whole, and irrespective of the many sects within its pale. When the power of the Deity with the Constantinians, symbolically styled “Michael and his Angels,” was casting the Pagan Sin-power out, so that place should be found for it no more in the heaven; the Woman appeared in it arrayed in all the insignia of imperial state. This was a period of revolution, in which power was passing from the pagan classes to the catholics. The former “prevailed not;” for their armies were beaten and dispersed by the catholic forces of Constantine, who became Emperor of Rome, and proclaimed the superstition of the Laodiceans, the religion of the Roman State. Thus truly, “a wonder appeared in the heaven” of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, the church, professedly christian, in union with the world—adulterously united to another than Christ, to the state; and therefore, in friendship with the world! Of the spiritual relation of such a church to Deity there can be no mistake on the part of one intelligent in the word. “The world’s friendship,” says James, “is enmity with God. Whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” The said “Holy Apostolic Catholic” party is therefore unquestionably God’s enemy; and so are all such, together with all that fellowship the union in all ages and generations, until the saints possess the world and rule it in righteousness. The catholic party being a worldly party, their leading spirits, or teaching prophets, were “of the world, therefore they speak of the world, and the world heareth them.” This is an infallible rule by which the world’s priests, or clergies, may be known. The spirit that is in them is the spirit that is in the world—“the spirit that works in the children of disobedience.” It was predicted that Anti-christ should come—1 John ii. 18; iv. 3. He was to be manifested through false teaching concerning the flesh, or nature, of Jesus. In John’s day there existed “many anti-christs,” who denied that Jesus Anointed came in “the flesh.” They affirmed that he came in another sort of flesh than that which is common to all men—in a holier nature, that was immaculate, or pure and undefiled. This dogma, of course, rendered null and void the teaching of the word which declares the condemnation of sin in the flesh, in the bearing in his own body the sins of believers to the tree, when nailed thereon by the predetermination of Deity. This, says John, was that of the Antichrist that should come. It was a dogma that had many advocates so early as apostolic times. Its teachers repudiated the fellowship of the apostles, and “went out from them; because they were not of them.” In denying the p. 77 true nature of Jesus, they preached “another Jesus;” and in so doing, denied that the Jesus whom Paul preached was the Christ; and in denying this, denied that the Father was manifested in common human flesh; and, therefore, denied the Father and the Son; “for whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.” “He is the antichrist,” saith John, “that denieth the Father and the Son;” and “this is the Deceiver and the Antichrist.” “He that abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God”—of the true teachings of God-manifestation he is wholly and necessarily ignorant.

Now, in the Catholic element of the Woman, the dogma characteristic of the Antichrist was embodied. It only waited for a Head to become politically manifest. That head was the Imperial Dynasty begotten in the woman-community by the working of the Mystery of Iniquity, and born of her in the appearance of what the world designates “THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR.” This son was the Man of Sin in his birth, and the Head of the Holy Apostolic Laodicean Catholic Apostasy, that was to rule all nations with a rod, of iron—the Antichrist, that had forced its way up to Deity, and usurped his throne.

In the consummation of this revolution in the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, the world had imposed upon it a despotism more “dreadful and terrible” than its predecessor, and no less the enemy of God and the persecutor and destroyer of his saints. No sooner had the Laodiceans become victorious over their pagan adversaries, and had acquired political power, than they became violent oppressors of all who did not conform to the standard of what they were pleased to style “orthodoxy.” As the party and power of the Man-child escaped from the devouring jaws of the pagan Dragon, and were enthroned in his place, they persecuted the Philadelphian party which abode in the doctrine of Christ; and the woman became a fugitive from imperial glory, in the sunshine of whose favor the unsealed professors of the world’s substitute for the one faith and hope of the gospel have basked from the consummation of the Sixth Seal to the present century of the unfinished Seventh.

After the perfecting of the revolution of the fourth century, the issue was no longer the Saints versus Imperial Paganism; but “the Remnant of the Woman’s Seed” versus the Imperial Laodicean Apostasy, known in history as “The Holy Catholic Church.” It assumed to itself this name after it had been “spued out of the mouth of the Spirit” as an unholy abomination beyond all possibility p. 78 of redemption. Prosperity accelerated corruption with rapid strides until the patience of Deity had reached its limit. Consumption and utter destruction of the antichristian apostasy were predetermined at a time duly fixed and revealed. The Lawless Power, ὁ Ανομος, “that opposeth and exalteth itself over all called god, or reverenced; so that he in the temple of the god as a god sitteth, showing forth himself that he is a god;” this absolute power, styled in Dan. xi. 36-39, “the king who does according to his will, and exalts himself and magnifies himself above every god,” was to prosper till the indignation against Israel be accomplished. He is then to stand up against the Prince of princes (Dan. viii. 25), who will consume him with the Spirit of his mouth, and destroy him with the manifestation of his presence”—2 Thess. ii. 4-8. This is the consummation that presents itself as the completion of the Seventh Seal prophecy; during all of which this the Antichrist is seen developing itself with intense ferocity and impiety against “the Deity, his name, his tabernacle, and them that dwell in the heaven”—Apoc. xiii. 6. It was not intended to permit the Mystery of Iniquity to attain to instantaneous maturity as soon as the Woman gave birth to her man-child. He had been nine months of years in coming to the birth, and it was determined that he should pass through youth and middle age to the decrepitude of all things human. But though the Antichrist was to prosper till the time appointed for his destruction by the saints, he was not to be free from the troubles and ills of “the present evil world,” in which “there is no peace for the wicked, saith Yahweh; for they are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” It is not compatible with the honor and goodness of God to allow them to rest while they are blaspheming him and oppressing and destroying his people. In the absence, therefore, of “the Son of his handmaiden,” Mary—“the Son of man at his right hand whom he hath made strong for himself”—He uses the wicked as his sword (Ps. xvii. 13) to torment one another for their abominations, until the time appointed for the sword of judgment to be committed to the saints, and the power of the wicked be by them destroyed.

