Vs. 17-21.--The position of the "angel standing in the sun," and "crying with a loud voice;" represents, that Messiah's judgments would be visible to all the world; and the extent of the invitation to the "fowls," indicates the vast slaughter of his enemies. Babylon being "utterly burned with fire," (ch. xvii. 16, xviii. 8,) as a suitable punishment of an apostate church; the "flesh of kings, of captains, of mighty men," etc., as a sacrifice to divine justice, is given as a feast to the fowls of heaven. The allusion here is to the destruction of "Gog and Magog." (Ezek. xxxix. 17-20.) These enemies of the saints are to appear and be overthrown before the millennium; and although John borrows the names of these enemies, (ch. xx. 8,) they are not the same as those of Ezekiel; the one appearing _before_, the other _after_ the thousand years. We have often found the enemies of the church called in the Apocalypse by the names of persecutors under the Old Testament;--Babylon, Egypt, etc.--We may consider the "fowls," the birds of prey, as symbolizing the kings who retaliate upon Babylon; (as in ch. xvii. 16;) or rather, as the Lord's people reclaiming their own, of which they had been unjustly and long deprived,--"spoiling the Egyptians." (Exod. xii. 36.) Some suppose that the confederacy of the "kings of the earth" with the beast, (v. 19,) is a distinct attack from that mentioned in chapter seventeenth; (v. 14;) but perhaps it is safer to consider it as the same, only more distinctly and fully exhibited here. Indeed it seems, from the agency of the "false prophet," to be the same event as that under the sixth vial, (ch. xvi. 14;) preparing to the battle of Armageddon. The Lord Jesus as "captain of the Lord's hosts," and the army of heaven following him, all of them on white horses, appear to be on the one side; and the beast with the kings of the earth, instigated by the false prophet, on the other. The rank and file like their leaders are described as having "received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image." But the beast of the earth, (ch. iii. 11,) causes all ranks to receive the mark, and worship the image of the beast, (vs. 15, 16) The beast of the earth, the woman, and the false prophet, all mean the same thing; and that is, an apostate church in alliance with tyrannical civil powers, (ch. xvii. 3.) Now, if the great city Babylon, a symbol which comprises the whole antichristian confederacy, has been utterly destroyed, as appears in the eighteenth chapter, whence come these enemies bearing the same characters? The only solution of this apparent difficulty is by supposing as we have done, that this is a re-exhibition of what has been more obscurely symbolized, (ch. xiv. 20; xvi. 17; xvii. 16; xviii. 2, 8, 20,) in order more distinctly to point out the end of two principal leaders,--the "beast and the false prophet," the empire and church of Rome. "These both were cast alive into a lake of fire