Fifth Vial - Darkness in Beast Kingdom

Vial - God's Judgement on the Papacy (Second Beast)

Revelation 16:10 - And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain.

Revelation 16:11 - And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

Isaiah 8:20 - To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Isaiah 8:21 - They will pass through it hard pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward.

Isaiah 8:22 - Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness.

In 1796, French Republican troops under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy, defeated the papal troops and occupied Ancona and Loreto. Pope Pius VI sued for peace, which was granted at Tolentino on February 19, 1797;

On December 28 of that year, in a riot blamed by papal forces on some Italian and French revolutionists, the popular brigadier-general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot, who had gone to Rome with Joseph Bonaparte as part of the French embassy, was killed and a new pretext was furnished for invasion.

General Berthier marched to Rome, entered it unopposed on February 10, 1798, and, proclaiming a Roman Republic, demanded of the Pope the renunciation of his temporal power. Upon his refusal he was taken prisoner, and on February 20 was escorted from the Vatican to Siena, and then to the Certosa near Florence.

The French declaration of war against Tuscany led to his removal by way of Parma, Piacenza, Turin and Grenoble to the citadel of Valence, the chief town of Drôme where he died six weeks after his arrival, on August 29, 1799, having then reigned longer than any Pope.

The Papacy's means of support was withdrawn by the abolition of tithes, the confiscation of the Church lands, and the destruction of monastic houses. This was followed by the national abolition of the Roman Catholic religion, and the razing the churches to the ground. So was the whole French ecclesiastical establishment broken up.

At length the decree went forth for the humbling of the beast himself. In 1809 Napoleon declared the Pope's temporal dominion at an end. The estates of the Church were annexed to France; and Rome was degraded to be the second city of the French Empire. Surely on the seat of the beast (Rome) the vial of wrath had been poured out.

The world had seen the weakness of Papacy, and a precedent was established for the benefit of future generations.

In France the Catholic religion continued only to be tolerated on an equality with other religions; in Portugal and Spain church property has been lately confiscated; and in Italy still later events have shown that the papal authority, if unsupported by temporal power, has not any longer in itself that which can maintain its supremacy.

The Papal States, officially the State of the Church were territories in the Italian Peninsula under the sovereign direct rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. These holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy.

The nationalist and liberal Revolutions of 1848 affected much of Europe, and in February 1849, a Roman Republic was declared, and the liberally-inclined Pope Pius IX had to flee the city. The revolution was suppressed with French help in 1850 and Pius IX switched to a conservative line of government.

The Beast kingdom became full of darkness during this vial. From 1798 A.D to 1866 A.D the authority of the Papal system progressively disintegrated. By 1861, much of the Papal States' territory had been conquered by the Kingdom of Italy. Only Lazio, including Rome, remained under the Pope's temporal control. In 1870, the Pope lost Lazio and Rome and had no physical territory at all, not even the Vatican.

In 1870 the Italian troops conquered Rome and annexed it into the kingdom of Italy. This marked the definite end of the Papal States. The continual loss of power caused them to gnaw their tongues (Revelation 16:10).

Revelation 16:11 - And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

The Papacy did not repent, instead it started hurling anathemas. Instead of repenting, the Papacy blasphemed God by introducing doctrines of devil like Immaculate conception of Mary (1854) & Papal Infallibility (1870).