Such, in brief, is the burden of the Book of Revelation. It will be observed that it involves these two cardinal points: First, the judgment and the extirpation of all that is evil by a series of struggles and agonies; and secondly, after this terrible experience, the creation of all things new. The first part, however, in the process of the Divine administration, consists of a series of scenes of miseries, disasters, and bloodshed than which nothing more terrible can be imagined, and which are described with a lurid force to which no other human writing offers anything comparable. War and disease and the confusion of all the elements of human society, and even of heaven and earth, are brought before us, until men are reduced to cry to the very mountains and rocks to cover them. All is described as the inevitable result of the wrath of God against evil and its representatives, and a fearful joy is ascribed to the heavenly beings who behold this vindication of the Divine righteousness. The four and twenty elders fall on their faces and worship God, saying (xi. 17), “We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, Which art and wast and art to come, because Thou hast taken to Thee Thy great power and hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldest give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the Saints, and to them that fear Thy Name, small and great, and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.” And then in awful response are heard, in the temple of God, “lightnings and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake and great hail.” These dread scenes, these fearful judgments, are depicted as the inevitable preliminary in the manifestation of the Divine Will and the establishment of the Divine Kingdom. This is the main fact which stands out broadly from the Book. It is not necessary, for the purpose of appreciating this, to comprehend the signification of each of the awful scenes which are predicted. How far they are capable of any explanation before the final events may well be doubted. Old Testament prophecy remained in great part mysterious until the moment of its accomplishment, and the full interpretation of Christian prophecy can hardly be less dependent upon its actual realization. But one thing is plain, that the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ upon earth, the full realization of all its promises of peace and goodwill, the complete manifestation of the glory and power of its King--that these great hopes and blessed promises cannot, according to the Book of Revelation, be realized without the world passing through scenes of fearful struggle and misery, and without the execution of Divine judgment upon the evil and falsehood with which it abounds.