The first chapter of Winston Churchill's The World Crisis 1911-1918 – his history of the First World War and its outbreak – was appropriately entitled, The Vials of Wrath; and the second chapter: Milestones to Armageddon.
Concerning those apocalyptical “vials of wrath”, that Churchill alludes to in the chapter heading of the above cited work:
I'd like to first of all quote from a mid-seventeenth century work, and its author's interpretation of the fifth vial – and where he believed it was destined to fall. But before doing so I reproduce below the text that appears on the page immediately preceding the title-page to the aforementioned work; and after this follows the text reproduced from the actual title-page itself. So first, from the page preceding the title-page, appears the following (all spellings; and capitalisation – are as per the original) :
Commons House
Munday Febr 21. An. Dom. 1641
It is this day Ordered by the Committee for Printing and Publishing of Books, &c. That Mr Jackson Minister of Saint Michael in Woodstreet London, be desired to peruse Mr More his Translation of Mr Mede his book on the Revelation, this day presented to the said Committee to be licenced, and to report to the said Committee his opinion therein, and concerning the Printing thereof.
John White.
I Have according to the Order of the Committee for printing, &c. read over Master More his Translation of Mr Mede his booke on the Revelation and finde it to be exactly Translated, and that the book it selfe gives much light for the understanding of many obscure Passages in the sweet and comfortable Prophecie, and though Master Medes opinion concerning the thousand years of the seventh Trumpet be singular from that which hath beene most generally received by Expositors of the best esteem, and I conceive hath no just ground, yet he therein delivers his judgement with such modestie and moderation that I think the Printing of it will not be perillous: and therefore conceive that the publishing of this Translation is a good work, and may with Gods blessing yeeld much comfort to many.
April 18, 1642
Arth. Jackson.
It is Ordered by the Committee of the Commons House of Parliament concerning Printing, this eighteenth day of April 1642. That the book Intituled the Key of the Revelation, &c. be Printed.
John White.
And now to the title-page itself – after which will appear the author's verdict concerning the fifth vial. (Again, all spellings; and capitalisation – are as per the original work) :
The Key of the
REVELATION,
Searched and demonstrated
out of the Naturall and proper
Charecters of the Visions.
WITH
A Coment thereupon, according to
the Rule of the same Key; published in
Latine by the profoundly Learned
Master Joseph Mede B.D. Late Fellow of
Christs Colledge in Cambridge,
For their use to whom God hath given a love and desire
of knowing and searching into that admirable Prophecie.
Translated into English by Richard More of Linley in the
Countie of Salop. ESQUIRE, One of the Burgesses
in this present Convention of Parliament. . . .
With a Præface written by Dr Twisse now Prolocutor in the
present Assembly of Divines.
Printed at LONDON by R.B. for Phil. Stephens, at his Shop
in Pauls Church-yard at the sign of the gilded Lion. 1643.
And now, concerning the aforementioned vial, the work's author writes:
'The fift phyall [fifth vial] is to be powred [poured] out upon the Throne or Seat of the Beast; that is, Rome it selfe. . . . Now by this destruction . . . the name of the Pope shall not indeed utterly perish, but from thence forth he shall be deprived of his glory and splendor, so that for griefe they shall bite their tongues: in the meane time not withstanding persevering as yet in their impenitency their hearts being hardened, they will abuse their griefs unto further blasphemy.' (p. 118).
The second source from which I wish to quote from, was written during the closing years of the seventeenth century – and was first published in 1701. It was written by the Presbyterian minister the Rev Robert Fleming (1660-1716), who was for a time the pastor of the Scots Church at Rotterdam, and was often consulted by William of Orange concerning spiritual matters; the Rev Fleming (amongst others) also accurately predicted from biblical study (a century before it occurred) the timeframe, of the then still future, French Revolution.
