Verse 5: „I heard an angel of the waters saying, ‚Thou art just, O Lord, who art and who were who has judged us.’‟ The waters this time are the living waters flowing from God’s throne, because obviously it’s a good angel. „Because thou hast, uh… They have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets and thou has given them blood to drink, for they deserve it.‟ The heretics are the shedders of blood. As a punishment, they must drink blood in hell.

„And I heard another from the altar saying, ‚Even so the Lord God Almighty, true and just are thy judgments.’‟ Another angel this time is the saints, verse 7, who are speaking sincerely from the altar, and from the innermost sanctuary of their hearts, pronouncing the justice of God’s judgment.

Verse 8: „And a fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun…‟ The sun is the Antichrist, the false sun. „And it was given to him with heat to afflict men.‟ He simply grew worse. The Antichrist grew worse. „And men grew hot with a great heat and blasphemed the name of God, having power over these plagues, nor did they do any penance in order to give him glory.‟

The heat of verse 9, „And men grew hot with a great heat and blasphemed the name of God.‟ The heat is the great tribulation of Matthew 24:21. „In those days, there will be great tribulation.‟ The heat is great tribulation of those days. Matthew 24:21. But men still sin. They do not do penance in order to give God glory. They just go on sinning.

Verse 10: „And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast.‟ The fifth angel is the preachers against the disciples of the Antichrist, who are the throne of the beast. Clinton is enthroned upon the delinquents in Washington and the delinquents in the media. So similarly, the Antichrist is enthroned upon his followers. „The fifth angel poured out his vial upon the throne of the beast, and the kingdom became darkness.‟ „And they chewed on their tongues for grief.‟ As the preachers against the disciples of the Antichrist, these disciples are the throne of the beast. In other words, those amongst whom he finds repose, those upon whom he leans his seat, those upon whom his power is seated, on whom he leans, on whom he rests. But when they are punished, when the preachers preach against them, they grow still less enlightened. They grow dark. „They grow still less enlightened and they gnash their teeth in pain,‟ like the Pharisees gnashed their teeth when our Lord preached amongst them.

Obviously, there are many times. In John 8, they were furious within then. They gnashed their teeth. It’s certainly the sense of what the Pharisees did when our Lord preached. So here, the followers of the Antichrist, under the effect of the preaching of the fifth angel, simply grow worse. „And they gnashed their teeth for pain, and they blasphemed the God of heaven for their pains and their wounds, and they did not do penance from their works.‟

Verse 12: „And the sixth angel…‟ The sixth angel is preachers against pleasure, money, and earthly goods. Materialism, if you like. „Preachers against pleasure, money, and earthly goods. The Euphrates…‟ „The sixth angel poured out his vial upon that great river, the Euphrates, and dried up its water in order that the way be prepared for the kings from the rising of the sun.‟ The sixth angel is preachers against pleasure, money, and earthly goods. The Euphrates is the mass of conformists going with the current, going with the flow as we say. The mass of conformists going with the flow, seeking only worldly goods. So the massive materialists drifting down a stream, a great muddy river. It’s a good image for the masses. And the sixth angel dried up its water. The sixth angel demonstrated the vanity of earthly goods, dried up the water of the Euphrates, demonstrated the vanity of materialism. In order that the way be prepared for the kings from the rising of the sun. The kings here are the true Christians who wish to reign with Christ. The true Christians who wish to reign with Christ. The rising of the sun is Christ from whom worldly goods distract people. He poured out his vial upon the materialistic masses, demonstrated the vanity of their materialism in order to prepare the way for them to turn to Christ. For the true Christians, enlightened by Christ.

