11:14-19 Before the sounding of the seventh and last trumpet, there is the usual demand of attention. The saints and angels in heaven know the right of our God and Saviour to rule over all the world. But the nations met God's wrath with their own anger. It was a time in which he was beginning to reward his people's faithful services, and sufferings; and their enemies fretted against God, and so increased their guilt, and hastened their destruction. By the opening the temple of God in heaven, may be meant, that there was a more free communication between heaven and earth; prayer and praises more freely and frequently going up, graces and blessings plentifully coming down. But it rather seems to refer to the church of God on earth. In the reign of antichrist, God's law was laid aside, and made void by traditions and decrees; the Scriptures were locked up from the people, but now they are brought to the view of all. This, like the ark, is a token of the presence of God returned to his people, and his favour toward them in Jesus Christ, as the Propitiation for their sins. The great blessing of the Reformation was attended with very awful providences; as by terrible things in righteousness God answered the prayers presented in his holy temple now opened.

17. thanks—for the answer to our prayers (Re 6:10, 11) in destroying them which destroy the earth (Re 11:18), thereby preparing the way for setting up the kingdom of Thyself and Thy saints.

and art to come—omitted in A, B, C, Vulgate, Syriac, Cyprian, and Andreas. The consummation having actually come, they do not address Him as they did when it was still future, "Thou that art to come." Compare Re 11:18, "is come." From the sounding of the seventh trumpet He is to His people Jah, the ever present Lord, WHO IS, more peculiarly than Jehovah "who is, was, and is to come."

taken to thee thy great power—"to Thee" is not in the Greek. Christ takes to Him the kingdom as His own of right.