The Fourth Vial of Revelation
Revelation 16:8-9
8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
9 And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.
When the fourth angel pours out the contents of his vial on the sun, it scorches men with fire. The second and fourth vials are the only two in which John uses pronouns to refer to the targets of God’s judgments. While John sees both vials poured out on things—the sea and the sun—his pronoun choices differ. The pronoun used for the sea in the second vial was it, which suggests it would involve a thing rather than a person. However, in the fourth vial, the pronoun chosen for the sun was him. The scriptural text indicates that the sun in the fourth vial was only a metaphor and would be fulfilled by a man. Since this vial gives power to the sun, the prophecy’s fulfillment would occur when this individual is empowered.
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The third vial prophecy was fulfilled after the French Revolution spread to the rural valleys of France. When King Frederick William II of Prussia and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II declared support for France’s deposed King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, the Revolution expanded into the War of the First Coalition.[i] Near the conclusion of this war, a rising star general was awarded command of France’s Army of Italy in 1796. Famous for his victorious strategy in the Siege of Toulon, a young General Napoleon Bonaparte used his newly awarded power to attack the Kingdom of Sardinia. His Montenotte campaign against the Sardinian and Habsburg armies would result in a military victory so conclusive that the Sardinians entirely withdrew from the war after only two weeks.[ii]
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The significance of the combatant armies is that the French military was atheist, while both the Sardinians and Habsburgs were Catholic. Most of the countries of the Coalition—the Spanish Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Papal States, Kingdom of Portugal, and Kingdom of Naples, among others—were either Catholic or partially Catholic. God used the atheist French Republic to punish the Catholic armies of the Coalition through this vial, symbolically scorching them with fire for their “fornication” with the Catholic Church.[iii]
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Napoleon’s rise to the command of the French Army of Italy satisfied the prophecy of the sun’s empowerment in Revelation 16:8. The general, who once said, “If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god,” scorched men with fire through his military conquests, much like Alaric, Genseric, and Attila during the three burning trumpets.
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[i] Tikkanen, Amy, and Thinley Kalsang Bhutia. 2023. Declaration of Pillnitz. August 20. Accessed January 29, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Declaration-of-Pillnitz.
[ii] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2023. Napoleon I. September 19. Accessed September 19, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Napoleon-I.
[iii] Rev. 9:21, 17:2, 18:3, 18:9, 19:2 (KJV).