After the apostle saw the things represented in the sixth chapter; that is, after he saw in vision the progressive accomplishment of the taking out of the way of that power, even of the pagan Greco-Latin or Roman power, which hindered the revelation of the New Power in the estate of Daniel’s fourth beast — a power both spiritual and temporal, or ecclesiastical and civil, unknown to the Augustan Caesars who ruled anterior to Constantine; and germinated from that “Mystery of Iniquity” which, as tares, was sown and springing forth in growing vigor in the days of John and Paul; after he saw this power, whom the latter styles “the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition,” and “the Lawless One,” exalted to supreme authority and enthroned; in other words, after the entire exhaustion of the judgments of the Sixth Seal, he saw “four angels” or powers, divinely commissioned to destroy, “standing against (epi) the four corners of the earth” — standing in arms, ready to operate against the four projections of that “third part of the fourth beast earth” or territory, which was to be the arena of the first four trumpets — namely, Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa. For a time, even during the time of the sealing of the symbolic 144,000, John saw the authorities, who had the control of these destroying tempests, “holding” or restraining “the four winds of the earth, that the wind,” the one wind of divine fury, blowing now against Italy, and then against Africa, and then in a third and fourth direction, “should not blow against the earth, nor against the sea, nor against any tree.”
That the blowing of the wind was a destruction set in motion against the earth, sea, and trees, is manifest from the proclamation made by the sealing angel commanding the four destroying messenger-powers not to injure them until the sealing work was accomplished. In other words, when the foundation was firmly and thoroughly laid for the witnessing against the rising power of the Beast of the Outer Court, whose Lion-Mouth would be opened in blasphemy, and, aided by the ten new regal powers, would overcome the witnesses (Apoc. 11:3-7; 13:6,7); so that there would be moral force enough to carry on the witnessing against the Apostasy in its decemregal and papal organization during what might remain of sackcloth-prophesying for a thousand two hundred and threescore symbolic days — when the foundation of this witnessing institution was duly organized and strengthened, then, and not till then, the destroying winds might begin to blow to the injury of the fourth- beast earth, sea, and trees.