Chapter IX. Second Section of the Seventh Seal; or, First Two Woe-Trumpets

Act I.—Fifth Trumpet; or, First Woe

Summary

A star falls out of the heaven into the earth, to whom is given the key of the pit of the abyss, which he opens; and from its furnace a smoke issues that darkens the sun and air. Out of the smoke locusts go forth into the earth with scorpion-power to torment “those men who have not the seal of the Deity upon their foreheads,” during five months, and to injure them other five. Their king is styled, THE ANGEL OF THE ABYSS; and named in Hebrew, ABADDON; in Greek, APOLLYON.

Time of Events

From A. D. 632 to A. D. 932=300 years.

Arena

The territory of the Dragon upon which the imperial “sun” shone before being darkened by the smoke. See Tabular Analysis, page 103.

p. 450Translation

Apoc. ix. 1-12.

1. And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star which had fallen out of the heaven into the earth, and there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss.

2. And he opened the pit of the abyss: and smoke ascended out of the pit as it were smoke of a great furnace; and the sun was darkened, and the air from the smoke of the pit.

3. And out of the smoke came forth locusts into the earth, and there was given to them power as the scorpions of the earth have power.

4. And it was commanded them that they should not injure the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, except the men only who have not the seal of the Deity upon their foreheads. 5. And it was given to them that they should not kill them, but that they should torment them five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when it striketh a man.

6. And in those days the men shall seek the death, and shall not find it: and they shall earnestly desire to die, and the death shall flee from them.

7. And the resemblances of the locusts were like to horses which had been prepared for war; and upon their heads as it were chaplets like to gold, and their faces as faces of men. 8. And they had hair as the tresses of women; and their teeth were as of lions. 9. And they had breasts as it were breasts of iron: and the sound of their wings as the sound of many chariots of horses rushing into battle.

10. And they have tails like to scorpions, and stings were in their tails; and their power to injure the men was five months.

11. And they have over them a king, the Angel of the Abyss: the name for him in Hebrew is Abaddon; and in the Greek, he hath the name Apollyon.

12. The first woe hath passed away; behold there come yet two woes after these things.

I.—Symbols Explained

On the sounding of the fifth angel, John saw “a star.” I need not repeat here what has already been said about stars. The reader is referred to my explanation of the symbols of the third trumpet, p. 451 the subject of which is the “great star Apsinthos.” The star of the fifth trumpet may also be styled a falling star; or rather, when John saw it in vision, a fallen star. Its place was in the heaven, or it could not have proceeded “out of the heaven.” It was not a fixed star of the heaven, transmitting through “the air” in “the night” of the Greek catholic world, the reflected light of the Byzantine “sun.” Had it been a fixed star of the eastern Roman firmament, its falling would not have been to receive power, but the deprivation of everything constituting the glory of a star. John may not have seen it in the act of falling into the earth. The falling had been completed when he first saw it. This is intimated by the perfect participle πεπτωκοτα, which signifies “having fallen.” The falling out of the heaven is no part of the vision’s scenery. It had fallen, or descended, into the earth, as the Apsinthian Star had fallen, or descended into the rivers and fountains of water. It did not forsake the heaven as its place, because it had fallen into the earth; but being a power, a power of the heaven peculiar to itself, it retained its position there, but fell with destructive effect upon the people represented by “the earth.”

By “the earth” in this vision is meant “the dwellers upon the earth;” or the grass, green things, and trees, which symbolized the unsealed. The eagle-angel community, constituted of the servants of the Deity sealed in their foreheads, was not to be tormented by this woe. The sealed servants of the Deity—the enlightened believers who have obeyed the truth—are nowhere in the apocalypse styled “the earth.” They are “a Holy Nation.” But “the earth” apocalyptic is the very reverse. “The earth” is an unholy generation that “wonders after the beast;” and that “worships the Dragon, and worships the beast;” and represents the “all kindreds, and tongues, and nations” subject to the Dragon and Beast forms of government—Apoc. xiii. 3, 4, 7. “The earth,” in the prophecy of the fifth and sixth trumpets, is symbolical of the secular and ecclesiastical orders and people of the Catholic Apostasy; which, by the fifth trumpet were to be “tormented” and “injured;” and by the sixth, to be “killed,” or deprived of all power, authority and rule, over the Eastern Third of the fourth beast dominion—ch. ix. 15, 18. “The earth” would therefore represent the territory upon which these catholic idolators dwelt. The sealed servants of the Deity dwelt there likewise, only in “the Two Wings” of it, where they were “nourished;” and though the locusts swarmed over “the earth,” they were especially forbidden to torment and injure them, in the command to injure only the unsealed—ver. 4. Hence, then, when John saw the Fallen Star “in the earth,” he p. 452 saw it where it did not naturally belong. It fell “out of the heaven into the earth;” and being a star of destruction, or a destroying power, it would make its way “into the earth” by an overwhelming invasive force. In other words, “the earth” was fallen upon, or invaded, by the star-power.