From the same work in which he predicted the outbreak of the French Revolution to within a few years of its occurrence: the Apocalyptical Key, or, the pouring out of the Vials (see the picture heading this post for the title-page to a much later American edition from 1843); here is what the Rev Fleming says, concerning the fifth vial of the Apocalypse (page numbers refer to the edition cited above) :
'The fifth vial, (ver. 10, 11,) [is that] which is to be poured out on the seat of the beast . . . the Roman See . . . this judgement will probably begin about the year 1794, and expire about A.D. 1848; so that the duration of it, upon this supposition, will be for the space of fifty-four years. For I do suppose, that seeing the pope received the title of supreme bishop, no sooner than A.D. 606, he cannot be supposed to have any vial poured upon his seat immediately (so as to ruin his authority so signally as this judgement must be supposed to do) until the year 1848, which is the date of the twelve hundred and sixty years in prophetical account [i.e. in calculating using the biblical 360 day year], when they are reckoned from A.D. 606. But yet we are not to imagine that this vial will totally destroy the papacy (though it will exceedingly weaken it,) for we find this [the papacy] still in being and alive, [and at work,] when the next vial [the sixth] is poured out.' (p. 21).
Looking back from his vantage point in the first half of the twentieth century, B[asil] Stewart in, Revelation Fulfilled in History (London: John Bale, Sons & Danielson, Ltd., 1934), wrote the following concerning the fifth vial of the Apocalypse:
'The Fifth Vial is a judgement upon the Papal metropolis, Rome, the seat of Popedom's authority. “Darkness” has fallen upon it twice: firstly . . . in 1798, when French troops entered Rome, arrested and insulted the Pope (Pius VI), and took him prisoner to France, where he soon afterwards died . . .
'Napoleon declared the Pope's Temporal reign at an end, and at the same time proclaimed a Roman Republic, and later, in 1809, made Rome itself the second city of the French Empire. In the latter year he issued decrees revoking Charlemagne's donations to the Holy See; annexing the Papal States to Italy, and total abolition of the Pope's Temporal Power, and making the Pope a mere pensioner of state in his spiritual capacity; acts which literally caused the Papacy and its adherents to “gnaw their tongues for mortification” at such indignities. . .
'With the downfall of Napoleon in 1815 Temporal Power was restored for a period of fifty-five years [from footnote: 'except for an interval between 1848 and 1850 when Pius IX was compelled to flee to Gaeta as a result of the French Revolution which broke out in Paris, February 23, 1848, when the Pope was formally deposed; restored to Rome two years later by a French army under Marshal Oudinot'] . . . the rise of Germany, the decline of France, and revival of Italy, combined to bring about its final abolition in 1870, as foretold in this Vial, a loss made more bitter by the fact that not a single Papist State raised a finger to prevent it !' (p. 113).
Returning back to the Rev Fleming's discourse, on what he expected to occur under the fifth vial; he continues with the following pronouncement concerning the locale of the sixth (under which the “kings of the earth and of the whole world” are gathered to the great conflict styled in the Apocalypse, “Armageddon”) :
'The sixth vial, (v. 12, &c.,) will be poured out upon the Mahometan Antichrist, as the former on the papacy. And seeing the sixth trumpet brought the Turks from beyond Euphrates, from the crossing which river they date their rise; this sixth vial dries up their waves, and exhausts their power . . . Now seeing this vial is to destroy the Turks, we hear of three unclean spirits like frogs or toads, that were sent out by Satan, and the remains of the polity and church of Rome, called the beast and the False Prophet . . . [T]hese messengers shall be so successful, as to draw . . . the greatest part of mankind, to take part with them. So that by the assistance of these their agents and missionaries, they shall engage the whole world in some manner, to join with them in rooting out the saints. (And here, in a parenthesis Christ gives a watch word to his servants, to be upon their guard in this hour of trial, v. 15.) . . . . [T]his vast army . . . [is] brought . . . to the place of battle, [symbolically] called Armageddon (i.e., the place where there will be a most diabolical, cunning, and powerful conspiracy against Christ's followers;) then immediately doth the seventh angel pour out his vial [on the air] . . .
'. . . These two vials [the sixth and the seventh] are, as it were, one continued, the first running into the second, and the second completing the first; the one giving us an account of the beast's preparations for warring against the saints, and the other showing the events of the whole.... Such long messages and intrigues . . . and preparations for so UNIVERSAL A WAR, must needs take up a great many years . . .' (pp. 21-22; emphasis added).
