Vs. 9-11.—­“And the third angel followed.”  The two preceding angels addressed communities, calling them to repentance and reformation.  Indeed, the language of the second implies little or no hope of their recovery.  This third angel, “following” up the scriptural testimony of those who went before, and assuming that church and state,—­the essential elements of the antichristian system,—­continue irreclaimable, addresses his message to individuals.  This angel is the last that the Lord Jesus will employ to awaken sinners that “are at ease in Zion.”  His ministry is yet future, and he will never be succeeded by an angel of mercy until mystical Babylon is overthrown.  The special, arduous and perilous work of this angel is, to threaten eternal death against every individual who persists in the hitherto popular idolatry.  “If any man worship the beast.”—­Up to the time of this angel’s appearance the beast lives and devours his prey:  consequently, his work comes within the period of the 1260 years.  During this limited time, there will be found in the Apocalypse three objects of popular devotion,—­the dragon, (ch. xiii. 4,) the beast, and his image, (v. 15.) In this place the dragon is omitted, as also in ch. xv. 2; xx. 4.  We may ask, why the omission?—­Simply because “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God,” (1 Cor. x. 20;) consequently, these worshippers being Gentiles, (ch. xi. 2,) there is no necessity that the dragon (the devil) should be particularized.  From the first rise of the beast, he was in alliance with the dragon, (ch. xiii. 2, 3;) therefore both are doomed to perdition, (ch. xx. 10.) Most expositors consider this angel as emblematical of events already past; the reformation effected by Luther, his coadjutors and successors, or the church of England![9] Their error consists in viewing the beast as the symbol of the church of Rome.  And it is remarkable, that through the power of local and political bias, those commentators who themselves perceive that the beast of the sea in chapter xiii. 1, symbolizes the Roman empire, lose sight of their own exposition when they arrive at the place before us!  And of this bias and inconsistency they seem to be wholly unconscious!  No, there has never yet appeared in the symbolic heaven a minister or ecclesiastical organization, which has authoritatively denounced everlasting punishment against all who “receive the mark of the beast.”  It is to be noticed here that the sins charged are cumulative, not distributive.  Guilt is contracted as here charged, by “worshipping the beast and his image, and receiving his mark.”  If the beast signify immoral civil power, and his image signify the Papacy, as we have seen they do, then it follows that worshipping both, and receiving the mark of the former, constitute the special guilt here charged by the angel:  that is, eulogizing, praising, and