1.—The Pit of the Abyss

But, before the star was seen by John “in the earth,” it had acquired possession of “the Key of the Pit of the Abyss”—η κλεις του φρεατος της αβυσσον. The pit of the abyss is the geographical locality of the “smoke,” out of which the locusts issued to invade “the earth.” When the pit was opened smoke arose out of it. The pit—το φρεαρ—is contiguous to “the earth;” they abutt the one upon the other. It is an immense depression in the surface of the globe, confining upon Palestine, then a province of the Eastern Third, called the Greek or Byzantine empire. It is the pit or reservoir, or basin in which lies the αβυσσος, abyss, or Dead Sea. It is introduced here symbolically to represent the region styled Arabia, whose tribes inhabited it, and poured out of it “into the earth.” The Arabic region is well represented as “the pit;” and locality of “a great furnace;” for the district of the Dead Sea, and of the whole valley of the Jordan northward to the Lake of Tiberias, is quite a phenomenon in physical geography, being below the level of the ocean. No other example of similar depression, or pit, is known. The Lake of Tiberias is 328 feet below the level of the Mediterranean; and from thence the river-valley declines to the Dead Sea, the surface of which is very nearly 1,400 feet below the same level. Owing to the great depth of this “pit,” or depression of the surface, together with the heights which wall in the valley, the heat powerfully accumulates, or becomes as it were “a great furnace,” by the concentration and reflection of the solar rays, while the bordering highlands prevent the admission of external breezes to relieve the temperature. The climate is therefore tropical. Travellers, on descending into this low and deep country, feel as if they had entered another zone. They confirm the accuracy of Josephus, who reports that winter in the plain of Jericho resembled spring, and that the inhabitants wore linen garments at the time when the people in other parts of Judea were shivering in the midst of snow. The balsam-tree, a tropical plant, which yields the medicinal gum, now called the balsam of Mecca, and is now limited to Arabia, once flourished in groves near Jericho, and furnished the p. 453 renowned balm of Gilead. Apart from the margin of the Jordan, the surface of “the pit” has the aspect of a parched desert through the months of summer.

Such are the natural conditions of this “pit of the abyss,” or sea, which constitute it a fit and proper emblem of the political situation of affairs within its limits before its locusts issued forth upon the earth. The whole pit was in the condition of a furnace. In Deut. iv. 20, Egypt is styled “an iron furnace” to Israel; and in Isai. xxxi. 8, 9, Zion and Jerusalem are styled the place of the fire and the furnace, whence shall issue the destruction that is to fall upon the Assyrian. So this Arabian Pit was the place of a fire burning as a furnace, which, when it should be “opened,” would pour forth a woeful tormenting power upon the unsealed inhabitants of the earth. The inhabitants of this pit of the sea, while they were shut up therein, would be in a state of war and distraction; for such is the idea conveyed by a burning furnace, which melts down the crude matters cast into it. A great furnace is never a symbol of peace and prosperity; but always of the contrary. John saw the pit of the abyss in this fiery, or embattled, condition before it was opened; but he has revealed to us no details. He has simply informed us, that a power was developed that was able to open the pit of the abyss; and to let out the contents thereof, which he styles “smoke” and “locusts.” This information he conveys in the words, “and to him (the Star) was given the Key of the Pit of the Abyss; and he opened the pit of the abyss; and smoke ascended out of the pit . . . and out of the smoke came forth locusts into the earth.”

