wicked
men.--This "voice from heaven" is indeed the _people's_ voice: and it is
legitimate, as coming from the people, because it is first the voice of
God. The "heaven" here mentioned is the seat of civil power,--"the
ordinance of man." (1 Pet. ii. 13.) In the times here
contemplated,--millennial times,--the rights of men will be respected,
predicated upon the rights of God, and flowing from them as inseparable.
In settling the point of title to civil sovereignty, or the eligibility
of any candidate for civil office, the principle enunciated by Hushai
the Archite will be found to be alone reliable:--"Whom the Lord and this
people choose." (2 Sam. xvi. 18.) Only let the Lord have the first
choice of candidates for office in both church and state, and society
will be prosperous and happy. (Acts i. 23, 24; vi. 5.) The "great voice"
of the 12th verse, comes from "heaven," as the "great voices" of the
15th verse, announcing the millennium.

13. And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part
of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven
thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of
heaven.

V. 13.--"The same hour" that the witnesses mark by their
resurrection,--contemporaneously with that joyful event, is "a great
earthquake,"--a revolution, (ch. vi. 12.) "The tenth part of the city
fell." The city,--"Sodom." "Tenth part of the city,"--a "street,"
equivalent to "horn." Some one of the "ten kingdoms" will secede from
the antichristian confederacy, or imperial dominion; "and the
remnant,"--the other nine, dreading the Mediator's vengeance, will
reluctantly but speedily submit. (See ch. vi. 16, 17.)--In the
"earthquake were slain of men (names, titles,) seven thousand." By
"names of men" to be slain,--that is, abolished in reorganized society,
we are to understand those "names of blasphemy" mentioned, (ch. xiii.
1,) hereafter to be explained.

We have now taken a very cursory view of the contents of the "little
open book." Its place is between the termination of the fourth, and the
sounding of the seventh trumpet. In other words, it gives an outline of
the contest between the witnesses and Antichrist during 1260
years,--events running parallel in time, at least in part, with the
first two woe-trumpets; for it obviously anticipates also, the effects
of the third and last woe.

This may be as suitable a place as any other, before proceeding to a
consideration