All things are of God, and “there is no power but of him. The powers that be have been put in order under the Deity.” He creates evil in punishment of sin. He makes evil powers a terror to evil doers, who all subsist by his permission, and by that only. Thus he tolerates as powers combinations of men whose principles and practices are his abomination. Evil being in the world as a present necessity, he gives shape and organization to it, so that it p. 79 may work out his own purposes to the confusion and overthrow of the agents through whom he operates. He does not leave the evil of this world to develope a chapter of accidents, and to run riot as chance may occasion. Had he done so, the Apocalypse would never have seen the light; for this remarkable instrument is a rehearsal before the performance of the prearranged and methodical development of the evil predestined to fall upon the “Children of Jezebel” for their worship of demons and images, and for their murders, sorceries, fornication, and thefts—Apoc. xi. 20, 21. These were, and continue to be, the crimes of the “Holy Catholic Church,” and its family of “Denominations” and “Names of Blasphemy,” which recognize it as “the Mother Church.” Its superstition became excessive and its demoralization extreme. “The christians of the seventh century,” says Gibbon, “had relapsed into a semblance of Paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East; the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished on the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess.”

The Seventh Seal, then, being inducted by the completion of the work of the angel ascending from the East for the sealing of the 144,000, the time had come for the loosing of the Four Wind-Trumpet judgments against the men of the Western Leg of the Imperial Catholic dominion. The full effect of these four trumpets was the slaying of the sixth, or imperial, head of Daniel’s Fourth Beast. This “wound by a sword” appeared for a long time to be unto death. For “the third part of a day and the third part of a night,” it lay prostrate as it were in death; but at the end of that period “the deadly wound was healed;” and the Imperial Head once more stood conspicuously before the nations as the sun of the Western World.

Another important result of these trumpets was the development of the Seventh Head of the Dragon-Beast in the place of its throne, that is, in Rome. This was to continue only a short space compared with its predecessor. After sixty years it was abolished; and for many years after, the sovereignty of “the Eternal City” was simply an affair of history.

Lastly, in addition to these events, the striving of the winds upon the great sea-nations caused the budding forth of the Horns upon the territory on which also the Sixth Head afterwards thrust itself into position on recovering from its deadly wound, and before which p. 80 three of the ten horns fell, and were “plucked up by the roots.” Thus, the judgments of the first four trumpets laid the foundation of what afterwards became the Europe of modern times.

But these scourges did not affect the Catholics of the East. Their hearths and temples were still protected from the fire and sword of the destroyer. The wrath of God upon their coreligionists of the West, however, failed to work repentance in them for their worship of “the ghosts” of dead men and women, adoration of images, murder of the saints; their sorceries, fornication, and thefts. In twenty years alone of this wind-trumpet period—that, namely, ending in the settlement of Italy by Justinian’s Pragmatic Sanction, A. D. 554—Italy and Africa lost nearly twenty millions of their inhabitants. Yet did not this cause reformation; but men went on waxing worse and worse, until the time came that they must be tormented with scorpions and killed with serpent fire.

This was the mission of the first two Woe-Trumpet angels, and constitutes the second part of the Seventh Seal. The first woe-trumpet was not to extinguish the “Holy Catholic” sovereignty of the East, but only to torment with the plagues of war “those men who had not the seal of God in their foreheads;” that is, all of the Greek Catholic superstition in contrast to the saints, who in all ages are the sealed of the Father.

The second woe-trumpet was to consummate what the first had only began. It was to extinguish the supremacy of Greek Catholicism over all the territory destined for subjugation by the powers brought upon the arena by these woes. But, as these two woes in their operation upon the Eastern Leg of Nebuchadnezzar’s Image wrought no more repentance upon the Latin Catholics of the Western than the first four trumpets did upon their coreligionists of the East, the judgments of the second woe were apportioned also to the catholics of the Horn-Kingdoms of the Sea-Beast. Hence the second woe-trumpet period, in its second part, comprehends the time of the prophesying of the Two Witnesses against the Sea-Beast, in which they exercise their power to shut up his heaven, and to smite his territory with all plagues as often as they will. It also comprehends the later period of the crusades, in which multitudes of the Sea-Beast, and Earth-Beast, and Image of the Beast, populations, all demon-and-image-worshipping devotees, fell by the operation of these woes. Other “voices” of the second woe were the killing of the witnesses as the result of a war upon them by the authorities of the Sea-Beast—a war waged against them when they were about finishing their testimony—and Papal and Protestant factions became the antagonist rivalries of the West. Another “voice” was the p. 81 resurrection of the witnessing bodies, their ascent to power, and the reign of terror in which they took direful vengeance upon the civil and ecclesiastical orders of the Laodicean Apostasy, which had put them to death three days and a half of years before.

The ending of the second woe, at the ascription of glory to the God of heaven, A. D. 1794, prepares us to enter upon the Third Part or Section of the Seventh Seal. This is the Seventh Trumpet or Third Woe. This period brings us to a comparatively recent epoch in the relations of the Apostasy. The so-called “Holy Catholic Church” and its “Branches,” the “Names of Blasphemy,” of which the “Scarlet-Colored Beast” is “full,” in other words, the Roman Mother Church and her brood of rebellious and protesting bastards were not one whit less blasphemous, or nearer the truth, or walking less after “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” after all the dreadful judgments of the first six trumpets, than were their Laodicean Fathers fourteen centuries before. They still caused to be visited with imprisonment, torture, civil disabilities, or death, “as many as would not worship the Image of the Beast,” and compelled “all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads; and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” They still continued their priestly fornication, “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats.” Their robbery of the people in tithes and offerings, under the deceitful pretence of curing their souls, was as rampant as ever. Sheer infidelity, or a barren formalism, characterized the more “liberal and enlightened” sections of the “Christendom” of the Beast and Image of the Beast. Pietism was the substitute for “sound doctrine,” which could not be endured; and the Law of Faith and the obedience it required were universally ignored. The pietism was the blind superstition of sect, with unreasoning assent to the dogmas of creeds and articles ordained by the authority of catholicism bewitched, and upheld by the force of “pike and gun.” The witnesses against these things being spiritually and civilly dead, though unburied, there were none to disturb the quiet into which the established orders of the Beast in Church and State, and the “many waters,” or multitudes, they controlled, had settled themselves for the tranquil and unlimited enjoyment of their estate. They rejoiced that they could be no more tormented by the prophesyings of witnesses they had slain, and that now all would be “merry” as a marriage-feast.

