And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings,.... As at the giving of the law, Ex 19:16 and at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, See Gill on "Re 11:15" and may intend either the pure ministry of the Gospel in the spiritual reign, the voices of Christ's ministers, and the effects of them, who will be "Boanergeses", sons of thunder, and will be the means of enlightening the minds of many, as well as of shaking the consciences of men, signified by the earthquake following; or rather, the tremendous and awful judgments of God upon the remains of the antichristian party, as the very great commotions and changes that will be made in the world are expressed in the next clause:and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great: for as the changes made in the Jewish state, civil and ecclesiastical, are signified by the shaking of the heavens and the earth, and as the fall of Paganism is expressed by an earthquake, and the fall of the tenth part of the city is the effect of another; so the destruction of all the antichristian powers, and the mutations made in the earth thereby, are designed by this; see Heb 12:26 Joe 3:16.
Mr.