"And it was given to him to make war with the Saints, and to vanquish them" - Verse 7

This Beast that vanquishes the saints is the same that in ch. 11:7, is referred to as destined to make war against the Two Witnesses. There is, however, this difference of result observable in the Beast's war upon the Saints "who dwell in the heaven;" and his war against the Witnessing Prophets who had power to shut his heaven, that it should not rain in their days of the prophecy - he vanquishes the Saints, but does not "kill them;" but in regard to the Two Prophets, he both vanquishes and kills them. The reason is this: he could not kill the Saints as a body politic, exercising power and authority in the Court of the Gentiles; because, not being politicians and political partisans, they never possessed them: it is therefore stated simply, that they were vanquished or overcome by the war. Hence, we find nothing about the saints rising from death until "the time of the dead" when Christ appears. But, in the case of the Two Witnesses, or politico-ecclesiastical communities opposed to the Horns and their Lion Mouth, they were politically killed, and lay dead and unburied in the platea of the Great City three lunar days and a half of years, and afterwards became the subject of a political resurrection and ascension into the heaven of the Beast. The Saints who dwell in the heaven in Christ have never been there yet. A better resurrection and ascension than that of the Two Witnesses is in reserve for them. The reader is re-erred to my eleventh chapter for particulars about the Beast's war upon the Witnesses. The Saints of the Holy City shared in much of their affliction, and are still trodden under foot; and will continue so to be, until the synchronous termination of the Forty Two months and 1335 years. After what I have written in that chapter of Vol.3, it is unnecessary here to repeat the story of the war. The Saints were killed by thousands in the war because they would not worship the Beast's Image. This was the fate of multitudes who did not dwell in the heaven; for the slaughter by the Beasts was often indiscriminate, on the principle that "the Lord would know his own;" for even Catholics dwelling in witnessing communities were not exempted from massacre and flame. History is copious in the narration of the sanguinary persecutions and crusades raised against them by the Pope, who promised forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation to volunteers in his wars with the saints and witnesses, all of whom he blasphemed as "emanating from the pit of the abyss." These volunteers responded to his incentives with enthusiasm; and in reporting the execution of their mission, would say, "we have spared neither age nor sex; we have smitten every one with the edge of the sword." Besides being subject to massacre, they were at all times by the canon law deprived of all civil privileges; and it was declared "homicidas non esse qui excommunicatos trucidant," that they who butcher the excommunicated are not murderers.