But “woe to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the voices p. 82 of that trumpet that was yet to sound.” Their political fabric was shaken by a great popular convulsion, which announced that their tormentors had come to life again, and were preparing to go forth, and to renew the conflict with the kings, priests, and aristocratic orders of the Beast and his Image, which had “overcome and killed them” for a time. This conflict was renewed by the witnesses against the Beast, and is consummated by Jesus and his Brethren, the saints, after his advent and their resurrection. When the Seventh Trumpet shall have completed its soundings, “the mystery of the Deity will be finished, as He hath declared the glad tidings to his servants the prophets.” The Mother Church and her harlot progeny, with all that sustain the existing order of things, are woe-bestruck under this third and last section of the Seventh Seal. Their kingdom is filled with darkness, and they gnaw their tongues for pain; yet repent they neither to give God glory, nor of their blasphemies and deeds.

What, then, remains for such a generation but capture and “destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power?” The Laodicean Apostasy in its Greek, Latin, and Protestant forms, can only be destroyed by this judicial manifestation of the presence of the Lord Jesus. When judgment is given to him, judgment is also given to the saints, for He is one of them, being the head of their body, or Chief. To him and them is assigned the deliverance of the nations in the only way they can be delivered, by that, namely, of “destroying them who destroy the earth”—ch. xi. 18. To attempt to reform the world by any agency extant is useless. Mankind is intoxicated, and therefore insane, and beyond the reach, consequently, of any spiritual amendment resulting from any appeal to their understanding based upon “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” The people are brutish, and their most revered leaders in church and state maniacally hallucinated. Nothing can be done with individuals or nations until their attention is gained; and all public meetings show that the blind multitude will only listen to that which flatters them, or is spoken in accordance with their prejudices. “When the judgments of Yahweh are abroad in the earth the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness”—Isa. xxvi. This is certain. Nothing but judgment can meet the necessities of the case; for the same authority saith, “Let favor be showed to the wicked yet will he not learn righteousness.” Now the decree has gone forth, that from the rising to the setting of the sun all nations shall assemble in a certain appointed way to worship the one King of the whole p. 83 earth in Jerusalem—Zech. xiv. 9, 17; Mal. i. 11; Apoc. xv. 4; for the reason given, “because his judgments are made manifest.” By these judgments the Eternal Spirit in corporeal manifestation will “avenge the heaven, the holy apostles, and prophets on their enemies;” visit with a just punishment the Apostasy in all its unhallowed forms, and expel from the high places of the Dragon-Beast all its spirituals of wickedness, that “the kingdoms of this world may become the Kingdoms of Yahweh and of His anointed”—Apoc. xi. 15; and all their subject nations be blessed in Abraham and his seed according to “the Gospel of the Kingdom.”

Now, the judgments that are to accomplish all these results are those to be displayed “in the days of the voice of the Seventh Angel when he shall sound”—ch. x. 7. This seventh trumpet is the trumpet of Isa. xviii. 3; xxvii. 13; Zech. ix. 14; Mat. xxiv. 13; 1 Cor. xv. 52; 1 Thess. iv. 16. It is the conclusion of the premises laid by the sounding of the previous six. This seventh apocalyptic trumpet in the seventh period of its sounding brings out the events prefigured in the Mosaic trumpet of the Jubilee. It brings in its consummation “the Atonement,” or Covering Over, of the sins of Israel, liberty from their long previous bondage to the House of Esau, and return to their possessions in the Holy Land—Lev. xxv. 9, 10. The assembling of the tribes is proclaimed, and their camps are marshalled for their journeyings. The princes, heads of the thousands of Israel, i. e., the saints, gather together unto Christ, and Israel is saved from their enemies—Numb. x. 2, 4, 9; 1 Thess. iv. 16; 2 Epist. ii. 1.

In Isa. xxvii. 13, it is styled “the Great Trumpet,” which Zech. ix. 14, testifies shall be blown by ADONAI YAHWEH, rendered “Lord God,” in the C. V., but literally, He who shall be Lords, that is, by the Eternal Spirit incarnate in Jesus and his Brethren. When Jericho was to be taken there were seven periods appointed for the sounding of trumpets. One trumpet-sounding was blown daily for six successive days; but on the seventh they sounded seven times, and at the seventh time the wall of the city fell and Jericho was taken. Thus there were thirteen circumurban soundings—seven upon as many days, and six additional on the seventh; but at the thirteenth only was the city destroyed. So in relation to the capture and destruction of Babylon by the Saints. The seven trumpets all sound against her during seven successive periods; but on the seventh period, or last day of sounding, there are seven soundings, apocalyptically styled “Vials.” Six are developed, but “the great city” is not fallen. At last, the seventh vial-outpouring, or blast, p. 84 of the seventh day sounding is manifested by ADONAI YAHWEH; “and the people shout, for the Lord hath given them the city.” The Lord Jesus and the Saints coöperate personally and visibly in the executing of “the judgment written,” which especially pertains to the Seventh Vial, or last period of the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet.

This is the last and greatest of the “Woes.” It is, in its seventh period, “the time of Jacob’s trouble, out of which, however, he shall be saved”—Jer. xxx. 7. But not of Jacob only, but also of “the House of Esau,” which shall be as stubble to the devouring flame, when “saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall be Yahweh’s”—Obad. 17-21; for at that time, which is “the time of the end,” when “the indignation shall be accomplished, and that determined done”—“Michael shall stand up, the great prince who standeth for the posterity of Daniel’s people; and there shall be a time of trouble, apocalyptically represented by “a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great” (ch. xvi. 18)—or, as Dan. xii. 1, expresses it, “a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation to that same time.” Then will the dead who have walked in the truth be raised to incorruptibility; and the Son of Man will send his messengers with a trumpet of great voice, and they shall gather together his elect ones from all the nations, from the end of the heavens; and they shall return—Deut. xxx. 3-5; Mat. xxiv. 31.

The sounding of the seventh trumpet results in the fall of Babylon the Great, the abolition of the powers of the world, and the establishment of the kingdom which is possessed by Jesus and his Brethren for a thousand years. These mighty results are not effected in an instant. The angels, or agents, of the vials encompass the city six times before judgment is assumed by Jesus and his Brethren. Hence, before their mission in the tragedy is evolved, the five vials are poured out upon “the earth,” “the sea,” “the rivers and fountains of waters,” “the sun,” “and “the throne and kingdom of the Beast.” The judgments of these vials of the Seventh Trumpet do not work repentance in the Laodiceans, but only anguish, because of their “pains and sores.” They affect chiefly antichristendom—the Horns, Sixth Healed Head, and Image; i. e., the Horns and Eighth Head.

