The First Vial is poured out upon the earth. A noisome and grievous sore falls upon men who bore the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. Men voluntarily bear the mark of him who opposes God; God will place this mark of His displeasure upon those who bear this mark, and they will feel it. Whether it is actual physical suffering, which is quite understandable, or symbolic of mental distress and affliction, we cannot say. One thing is certain. It is a question of terrible sowing of idolatry and an adequate and terrible reaping.
The Second Vial is poured out upon the sea. It becomes as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul dies in the sea—speaking of widespread war and bloodshed upon the masses of the people.
The Third Vial is poured upon the rivers and fountains of water. They become blood. Judgment falls not only upon the revolutionary masses of people, but upon the rivers and fountains—these speak of what is ordered and stable: a river flows between its banks, fountains are springs of refreshment.
Under the third trumpet the waters are made bitter, so much so that men die who drink of them.
Under the third vial the waters become blood. Things become evidently worse. Not only are things corrupted as under the third trumpet, but widespread death ensues. The judgment is severer and more general, and we gather that the third vial follows and accentuates the third trumpet.
The reason why judgment falls on this section of society, is because these governing bodies lend themselves to persecuting the saints and prophets. It is a question, as it ever is, of sowing and reaping. They shed the blood of saints and prophets; blood was given them to drink. How terribly significant is the short sentence, “They are worthy,” worthy or deserving of judgment. God is always righteous in His judgments.
The Fourth Vial is poured upon the sun. The fourth trumpet darkens the sun; that is, supreme authority is first paralyzed and then unable to discern how to act.
The fourth vial causes the sun to scorch men, so that they blaspheme God in their pain and anger; that is, supreme authority becomes oppressive in a high degree.
But all this does not work repentance. Such is man. Again it appears as if the fourth vial follows the fourth trumpet.
Notice the progressive order of these vials up to this point. They fall on (1) earth; (2) sea; (3) rivers and fountains; (4) sun. That is ordered society comes in for judgment, those who came willingly under the power of the beast; then the unruly masses of mankind come in for visitation; then the rulers; finally the supreme authority is used in oppression.
The Fifth Vial is poured out upon the seat of the beast. His kingdom is filled with darkness. Evidently the effect is terrible, as men gnaw their tongues with pain, but it is only to blaspheme the God, of heaven.
The fifth trumpet tells of the unloosing of myriads of demoniacal forces for the extermination, under the hand of God, of all who have not the seal of God in their foreheads. If, as we believe it likely, these two judgments coalesce, we can easily understand the description of the effects of the fifth vial. Such a state of things is unsupportable, and must head up to an end.
The Sixth Vial is poured upon the great river Euphrates, the water thereof is dried up, and the way of the Kings of the East is prepared.
The sixth trumpet witnesses the loosing of the four angels bound in the same river, resulting in the collection of an enormous army, the instrument of sanguinary slaughter in the Roman earth (the third part). We shall see how these two events are contemporaneous. Details must be very carefully followed here.
To begin with, the Euphrates is the eastern boundary of the promised land. Today Palestine measures roughly 150 miles by 50 miles, and equals about the size of Wales. The land promised to Abraham is to extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates and from the Red Sea to Lebanon, and will be many times larger. Some authorities say it will be larger than any European country save Russia.
Evidently the Euphrates being dried up means that the barrier which has kept behind it Israel's enemies loses its power to restrain. The drying up of the Euphrates has often been said to be the shrinking and waning of the power of the Turkish Empire, till it becomes no check to aggression from further east.
This shrinking has been a process going on for a long time. The Balkan States have one after another obtained their independence at the expense of Turkey, until she possesses a mere fragment of her former possessions in Europe. The great European War has seen it dispossessed of Arabia, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and its shadowy suzerainty over Egypt repudiated. It is not a little remarkable that the Euphrates has been in literal process of being dried up by the dam, which has been in process of construction under Sir William Willcocks for irrigation purposes. Still we believe that the drying up of the Euphrates signifies, whatever means may be taken, that God's restraining power is removed for His own wise purpose, and the loosing of the four angels to be the setting into motion, as allowed of God, all this terrible array of force. The Kings of the East are often taken to mean the Kings of the Far East—China, Japan, etc.—but the Kings of the East in Scripture refer, we believe, to those nearer to Palestine, especially such as belonged to the second world-empire, the Medo-Persian.
Three unclean spirits, like frogs, come out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. Here we have the trinity of evil working together. Satanic influence of an extraordinary nature emanates, and the awful result is seen in the kings of the earth and of the whole world gathering themselves to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
Here we pause. The terrible armies are gathered together, and there the vial ends. The materials for the battle of Armageddon gather together under the sixth vial—the battle itself takes place under the seventh, as we shall see.
Under the sixth trumpet we find sanguinary conflict affecting the Roman Empire taking place. Evidently the campaign goes on until it culminates in the great battle of Armageddon.
The Seventh Vial is Poured into the Air. At once the great voice is heard from the temple, “It is done”; as just before the seventh trumpet the Lord Himself, in angelic form, swears by God that there shall be no more delay, and that the mystery of God shall be finished. The result of both these—trumpet and vial-judgments are voices, lightnings, thunderings, earthquake, and great hail.
It is as if the end had come in the coalescing of these terrible judgments. Everything is shaken at last. The great city, the capital of the revived world-wide Empire, the city of Rome itself, is divided into three parts; the cities of the nations fall; great Babylon, the great corrupt ecclesiastical system, meets its doom, as we shall see in the next chapter, at the hands of the infuriated secular power; every island flees away, and the mountains are not found; it is the last terrible upheaval and convulsion of everything great and stable.
Then the vail drops upon the chronological description of events, to be resumed in chapter 19:11, when the intervention of Christ personally in the great battle of Armageddon takes place. But this in detail when we come to that chapter.