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CHAPTER VI.

RESPECTING THE UNFULFILLED PROPHECIES OF THE
APOCALYPSE.

HITHERTO, our course has been sufficiently plain : but, when we approach to the unfulfilled prophecies of the Apocalypse, we can do little more than sort and arrange them by the aid of those which have been already fulfilled.

I. That we should, antecedently to the accomplishment of such prophecies, pretend to settle and determine minute particulars, was not, I apprehend, the intention of the revealing Spirit. But, yet, unfulfilled prophecy so far depends upon fulfilled prophecy, that a knowledge of the latter must, to a certain extent, involve a knowledge of the former.

Thus, if, in fulfilled prophecy, it has been satisfactorily determined, that the ten-horned wildbeast denotes the Roman Empire: we cannot but recognise the same Roman Empire in unfulfilled prophecy, when, still in unfulfilled prophecy, we again encounter the same ten-horned wild-beast. Hence, if, in unfulfilled prophecy, we find the destruction of the ten-horned wild-beast announced; we are certainly enabled, by the aid of fulfilled prophecy, to anticipate the destruction of the Roman Empire.

H

The same remark applies to the harlot and the false prophet. In the explanation of fulfilled prophecy, they have been severally determined, under some slight varieties of aspect, to be what we may generally denominate the Church of Rome. Hence, if, in unfulfilled prophecy, we read of the destruction of the harlot and the false prophet; we are obviously compelled, on our own principle of exposition, to consider ourselves as reading of the destruction of the Roman Church and the Papacy.

Beyond this, save as the very terms of the prediction itself lead us by the hand, we are not warranted to go and, in truth, so far as speculation is concerned, the less that any commentator says respecting unfulfilled prophecy, the more will he merit the praise of a wise sobriety.

II. The unaccomplished prophecies of the Apocalypse may be reduced under the three principal divisions of the sixth vial, the seventh vial, and the millennium.

Though I come to this part of my subject with much reluctance: yet, since my Work would be incomplete if I passed it over in total silence, I proceed to consider it on the principle and in the order, which have been specified.

CHAPTER VII.

RESPECTING THE EFFUSION OF THE SIXTH VIAL.

ST. JOHN delivers the prediction of the sixth vial in terms following.

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates: and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings from the rising of the sun might be prepared. And I beheld three unclean spirits, like unto frogs (for they are the spirits of demons, working signs), to go forth, from the mouth of the dragon and from the mouth of the wild-beast and from the mouth of the false prophet, unto the kings of the earth even of the whole habitable world, in order to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he, that watcheth,

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I punctuate the original in manner following, which removes all necessity of the ellipse commonly thought to be here required.

Καὶ εἶδον, ἐκ τοῦ στόματος τοῦ δράκοντος καὶ ἐκ τοῦ στόματος τοῦ θηρίου καὶ ἐκ τοῦ στόματος τοῦ ψευδοπροφήτου, πνεύματα τρία ἀκάθαρτα, ὅμοια βατράχοις (εἰσὶ γὰρ πνεύματα δαιμόνων, ποιοῦντα σημεία), ἐκπορεύεσθαι ἐπὶ τοὺς βασιλεῖς τῆς γῆς καὶ τῆς οἰκουμένης ὅλης.

and keepeth his garments; lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And they gathered them together into a place, called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon".

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The subordinate matters, included within the oracle of the sixth vial, are: the exhaustion of the Euphrates; the preparation of a way for the kings from the rising of the sun; the going forth of three unclean spirits to the kings of the earth; and the agency of those unclean spirits in gathering the kings together to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

I. Of these several subordinate matters, the first is the allegorical exhaustion of the great river Euphrates.

On the principle of the partial development of unfulfilled prophecy by the aid of fulfilled prophecy, I can have no hesitation in applying, with Mr. Mede, this figuratively predicted circumstance to the literal downfall of the Ottoman Empire. In the present case, the operation of the principle is abundantly obvious. If the loosing of the four angels who are bound on the margin of the Euphrates, as effected by the sounding of the sixth trumpet, denote the rise of the Turcomannic

'The verb singular ovvýyayev, as it has often been justly remarked, agrees with the nominative neuter plural åкáðαρrα TVεúμаrа, whose office it was, as we learn from a preceding clause, to collect the kings.

2 Rev. xvi. 12-16.

Power: homogeneity requires, that the exhaustion of the same Euphrates, by the influence of the numerically corresponding sixth vial, should import its downfall.

Accordingly, with this result, the poetical machinery of the oracle will be found perfectly to agree. The imagery of describing the Sovereignty, within the dominions of which the Euphrates is situated, by the strong and many waters of that river, had already been employed by Isaiah in the case of the King and Kingdom of Assyria. Hence, by the analogy of prophetic language, the present waters of the Euphrates, even independently of the aid which we receive from the already accomplished oracle of the sixth trumpet, can only be the Monarch and Monarchy of the Ottomans. Such being the case, we are again brought to the conclusion, that the exhaustion of the waters of the Euphrates must denote the downfall of the Ottoman Empire."

An impatient speculatist, upon the passing events of the age combined with the gradual evolution of the mysterious roll of prophecy, will perhaps be tempted somewhat rapidly to pronounce, that the sixth vial is even now flowing, and that it began to be poured out upon the mystic Euphrates when on the 4th day of April in the year 1821 the Greek Insurrection commenced with the capture of Patras.

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