The Sixth Vial has primarily to do with the eastern section of the fourth beast territory. Its judgments are poured out upon the Euphratean district, where the third part of the men of the Laodicean p. 85 Apostasy had been politically killed by the messenger powers confined, until loosed, by the Euphrates. Under this vial the time comes to dry up the power which keeps them in vassalage and subjection. Not, however, for their sake, and for their restoration to their former position, but as a preparation for the establishment of that EASTERN KINGDOM which is to be possessed by the Theistic Kings, the Saints, and is to rule over all the earth.

This vial is divisible into four parts, each part being characterized by a notable series of events. The drying up of the Euphrates is characteristic of the first part; the political wonder-working of the frog-like spirits of demons, the second; the Eternal Spirit’s advent in Jesus and the Saints, the third; and the postadventual gathering of the powers that be into Armageddon, the fourth.

The second part has to do with the whole Laodicean Habitable apportioned to the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, whose policies developed by the machinations of the Frog Power bring them into position for conflict with Jesus and his Brethren, styled “the war of the great day of Ail-shaddai,” or God Almighty.

The third part has to do with the affairs of the Saints exclusively, and belongs to the things written on the inside of the scroll. It announces the appearance of “the Lord, the Spirit,” and the blessing at this time of all Saints who shall not be found naked or uncovered. In this part of the sixth vial, “the King comes in to see the guests furnished for the wedding”—Matt. xxii. 10, 11; and to scrutinize them, that it may be seen who of them are fit associates: for his majesty, and who are not. At this epoch “the Great White Throne” is placed, styled by Paul in Rom. xiv. 10; and 2 Cor. v. 10, “the Judgment Seat of Christ,” before which all constitutionally in Christ appear. They stand before it bodies, or living souls, such as Adam was when he was created from dust of the ground. Their resurrection brings them back to nature, and so restores to them identity, and enables them to “give account of themselves to God.” Paul will be there to give account of himself among the rest. All called saints, who by the gospel have been invited to the Kingdom, who cannot give a good account of themselves; who, in other words, have been “walking after the flesh, or “sowing to the flesh,” between their immersion into Christ and their death, will be pronounced “naked,” not having “watched and kept their garments.” These will therefore be put to shame and contempt, and will be condemned to “receive things in body” accordant with their deeds—Matt. xvi. 27; Rom. ii. 6. Negatively, they will not be “accepted of Christ;” they will not be “clothed upon with the p. 86 house from heaven;” “immortality will” not “be swallowed up of life;” they will not be permitted to “eat of the tree of life in the midst of the paradise of the Deity;” but affirmatively, they will be “injured by second death;” they will be “blotted out of the book of the living;” they will “die” and “reap corruption”—Apoc. ii. 11; Ps. lxix. 28; Rom. viii. 13; Gal. vi. 8. Thus, they will receive in bodies natural “bad things” according to their previous works, which they could not do if by resurrection per se they were of necessity incorruptible and immortal.

Judgment at the house of God being ended (1 Pet. iv. 17) by the separation of the good and bad fish enclosed by the gospel net (Matt. xiii. 47, 48), the good are appropriated by the Lamb for future use. Cleansed and purified from tares they constitute the wheat of his garner. All “false brethren,” and mere pretenders, not having on the wedding garment, being cast into outer darkness, those who are accepted by the King as “holy, unblamable, and irreproachable in his sight” (Col. i. 22), “enter in through the gates into the holy city”—Apoc. xxii. 14; and become “the 144,000 having the Lamb’s Father’s name written on their foreheads”—ch. xiv. 1. These accepted ones are the saints to whom judgment is given for the destruction of the Fourth Beast—Dan. vii. 22, 26. “They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth” in all the scenes and enterprizes of “the war of the great day of Ail-Shaddai,” until they are seen no longer as the Rainbowed Angel with feet as pillars of fire—ch. x. 1; but under the new aspect of Divine Harpers standing on a sea of crystal, no longer “mingled with fire,” as the conquerors of the beast and all pertaining to that hateful dominion, singing the song of victory—the song of Moses and the Lamb—ch. xv. 2.

Thus, the events of this third part of the sixth vial are an organization and preparation of the Stone-Power—the cutting of the Stone out of the mountain without hands—Dan. ii. 45; for the work of smiting Nebuchadnezzar’s Image on the feet, and of reducing the broken pieces to powder, light as the chaff of the summer threshing floors, that all may be carried away of the tempest and found no more. The Stone-Power is constituted of the Eternal Spirit, or Deity, manifested in Jesus and the Saints, “glorified together,” and directing and leading the tribes of Israel, and the mixed multitude commingled with them. At this time, and thus officered and commanded, Israel will have arrived at “their latter end;” have been made “willing;” and have been energized for “one to chase a thousand, and for two to put ten thousand of their enemies to flight”—Deut. xxxii. 29, 30. “Yahweh Elohim,” the Spirit incarnate in p. 87 Jesus and his Brethren, “is with them; and the shout of the King is among them.” They have now “the strength of the unicorn; and are risen up as a great lion, and lifted up as a young lion; and shall not lie down until he devour the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.” The time now comes for the King of Israel to be higher than Gog, or Agag; and for his kingdom to be exalted. Thus officered, and commanded by Michael the Great Prince, “he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.” In this third part of the sixth vial, the Star of Jacob prepares to shine forth as Israel’s Sceptre, and to smite the princes of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth—him that remaineth of the city—Numb. xxiii. 21, 24; xxiv. 7, 8, 14, 17-19.

The saints being “gathered together unto Christ,” his day is come; and the due season at length arrived for the consumption and destruction of the Lawless One by the spirit of his mouth, and the manifestation of his presence—2 Thess. ii. 1-8. All things being thus ready, the messenger-power of the Sixth vial proceeds to the gathering of the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable, into Armageddon. This introduces the fourth part of the vial, and creates the situation necessary to the parallel outpouring of the seventh. In this fourth section of the vial-period the peoples will associate themselves against Israel, in whose midst Immanuel now is; and, under the fiery flying serpent of Assyria, will rush as the rushing of many waters, and with the sound of the roaring seas, to spoil and scatter them—Isai. viii. 9, 10; xiv. 25, 29; xvii. 12-14. They will ascend like a storm-cloud to cover the land in this the day of Yahweh’s vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.—Isai. xxxiv. 1-8; lxiii. 1-6. He will cause them to come up from the north parts, and bring them upon the mountains of Israel, which are the apocalyptic “Armageddon”—Ezek. xxxviii. 9; xxxix. 2, 4. There, under the king of the north, encamped between the seas, even to the mountain of the glory of the holy (Dan. xi. 41, 45) will they be gathered against Jerusalem to besiege and take it, and rifle it, and to make captives of its residue—Zech. xiv. 2. But they will not find therein the King of Israel. By this gathering of all nations against Jerusalem, in tempestuous conflict among themselves for the possession of the holy city, which becomes to them “a cup of trembling,” and “a burdensome stone” (Zech. xii. 2, 3) the judgments of the Sixth vial are closed. It will have assembled the Laodicean and other heathen in that part of Armageddon, called in Joel, “the valley of Jehoshaphat;” where Yahweh p. 88 Elohim, the Spirit incarnate in the Saints, will sit in judgment upon them. “The mighty ones” of the Spirit having descended into the arena, or valley of decision or threshing, and its fats overflowing with multitudes upon multitudes of wicked, “the great and terrible day of Yahweh” is about to shine forth in their overthrow and destruction—Joel iii. 9-14.

