Chapter 9

SECOND SECTION OF THE SEVENTH SEAL

OR

FIRST TWO WOE-TRUMPETS

ACT I — FIFTH TRUMPET; OR, FIRST WOE
SUMMARY

We have seen in ch. 7, that the judgments of the first four trumpets were restrained until the work of sealing the servants of the Deity should be sufficiently advanced. The tempests that were to wreck the state, and dash it in pieces upon the rocks, were not to blow until there should be a community of faithful ones developed, who should be able to read the signs of their times aright, and be able to instruct others. This is implied in their being “sealed in their foreheads”.

An angel, in a symbolic sense, represents a class of agents executing a mission to which they have been appointed. We have seen this use of the word in ch.

The phenomena of the fourth trumpet are thus briefly sketched by Mr. Elliott: “The vision has passed; the fourth angel sounds. Hitherto, though its land, its sea, and its frontier rivers and fountains of waters have been desolated, yet the sun has still continued shining on the West­ern Empire as before. But now at length this too is affected. To the ex­tent of a third part of its orb, it suffers eclipse. The shadow falls over the Western Empire.

“For the understanding of the prophecies,” says Sir Isaac Newton truly, “we are, in the first place, to acquaint ourselves with the figurative language of the prophets; which is taken from the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic.”

The following is Mr. Elliott’s summary of the phenomena of the vision. “Which,” he inquires, “is the new scene of judgment? ‘The third of the rivers,’ it is said, ‘and the fountains of waters.’ It begins where yon mighty river to the North forms the ancient limit between barbarian Germany, and the Illyrian, or Middle Praefecture of the Roman Empire. Mark the portentous meteor that glares over it; like a blazing torch trailing its red line of light behind it in the Northern sky!

On account of the luminaries in the natural heaven governing the day and the night (Gen. 1:14-18), all luminaries in the symbolical lan­guage signify ruling powers; and the light itself is well employed to sig­nify the edicts, laws, rules, or directions that proceed from them for the good of their subjects. Thus of the Great King, styled the “Day Star,” and “the Sun of Righteousness,” it is said in Psalm 119:105, “Thy word is a light unto my path;” and in Hos. 6:5, “Thy judgments are as the light.”

The following is Mr. Elliott’s sketch of the phenomena of this vis­ion. “A pause ensues. Then presently there is heard another trumpet- blast of judgment.

We are plainly informed in this text, that its terms are not to be un­derstood “literally”: that the great mountain in a state of intense com­bustion was not a real mountain, but something analogous thereto.

The following historical summary from Elliot’s Horae Apocalyp- ticae being strictly correct, I cannot do better than to lay it before my readers. “The first angel sounds his trumpet: and lo the same tremen­dous tempest as before, black with other clouds from the cold hail­generating countries beyond the Danube, and charged with lightning and hail, appears driving westward.