The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

It was the disposition of expositors who lived just subsequent to the French Revolution to
apply this vial symbol as they did the preceding ones to the calamitous events that
occurred in connection with that revolution. The sun is interpreted by these expositors to
represent the revolutionary rulers of those times, and the scorching rays of the sun to
describe the despotic sway and oppressions of these rulers. Those blaspheming God on
account of the plagues are understood to be the people of France. This interpretation
would be a most natural one to those who understood these vial plagues to refer to
judgments on Roman Catholicism. The unfolding of the events of history since that time
has revealed that not only was this too early a date to apply the vision, but that this woe
plague as also the others have a much wider application.
The sun when used as a symbol, generally represents the light of the Gospel; in a wider
sense it sometimes represents the light of truth in general. There is no symbol employed in
the Scriptures that is more common. It is used in many of the Old Testament prophecies,
and is found very frequently in the Revelation visions. Among the symbols of the fourth
trumpet there is portrayed a darkening of the sunlight, which we interpreted to represent
the substitution of gross errors for the truths of God's Word by the false religious system
of Papacy. We also found the same symbolism used in the fifth trumpet, which we
interpreted to mean the darkening of the sunlight of truth by the great eastern apostasy of
Mohammedanism.
The effects produced in the world by the darkening of the Truth by Papacy was the
bringing in of what is generally called the Dark Ages--a period of ignorance and
superstition, affecting both nations and individuals. The Reformation of the sixteenth
century caused the Gospel sun to shine in a measure; but the formation of the Protestant
sects prevented it from shining in its fullness. There was a sufficiency of light, however,
shed by the Reformation to liberate to a large extent the nations from the yoke of Papal
bondage, bringing in as the nineteenth century dawned a gradual increase of knowledge.
In the opening years of the nineteenth century the Bible began to come in--to the
possession of the people in general. It was not, however, until about 1874 that the full
blaze of Gospel sunlight began to shine for the benefit of the Lord's consecrated. About
this time also the masses of mankind, because of a more general diffusion of knowledge,
were aroused to more independent thinking. Matters pertaining to the rights and wrongs
of man then began to be discussed, and this has gone on increasingly up to the present
time. The various organizations of labor and capital, etc., existing today began to be
formed in those days. This increase of knowledge has caused discussions and contentions
over the rights and wrongs of the classes and has become more and more heated as the
days have come and gone. The tendency is at the present time towards a concentration of
all these organizations into two classes, in opposition one to the other. The shaking and
unsettling of the present order of things is causing conditions that are bringing great
trouble and disturbance of mind to mankind in general as the various remedies provided
by legislators are tried and fail to bring the hoped-for cure. All this, it is generally
admitted, has been caused by an increase of knowledge, described in this symbol as an
unusual increase and diffusion of sunlight. This seems to be what is portrayed in this
fourth plague symbol.