The fourth section of the Seventh Seal is the seventh and last vial. The judgments of this pertain emphatically to “the great and terrible day of Yahweh,” styled in ch. xiv. 7, “the Hour of his Judgment.” It is “the consummation of the seventh seal, which fills up the wrath of Deity” upon the Laodicean Apostasy. It is the vial-period in which the sea of nations is mingled with the fiery indignation of the Eternal Spirit—ch. xv. 2. It begins with Yahweh going forth to fight against the assembled nations; and in vanquishing them in Armageddon, to stand upon the Mount of Olives preparatory to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem—Zech. xiv. 3, 4; ix. 9, 10; Ps. xxiv. 7—10; cxviii. 26; Matt. xxiii. 39; Apoc. xiv. 1. This defeat consummates the outpouring of the seventh vial upon “the Air”—it shakes the heavens and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; it shakes all nations to the overthrow of the throne of kingdoms and the destruction of the strength of their dominions—Hag. ii. 6, 7, 21, 22; Joel iii. 15, 16. Consequent upon the full exhaustion of the vial is the darkening of the sun and moon, and the extinguishing of the stars of the Gentile aerial, by the bathing of Yahweh’s sword therein. In the words of the Spirit, “all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree”—Isai. xxxiv. 4, 5; Joel iii. 15; and as a consequence, he before whose face this earth and heaven flee away (Apoc. xx. 11) appropriates the world’s kingdoms to himself and friends—Apoc. xi. 15.

The overthrow of the armies of the nations in Armageddon is the manifestation of the end. Subsequently to the defeat of the enemy, by which the king effects his entrance into the Holy City, he issues a proclamation, styled “a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne,” announcing that “It is done”—ch. xvi. 17; xxi. 6. What is done? “That which is determined”—the full accomplishment of the indignation which scatters the power of the holy people—Dan. xi. 36; xii. 7. The “time of the end” is finished when the angel-power of the seventh vial has poured out all the wrath upon “the air” of the Nebuchadnezzar-Image: the “time, times, and a half,” or 1260 years of Dan. xii. 7, are expired; and the 1335 years of verse 12 also. This exhaustion of the indignation p. 89 is styled “the consummation” in Dan. ix. 27. The indignation hath its first end and its “last end” (Dan. viii. 19) and between these two ends a long intermediate interval of centuries of desolation. The seventh vial is identical with “the last end,” in which the Little Horn of the Goat power, “the king who doth according to his will,” “the Assyrian” (Mic. v. 5), “Gog of the land of Magog,” “the King of the north,” Nebuchadnezzar’s Image, the four great beasts from the sea, “the dragon,” “the Beast and his Image,” the ten horns—all terms representing “the kingdom of men”—will stand up in battle array against the Prince of princes and his faithful and chosen followers. But affliction comes upon the tents of Cushan, and those of the land of Midian are made to tremble at the Ensign lifted up upon the mountain of Israel—Hab. iii. 7; Isai. xviii. 3. Great and terrible is the power of the Holy One in the judgments of the seventh vial. “He stands, and measures the earth; he beholds and drives asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains are scattered, and the perpetual hills do bow”; or, in the words of Apoc. xvi. 20, “every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.” Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but he who comes with dyed garments from Edom, is with burning and fuel of fire—Isai. ix. 5; lxiii. 1-6; lxvi. 15, 16. The armies of the kingdom of men issue forth as a whirlwind to scatter him; but vain are all their efforts; for He will march through the earth in indignation, and thresh the nations in anger; for he goes forth for the salvation of his people, and he will not be foiled.

“It is done.” Is the result of the exhaustion of this vial upon “the air,” the fourth beast of Daniel’s vision will have been totally destroyed in all its paits, and the kingdom of God established as the sole political organization for the government of the nations. It will then be said, “Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith Adonai Yahweh; this is the day whereof I have spoken—whereof he has spoken by his servants the prophets that he would break the power of the Gentiles, when saviours should come up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the Kingdom should be to Yahweh”—Ezek. xxxix. 8; Obad. 21.

Such is the general result of the Seventh vial upon “the air.” There are, however, certain stages through which judgment passes to the subversion of the existing order of things, and the establishment of that which is to last unchanged for a thousand years—“the world to come.” This fourth section of the Seventh Seal is divisible into two acts, or summaries of detail. The first relates to what may be p. 90 styled, the first angel mission of the seventh vial; the second, to the second and third angel missions of the same. The first angel mission forewarns the nations of what is prepared to burst forth upon them. It announces that the Hour of Judgment has actually arrived; and declares the glory of Yahweh among the Gentiles inhabiting Tarshish, Pul, Lud, Tubal, Javan, and the isles afar off from Jerusalem—Isai. lxvi. 19; Apoc. xiv. 6. This manifesto is proclaimed after the advent and resurrection, and separation of the tares from the wheat at the judgment seat of Christ, and occupation of Jerusalem by the great king, and before the fall of Babylon by certain “of those who escape.” They are sent as משכי קשת mŏshkai kĕshĕth, “sounders of truth,” to blow the great trumpet of the jubilee, and to invite all nations to do homage to the King of the Jews—Isai. xviii. 3; xxvii. 13; lxvi. 19; Lev. xxv. 10; Apoc. x. 11. To this proclamation succeeds the day of affliction, in which a great sacrifice is offered by Yahweh for the birds and beasts of prey—“the flesh of the mighty, and the blood of the princes of the earth”—Lev. xxiii. 27-32; Ezek. xxxix. 17; Apoc. xix. 17.