Before returning back to the Rev Fleming's work, it's interesting to observe what Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) thought concerning the sixth vial:
'Analogous to the loosing of . . . [the four] Angels [of the sixth TRUMPET (Revelation 9:13-21) – being the second, and Turkish phase of Islam's conquests] is the drying up of the waters of [the] Euphrates in the sixt[h] Vial. For these two actions must correspond because the beginnings of this Trumpet & Vial which are contemporary. Now by the waters of this river we are to understand the people situate upon it . . . that is, the Turkish Sultanies. And by the pouring [out of] a Vial upon this River the inflicting of some great calamity upon that people: such as was the Tattarian invasion. And by the consequent drying up [of] the waters thereof the wasting of the power & dominion of that people... that is, the [final] dissolution of the Turkish Sultanies by that invasion.'
(Untitled Treatise on Revelation by Isaac Newton. Source: Yahuda Ms. 1.8, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. From online transcript on the University of Sussex's, “The Newton Project”).
As to the time periods he envisioned, the Rev Fleming surmised that the Turkish monarchy might, “be totally destroyed between 1848 and 1900”; and went on to mark his discourse with the following words:
'[F]or they only that shall live after the great battle of Armageddon is over, can see the exact fulfilling of this prophecy . . . with the same advantage they see also the fulfilling of Daniel's visions with respect to the coming of the Messiah and his death. We therefore, now have no more advantage, as to time, in explaining and understanding this latter event, than the Jews had as to the first, who lived in the days of the Maccabees, while Daniel's weeks of years were running out. And I question if they did understand the periods of time they were under, more clearly, if at all so distinctly, as we do the times that have passed over the Christian Church, and that part of time we are now under. Therefore, I say we have great reason to thank God, that so much of this book [the Revelation] is already made so clear to us, as to prove confirming thus far to our faith: for whatever differences have been among the most eminent interpreters of this book, as to particular calculations and accommodations of things; yet they have all of them agreed in the main foundations of the interpretation thereof, which I have built upon . . . as Dr. Cressener has irrefragably proved in his book, entitled, A demonstration of the first principles of the Protestant application of the Apocalypse. So that there are two things almost equally strange to me, that the Jews should own the verity of the Old Testament, and particularly of Daniel's prophecy, and not see that the Messiah is come; and that the papists should believe the divinity of the New Testament, and particularly of the Revelation, and not see that their church is antichristian. But while I admire the wilful stupidity of both these parties, I cannot but admire also the wisdom of God in making use of both these in his Providence to confirm to us the verity of Christianity, in prophesying both of the one and the other so long before, and in continuing them to this day as standing monuments of the divinity both of the Old and New Testaments.' (p. 24).
At the end of his treatise, Fleming concluded with the following words:
'Yours to love and serve you in the gospel of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
ROBERT FLEMING.
LONDON, Jan. 1, 1701.
Being the first day both of the year and century.'
As we saw in the previous post (The Papal Conquest) where Cardinal Manning pronounced – in a sense, no doubt, as one of the countless number of that great Roman agency, who were “gnaw[ing] their tongues for mortification” at the Pope's loss of his Temporal Power – that he believed that there was but “one solution” of that “difficulty” . . .
Here again appears Manning's sole “solution”; this time quoted from another work entitled: Prophecy, The War, and the Near East (Marshall Brothers, Ltd., Fifth Edition, December 1919), by G[eorge] Harold Lancaster, M.A., F.R.A.S., C.F., (Vicar of St Stephen's, Bow, London, E.3; Hon. Lecturer of “The Palestine Exploration Fund”, & Fellow of The Royal Colonial Institute); who writes:
'Once the temporal power of the Pope was lost . . . his political aspirations, by a strange law of contrariety, became greater than they had ever been during the past twelve and a half centuries. The Pope has been a prisoner in the Vatican for about 50 years, and his agents and emissaries have ever since been endeavouring to restore the Papal Power, and to reconstruct the Papal system, so that it may yet have world dominion and unfettered influence.
'[The late Archbishop of Westminster] Cardinal Manning once speaking upon the desired restoration of the Papal Power [as recorded in the Tablet, January 24th, 1874] uttered these momentous words : –
“There is only one solution of the difficulty, a solution I fear impending, and that is the terrible scourge of a Continental war, a war which will exceed the horrors of any of the wars of the First Empire. And it is my firm conviction that, in spite of all the obstacles, the Vicar of Jesus Christ will be put again in his own rightful place. But that day will not have been until his adversaries will have crushed each other with mutual destruction.”' (p. 116).
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