Revelation 9:3-5

1599 Geneva Bible

Footnotes

1. Revelation 9:3 A description of the malignant spirits invading the world, taken from their nature, power, form and order. From their nature, for that they are like unto certain locusts, in quickenness, subtlety, hurtfulness, number, and such like in this verse. From their power, for that they are as the scorpions of the earth, of a secret force to do hurt. For our battle is not here with flesh and blood, but with powers, etc., Eph. 6:12. This place of the power of the Devils generally noted in this verse, is particularly declared afterwards in the three next verses.
2. Revelation 9:4 Here that power of the devils is particularly described according to their actions and effects of the same. Their actions are said to be bounded by the counsel of God: both because they hurt not all men, but only the reprobate (for the godly and elect, in whom there is any part of a better life, God guardeth by his decree) whom Christ shall not have sealed, in this verse: and also because they neither had all power not at all times, no not over those that are their own, but limited in manner and time, by the prescript of God, verse 5. So their power to afflict the godly, is none, and for the wicked is limited in act and in effect by the will of God: for the manner was prescribed unto them that they should not slay, but torment the wretched world. The time is for five months or for an hundred and fifty days, that is, for so many years in which the devils have indeed mightily perverted all things in the world: and yet without that public and unpunished license of killing, which afterward they usurped when the sixth Angel had blown his trumpet, as shall be said upon verse 13. Now this space is to be accounted from the end of that thousand years mentioned, Rev. 20:3, and that is from the Popedom of that Gregory the seventh, a most monstrous Necromancer, who before was called Hildebrandus Senensis: for this man being made altogether of impiety and wickedness, as a slave of the devil, whom he served, was the most wicked firebrand of the world: he excommunicated the Emperor Henry the fourth: went about by all manner of treachery to set up and put down empires and kingdoms as liked himself: and doubted not to set Rodolph the Swedon over the Empire instead of Henry before named, sending unto him a Crown with this verse annexed unto it: Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho: that is, The Rock to Peter gave the crown, and Peter Rodolph doth renown. Finally, he so finely bestirred himself in his affairs, as he miserably set all Christendom on fire, and conveyed over unto his successors the burning brand of the same: who enraged with like ambition, never ceased to nourish that flame, and to enkindle it more and more: whereby Cities, Commonwealths, and whole kingdoms set together by the ears amongst themselves by most expert cut-throats, came to ruin, whiles they miserably wounded one another. This term of an hundred and fifty years, taketh end in the time of Gregory the ninth, or Hugolinus Anagniensis (as he was before called) who caused to be compiled by one Raimond his chaplain and confessor, the body of Decretals, and by sufferance of the Kings and Princes to be published in the Christian world, and established for a law. For by this sleight at length the Popes arrogated unto themselves license to kill whom they would, whiles others were unawares: and without fear established a butchery out of many of the wicked Canons of the Decretals, which the trumpet of the fifth Angel had expressly forbidden, and had hindered until this time. The effects of the bloody actions are declared upon the sixth verse: that the miserable world languishing in so great calamities, should willingly run together unto death, and prefer the same before life, by reason of the grievousness of the miseries that oppressed them.