"The Second Woe has passed away; behold, the Third Woe comes immediately."

The fifth trumpet, which summoned the Saracens against the Greek division of the Catholic Apostasy, was the first woe, and the sixth trumpet, which sounded forth the four angel-powers to put to death the Greek Catholic dominion, was the second woe. This was not only to extinguish this dominion, but to torment with a terrible testimony the world rulers and spirituals of the European Commonwealth in church and state, symbolized in the prophecy by "the beast with seven heads and ten horns." Hence, the judgments of the Second Woe were widely diffused over the whole of the Great City from the Euphrates to the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean. They began their desolating career A.D. 1062, and continued in their work of death upon the worshippers of the Demonials and Catholic Idols, until the demonial worship was destroyed in France, and its national homage transferred from the Roman "God of the earth" to "the Deity of the heaven," A.D. 1794, a calamitous period of 732 years. The ascription of glory to the Supreme Being was the remarkable act by which the second woe was consummated.

But, notwithstanding all the judgments that had fallen upon the Catholic World, it continued unrepentant of its idolatry, of its murders, its sorceries, its fornication, and its thefts. They had been terribly chastised in France. The blood they had shed there was avenged twofold; their spiritual sorceries had been abolished; the priests had been compelled to marry; and the wealth they had acquired by theft and fraud, they had been forced to disgorge. About two thousand priests had died by the executioner, many abjured their religion; and thousands had been expelled from the bloodstained country they had plundered and ruined. Still the Catholic world clung to its delusions, and repented not of its deeds. The Second Woe had exhausted itself upon "the Tenth of the City." The Reign of Terror ended with the execution of Robespierre and his colaborers. Forty-nine days after the Festival their heads rolled into the basket of the guillotine. Applause accompanied every descent of the fatal blade; and joy prevailed on every side, and the system of terror was overthrown. The woe had "passed away," and the time had come for republicanized France to become an angel-power of destruction against the worshippers of the beast in the other Tenths of the Great City.

"The third woe comes immediately" after the termination of the second. Between the predicted events of the first and second woes, that is, from the end of the first to the beginning of the second woe, there was an interval of about 130 years. But between the end of the second and the beginning of the third, there was no appreciable interval. It may therefore be considered as beginning in the year of the Festival, A.D. 1794. This third woe is, of course, the Seventh and Last Trumpet -- the Seventh Trumpet Division of the Seventh Seal, and summarized in the following words:

"And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in the heaven, saying, The kingdoms of the world have become our Lord’s and his Christ’s, and he shall reign for the aions of the aions."

This is the grand result of the sounding -- a consummation to be perfected as the result of the sounding of the seventh trumpet. This third woe trumpet has been sounding during the past seventy one years. These are so many of "the days of the voice of the seventh angel" as have hitherto elapsed. But they are not all "the days of the voice. " They have brought us to the terminal epoch of the Holy City’s "forty and two months;" and I believe that there are yet forty more "days," or years, to fill up all "the days of the voice of the seventh angel." The fall of the Tenth of the city happened in a day, but it did not become the Lord’s. All the tenths are to fall likewise by violence, to which they will be forced to yield, and to become the property of Him who overturns them. This overthrow will be the work of the "Hour of Judgment," which does not begin till after the advent of Christ, and the giving of judgment to the Saints; and consequently, after their resurrection and ascension to power in the heaven, as prefigured in the resurrection and ascension of the political witnesses "in the cloud." The judgments of the second woe terminated in the Reign of Terror, the most awful and terrible epoch ever yet experienced by a nation. It was emphatically the Reign of Death, oftentimes in its most appalling forms. But the consummation of the seventh trumpet will woefully surpass the Reign of Terror. This was limited to a single nation, of which the mighty were hurled from their seats into the lowest depths, and the rest sent empty away. But the terminal epoch of the seventh trumpet now upon us, will make the ears to tingle only to hear the report of its terrors. Daniel was informed that it would be "a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation to that same time" (xii. 1). "The time of the end" of the third woe trumpet is a time of unsurpassed calamity, and will extend to all nations in all parts of the earth. Their trade and commerce will be ruinously perturbed; their countries devastated by war; their hundreds of thousands prostrated by famine, pestilence and sword; their armies scattered like chaff before the wind; their "religions" abolished as "abominations" and blasphemies; their priests, clergies and ministers punished as sorcerers, murderers, impostors, hypocrites, and plunderers of the poor; and their kings, nobles and gentry destroyed as "the destroyers of the earth."

