ge and
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" 6:9, 10. The epoch
which they anticipated not having then arrived, "white robes were given
unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest
yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also, and their
brethren that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled"
(6:11),--_i.e._, till their number should be filled up. As the destruction
of that hierarchy, in which "was found the blood of prophets and of saints
and of all that were slain upon the earth" (18:24), had just been
symbolized (in the 18th chap.), and as these rejoicings are because God
"hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her
fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand"
(19:2), it follows that the epoch here symbolized is that to which the
saints were to wait, and that they are now to be crowned with their
reward.

As the destruction of Babylon is a little anterior to that of the beast
and false prophet (19:20), and is to be destroyed by the brightness of
Christ's coming (2 Thess. 2:8), at a time when the kingdom is to be given
to the saints of the Most High (Dan. 7:22), it explains how it is that the
kingdom is set up in the days of the kings symbolized by the divided toes
of Nebuchadnezzar's image: symbolic of the same as the horns of the beast
in Dan. 7:7, 24, and Rev. 17:3, 12, 16; for "in the days of these kings
shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed,
and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever," Dan.
2:44.

The kingdom is therefore commenced previous to the descent of the Lord to
the earth, by the saints being caught up to meet him in the air. "For the
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first;
then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them
in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with
the Lord," 1 Thess. 4:16, 17.

This epoch, then, is that of the sounding of the seventh trumpet; for "in
the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound,
the mystery of God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his servants
the prophets," 10:7. This mystery Paul thus explains: "Now this I say,
brethren, that flesh and blo