The first comes by apostasy letting loose the in fluences of what is beneath—what is of the abyss. The effect is to put out or darken the supreme authority and the healthful influences which acted on men’s minds.[1] From this, a swarm of marauders spread themselves upon the earth—the prophetic earth—having a king, the angel of the bottomless pit: for though, having the active energy of imperial power, and towards others in face they were men, yet they had power on their heads, they were not behind in the open dignity of man, as governing in civil power by the image of God; they were subject to something, though they might press forward in prevailing conquest on others; and their sting was in their tail. It was not their energy that was their poisonous power of mischief, but what they brought in as a consequence: “The prophet and teacher of lies, he is the tail.”
The next woe was a more open incursion of external enemies, as such, this army of prevailing, imperial, congregated power, and from the mouths of them, they carried it before them; what was judgment came forth, only by evil, and what was
- ↑ In the protracted view I see no reason to deviate from the ordinary interpretation of this: in the crisis, it will have its accomplishment in the great last enemy, or Antichrist.
