INDUCTION OF THE JUDGMENTS OF THE SEVENTH SEAL

Though cast out of the third of the heaven, as indicated by his Tail drawing the third of the stars of the heaven, and casting them into the earth (Apoc. 12:4), the Dragon still retained power in “the earth and sea” of the Greco-Latin polity (Apoc. 12:12,13,15,16; 7:3). His power there was a “woe” to their indwellers, not excepting those who pro­fessed the faith of Jesus. Retribution, however, followed in his entire exclusion from the heaven, A.D. 324 (Apoc. 12:8); upon which the sealing of the 144,000 servants of the Deity, and the period of “silence, about half an hour,” began. Further retribution was suspended during the silence; but this being ended, the prayers of all the saints, which ascended during the silence as a cloud of incense from the golden altar of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, before the Deity (Apoc. 8:3,4), were answered by “voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and earth­quake,” (Apoc. 8:5); which preceded the preparation of the Seven Trumpeters to sound against the earth and sea (Apoc. 8:6).