“our God is a consuming fire.” (Heb. xii. 29.)—­The one angel calls upon the other,—­encourages his companion, to execute the judgment of God.  “Thrust in thy sharp sickle.”—­Under the superintendence of the Mediator, his servants by their prayers and their sermons have an active part in this work of judgment.  From the mouth of the witnesses proceeded fire to devour their enemies, (ch. xi. 5.) This is the last work of judgment in which they will be honoured.  Joining their victorious predecessors who overcame the antichristian combinations “by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony,” (chs. vi. 9, 10; xii. 11,) these undaunted servants of the Lord are honored by him as instrumental in the infliction of the final judgments symbolized by the seventh trumpet and the seventh vial,—­the third and last woe.—­The “wine-press” is the symbol of the “wrath of God,” and its location “without the city,” denotes that the churches of the apostacy are excommunicated,—­“reprobate silver, because the Lord hath rejected them.”

We are not told here by whom the grapes are trodden; but this is the work of the Lord Jesus himself, who in the days of his flesh on earth forewarned his impenitent foes that he would thus deal with them in his wrath.  “Those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” (Luke xix. 27; Isa. lxiii. 3; Rev. xix. 15.)—­The blood in depth is to the “horse-bridles,” and in extent “a thousand and six hundred furlongs,”—­200 miles!  Although this language is hyperbolical, it is intended to signify “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that same time God’s people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” (Dan. xii. 1; Rev. xiii. 8.)—­Thus it appears that church and state, having combined in the antichristian apostacy, are severally visited with the unmingled wine of the wrath of God.  All the saints shall have obeyed the call,—­“Come out of her, my people;” and mystic Babylon shall then be utterly destroyed.  Whether Palestine, the Pope’s patrimony, or some other territory be understood by the “1600 furlongs,” is matter of vague conjecture by all expositors, and is to be verified only by the fulfilment of the prediction.

CHAPTER XV.

This chapter introduces the third and last series of symbols under which the prospective history of the church militant is given, to strengthen the faith and animate the hopes of her suffering and heroic children.  The warfare of the witnesses for the crown rights of Immanuel, which have been usurped by his enemies, has been symbolized under the seals, (chs. vi.-ix.,) and under the trumpets, (chs. xi. xii.;) and the symbolic narrative is yet under the vials to be greatly amplified, especially their last and greatest conflict, briefly represented in the latter part of the preceding chapter,