of ungodly men. The fifth and sixth seals shew the different result of the actually persecuted or rather killed, and the powers that had persecuted them;[1] the seventh, the great result, in spite of the persecution: the word of God had not been bound.
The four winds blowing on the earth and sea, shew the disorder and tumult of the spirit of
- ↑ It would seem, from the fifth seal, just when the heavens are going to be changed, that, after the Church who have suffered, are publicly owned and put in white robes, they are to rest a little season, because there are brethren and fellow-servants to be killed yet. Though thus owned, therefore, vengeance could not be taken for this little space, till this was done. But then the heavens were changed to prepare for this vengeance. In the trumpets, note, that there is no evil on the saints, or any saints, but judgment on the earth or its inhabiters. The last suffering, i.e. as to death, of these “brethren,” seems a transition point, the act of the beast in its last state, as coming out of the bottomless pit, getting rid of them in that power, to the comfort of the inhabiters of the earth whom they tormented. They stood before the God of the earth.
Some would account this the time of the catching up of the Church; but this appears to me a mistake : it is the time, rather, of their public owning before the throne, consequent upon the change in the heavens previously spoken of, and previous to the commencement of the judgments. The hundred and forty-four thousand are, in that case, the Jewish remnant, then owned upon earth. Looked at as the Church, in its own portion, it is looked at, I apprehend, as in the heavens, from the end of the third chapter. It is quite done with on earth there.