„And I saw,‟ this is still the sixth angel, „I saw from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast and from the mouth of the pseudo-prophet, three unclean spirits in the manner of frogs.‟ From the mouth of the dragon, this is obviously chapter 12, the dragon, the beast, and the pseudo-prophet, the false lamb, the dragon, the first beast and the second beast, the dragon, the beast and the false lamb. Chapter 13, the false prophet here, the heralds of the Antichrist. The heralds of the Antichrist. In chapter 12, the false lamb was of great – chapter 13 rather, chapter 13. The false lamb was a great servant of the Antichrist. The false lamb was the pseudo church rallying religious feeling and religious opinion behind the Antichrist, which is a very important thing to do. We shall certainly see the Antichrist doing that, we see him already doing it. The world government has got the new world church at its service. And the new world church will render the one world government a great service because it’s going to persuade people that the one world government is Catholic. So the false prophet is the heralds of the Antichrist, the false churchmen heralding the Antichrist, if you like. The false churchmen, the new churchmen heralding the Antichrist.

Three spirits in the manner of frogs: black magic, worship of man, and false philosophers. Black magic, the worship of man and false philosophers. In the manner of frogs, why frogs? Because they sit in the mud and croak continually the same senseless slogans. Listening to no opposite arguments. They croak continually the same senseless slogans listening to no opposite arguments.

„For they are the spirits of devils doing signs.‟ They are the spirits of devils means they are inspired and led by the devil. These three frogs are inspired and led by the devil. They work signs. They work signs, in other words, pseudo miracles within the laws of nature. Pseudo miracles within the laws of nature. Prima Pars, question 110, article four, Ad Secundum. Pseudo miracles, they’re not really worked by God and they don’t need divine power to work them, but they are happenings outside of the ordinary, which strike wonder into men because men don’t see the angelic powers, for instance, which work these wonders. If somebody on the stage holds up a fork and suddenly the fork bends in his hand, you might call it a miracle. It isn’t anything of the sort, really. It’s only that men don’t see the angel who comes along and bends the fork. It’s very easy for an angel to do, to bend a fork, very easy, if God allows him to. So there’s an example. It’s completely within the laws of nature that an angel should come along and bend a fork so that all the audience gasps in amazement when they see the fork being bent. But it’s completely within the laws of nature. There’s nothing supernatural about it at all. All that is, is that it’s not normal for forks to bend by themselves and therefore it’s outside of the normal, but it’s not outside of the natural if you include the angels in nature, obviously.

Therefore, false signs are signs which fall within nature, but outside of what men normally see and can easily explain. And these are the signs that the false spirits are going to work, working pseudo-miracles within the laws of nature. „And they proceed to the kings of all of the earth to gather them together for war against the great day of Almighty God.‟ The kings are here, quite the opposite from the last kings. The kings last time were the true Christians. Here, the kings are the secular powers, all in league against Christ. The secular powers all in league against Christ, but in fact, heading for their comeuppance on Judgment Day. They gather together the kings of all of the earth for war, that’s the purpose, but in fact, against the great day of judgment. In other words, they don’t realize it, but they’re simply heaping up for themselves wrath on the day of judgment. They’re heading for their, Americans say, comeuppance. They’re heading for their punishment on Judgment Day, the great day of the Almighty God.

Verse 15: „Behold I come like a thief‟ evokes, of course, the gospel warning of the suddenness of Judgment Day. Matthew 24:43, „Behold I come like a thief,‟ the Lord God speaking. Matthew 24:43, the Lord God warning of the suddenness of Judgment Day. „Blessed is he who keeps watch and guards his clothes, keeps his clothes clean, lest he be caught walking naked and that his shame be discovered.‟ The clothing is of course the state of grace and accompanying virtues. Blessed is he who keeps watch and keeps his clothes around him in order not to be caught bare and disgraced. So the clothing of grace, blessed is he who keeps watch and keeps the state of grace around him, keeps wrapped in the state of grace. So clothing is the state of grace and its accompanying virtues.