2.—The Key of the Pit

A key is symbolical of governmental power and authority. The laying of the key of the house of David upon the shoulder of Eliakim, was representative of the bestowal of regal power upon ONE, who should be for a glorious throne to his father’s house, and have the sole power of opening and shutting—Isai. xxii. 22. With the Mohammedans, it is also symbolical of administrative power. “The Koran,” says M. Peyron, “continually speaks of the Key of God, which opened to them the gates of the world and of religion. So in the Koran: “Did not God give to His legate the power of heaven which is above, and fire (the furnace-pit) which is beneath? With the Key, did he not give him the title and power of a porter, that he may open to those (the locusts) whom he may have chosen?” The parentheses in this quotation are mine. The following form of renunciation p. 454 of Mohammedanism, enjoined on a convert to the catholic superstition, thus alludes to Mohammed’s key of heaven: I anathematize the spurious teaching and promising of Mohammed among the Saracens; who says, that he is become the Key-holder of Paradise.” The key was also an armorial bearing of the Mohammedans in Spain. When they crossed from Africa to Spain, it was on their standard; and was afterwards sculptured on the archway of the Alhambra, an engraving of which is given in Mr. Elliott’s work.

In the apocalypse, there are two keys spoken of in connection with “the abyss;” this in ch. ix; and another in ch. xx. 1. They are, however, not the same. The former is the key of the pit of the abyss; and the latter, the key of the abyss itself. The key of the pit was given to the Star of the pit, or the Star who kindled the furnace of the pit; while the key of the abyss is brought out of the heaven by the angel thence descending. He descends with power to enlighten the earth with his glory, and to shut down the Dragon “into the abyss,” out of which, according to Daniel, he came up—סלקן מן־ימא sālkān min yămmāh—ch. vii. 3.

3.—The Abyss

This leads me to remark, that in these places of the apocalypse, αβυσσος is improperly rendered “bottomless pit.” In Isai. xliv. 27, what in the Septuagint is αβυσσος, or abyss, is in the Hebrew צוּלה tzulah “deep;” and is explained in Jer. l. 38, and li. 36, of Babylon’s power, which is also likened to a dragon therein. Hence, in Daniel’s time, the eagle-winged lion of Babylon was the dragon of the great sea, or abyss, so long as its dominion extended to the Mediterranean; but when it lost that jurisdiction, then its “sea,” or abyss, was said to be “dried up.”

Abyss is frequently used in the Greek version as synonymous with sea. The following passages show this sense of the word αβυσσος: In Job xxxviii. 30—“the face of the abyss is frozen;” xli. 31, “he maketh the abyss to boil like a pot; he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.” In Isai. lxiii. 13, where is he “that led them through the abyss” by the hand of Moses? It is manifest that there is nothing bottomless in the abyss as used in these texts.

In Rom. x. 7, abyss is used by Paul in asking, “Who shall descend into the abyss?” in the C. V. deep: and he tells us what sense he attaches to the word in letting us know the purpose of the descent—“that is,” says he, “to bring up Christ again from among dead ones, εκ νεκρων.” This is an abyss which is “never full;” p. 455 still bottom can be reached when “there shall be no more death,” and the grave shall be destroyed. In this use of the word, abyss does not signify “the invisible receptacle of departed spirits,” but the common receptacle of dead bodies; or more strictly speaking, the aggregate of dead bodies themselves. These are a sea of death, which when living were “a troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt”—Isai. lvii. 20.

The apocalyptic abyss is this troubled sea of nations, inhabiting the countries circumjacent to the Great Sea; and out of which Daniel’s four beasts arose. Arabia is physically and politically “the pit” of this “abyss”—physically, because it is a sandy sea-bottom; and politically, because its tribes may be regarded as the lowest, or worst of the peoples of the east. The key of the abyss, that is brought down from heaven by the binding angel, is power to suppress the Dragon-Government, and to destroy the Beast-Polity of the abyss, or sea—Apoc. xiii. 1: and to maintain its suppression for a thousand years. The abolition of the Dragon-Government will be the reduction of all its officials in church and state to the common level of mankind; and the depriving them of all power to recover the position lost during that long period. Thus, they will be commingled with the waters of the great national abyss—they will have been “cast into the abyss, and shut up, and sealed” with such a mark of divine reprobation, that they will be able to deceive the nations by their hypocritical pretensions, and blasphemous projects, no more for ages.

What a different key is this to the key of the pit! This key is power given to one to open the pit to let out clouds of tormentors and destroyers. Their mission is not to deliver the nations from official and clorical deceivers; but to torment and injure these blind leaders, and those who are blindly led by them. These all “have not the seal of the Deity in their foreheads;” and were therefore obnoxious to the stinging calamities inflicted by the bold, licentious, and ferocious swarms emergent from the smoke-clouds of the flaming pit.

