(1.) The position of the prophecy in the general structure of the Book. The prophecies of this wonderful book are arranged on a divinely ordered plan. There are some chapters to which it is difficult to assign their place; but it is easy to see what may be termed the backbone running through the whole. To use a very homely illustration, there is the main line of rail conspicuously running through the whole, and you may trace that clearly, though you cannot always trace the branches. Now in this outline there are three great series of prophetic periods—the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials; and these three series appear in a remarkable manner to follow each other. First there are the seals, as in chap. vi.; and when the sixth seal is opened, and the seventh about to follow, there appears a general expectation of the coming of the Lord. But when the seventh seal is actually opened, instead of our coming to the end, as apparently was expected, we find a second series developed. The seven trumpets were wrapped as it were in the seventh seal (viii. 1, 2), so that when it was opened they appeared, and a fresh series commenced, and the trumpet-angels one after another blew their blast. At length the seventh trumpet is sounded, and again it appears as though you had reached the end. But like the seventh seal, it, too, is found to contain within itself a third series. The seven vials are wrapped within it, and when that last trumpet is blown they are poured forth in awful succession on a wicked world. Thus the seventh seal contains all the trumpets, and the seventh trumpet all the vials. Now if this be the case it is clear that the sixth vial must come very near the end. The trumpets are none sounded till the six seals are passed and the seventh seal is opened. The vials do not begin till the six trumpets have completed their blast and the seventh has sounded; and of the vials five must have been poured out already, so that there can be nothing remaining but the seventh, or the last. To take the very homely illustration of a railway. Suppose a series of stations on a line, the seventh being a junction; suppose that on the branch from that junction there was another series of stations, the seventh again being a junction; and from that second junction there was another line of seven stations, the last being your home. What would you think of your position when you had travelled the whole length of the main line, and the whole of the first branch, and when you had gone so far along the second branch that you had actually reached the sixth station on that last line? You would say, surely, that you were near the end of your journey, close to home. Now whenever the Church of God reaches the sixth vial that will be its position. All the seals will have been opened, all the trumpets blown, and six of the seven vials poured out.