Verse 16: „And he will gather them together in the place which is called in Hebrew, Armageddon.‟ Armageddon may be a physical place. For instance, in Israel, Palestine, it’s a place called Megiddo. Compare 4 Kings 23:29. „He will gather them together in Armageddon.‟ A place called in Hebrew, Armageddon, maybe Megiddo. Allegorically, the word means dark mountain. In other words, the Antichrist, who is going to be a mountain of pride. So all souls are going to be gathered towards the Antichrist, gathered around the Antichrist, so to speak, for the last judgment.

The seventh angel is preachers against devils. Preachers against devils. The air is devils’. The devils are not thrown out of Heaven. Until the day of judgment, some of them are allowed to… They’re not all trapped in hell. You may remember the gathering of swine who begged not to be forced back to hell. So they’re allowed in the intermediate regions and that’s why Saint Paul will say, Ephesians 2 verse 2: „And you when you were dead in your delights and in your sins in which once you walked according to this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, spirits who now… the prince of the power of this air, of this atmosphere.‟ So the idea is the devils, the air has connection with the devils.

So he pours out his vial upon the air, he pours out his vial upon the devils beneath heaven, not yet all trapped in hell. Preaches against the devils who inhabit the air between heaven and earth in the last times. And there came out a great voice from the temple from the throne saying, this voice is the voice of God announcing that the world is finished. It’s over. The voice of God announcing that the world is finished.

And in verse 18, there follow signs at the end of the world. Matthew 24, the Antichrist’s last fling. The last fling of the Antichrist. Thunder, lightning, and voices and thunder and earthquake. Lightning is pseudo-miracles which dazzle people, like lightning dazzles. Lightning is pseudo-miracles. The voices are preaching, various kinds of preaching. Thunder is threats and the earthquake is persecution. So you’ve got lightning is pseudo-miracles, the voices are preaching, thunder is threats, and earthquake is persecution. Matthew 24:21. That’s a constant reference to the discourse of our Lord about the end of the world. The earthquake is persecution, Matthew 24:21.

„And the great city was made into three parts.‟ What else was famously divided in three parts? The beginning of Caesar’s Gallic War. Omnis Gallia in tres partes divisa est. All Gaul is divided in three parts. The famous opening words of Caesar’s Gallic War. Why did every schoolboy used to know Caesar’s Gallic War? Answer, because Caesar’s Gallic War was always taught to schoolboys. Question, why was Caesar’s Gallic War always taught to schoolboys? It was written in a simpler style. Yeah. Caesar’s Latin is very pure and very correct, very pure, and very easy to read. Besides being a great general, he was a master propagandist and a master politician. He was a genius, there’s no doubt about that. And he wrote his own account of the Civil War and of the Gallic War, and both of them survived. He was a great writer as well as a great politician and a great general. Very talented man, which is why from then on, the Roman emperor was called Caesar. In German he’s always called, the emperor is called Kaiser, and in Russian he’s always called Zar, same word. All for one man.

He wrote his own account of his own war campaigns and it’s very skillfully written to make people think what a wonderful guy he was. And it succeeded to a great extent. When he finished campaigning in Gaul, he took a long time to subdue Gaul. And the first sentence of the Gallic War is all Gaul is divided into three parts and describes his various campaigns.

He was holed up. So what the Romans did… The Romans were disciplined. The enormous thing about this business, the Romans, is they were disciplined. So the Romans come along with a small army, under Caesar, and they simply build a trench all around the hill and close him in. Today, you can fly over the area, which is right next to our seminary in France, and you can still see the lines, some of the lines in the cornfields. Aerial photography picks up these lines. And then, of course, if you dig, you can still find the lines of the trenches. Sometimes, I think, with the naked eye, you can sometimes see the slightly darker earth or whatever it is.