4.—The Smoke of the Pit

Until the power of the Prophet-King, or Star, was matured in “the pit of the abyss,” the pit was shut; so that neither “smoke” nor “locusts” could issue forth upon “the earth” to torment and destroy the unsealed. The furnace was roaring with flaming blast in the pit, from which nothing could come forth until the acquisition p. 456 of undisputed authority and power by the star. This he at length acquired; for it is testified, that “he opened the pit of the abyss.” He had become a powerful star, ruling over the kingdom of the pit, styled historically, the kingdom of Arabia; the armies of which no longer in a state of civil war, but united under the yellow banner of the star, were prepared to rush through the opened portals of the pit, and to invade the world at large.

And invade it they did; for when the pit was opened, smoke poured out in columns vast enough to darken the sun and the air. “Smoke” when considered as proceeding from fire, signifies punishment and war. Thus, Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the cities of the plain, were situated in the pit of the abyss; and when they were destroyed, “the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” Here, the smoke became representative of their judgment. It is the adjunct of anger, as in Deut. xxix. 20, “The anger of Yahweh shall smoke against that man;” and in Ps. lxxiv. 1, “O God, why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” Smoke arising out of a pit, and darkening the sun and air, is symbolical of divine anger and wrath against the things represented by “the sun and air.” In ch. ix. 18, the men obnoxious to the sixth trumpet woe, are said to be “killed by the fire, by the smoke, and by the brimstone.” In ch. xiv. 11, smoke is associated with torment as “the smoke of their torment ascendeth to the aiōns of the aiōns; and they have no rest day nor night;” and in ch. xv. 8, “the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of the Deity and from his power;” that is the wrath contained in the seven vials, and which in its seventh vial consummation comes for the destruction of the destroyers of the earth—ch. xi. 18.

5.—The Sun and Air Darkened by the Smoke

The sun is here the symbol of the same imperial majesty as that which was darkened in its third by the judgments of the fourth trumpet. The darkened third had recovered its light in the process of re-annexing Italy and Africa to the Byzantine, Greek, or Constantinopolitan, empire in the reign of Justinian. The “deadly wound” the Sixth Head had received, had been “healed;” and its affairs restored to order in Italy by the Pragmatic Sanction, A. D. 554. The sun now shining forth, “the third of the day and of the night,” then recovered their brightness. The sun, therefore, now shone upon Italy, Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and the islands of the sea. “The rest of the men not p. 457 killed by” the fifth and sixth trumpet plagues, were found in Spain, Gaul, Britain; Germany, &c. When the sun was darkened by the smoke of the pit, its light, or power, was quenched in the countries of “the earth” where the locusts of the smoke established themselves.

Not only was the sun darkened, but “the air” likewise. In the darkening of the Roman luminaries by the fourth trumpet “the air” remained unaffected. In symbolic language, the air denotes the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the world. This constitution was not changed when the Seventh Head superseded the Sixth in Rome. It still continued catholic. The Gothic kingdom of Italy was a catholic monarchy administered by Arian catholic kings, who distributed civil and ecclesiastical offices both to Arian and Trinitarian members of the apostasy. But when the smoke of the pit darkened “the air” all this was changed where its locusts tormented the unsealed. The aerial constitution became Arabian. Place and power, in the conquered countries, were only for the locusts of the smoke; so that if a catholic idolator would retain office, he must become a convert to the new superstition, which so darkened the air politically, that the rays of the spirituals of wickedness in the Byzantine heaven, could not pass through it for the illumination of their coreligionists in scorpion-like torment.

In Apoc. xvi. 17, “the air” is also the recipient of judgment. But in this instance, on a much larger scale. The course of the whole world will be changed; so that every political island and mountain will be abolished. The civil and ecclesiastical constitutions of all the states and kingdoms will be superseded by “the law that goes forth from Zion,” which will become “the air” in which clouds of saints will meet the Lord, and so be ever with him—1 Thess. iv. 17. When the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of Yahweh and his Anointed, “the wise” will be the embodiment of “the air” or firmament; for “they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament”—Dan. xii. 3. No smoke of the pit, or wrath of vials, will ever darken, or abolish them. They will always be bright and clear, and give transmission to the healing rays of the Sun of Righteousness, as his kings and priests over the subject nations of the earth.

6.—“Out of the Smoke came forth Locusts into the earth.”

