Horae Apocalypticae - The Three Frogs

The Three Frogs

In Revelation 16: 13, three frogs came from the mouths of the dragon, the Beast and the false prophet to work mischief in the world. These Edward Elliott identified as atheism, revolution and priestcraft. A wide selection of historical 'evils' was identified with these: the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the attacks on established institutions which accompanied the passage of the Reform Act of 1832 (although no stand was taken on the franchise issue itself) the atheist element in the Chartist press, Essays and Reviews, Bruno Bauer and David Strauss, the 'papal aggression' which resulted in the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851, the reliance of British governments upon the Commons' votes of Irish MPs, the expulsion of the Dutch from Belgium, John Keble's The Christian Year, "the pretended creations and transformations of Crosse, Darwin, etc" and the removal of restrictions upon trade with India which, he said, meant "the opportunity was seized to send out thither bales of the works of Tom Paine" and that these ideas were woven by Muslim writers into their criticisms of Christianity.

Edward Elliott also admitted the visions of the harvest and the vintage presented problems. His contemporaries were divided between those who saw them as a mercy upon the good (a harvest should be a time of joy and celebration) or as a judgment on the bad (as the warlike language used implies). Elliott saw it as a judgment which was a reward for the martyred saints. He felt this answered the pre-millennial question, "For how could the saints' blessedness and reward be viewed as imminent if a millennium of the spiritual evangelization of the world were expected to precede it?" But by saying all the Beasts and dragons were really one and then identifying these closely with the antichrist, Edward Elliott came close to assigning all the evil in the world to the papacy.

The seventh and last vial was to be poured on the air. Edward Elliott expected a polluted moral atmosphere to corrupt normal society but admitted this figure of speech to be unusual in prophetic writing.