The offering of this sacrifice is the punishment of the goats—Zech. x. 3-6; Matt. xxv. 31-46; and constitutes the second act of this fourth section of the seventh seal. The offering is the mission of the mighty angel with the rainbow upon his head, whose countenance is as the sun, and his progress as moving pillars of fire—Apoc. x. He places his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth, and thus takes up a burning position upon the territory of the ten-horned, and two-horned beasts of ch. xiii. “The earth and the whole habitable” thus become an arena of intense conflagration, in which the Gentile body politic is given to the sword and the burning flame—Dan. vii. 10, 11:—“the sea” is mingled with fire, and “the earth” becomes “a lake of fire burning with brimstone”—ch. xv. 2; xix. 20:—“the Aion-Fire prepared for the Devil (Dragon—ch. xx. 2) and his angels”—Matt. xxv. 41; into which all are cast who are condemned to share in the punishment inflicted upon the goats—ch. xx. 15; xiv. 9-11.

This rainbowed angel is symbolical of the Eternal Spirit incarnate in Jesus and his Brethren, the glorified saints, in their warfare against “the beast and his image,” over which they get the victory. He is the “Four Living Ones full of eyes,” in one symbol, giving utterance to the roar of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah—Joel iii. 16; ii. 11; Jer. xxv. 30-38; Isa. xlii. 13-16. What proceeds from the company of actors represented by this symbol, “proceeds from the throne,” whence issue forth “lightnings, thunderings, and voices”— p. 91 ch. iv. 5. The rainbowed messenger is the embodiment of “the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne”—of the “seven horns and seven eyes, the seven spirits of the Deity, sent forth into all the earth”—ch. iv. 5; v. 6. “When he had cried,” or made the proclamation pertaining to the first angel mission, which is responded to by the armies of the Ten Horns rushing forth as a whirlwind to scatter him (Hab. iii. 14; Apoc. xvii. 14) “seven thunders utter their voices”—ch. x. 3. The details of these thunders are not specified. They will become history to be read by the generations to come when they shall have thundered down all opposition to the dominion of the saints. It would have swelled the apocalypse to an unwieldy size, and have greatly augmented its complications, to have recorded in detail the utterances of these thunders. John was therefore commanded to “seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and to write them not.” Hence, all we can say about them is, that as “thunder,” which implies lightning, is the symbol of destruction, the seven thunders augur only a bitter practical prophecy to many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings—ver. 9, 11.

But in the hand of this mighty heaven-descended Spirit-Messenger, not naked spirit, but “clothed with a cloud” of the holy and blessed of the Father, is “a little scroll open.” It is not closed or rolled up like the seven-sealed scroll, but open and unsealed. It is, the scroll of judgments, in bitter manifestation, in current outflow from the body of John and his coworkers in the execution of the judgments written—ch. x. 9; Psal. cxlix. 5-9. It contains the denouement of the apocalyptic tragedy—the issue of the plot, or, as Daniel was informed, “the end of the matter.”

In this little open scroll is written the performances of the actors in the second and last act of the fourth section of the seventh seal. It is, therefore, the key that opens or unlocks “the Mystery of the Deity as he hath declared the glad tidings to his servants the proprophets”—ch. x. 7. Upon it are inscribed the missions of the second and third angels, comprehensive of the judgment of Babylon, the conquest of the Ten Horns and destruction of the Beast, and the slaying of “the remnant” not included in the symbol, by the white-robed battalions of the King of kings and Lord of lords.—ch. xix.

The mission of the second angel is to destroy “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and the Abominations of the earth”—ch. xiv. 8. It is a work of the saints to do this; for she is “drunk with their blood, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus”—ch. xvii. 6; xviii. 4-8. Hence, they are the messenger-power of the second mission. They enlighten the nations with the glory of the coworking Spirit, so that they bring into contempt the Laodicean p. 92 Apostasy in its Greek, Latin, and Protestant manifestations, causing the spiritual merchants of all privileged and unprivileged sects of “Christendom” to weep and mourn, “because no man buyeth their merchandise any more”—ch. xviii. 11.

The Ecclesiastical Corporation of the Fourth Beast, by the abundance of whose spiritual delicacies the great men of all nations, styled demons, foul spirits, unclean and hateful birds, had waxed rich (ch. xviii. 2, 3, 23), being tormented to utter and final extinction from “the Air” (ver. 8, 15, 21) by the second symbolic angel, or Yahweh Elohim and the Saints (ver. 6, 8), they continue their work in the mission of the third angel to the tormentation and destruction of the beast and false prophet-power in their civil and military organizations. The adherents of these constitutions bewail and lament the breaking up of the priest and clergy craft of “Christendom” (ver. 9, 10), showing that their political existence continues beyond the fall of that “Mystery of Iniquity.” These, therefore, become the next object against which “the holy messengers and the Lamb” direct their exterminating judgments—ch. xiv. 9-11. This work of destruction continues so long as the smoke of their torment ascends, which is till the body of the beast is destroyed by the burning flame that issues forth from before the Ancient of Days, or, as it is apocalyptically expressed, εις αιωνας αιωνων, to aions of aions, which is to the commencement of the thousand years’ reign—Dan. vii. 10, 11; 2 Thess. ii. 8; Apoc. xiv. 10, 11.

This whole burnt-sacrifice of the fourth beast in the day of Yahweh’s vengeance would have consummated the tragic drama of the apocalypse had there been no Gentile Remnant beyond the jurisdiction of the fourth beast. Had. Daniel’s vision presented before him only one beast, then there would have been no more to do than to celebrate the victory, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and so enter upon the reign. Or, had Nebuchadnezzar’s Image consisted only of one metal, and been pulverized by a single blow of the stone upon the feet, the stone would at once have become a great mountain filling the whole earth. But these suppositions do not obtain. There are four beasts to be disposed of, and four metals, and a grinding of the whole to powder after the fracture of their image-combination by the stone. The fourth beast and the iron teeth and brazen claws thereof being in process of demolition by the second and third angel missions, “the remnant” (ch. xix. 21), or “dragon” (ch. xx. 2, 3), or first three beasts of Dan. vii. 4, 5, 6, 12, are being also collaterally and coetaneously subjected to the sword of the King of kings and his white-robed squadrons of the heaven. This great potentate, riding this “white cloud” or body p. 93 of celestial horse (ch. xix. 11, 14), “having on his head a golden wreath and in his hand a sharp sickle” (ch. xiv. 14, 15), reaps the harvest of the earth, and gathers the clusters of the earth’s vine, and casts them into the great winepress “without the city,” which he treads in anger, making them drunk in his fury, and so brings down their strength to the earth—Isa. lxiii. 1-6; Joel iii. 13; Apoc. xiv. 20.