“Locusts.” says Daubuz, “begin to appear in spring, about a p. 458 month after the equinox, and are only seen at most during five months. They are wont to arise in such vast companies, that they form a kind of cloud which eclipses the sun and darkens the sky; and make so great a noise with their wings as that, according to some, the sound thereof may be heard at six miles distant. Wherever they fall they make a most terrible havoc of all the fruits of the earth; and therefore the people, when they see them flying, are in the greatest consternation. Pliny says, “That they were looked upon as a plague proceeding from the wrath of the gods.”

The head of the locust resembles that of the horse; and therefore the Italians, who are often troubled with them, call them cavalette, as it were little horses.

“The Arabians, who know them well, say that the locusts have the thigh of a camel, the legs of an ostrich, the wings of an eagle, the breast of a lion, their tails are like a viper’s, and the appearance of horns adorns their heads and countenance.” As to the teeth of the locusts, Pliny observes that “nothing can resist them.” For the reasons above given, locusts are the symbol of an army of enemies coming in great multitudes, with great speed and swiftness to make an excursion in order to plunder and destroy.

“It is further to be observed, that locusts are generated in the pits of the earth, out of which the new progeny arises in the spring.” Volney observes, that “the inhabitants of Syria have remarked that locusts come constantly from the desert of Arabia.” Indeed, etymologically, an Arab and a locust are almost the same in radicals, and in pronunciation—ארבה arbeh, signifying a locust; and ערבי arbi, an Arab. In Judg. vi. 5, in the original, the locust is used to designate the number and character of invading Arab hosts—“they (the Midianite Arabs and children of the east) came as locusts for multitude.” In a work styled Mohammedanism Unveiled, the writer says: “In the Bedoween Romance of Antar, the locust is introduced as the national emblem of the Ishmaelites.” He adds: “It is a remarkable coincidence with these illustrative facts, that Mohammedan tradition speaks of locusts having dropped into the hands of Mohammed, bearing on their wings this inscription, ‘We are the army of the Great God.’”

It is evident from the entomology of the insect, that the apocalyptic locusts were not literally such. The locusts of the first woe had faces of men, and tresses as those of women, and a king over them. These and other characteristics show that they were armies of men, whose main force consisted of cavalry, invincible, licentious, and tormenting; analogous in their destructive operations to clouds p. 459 of locusts. They were fitly styled locusts as coming from Arabia, the native country of the locust, whose name, with the change of a single letter as ערבה for ארבה ărābāh for arbeh, signifies a desert—the Arab desert between the Dead and Red Seas. As of the locust so of the “scorpion,” whose native locality was considered by the Jews to be the Arabian desert. And they had good reason for this; for they were reminded by Moses on emerging from it, that it was “a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions.” “And who know not,” says Elliott, “if facts so notorious be worth mentioning, that it is Arabia, still Arabia, that is regarded by naturalists as the original country of the horse; and its wildernesses are the haunts also of the lion. The entomology of the hieroglyphic is all Arabian.”

7.—“Power was given to the Locusts as the Scorpions of the earth have power.”

The bite or sting of the scorpion is generally fatal. Hence, the power of the locusts was a fatal power. They had scorpion-like tails, and in these tails was some of their power for destruction. But scorpion-like tails and stings were only symbolical of something analogous thereto. In Gibbon, I find the following solution of the mystery. “A Roman knight,” says he, “who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates his own fears at the sight and sound of the mischievous engines that discharged a torrent of the Saracen fire. ‘It came flying through the air,’ says Joinville, ‘like a winged, long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of a hogshead, with the report of thunder and the velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by the deadly illumination.’ The use of the Saracen fire, or, as it was afterwards called, the Greek fire, was continued to the middle of the 14th century, when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind.”

An Arab writer in the Escurial collection, about the year 1249, thus speaks of what Joinville styles “a winged, long-tailed dragon,” used by the Saracens: “The scorpions,” says he, “surrounded and ignited by nitrated powder, glide along like serpents, with a humming noise, and, when exploded, they blaze brightly and burn. Now, to behold the matter expelled was as a cloud extended through the air, which gave forth a dreadful crash like thunder, vomiting fire on every side, and breaking down, burning, and reducing all things to ashes.”

p. 4608.—Chaplets like to Gold

The use of this tormenting Saracen fire constituted the resemblance of the Arabs to scorpion-tailed locusts. Besides this, they had other remarkable “resemblances” in their equipment for war. They had, as it were, “chaplets like to gold”—ὡς στεφανοι. This was only an ὁμοιωμα—resemblance—not literal golden circlets. They would be yellow so as to bear a resemblance to gold. They had a yellow headgear. Ezekiel, in ch. xxiii. 42, describes the head-dress of the Sabean and Keturite Arabs by עטרת, ătĕrĕth, rendered in Greek by στεφανον, as “Sabæans from the wilderness, who put beautiful stephans or wreaths upon their heads”—that is, turbans. It was a usual saying among them that Allah had bestowed four peculiar things upon the Arabs; and that one of them was, that their turbans should be to them instead of diadems. “Make a point,” said their prophet, “of wearing turbans, because it is the way of angels.”

