It has often been the cry of the antichristian multitude,--"The voice of the people is the voice of God." This cry has been iterated and reiterated, in centuries past, like that of the Ephesian worshippers of Diana; that thereby the testimony of the witnesses might be counteracted and silenced. It has been only too often successful. But where did flattering demagogues and haughty despots find the sentiment? They found it engraved on the moral constitution of man by our beneficent Creator. They found it also transcribed on the pages of objective revelation,--the Bible. But, like other moral and scriptural principles, it has been perverted and misapplied by the perverse ingenuity of wicked men.--This "voice from heaven" is indeed the _people's_ voice: and it is legitimate, as coming from the people, because it is first the voice of God. The "heaven" here mentioned is the seat of civil power,--"the ordinance of man." (1 Pet. ii. 13.) In the times here contemplated,--millennial times,--the rights of men will be respected, predicated upon the rights of God, and flowing from them as inseparable. In settling the point of title to civil sovereignty, or the eligibility of any candidate for civil office, the principle enunciated by Hushai the Archite will be found to be alone reliable:--"Whom the Lord and this people choose." (2 Sam. xvi. 18.) Only let the Lord have the first choice of candidates for office in both church and state, and society will be prosperous and happy. (Acts i. 23, 24; vi. 5.) The "great voice" of the 12th verse, comes from "heaven," as the "great voices" of the 15th verse, announcing the millennium. 13. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. V. 13.--"The same hour" that the witnesses mark by their resurrection,--contemporaneously with that joyful event, is "a great earthquake,"--a revolution, (ch. vi. 12.) "The tenth part of the city fell." The city,--"Sodom." "Tenth part of the city,"--a "street," equivalent to "horn." Some one of the "ten kingdoms" will secede from the antichristian confederacy, or imperial dominion; "and the remnant,"--the other nine, dreading the Mediator's vengeance, will reluctantly but speedily submit. (See ch. vi. 16, 17.)--In the "earthquake were slain of men (names, titles,) seven thousand." By "names of men" to be slain,--that is, abolished in reorganized society, we are to understand those "names of blasphemy" mentioned, (ch. xiii. 1,) hereafter to be explained.