nd 8th verses. In the
4th verse the witnesses declare their faith thus,--"All nations shall
come and worship before thee." But this is a description of the
millennial state of the world. (Ps. lxxii. 11.)

CHAPTER XVI.

All preliminaries being now arranged, the seven angels receive their
commission by a "great voice out of the temple." It is the "voice of the
Lord, full of majesty." (Ps. xxix. 4.)--As the _seals_ and _trumpets_
were not coincident, but successive, so it is doubtless with the
_vials_. No two begin to be poured out at the same time. One follows
another in orderly succession.

Several questions of difficult solution, arise in the minds of devout
and humble students of the Apocalypse, respecting the series of the
vials. Are the vials cotemporary with the trumpets? Seeing that the
seventh seal included all the trumpets, does analogy require that all
the vials be comprehended under the seventh or last trumpet? Or, do the
seven vials come under the last three trumpets, distinguished as they
are by the character of woe-trumpets? (ch. viii. 13.) Other questions
may here be propounded; but these seem to be the most obvious and
important, in fixing the time of the events predicted.

The breaking of the seventh seal unquestionably laid open the whole of
the book, including all the trumpets and vials,--all future events till
the end of the world; but it does not follow, for instance, that the
awful scene of the final judgment is to be cotemporary with any of the
trumpets, (ch. xx. 11, 12.) The seventh seal, therefore, discloses
important events, which are to come to pass subsequently to both
trumpets and vials. The fact that both trumpets and vials are disclosed
by the opening of the last seal, admits of their being cotemporaneous.

From the striking resemblance between the effects of the trumpets and
those of the vials, (ch. viii. 7-12; xvi. 2-12,) they might seem to be
cotemporary. This, however, is not the case, for the objects of the
judgments are different, that of the trumpets being more formally the
civil empire, while that of the vials is the ecclesiastical empire;
each, however, greatly affecting the other, because of their unholy
union against the cause of Christ. Perhaps it may be most consonant to
the mind of the Spirit to view the vials as agreeing in time with the
three woe-trumpets. Keeping in view the definite period of Antichrist's
domination in church and state, 1260 years, and the prob