The result of the reaping the harvest and treading the great winepress is the binding of the Dragon-power and the shutting of it up in the abyss for a thousand years; in other words, the taking away of the dominion of the Assyrian lion, the Medo-Persian bear, and the Greco-Egypto-Anglican leopard, for a season and a time—Dan. vii. 12. These organizations of peoples are not destroyed, as was the Babylonian fourth beast embodying the Laodicean Apostasy. They are conquered and deprived of dominion, which is transferred to their conquerors the saints, who will have brought down their strength with a sanguinary and mighty overthrow. Thus, Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Khush, Elam, Shinar, and the islands of the sea, will have felt the edge of their two-edged sword, as well as Europe and the West; for, like birds of prey, their tribes will “fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the West; they will spoil them of the East together; they will lay their power upon Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey them”—Isa. xi. 11, 14. The face and condition of the East will then be altogether changed. With the present spiritual and temporal constitution of “Christendom” destroyed, and the East brought into subjection to Deity, the nations will then be truly “blessed with” and “in Abraham and his seed,” as predicted in the gospel of the kingdom. Yahweh will be made known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know Yahweh in that day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation. . . In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land; whom Yahweh Tz’vaoth shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance—Isa. xix. 21-25.

As to the leopard, or “Philistines toward the west,” the third beast, of which Egypt is a part, Tarshish and Javan, these also become a spoil in the war of the great day of Yahweh Ail-Shaddai. The Tyrian commerce of the Great Sea is turned from Britain to p. 94 Palestine as a flowing stream; and “her merchandise and her hire is holiness to Yahweh; it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before Yahweh, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing”—Isa. xxiii. 18; lx. 5, 9; lxi. 6; lxvi. 12; Ps. xlv. 12; lxxii. 10.

In the development of the second and third angel-missions, and in the harvesting of the earth and treading of its vintage, all the work of the seventh vial will have been accomplished. All its voices, thunders, and lightnings, will have been hushed into eternal silence; the vibrations of the greatest earthquake that ever shook the nations will have ceased their tremblings for ever; the threefold divisions of the great city will all have been confounded in the fall of Babylon, and the flight of every political island, and disappearance of the imperial mountains of ancient date. Jesus and his Brethren, energized by Yahweh, the Eternal Spirit, descending as a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, will have beaten down the Assyrian, and swept away all refuges of lies. The Laodicean Apostasy will have been demolished and for ever abolished; and “the smoke of the temple from the glory of the Deity, and from his power,” will all have cleared away, and men will enter into the temple and go out no more—Isa. xxx. 30; xxviii. 2,17; xxxii. 19; Ezek. xxxviii. 22; Apoc. xi. 19; xv. 8; iii. 12; xvi. 17-21. “IT IS DONE.” “The Air” is purified of “the spirituals of wickedness in the heavenlies” (Eph. vi. 12), and nothing remains but for the victorious saints and the conquered world of nations to celebrate the victory.

Such is a brief sketch of this remarkable prophecy, outlined in the light of the prophets, the testimony of history, and the reality of what exists, truly brought out by the unerring principles of apostolic truth. The Apocalypse is its own evidence of its divine authenticity. Its perfect harmony with Moses and the prophets, the discourses of Christ Jesus, and the teachings of all the apostles; its unique and inimitable structure, and its complete frustration of all the attempts of “the wise and prudent” to comprehend it (Matt. xi. 25), are evidences that it originated, not from John or any other of his learned or unlearned contemporaries, but from the mind of Him to whom are known all his works from the beginning. It brings to nothing “the understanding of the prudent,” and resolves into outer darkness the wisdom of all the world’s rulers and soul-merchants, in whatever name or denomination they may rejoice in Church and State. “If any man will do the Father’s will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of the Deity”—John p. 95 vii. 17. No man can do his will who is not intelligent in “the truth as it is in Jesus;” because his will demands an enlightened obedience. A man, therefore, who is not an enlightened believer, is essentially deficient in the prime prerequisite qualification of an interpreter and critic of interpretations. This is the reason why there is not a single scriptural interpretation of the apocalypse extant from the days of Sir Isaac Newton to the current year. Many attempts have been made, but they have all proved failures; because their “wise and prudent” authors, being the mere embodiments of the dogmatic pietism sanctified in the world’s opinion by the “names of blasphemy” of which “the scarlet-colored beast,” in contemporary existence with Christ’s advent, is “full” (ch. xvii. 3), are necessarily ignorant of “the first principles of the oracles of God.” A man cannot be loyal and true to his Romish or Protestant creed and understand the apocalypse. His head will be full of immortal soulism, heaven beyond the realms of time and space, purgatory, mariolatry and saint-worship, eternal subterranean hells, baby-ghosts transformed into angels studding the cloudy vapors of the air, and of all other speculations kindred to these. Such a wise and prudent genius mistakes a community of confessed “miserable sinners,” assembling in an ecclesiastical temple of the dead, and rejoicing in the Queen as their head, for the Church of Christ, and looks only for saints in “sainted” sinners translated to the skies! Such a “theologian,” be he lay or clerical, conformist or dissenter, never has, and never can, understand the apocalypse till he abandons these traditions of the Apostasy.

The author of this work does not address himself to such. He writes of them as an interpretation of the book that delineates the terrible catastrophe coming upon them demands; but he writes for “the servants of the Deity,” that they may read and understand. Lest, therefore, the sketch already given should fall short of that simplicity necessary to the comprehension of the apocalypse by the least intelligent of his brethren in Christ, the author invites their attention to the following “Tabular Analysis,” which presents, as it were, synoptically, the subject matter of the previous sketch. The method of the Analysis is suggested by the Apocalypse itself. The first general division of the prophecy contains the first five chapters; the second, the seven sealed scroll; the third, that portion pertaining to the introduction of the thousand years’ reign, or kingdom of God; the fourth, the prophecy of millennial blessedness; and the fifth, the prophecy of the “little season.” These divisions must not be confounded with the divisions of the scroll; p. 96 for the two divisions of the scroll are comprehended in the second general division of the prophecy.

The Roman figures, I., II., III., IV., V., prefixed to certain captions of the Analysis, indicate that all following that title belongs to the divisions so numbered.

