And I looked, and behold a white cloud An emblem of the equity and holiness, as also of the victory of him that sat upon it, over all adverse power; and upon the cloud one like unto the Son of man By the majesty of his form, as represented in Daniel; having on his head a golden crown Signifying his high dignity, his extraordinary authority and power; and a sharp sickle in his hand As if going forth to reap some remarkable harvest. And another angel came out of the temple Which is in heaven, (Revelation 14:17,) out of which came the judgments of God in the proper seasons; crying, by the command of God, with a loud voice, Thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the time is come, &c. Namely, the appointed time of judgment, for which the world is ripe; the voices of the three warning angels, spoken of from Revelation 14:6-11, not having their due effect, it is here predicted that the judgments of God would overtake the followers and adherents of the beast, which judgments are represented in this paragraph under the figures of harvest and vintage, figures not unusual in the prophets, and copied particularly from the Prophet Joel, who denounced God's judgments against the enemies of his people in the like terms, Joel 3:13, saying, Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow for their wickedness is great.
“Having passed,” says Mr. Faber, “the epoch of the Reformation, we now advance into the times of God's last judgments upon his enemies, the days of the third wo-trumpet. Two remarkable periods of the most conspicuous of these judgments (the several steps of the whole of which are afterward described under seven vials) are here arranged under the two grand divisions figuratively styled the harvest and the vintage. In the days of Bishop Newton the third wo-trumpet had not begun to sound. Hence his lordship justly observed, ‘What particular events are signified by this harvest and vintage, it appears impossible for any man to determine; time alone can with certainty discover, for these things are yet in futurity. Only it may be observed, that these two signal judgments will as certainly come, as harvest and vintage succeed in their season; and in the course of providence the one will precede the other, as in the course of nature the harvest is before the vintage; and the latter will greatly surpass the former, and be attended with a most terrible destruction of God's enemies.' But although both these signal judgments were future when Bishop Newton wrote, it has been our lot to hear the voice of the third wo, and to behold in the French revolution the dreadful scenes of the harvest. Still, however, a more dreadful prospect extends before us. The days of the vintage are yet future; for the time hath not yet arrived when the great controversy of God with the nations shall be carried on between the two seas, in the neighbourhood of the glorious holy mountain, in the blood-stained vale of Megiddo, in the land whose space extends one thousand six hundred furlongs.” Mr. Faber, therefore, considers the harvest and the vintage here as predicting “two tremendous manifestations of God's wrath, two seasons of peculiar misery;” and that the apostle gives here only a general intimation of these, reserving a more particular account of them for future consideration under the pouring out of the seven vials, which are all comprehended under the third wo, and which he divides into three classes; the vials of the harvest, the intermediate vials, and the vials of the vintage. Dissertation on the Prophecies, vol. 2. pages 378 and 382, edition 1810. Whether and how far these views of Mr. Faber appear to be just and consistent with the general tenor of this latter part of the prophecy, we shall be better able to judge when we come to consider the contents of the two next Chapter s.