The Fifth Vial of Revelation
Revelation 16:10-11
10 And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain,
11 And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.
Napoleon’s ascension to the rank of general directly led to the fifth vial. Here, again, a vial imitates a trumpet. In Revelation 9, a star from Heaven fell to earth and commanded an army of locusts, which tormented those who did not have God’s seal for 150 years. God used the Muslim armies to weaken the Catholic Byzantine Empire. Similarly, God used the atheist French armies to diminish the Catholic Church at its heart, in papal Rome itself.
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John’s description of the fifth vial illustrates how God would exercise his wrath against the seat of the Antichrist. The judgment on the beast’s seat of power is so significant that it plunges into darkness, causing the people there to feel severe pain. Even still, the followers of the Antichrist papacy remain defiantly unrepentant.
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This vial is the last concerning the conflict between Revolutionary France and the Catholic Church. Edward Bishop Elliott interpreted the fulfillment of the fifth vial as the 1797 Peace of Tolentino between Revolutionary France and the Papal States.[i] However, while the pope ceded several territories to Napoleon and France, the seat of the papacy was unimpacted. Therefore, the Peace of Tolentino was likely an incorrect interpretation of this prophecy.
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The Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome has historically served as the official administrative seat of the papacy. In the late eighteenth century, popes no longer resided in the basilica’s adjoining palace, choosing to live in Rome’s Quirinal Palace instead. However, whenever the city was threatened with invasion, popes would retreat behind the formidable defensive walls of the Vatican. The consequential fifth vial would transpire during an invasion such as this, as God’s wrath would finally reach the seat of the Antichrist in Rome itself.
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The fifth vial represents the removal of the papacy’s temporal power by French general Louis-Alexandre Berthier in 1798. The significance of this event in the timeline of Revelation cannot be understated—it marked the end of papal supremacy, brought a close to the tyranny of the Great Tribulation, and removed the papacy’s ability to persecute Christians. After Pope Pius VI was deposed, he was exiled to France, where he would die in captivity.[ii] The moment Rome lost its pope, it also lost its status as a papal seat. When the pope was deposed and exiled, the beast’s seat was thrust into darkness, and the fifth vial was fulfilled.
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[i] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Fifth Vial.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. III, by Edward Bishop Elliott, 395-410. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley.
[ii] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2023. Pius VI. August 25. Accessed October 26, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pius-VI.