Then the Gauls were a bit galled by all this. So along they came. They decided that they were gonna come and beat up the Romans. So they came from all sides to come and beat up the Romans. So what did Julius Caesar do? Does he panic and run away? No way. What does Caesar do? He builds a second line, a second line like that, and then all the Romans run around in this area. They’ve got towers to protect. There’s a double ring. And so now the Romans, this small army is enclosing the Gallic chief on top of the hill, while the masses, the hordes attack from all sides, but they can’t get their act together. So wherever they attack, the Romans just hold them off. Finally, the Gauls have had enough because they didn’t bring enough, uh, Gauloise cigarettes with them, so they had to go home again. So the Gauls get fed up. They’re trying to beat the Romans from the outside. So off they go, home again, and finally, Vercingetorix is taken, taken prisoner. The Romans defeat Vercingetorix. He’s taken prisoner. He’s taken off to Rome. He’s taken in chains to Rome as part of Caesar’s triumph, and he dies. He’s killed in the Mamertine Prison where Peter and Paul also were. He’s killed in that prison a couple years later. And that’s how Caesar conquered Gaul, by discipline and by military skill against brave men, much superior in numbers, but much less united and much less skilled, as far as the military discipline is concerned. And you can see these lines. Of course, they’re not as neat as that. They much more follow the geography, but there’s still a village on top of the hill, and there are still these lines discoverable in the earth. It’s an extraordinary story.

Then when in Rome, meanwhile… Caesar was a politician as well. In Rome, this is, we’re around the year 50. Rome has been in some commotion. The great Roman Republic which rested upon the virtue of the ancient Romans, the tough, the hardy, self-controlled virtue, viribus antiquis, moribus antiquis. That’s it. Moribus antiquis. Famous line of Ennius. Moribus antiquis stat res Romana. Virial scole. „By old morals stands the Roman thing.‟ Res Romana, res publica, republic. The word republic comes from res publica, the public thing. So the Roman Republic is the Roman thing. „Stands the Roman thing, and by men.‟ By ancient morals and men stands the Roman thing. In other words, that’s the strength of Rome and the greatness of Rome and the building of Rome was the old-fashioned, homespun virtue.

When Rome began building a great empire, the politics began. Now, the wealth, the money, the creation of a big city in Rome, big population, because originally it was nothing. When was Rome founded? The famous year? 753 BC. By Romulus and Remus. Romulus, of course, the two children, the twins that were suckled by a wolf is the story. And then Romulus killed Remus, and Romulus founded Rome. It comes from the Rom-. So Romans and Roman Catholics because of a child suckled by a she-wolf. That’s the story. Romulus founded Rome, supposedly in 753.

Rome began with kings. The kings turned into tyrants. The Romans got rid of the tyrants and got rid of the kings, which is when they founded their republic under a system of government with consuls and praetors. This system of government lasted very well, down to about the year 100 when the generals began… The first one was Sulla or Marius. There were two generals who began getting into politics as generals at the beginning of the first century BC, Sulla and Marius. And Roman politics was somewhat perturbed because life does move on. Life was… The Roman Empire was building. Around the middle of the… around 150, 160, the Romans meeting with… The Romans appear in scripture because of? The Maccabees is right, yes. The Maccabees encountered the Romans and make an alliance with the Spartans and then they make an alliance with the Romans. And scripture expresses the admiration of the Israelites, of the Jews, and of the Maccabees for the political savvy of the administration of the Roman Empire, of these ancient men who built the empire.

But around 100, the political system is coming under strain because men are changing, their ways are changing, luxury, big city. And the generals begin to get into politics. There are two particularly, Sulla and Marius. And they both came a little close to being dictators. A little close. Not yet, but they’re getting that way. Of course, the Roman constitution did allow for a dictator. That’s where the word originally comes from. When the Republic was under severe pressure, then the Romans could hand over all power to one single man, one single general often. He would deal with the crisis and then it would go back to consuls and it would go back to normal. But in this case they were out of politics taking over power, not just because there was a single crisis. So the system is coming under strain.

