n days, "a
thousand two hundred and threescore days" (chaps. 11:3; 12:6). Compare
Daniel 7:25. Again, answering to these three years and a half, we have
the three days and a half during which the two witnesses lie dead. Chap.
11:9, 11. The number _six_, moreover, from its peculiar relation to
seven, represents the preparation for the consummation of God's plans.
Hence the sixth seal (chap. 6:12-17), the sixth trumpet (chap. 9:14-21),
and the sixth vial (chap. 16:12-16) are each preeminent in the series to
which they belong. They usher in the awful judgments of Heaven which
destroy the wicked. Here, perhaps, we have the key to the symbolic
import of the number of the beast, 666. While it represents, according
to the principles of Greek numeration, the number of a man, it seems to
indicate that upon him fall all the judgments of the sixth seal, the
sixth trumpet, and the sixth vial.

_Four_ is the natural symbol for universality. Thus we have the four
living creatures round about the throne (chap. 4:6), perhaps as symbols
of the agencies by which God administers his universal providential
government (chaps. 6:1, 3, 5, 7; 15:7); the four angels standing on the
four corners of the earth and holding the four winds (chap. 7:1); and
the four angels bound in the river Euphrates (chap. 9:14). So also in
the fourfold enumeration, "kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation,"
or its equivalent. Chaps. 5:9; 10:11; 11:9; 14:6; 17:15. _A third and a
fourth part_, on the contrary, represent what is partial. Chaps. 6:8;
8:12; 9:18.

_Twelve_ is the well-known signature of God's people. Compare the twelve
tribes of the Old Testament and the twelve apostles of the New; the
woman with a crown of twelve stars (chap. 12:1); the twelve gates,
twelve angels, twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem, the twelve times
twelve cubits of its wall, and its tree of life that yields twelve
harvests a year (chaps. 21:12, 14; 22:2). We have also the same number
combined with a thousand, the general symbol for a great number. From
each of the twelve tribes of Israel are sealed twelve thousand (chap.
7:4-8), making for the symbolical number of the redeemed twelve times
twelve thousand (chap. 14:1, 3); and the walls of the New Jerusalem are
in every direction twelve thousand furlongs (chap. 21:16).

_Ten_ is possibly only a symbol of diversity, as in the case of the ten
horns of the beast (chaps. 12:3; 13:1; 17:3); though some take a literal
view of it