Revelation 16

Notes

Ver. 1. Already the wicked have had fearful earnests of these vials of divine wrath poured out upon them. From A.D. 713 to 734 the Mahometan Saracens poured themselves into Spain and the south of France, rendering much of those countries a comparative desert. From A.D. 830 to 980 the contentions among the descendants of Charles the Great, emperor of Germany and king of France, and the ravages of the Hungarians in Italy and Sicily, deluged those countries with human blood. From A.D. 1090 to 1290 not a few millions were cut off, and most of Europe reduced to the brink of ruin by the sacred, or rather vain, war for the recovery of Canaan from the Mahometan Seljukian Turks and Saracens. From 1200 to 1370 the contentions of the Guelfs and Gibellines, or Church and emperor's parties, rendered Italy and Germany a scene of human carnage and blood. From 1370 to 1447 the repeated schisms of the Church and the oppression of the Bohemians occasioned terrible wars in Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. Between 1486 and 1534 a sweating sickness and other pestilential disorders carried off prodigious multitudes in England, Germany, and France. From about 1370 to 1698 the Ottoman Turks proved a terrible scourge to the Saints in Hungary, Poland, Italy, Germany, Mediterranean isles, &c. We live in an age when the request for a philosophy of history may be made with good hope of success. The great achievement of the modern mind has been almost entirely to reconstruct historical science. With very few exceptions, the historians of the three centuries immediately preceding the French Revolution were little more than analysts. That any moral significance underlay the tale of sound and fury which they related, that the spiritual and intellectual movements running through the ages are the most important elements in the career of humanity, that the phenomena of history are not isolated and fortuitous, but are connected, are co-ordinate, and are the expression of laws, they never so much as dreamed. But now history is no longer considered a mere hanging together in a continuous narrative of so many disconnected events. The springs of political action must be apprehended, the real causes of great revolutions must be traced, and along with the record of events must be seen what powers beneath the surface are at work to make the events possible. So if we are to understand the forces with which early Christianity had to contend, we must see in heathenism, above all things, religion. The pagans were as much given up to religion as were the Christians, the difference was that one was true and the other false. When St. Paul came to Athens he found the inhabitants too religious. Altars stood beside the streets. The contest between Christianity and paganism then was a war between one religion and another. It was a conflict between the true and the false, between a religion allied with all the passions and wrong tendencies of the lower nature, and a religion allied with what is spiritual and ethical and universal in man. The conflict between the two religions was the most deadly and awful struggle in the history of man on earth. The author of Revelation was a witness to the malignity and hate of heathenism. He saw it in all its revolting meanness and corruption. And doubtless many of the bold and wonderful figures he uses in this book were intended to portray some of forms of heathen religion. It is difficult exactly to determine what in some of the expressions he uses he had in mind But the Bible is a growing book, and what we do not understand now we will come to a knowledge of as history advances. Revelation is not a narrative, it is a book of forelookings. The writer is a seer. He is looking to the coming ages and the coming triumphs of truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and to the coming downfall of organized evil in all forms. Genesis opens the movement of God in history and Revelation closes it. Hence all of Revelation will not be understood till God through Christ completes His eternal purpose.

Ver. 12. Euphrates. For the meaning of 'Euphrates,' see note on ch. 9. 14.—Kings of the east. A title perhaps emblematic of sincere inquirers after Christ, in allusion to the magi, Mat. 1. 1, 2, whom ecclesiastical tradition represents as kings. This interpretation is favoured by the fact that wherever Popery has power, whether popular or legal, free inquiry after Christ in the Scripture is authoritatively suppressed. C.

Ver. 19. The great city (mystical Babylon) was divided into three parts, instead of ten as formerly—either three great monarchies or three great parties; and if the latter, these parties most probably will be, Papal, political Protestant, and infidel.—Note, All spiritual Protestantism will have utterly separated from aiding and abetting the Babylonian powers, Re. 18. 4.—The cities of the nations—the ten kingdoms—fell—were revolutionized and swallowed up in the three. C.

Reflections.—Gradual, but terrible and righteous, are the judgments of God which shall in due time be executed upon Popish idolaters and persecutors, and their ungodly companions in wickedness. Actuated by unclean diabolical spirits, and instigated by false teachers, they may for a little time gather themselves to contend with the almighty Redeemer, obstinately persist in their abominable courses, and blaspheme God, as if he injured them. But quickly the vials of his wrath shall be poured out upon them, answerable to their guilt, till they be utterly and irrecoverably ruined. And unexpected, fearful, extensive, sudden, and destructive shall be their punishment. Happy are they who shall be found faithful to Christ and righteousness, adorned with his grace, and watchfully preparing to meet him! While others howl and blaspheme for vexation of spirit, these shall rejoice in the Lord, and applaud the truly righteous and faithful realization of his purpose.