By the middle of the century, before our Lord, and that was about 55, 50 BC, Julius Caesar… You had the two triumvirates. In 60, you had the… that’s three men essentially administering power. There was a triumvirate in 60, at which Pompey took part, I think. The generals had becoming more and more prominent. And normally when a Roman general… The Romans, in their constitution, forbade generals to take power, and they forbade… it was written for the gen-… And a general coming back towards Rome was ordered to leave behind his army when he crossed a little river called… When he’s coming from the north, if he crossed this little river, he had to leave his army behind. He had to either go ahead of his army or he was supposed to come behind it. But he wasn’t allowed to come on Rome with his troops. Anybody know that name of that little river? Rubicon? Rubicon is right, the Rubicon, which is still a little river. The Rubicon. If you got Italy like that, the Rubicon will be somewhere up here. There’s Rome. It’ll be somewhere around there. The Po is this huge river. The Po flows eastwards. Yes, the Po flows east. The Po is that huge river. The Rubicon is a tiny little river this way. So that’s the Rubicon, that’s the Po, that’s for Rome.

So, Caesar coming back from Gaul, perhaps after he’d just finished at last conquering it entirely. He’d obviously been staying in touch with the developments in Rome. Caesar decided to cross the Rubicon with his army. And as he crossed the river with his army, what did he say? Anybody know? Alea iacta est. Alea iacta est. These are things you would all of you have learned in school if you had had an old-fashioned education. „The die is cast.‟ „The die is cast.‟ In other words, he had broken the rules of the republic. When he crossed with his army, he had broken with the rules of the republic, and that was more or less the moment of the end of the Roman Republic.

When Caesar then advanced on Rome with his army, I think Pompey fled to Brindisi. Pompey fled because Pompey knew that he couldn’t face up to Caesar with his army. I think Caesar had him pursued. In any case, Caesar took command of Rome with his army and was in effect the real ruler of Rome. His one-man rule… I may be getting a number of details wrong. His effective rule lasted about six years, maybe less. In any case, after a while the Romans reacted. That’s the play of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. There was a conspiracy against him, and in the name of getting rid of a dictator, which was a classical Roman tradition, we don’t want kings, we don’t want dictators, and in the name of pretending to protect the old republic and to get rid of this new dictator, Caesar was assassinated. Et tu, Brute in the capital. When you were in Rome did you ask to see the spot where Caesar was killed?

When he was assassinated, it’s not as though the old-fashioned republic immediately revived. Men were no longer the same and you could get rid of Clinton and things you won’t go back to the old system by getting rid of Clinton because men are not what they used to be. The old men and the old morals are virtually gone with television, with pornography, with abortion, with all of this. You’ve got a new race of men and therefore no wonder you’ve got new kinds of politics in Washington. It’s absolutely normal. It’s a different world and people had better wake up to it.

So, there was a power struggle after Caesar’s death, Mark Antony, Octavian and Caesar’s nephew, a young man called Octavian who was not a great general but who was very… something of prig, Shakespeare suggests. But he was very… he was clean living and he was politically very shrewd, Octavian. And in the fight that ensued… Octavian is his name. I think he was a nephew of Caesar. In the fight they… so from ‚44, Caesar was killed, assassination of Caesar. ’30 was the Battle of Actium and that was the final victory of Octavian over Mark Antony. Mark Antony was a friend of Julius Caesar but Mark Antony, amongst other things, fell in love with Cleopatra and that sort of paralyzed him. In any case, there was a sea battle with Cleopatra there, Mark Antony on one side and Octavian on the other and Octavian won and from then on it was the triumph of the new… that then began, really began the empire.

So the Roman Empire began from ‚30 and the Roman Republic came to an end really in ’44. So that was the transition and that’s much the most interesting history, much the most interesting century in Roman history, the first century BC, the transition from the republic to the empire. Octavian was a very wise emperor, a very good emperor and reigned from at least ’30 until 14 AD. Yes, I think that’s right. And he established the Roman Empire, only he was smarter than Julius Caesar in one way, or maybe he learned from Julius’ assassination. Julius Caesar had not paid enough respect to the outward forms of the old republic. He hadn’t bowed in front of the senators or he hadn’t… he’d been a bit too brash and that’s why they got rid of him because they felt he was an upstart and too proud and gonna be a dictator and so on.