Tabular Analysis of the Apocalypse

General Subject

A revelation symbolically and dramatically exhibited of the enmity between the Serpent and his Seed, and the Woman and her Seed, as especially developed in the conflict between CHRIST AND HIS BRETHREN with Daniel’s Fourth Beast System of Powers: of the judgments retributively affecting these; of the sufferings of Christ’s Brethren in the conflict; of their subjugation until the ANCIENT OF DAYS appear; of the subsequent overthrow and destruction of the Powers of the World by Christ and his Brethren; and of the consequent establishment of the Kingdom and Throne of David promised to the saints, and never to be destroyed.

Gen. iii. 15; Dan. ii. 44; vii. 21, 22, 26, 27; Apoc. vi.—xx. 5; Heb. ii. 11-14.

Time of Development

From A. D. 107 to A. D. 1905=A. M. 5995.

General Divisions

I. The Seven Apocalyptic Epistles to the Seven Representative Ecclesias. II. The Seven-Sealed Scroll. III. The Little Open Scroll containing the utterances of the Seven Thunders from the throne, which John was forbidden to write. IV. The prophecy of Millennial Blessedness. V. Prophecy of the “Little Season.”

I. The Seven Apocalyptic Epistles

[See the First Volume, page 428.]

p. 97II. The Seven-Sealed Scroll

1. First General Division of the Scroll

The First Four and the Sixth Seals representative of the judicial manner of “taking out of the way” the PAGAN CONSTITUTION of the “Dreadful and Terrible Fourth Beast,” which withheld the revelation of “the LAWLESS ONE;”^a and the consequent manifestation of the CATHOLIC MYSTERY OF INIQUITY, or Man-of-Sin Power, in the Heaven of the said beast, or “Great Red Dragon.”^b

Time of Events

From A. D. 107 to A. D. 325.

2. Second General Division of the Scroll

The Seventh Seal, Seven Trumpets, and the Six Vials to the appearing of Christ “as a thief;” exhibiting the development of the Ten Horns of the Fourth Beast, in the wounding of the Sixth Head and establishment of the Seventh;^c the subversion of the Greek Catholic Dynasty of Constantinople;^d the rising of Daniel’s Episcopal Horn, or Eighth Head, that speaks blasphemies and “as a dragon;”^e the war of the saints with this power; their subjugation death, resurrection, and ascension to the heaven, at the ending of the Sixth Trumpet;^f judgments upon their enemies, the Horns, Eighth Head, and Image,^g and the preparation of their way.^h

Time of Events

From A. D. 325 to the Fall Seasons of A. D. 1864-8, or thereabouts.

III. The Little Open Scroll

The Seventh Seal, Seventh Trumpet, Seventh Vial, and Seven Thunders from the manifestation of Christ and his Brethren as the Lamb in the midst of the 144,000 redeemed from the earth, to the full establishment of the Millennial Throne and Kingdom of David upon the utter destruction of Daniel’s Dreadful and Terrible Fourth, p. 98 Beast; and the subjection of the first three, or the Lion, the Bear and the Leopard.

Apoc. iv. 5; v. 5-14; vii. 9-17; x; xi. 15-19; xiii. 10; xiv; xv; xvi. 15-21; xvii. 14; xviii; xix; xx. 1-6; 11-15; xxi. 8.

Time of Events

“The Time of the End,”^a from the Quadrennial Epoch, A. D. 1864-8 to A. D. 1905.

IV. The Prophecy of Millennial Blessedness

Millennial blessedness and glory pervade the earth, and all its nations are “blessed in Abraham and his Seed,” according to the Gospel. The government of the world being in the hands of Jesus and his Brethren, there is “glory to the Deity in the highest heaven, over the earth peace, and good will among men,” who all rejoice in their great deliverance from the tyranny and misrule of the spirituals of wickedness in the heavenlies of Church and State.

Dan. vii. 14, 27; Apoc. v. 13; xiv. 13; xv. 3, 4; xx. 6; xxi. 9-27; xxii. 1-5.

Time of Events

From A. D. 1905 to A. D. 2905.

V. Prophecy of the “Little Season”

The Postmillennial “Little Season,” when the Adversaries of righteousness administered by the saints in Church and State, will get up a widespread rebellion against their government. War ensues, and their camp and capitol are invested; but the power of the administration prevails; and with the suppression of the insurrection, the time comes to consummate the work of “taking away the sin of the world,” in the destruction of “the last enemy”—of “that having the power of death,” and of “the works of the Devil.”

Apoc. xx. 7-10; xxi. 1, 3-7; xxii. 3; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Heb. ii. 14; 1 John iii. 8.

p. 99Time of Events

From A. D. 2905 to A. D. 2910=A. M., 7000.

Special Divisions of the Apocalyptic Tragedy

I. The First Six Seals

Act I.—Seal 1

The ARCHER of the white horse goes forth from the Lamb with his bow, on a career of conquest—ch. vi. 1, 2.

Act II.—Seal 2

The rider of the red horse puts an end to the previous peace, and involves the populations of the Fourth Beast polity in bloody civil wars—ch. vi. 3, 4.

Act III.—Seal 3

The Greco-Latin Horse black with lamentation, mourning and woe—ch. vi. 5, 6.

Act IV.—Seal 4

War, famine, pestilence, and barbarian invasion combined, sickly over the Roman Horse with the pale cast of death and corruption—ch. vi. 7, 8.

Act V.—Seal 5

A period of great resistance unto blood on the part of the Bowmen engaged in the conquest of the paganism of the Fourth Beast—ch. vi. 9-11.

Act VI.—Seal 6

A great earthquake inaugurates this judicial period. War in the heaven,^a resulting in an eclipse of the sun, in the moon becoming p. 100 blood, in stars of the heaven, the stars drawn by the tail of the Dragon,^a falling to the earth, and in the casting out thereinto of the great red dragon.^b The heaven of the Dragon-polity departs as a scroll rolled up; and every mountain and island change their places. The angels of the dragon are cast out with him.^c No place for them any more in the heaven from which they are ejected having been effectually conquered by the Archer—the fellowservants and brethren of the souls under the altar; who conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, on account of which they were slain, not loving their lives unto death.^d Great rejoicing in the heavens by them who succeed the ejected dragon and his officials, who rage with great fury in the earth and sea of their late dominion.^e The great day of wrath upon paganism.

The woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, the Laodicean Apostasy, imperialized, and the Man-of-Sin power revealed.^f