“And after this, I heard a loud voice of a mighty crowd in heaven,
saying, Praise ye Jehovah! The salvation, and the glory, and the
power of our God! For true and righteous are his judgments; for he
hath judged the great harlot, who corrupted the earth with her
fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her
hand! And again they said, Praise ye Jehovah! And her smoke
ascendeth for ever and ever. And the twenty-four elders and the
four living beings fell down and worshipped God, who sat on the
throne, saying, So be it! Praise ye Jehovah!” Rev. 19:1-4.
Daniel, in vision, saw the same persecuting power symbolized by a “Little
Horn,” having “eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great
things;” and he beheld, “and the same Horn made war with the saints, and
prevailed against them, until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was
given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints
possessed the kingdom,” Dan. 7:8, 21, 22. And Paul testified of “that
Wicked” who was to be revealed, that he was the “Man of Sin,” “whom the
Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with
the brightness of his coming,” 2 Thess. 2:3-8. The destruction of that
which was thus symbolized and predicted, must, consequently, be at the
epoch of Christ’s second coming and of the establishment of the kingdom of
God.
It is also at the epoch anticipated by “the souls of them that were slain
for the word of God and for the testimony which they held,” who, from
under the altar, on the opening of the “fifth seal,” “cried with a loud
voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” 6:9, 10. The epoch
which they anticipated not having then arrived, “white robes were given
unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest
yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also, and their
brethren that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled”
(6:11),—_i.e._, till their number should be filled up. As the destruction
of that hierarchy, in which “was found the blood of prophets and of saints
and of all that were slain upon the earth” (18:24), had just been
symbolized (in the 18th chap.), and as these rejoicings are because God
“hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her
fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand”
(19:2), it follows that the epoch here symbolized is that to which the
saints were to wait, and that they are now to be crowned with their
reward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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