Page:Darby - Notes on the Book of Revelations, 1839.djvu/139

 witness of all this slaughter of the saints of God. I hardly think one saint would give this testimony from under or out of the altar. If the ordinary reading be correct, then an angel announces it out of the altar, recalling the mind to their having been in their death, as burnt sacrifices ta God.

The fourth angel deals with the supreme power over the earth. But its effect was only to make it hotter: men suffered from intolerable tyranny now; they would not be subject to God—now they only blasphemed Him.

The fifth poured out his vial on the throne of the beast, which was really Satan’s throne, the seat of his dominion and power.

The effect was darkness and confusion; and they, the people of his dominion, “gnawed their tongues for pain.” The beast and his armies, his active evil and mischief, are not in question now; the vial was poured upon his throne. There, God’s judgment reached him; in the other the Lamb’s. The pains and sores here connected seem to identify this class with the first. God had still, to them, only the character of the God of heaven.

Under the sixth, that which flowed through, and gave its strength, character, and prosperity to Babylon was dried up; that “the way of the kings from