So Caesar got himself assassinated because he wasn’t careful enough to pretend that the old system was still going which people do like. People like to feel the old system is still going. So, Octavian took great care to preserve all of the appearances of the old system, and he… I think he had two consuls. He had the whole Senate. He paid his deference and all of that, so he didn’t trample upon the old ways. He pretended to respect all of the old ways when in fact it was something completely new. And for Rome, it was completely new and it was the Roman Empire that then lasted for another good 400 years. You had a string of emperors, some of them good, some of them very bad, obviously.

But that’s the story, a little of the story of Julius Caesar. He was a very brilliant man, but a little careless of his fellow human beings’ feelings. He was a little careless of his fellow Romans’ feelings. That was the time when Roman soldiers really were Roman soldiers. They were conquering the world. They were administering a huge empire. They were becoming… at the time, they were becoming the masters of the world, of the known world and they did a pretty good job, generally speaking. Humanly speaking, they did a pretty good job, which… the Romans could never have held that huge empire had the peoples conquered not recognized that belonging, being under the Roman Empire had great benefits.

I mean, it was like, you know… I mean, you had roads, you didn’t have too many robbers, you had the sea. Pompey had cleared the Mediterranean of pirates. You could cross… so thanks to the Roman Empire, you could cross the Mediterranean without getting attacked by pirates. You had those benefits of civilization. That’s why, for instance, the Gauls, once they were beaten by Julius Caesar… they’re very warlike and fractious and bloody-minded people, but they also… they quietened down quite happily under the Roman Empire. They didn’t rise up because they knew darn well that this was… it was in the Romans… the Romans did them a lot more good than it did them harm which is why, to this day, French is obviously a Latin language. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, they’re all of the Latin countries were under the Roman Empire, formed by the Roman Empire.

Then of course when Augustus had established peace and in the year one where they closed the door of the Temple of Janus, which was the sign of peace, and at that very moment when the whole civilized world, quote-unquote, „civilized‟ world was at peace, then our Lord was born. So, it was all a providential preparation for Rome to be the seat and throne of the Roman Catholic Church.

What else was I gonna say? Maybe I should… that’s about it. It’s quite a story and it’s all pagan, of course. Another great politician of this time was Cicero, who was a great… the famous speaker. He’s a wonderful orator. And his speeches still survive in a beautiful Latin, but it’s more complicated than Caesar’s Latin. The advantage of Caesar’s Latin is it’s quite simple. It’s very beautiful, but it’s quite simple. Cicero’s Latin… it’s incomparable oratory. And he was active in this period, this same period, and he committed suicide. He was being hounded down because he was too important, too dangerous. Perhaps it was Caesar who hunted him down. Caesar or one of the others, and he committed suicide. Another great general of this time is Pompey. He it was who fought many of Rome’s battles, and then he was either killed in battle or I think rather… I think he also died on his own sword in Egypt. He was being pursued by Caesar’s men I think. Caesar was pursuing him. He was assassinated. Assassinated was he? Okay, in Egypt. That’s right. He was assassinated then, but by Julius Caesar’s men I think.

Caesar was a realist in politics. Whether Caesar saved his soul remains very much open to doubt, but humanly speaking, it was a brilliant career. What age did he die? About what age? 56 years. That would be about it. He wasn’t all that old. Augustus died somewhat older. He lived and he reigned for 44 years, and it was Augustus who consolidated the new system, the empire. The Senate went on for some time in appearance. The appearance went on for a long time. We may see the appearance of Congress going on for a long time yet, but it’s really been gutted.

Well, of course, the Congress is still, in theory, the legislative power. There’s a former… in the latest John Birch Magazine, The New American, there’s an interesting quotation by Robert Reich, who was Labor Minister under Clinton earlier, and Robert Reich says in effect that the Congress is now virtually irrelevant. It’s completely bypassed. So…