Section 5

At the commencement of this period, A.D.

In the answer given by the Spirit to the emblematic souls underneath the altar, the professors of Christianity still alive and contemporary with the fifth seal period, are divided into two classes — the one the fellowservants, and the other the brethren, of the de­ceased souls. The brethren are fellowservants, but all the fellow­servants were not brethren — even as christadelphians are Christians, but all Christians so-called are not christadelphians.

Such was the style of address put into the mouths of the souls underneath the altar by the Spirit — ho Despotes ho hagios kai ho alethinos. This is the only place in the Apocalypse where the word Despotes occurs; in the twenty-two other places where the word Lord is found it is

“When he opened the fifth seal, 1 saw underneatn the Altar the souls of them who had been slain” — tas psuchas ton esphagmenon. Clerical metaphysicians, with rare exceptions, declare these hierogly­phic souls seen by John in vision to be the disembodied immortal spirits of saints with Christ in heaven.

“And there were given to them each white robes," says John, stolai leukai. These were symbolically given to the souls already slain, and reposing underneath the Altar of Sacrifice.

The soul underneath the Altar, though really dead and therefore unconscious (for "the dead know not anything” Ecc. 9:5), are repre­sented as speaking. They are supposed to utter a demand for ven­geance upon their enemies, whose death-dealing power had, after a long interval of peace, broken out against the "partakers with the “Altar" afresh. "Until when.

John informs us, that when the Lamb opened the fifth seal he saw the Altar and souls underneath it. There are two apocalyptic altars pertaining to the apocalyptic temple — the thusiasterion of the priest’s court, and of the Holy Place.

This fifth seal comes in between the expired political judgments of the fourth and the renewed judgments of the sixth. While, in the previous four seals, the Roman heathen were the subject acted upon in their visions, in this, the fifth, it is those who profess the faith of Christ who are the object against which the seal-judgment is directed. The horses and their riders have disappeared from view, and, what is more remarkable, the four living ones also.

Vol. 1., pp. 428, 446

The Sardian state of the Ecclesias, in which things spiritual were "ready to die," merged into that in which the “few names," repre­sentative of those who were not “dead,” were the "little strength" — the Philadelphian. The philosophical Christianity and superstition of Satan's synagogue everywhere prevalent. The "little strength" the salt that preserves the Christian community from utter corruption — Apoc. 3:7.

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,”