hey had simply
been changed to blood. They were converted into black and poisonous, or
corrupt, blood. This denotes the vast slaughter and massacre of the
inhabitants of this kingdom; while the death of the living creatures
denotes the extinction of those in power.

It may appear at first that making the conversion of water into blood a
symbol of bloodshed is adopting the literal method of interpretation;
but not so, and for the following reason: The symbol is taken from
nature, the waters of the sea representing the inhabitants of the
kingdom. The waters are changed into an unnatural state or element, that
of blood, and this change denotes an analagous one passing upon the
inhabitants. Their continuing in life would be their remaining as
waters: their massacre and destruction would be the waters changed to
blood--a horrible and unnatural element. Likewise, the death of the
living things in the sea is a similar destruction overtaking the kings,
rulers, and princes.

With our understanding of the nature of the first vial, which prepared
the way for the pouring out of this one, we shall have no difficulty
whatever in identifying this symbol with the terrible convulsions of the
French Revolution. It followed as a necessary consequence of the first.
Voltaire and his coadjutors had insulted and trampled in the dust
everything held sacred in human eyes, and this fully prepared the way
for the scenes of terror that followed.

In studying these vials the reader should bear in mind constantly the
reason _why_ they were sent as judgments upon the nations of
Europe--because of their former oppression of God's people. From the
days when the Popes received their first temporal authority at the hands
of the Carlovingian king, Pepin and Charlemagne, France[11] constituted
the real backbone of the Papacy, the very center of her power and
authority, as all history will show. In the fourteenth century the Papal
seat was removed from Rome to Avignon, in France, where it remained for
about seventy years. During this period all the Popes were French, and
"all their policies were shaped and controlled by the French kings." To
write a history of the Papacy during the Dark Ages is to outline the
history of France, so closely are their affairs interwoven. Hence it is
only natural that she should be symbolized as the "sea" in this part of
the Apocalypse, with the other nations as tributaries. Ver. 4-6. That
the French Revolution was in its ef