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12 And the sixth poured out the contents of his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order that the way of the kings from

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tinue, the prophecy does not inform us, unless the 'five months' of the vision of the fifth trumpet are intended to symbolise the time of its duration.1 latter part of the vision is terribly significant of the incorrigible state of the Roman Christendom of our day. Revolution, the natural and judicial result of bad example and the neglect of religious teaching, is a blood-red spectre which robs of peace all the Christian sovereigns and rulers of the world. It is the judgment which falls upon the throne of the worldpower. But it has not had the effect of bringing either princes or people to repentance; nor can we entertain any reasonable hope that the revolutions probably soon to come will produce any better result.2

12. When ancient Babylon was taken, the armies of Cyrus, long detained on its banks, marched into her on the dry bed of the river. This supplies the imagery of the present vision. The kings from the East must mean the destroyers of Babylon. These are explained in chap. xvii. 16, 17, to be those worldly powers which have for a long time supported her, the rulers of

Roman Christendom. They are

here called kings from the East simply because Cyrus was so described." Further on they are called 'the kings of the whole Roman world' (oikoumenè).4

Chris

Babylon in this prophecy is represented as supported by the river Euphrates and by the wildbeast. The river is explained to mean the masses of the people,5 the wild-beast is the symbol of the rulers of the world. tian sovereigns and ecclesiastical rulers, though closely allied during the time of the Church's complete supremacy, have never been the best of friends. In all contests, however, the Church until lately has always gained the victory, because she has been supported by the faith of the masses of the people. The doom of the Church, therefore, is at hand, when the masses of the people in the nations of Christendom cease to acknowledge her claim to their allegiance. Then the rulers of the world can safely rid themselves of a yoke which they have long unwillingly borne. The drying up of Euphrates in this vision seems therefore to signify the withdrawal of popular support from the harlot Church.

Rev. ix. 5, 10. 2 See Rev. ix. 1-11, and the Commentary.

3 Isai. xlii. 2 compared with Isai. xlv. 13. 4 Verse 14. 5 Rev. xvii. 15.

13 the rising of the sun might be prepared. And I saw coming out of the mouth of the serpent, and out of the mouth of the wild-beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet three unclean spirits like frogs; 14 for they are the spirits of demons working signs, which go forth to the kings of the whole world (oikoumene) to gather them together for the battle of 15 that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his 16 shame. And they gathered them together to a place

13, 14. Here we see how that support is withdrawn; namely, by the spreading of infidelity traced to three obvious causes: the working of Satan, the maxims of the world, and the false teaching of the Pope. This naturally results in a general apostasy of kings and people, and a united and determined effort to extinguish the light of the Church. How soon this apostasy will take place, or how far our own Church and country may participate or be involved in it, it is impossible to conjecture. But we must be blind indeed if we do not see that the serpent, the wild-beast, and the false prophet are busily engaged in sending out of their mouths those principles of unbelief, worldliness, and superstition, which must destroy eventually the faith of those who are exposed to their influence while left without the defence of earnest and faithful Christian teaching. That nation

must be in danger of being drawn into the vortex of the great conspiracy, which, though she has the light of a pure and reformed branch of the Church, and can command the services of a vast and devoted band of Christian teachers, nevertheless publicly ignores the paramount importance of religious teaching in her elementary schools, throws open her universities to Jews, Mahometans, and infidels; and receives into her legislative council not only those who deny that Jesus is the Son of the living God, but even those who do not believe in the existence of any God at all Who governs and will judge the earth.

15, 16. When the great conspiracy of the serpent, the wildbeast, and the false prophet is fully developed; when kings and people seem to have succeeded in extinguishing the lights of Christendom; when they that dwell on

called in the Hebrew tongue Har-Magedon (the mountain of Megiddo).

17 And the seventh poured out the contents of his

vial upon the air, and there went forth a loud voice from the holy place, from the throne, saying, It is 18 finished. And there were lightnings and voices and thunders, and there was a great earthquake such as was not since man was upon the earth, such an 19 earthquake and so great. And the great city was

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explain more in detail the judgments of the sixth trumpet and the sixth vial; showing more evidently who are the instruments of those judgments and on whom they fall; and unfolding the figurative meaning of many things already mentioned by anticipation.

'Lightnings and voices and thunderings' mark in this prophecy the introduction of new objects before the prophet's field of vision.1

The great earthquake of the sixth seal preceded the final judgment of the Lamb.5 A great earthquake accompanied the judgment of the great city in the vision of the sixth trumpet, immediately preceding the judgment of the dead.6 Here also we have a great earthquake and a fuller account of the judgment of the great city.

The great city has already

Rev. xi. 10.

2 Rev. xi. 5.

Compare Rev. x. 4 and xi. 19 with xvi. 18.

See chap. xi. 15-18.

Rev. vi. 12-17. Rev. xi. 13, 18.

divided into three parts, and the cities of the Gentiles fell; and Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the 20 fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and 21 the mountains were not found; and great hail about the weight of a talent came down out of heaven upon men; and men blasphemed God for the plague of hail; for the plague of it was exceeding great.

been described as the holy city trodden under foot by the Gentiles, as Sodom and Egypt, and as the city in whose streets the Lord was crucified, where also His faithful witnesses bore their testimony in sackcloth, and then were for a short time slain and silenced and left unburied, while the world rejoiced at being relieved from the torment of their preaching.1 The great river Euphrates also, the main support and defence of Babylon, has been several times mentioned ; 2 as well as the fall of Babylon

1 Rev. xi. 2-10.

in a passage in which she is said to have caused the nations to commit fornication with her.3 In the following chapter she will be more fully revealed as the symbol of Roman Christendom, especially of the Roman Church established as the Church of the

Roman Empire. She is here identified with the great city of chap. xi., there called Sodom and Egypt; and as, in chap. xiv. 8 she is said to have corrupted the Gentiles, so here, she does not fall alone, sbe involves the cities of the Gentiles in her fall.

2 Rev. x. 14 compared with vii. 1-3 and xvi. 12.
3 Chap. xiv. 8.

CHAPTER XVII.

1-18 A vision of the judgment of the harlot Church; of her long reign over the kings of Christendom and over the masses of their subjects, and of her final rejection by them.

INTRODUCTION.

The great city of this prophecy is called the holy city trodden under foot by the Gentiles, Sodom, Egypt, Babylon and the great harlot, who commits fornication with the kings and people of the oikoumenè or Roman world, and signifies the Latin Church centred in Rome, and established as the Church of the Roman Empire.

The complete union of Church and State, which existed from about the age of Charlemagne until the French Revolution, is one of the most conspicuous and remarkable phenomena of medieval and modern European history; and it is perhaps the least likely state of things to have been anticipated by any Christian writer in the first or second century of our era.

The common symbols for the Church in Scripture are those of a woman and of a city. The well-known symbol for the Roman Empire, from the age of St. John until the end, is that of a wildbeast with ten horns. In the vision of this chapter we have these two symbols united. We have, in fact, a most intelligible symbolic picture of the great Roman Hierarchy. We have a symbolic picture of the long reign and supreme dominion of the Church in the Roman world—the woman sitting upon the ten-horned wild-beast. But this vision is specially given to reveal the punishment of the Church for its long course of sinful worldliness, falsehood, idolatry, superstition, and cruel persecution of all who have attempted its reformation. It points out by signs which cannot be mistaken the complete eventual separation of Church and State; the quarrel of those who so long were guilty lovers; the natural result of that hatred of ecclesiastical dominion which has so long rankled in the hearts of so-called Christian Governments. It represents to us the great wild-beast as at last grown weary of his harlot and determined to cast off his

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