The Spirit of the Eternal in Jesus and his Brethren is "the Lord and his Christ," by whom this world-wide revolution will be developed and directed. The political witnesses of Jesus developed and directed the great French Revolution. Theirs was a great and mighty, as well as a terrible work; but it is the witnesses of the Holy City, the One Body, who will constitute the Revolutionary Government, and to whom the higher and nobler, mightier and more terrible mission is assigned, of breaking in pieces the political fabric of the world; of emancipating the nations from the reign of ignorance and strong delusion, and of blessing them in Abraham and his Seed. This is the work that is before them, and which, when accomplished, will introduce them to the reign of the aions of the aions, or THE THOUSAND YEARS.

And when this Millennial Sabbatism shall be duly established by the Eternal Spirit, the One Body, in glorious manifestation, and symbolized by the Four and Twenty Elders before the Deity, and "on their thrones," "fall upon their faces and do homage to the Deity, saying, We give thanks to thee, O Lord, the Almighty Deity, who is, and who was, and who art the Coming One, because thou hast assumed thy great power, and reignest."

But this is all in the future. It is the grand apocalyptic consummation of the gospel of the kingdom. It is the Divine purpose of the seventh trumpet first stated, but the last accomplished. The Spirit’s Body cannot be the Who is, and the Who was, and the Coming One reigning, so long as the saints are sleeping in the dust, and those who corrupt the earth are undestroyed. The resurrection of the holy generation is therefore indispensable to the denouement of the plot. The resurrection first comes in a time of trouble -- a trouble which has doubtless begun, and which will not diminish, but increase, until there be great wrath among the nations. And so it is written in the eighteenth verse of this chapter, saying:

"And the nations were made angry, and thy wrath came; and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give the reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, even to those who fear thy name, to the small and to the great; and to destroy those who corrupt the earth."

The nations of this prophecy are those of "the earth and of the whole habitable" (Apoc. xvi. 14). They are "made angry" through the operation of the Frog Power, which is the Imperial Democratic Power of France, the policy of which acting upon the governments of Constantinople, Vienna and Rome, causes these powers in their political antagonisms to become threatening and warlike. Thus the nations they govern are "made angry," and the world is again the theatre of war.

While they are in this international belligerency, developing their wrath upon each other, the wrath of Deity is manifested -- "and thy wrath came." But before this wrath can be manifested, He that is to execute the vengeance must have first come; and those who shall have the honor of co-operating with him in judgment, must be raised from among the dead, and have been themselves examined before his tribunal, accepted and quickened with incorruptible life. When the Divine wrath comes upon these nations, the revolutionary executors and directors of the indignation will be the Lord Jesus and his Brethren -- the Saints. The work preparing for them by the Imperial Democratic Power, which is the political witnessing power of "THE MOUNTAIN" imperialized, will be assumed and consummated by the Saints, who are "the Kings from a Sun’s risings." The Mountain, whose representatives are the members of the Napoleon Dynasty, could not with all the power at its command, do the work of wrath assigned to these kings. The nations have felt the power and wrath of "the Terrible Mountain," when, under the generalship of the first Buonaparte, it inflicted "a noisome and grievous sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast, and worshipped the Papal Image," when it "gave them blood to drink" in the plains and valleys of Italy; "scorched with fire" the unrepentant blasphemers of Southern Germany; hurled the Roman God from his throne into captivity; filled his kingdom with darkness; caused his blaspheming priests and worshippers to "gnaw their tongues for pain." In short, the Imperialized Mountain had executed the wrath of the first, third, fourth and fifth vials of the Revolutionary Hour; and having regained its position in the heaven, from which it was expelled at the fall of Napoleon, &c., into which it originally "ascended in the cloud," it is blindly preparing a situation for the manifestation of the almighty and terrible power of the witnesses of the Holy City. The Mountain, though terrible and powerful, is not almighty; but the Holy City, when the forty-two months of its subjection shall have fully passed, shall be more terrible, and absolutely omnipotent in the execution of its mission. What "the Mountain" could not do, "the Stone" will fully accomplish, when it will "become A GREAT MOUNTAIN, and fill the whole earth."

"Thy wrath is come." The coming of this wrath is marked by the commencement of the Seventh Vial, which is poured out upon "THE AIR" -- the political aerial in which the kingdoms of the kosmos, or fourth-beast constitution of things, shine in all their glory. The wrath falls upon the Governments to their destruction. The Imperial Mountain overturned the Papal Throne; but after the fall of its Emperor, it was reestablished, as were also other thrones. But the Mountain having recovered its position, has the papal throne again in its powerful grasp. It will not be able finally to abolish it. This is not its mission. It is only the Holy City, the One Almighty Body, that can overthrow all thrones in its wrath, and prevent them from being again established. The One Almighty Body by Seventh-Vial wrath is to possess itself of the kingdoms of the Unmeasured Court of the Gentiles. The corruptors of the earth will then have been destroyed, and the coming wrath of the Deity exhausted.