(Revelation 11:13)
After the saints were set free from the beast, the apostle John said, “In that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell, seven thousand were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.”1Rev 11:13
This is the second “hour” described in the Book of Revelation.
In Revelation 16:18, the battle of Armageddon is also described as a “great earthquake” where a third of mankind died.
A tenth of Europe, a tenth of the great city, died in the Reformation wars that broke out among the Catholics and the Protestants.
• In France, religious wars killed three million people from 1562 to 1598. Thousands of Waldensians were murdered in Merindol in 1545, and thousands of Huguenots were killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, which “printed on Protestant minds the indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion.”
• Religious freedom in northern Europe came at a great cost, with decades of rebellions, wars, and bloody persecutions.
• Germany and central Europe suffered tremendous violence in the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648. In 1620, the Protestants in Bohemia were defeated at the Battle of White Mountain and were forced to return to Catholicism. The deaths in Germany were the most numerous: one third of the German population died.
In total, one-tenth of the population of Europe died in these wars. A tenth of the city fell.
John said “seven thousand” were killed in the earthquake. This expression comes from 1 Kings 19:18, where God said, “I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal.”
These were the 7,000 who did not worship the beast.
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