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 16, 17. The paeans of the four and twenty ancients to their triumphant Saviour represent the praises of the Church given to Christ through the ministry of the priesthood.

18. Toward the end of the world a final revolt against the Church shall be punished by a deluge of fire. Shortly thereafter shall come the resurrection of the body, and the general judgment in which God will reward His prophets and saints, and all who fear His name be they great or small. The wicked shall then suffer the just punishment of their iniquity.

19. If this verse be connected with the foregoing, it describes the intervention of Christ to protect His Church against her enemies in the last conflict at the end of the world. It seems better, however, to take it as a prelude to the following chapter. It then refers to the assistance which God gives His Church in her conflict with Satan mentioned above (vv. 2, 3), and described at length in the following chapters.

The ark of the testament is the Eucharistic Tabernacle in which Christ dwells with His Church. The lightnings, voices, and earthquake (thunders, in Greek) symbolize the preaching and warnings of the Church; her anathemas and judgments against all heresy and schism, and the divine punishment which these sins bring down upon those guilty of them.