9.—Faces as the Faces of Men

Another resemblance of the locusts was that “they had faces as faces of men.” This distinguished them from the Goths and other kindred barbarian hordes; the faces of these being noticed by Jerome, who was contemporary with their earliest invasions, as having faces shaven and smooth, like women’s faces. The beard was not always worn by the Romans. From Nero to Hadrian, the imperatorial custom was to have the beard shaven; from Hadrian to Constantine, unshaven; afterwards (with the exception of Julian), down to Phocas, shaven. But the locusts did not shave. They wore beards, and so vindicated their relationship to the bearded race, and their antagonism to all shaven crowns.

Pliny, who was contemporary with John, speaks of the Arabs as wearing the turban, having the hair long and uncut, with the moustache on the upper lip, or the beard, that “venerable sign of manhood,” as Gibbon, in Arab phraseology, calls it. In the age immediately preceding the great Saracen irruption, in the poem, Antar, the Arabs are portrayed with moustache and beard, long hair flowing on the shoulder (“hair as the tresses of women,” which the Greeks regarded as shameful), and the turban also.

10.—“Their Teeth were as of Lions.”

This indicated their ferocity. Nothing could successfully resist p. 461 them in their ravening upon the prey. The Star styled his first vizier, Ali, the Lion of God. “Who,” said Mohammed, “will be my Vizier and Lieutenant?” “O prophet,” replied Ali, “I am the man. Whoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet, I will be thy Vizier.” “These words,” says Hallam, “are, as it were, a text upon which the commentary expands into the whole Saracenic history.” The spirit of Ali was the spirit of the lion, and became the spirit of the hosts he led to battle, who were equally entitled with him to the appellation of the lions of God.

11.—“And they had Breasts as it were Breasts of Iron.”

In this the thing covered is put for the covering. In the poem Antar, as quoted by Elliott, the steel or iron cuirasses of the Arab warriors are frequently noticed; as, “a warrior immersed in steel armor;” “15,000 men armed with cuirasses, and well accoutred for war;” they were “clothed in iron armor and brilliant cuirasses;” “out of the dust appeared horsemen clad in iron.” In the Koran, among God’s gifts to the Arabs, their coats of mail for defence are specially mentioned; as, “God hath given you coats of mail to defend you in your wars.” The Saracen policy was the wearing of defensive armor. The breastplate of iron, as symbolized by their iron breasts, was a descriptive feature answering literally to the Arab warriors of the sixth and seventh centuries.

12.—The Two Periods of Five Months each

The locusts were to torment the men of the catholic apostasy in church and state “five months”—ver. 5; they were also to “injure” them for “five months”—ver. 10. This is, of course, symbolic time. The fitness of things requires that the time allotted for symbolic action should be expressed symbolically and analogically. The entomology of the hieroglyphic required that it should be five months, and not ten; because locusts are only seen at most five months, namely, part of April, May, June, July, and August, with part of September. Yet it would seem that they could not do all the tormenting and injuring they were appointed to do against “the shaven crowns” and their deluded votaries in one season of five months, but in two seasons. The decorum of the symbols, therefore, rejected the record of ten months, and required the time to bo expressed symbolically twice by “five months.” This period is 150 p. 462 days, and upon the principle of a day for a year, which is the basis of the symbolic times of the apocalypse, represents 150 years. Hence, the locusts were to torment with scorpion torment “the men” of the apostasy until the end of 150 years; and they were to injure “the rest of the men” not included in the eastern or Byzantine third, which was politically “killed by the plagues” of the first and second woes, until another 150 years should have expired. So that the sounding of the fifth trumpet would continue to harass the men destitute of intelligence in the truth, for not less than 300 years. A period to be dated from the commencement of the tormentation or military operation of the locusts in the Roman earth, A. D. 632-3.

13.—“And they had over them a king.”

“The locusts,” says Solomon, “have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” As we must not set scripture against scripture, these opposite sayings concerning locusts must be interpreted so as to harmonize. The apocalyptic locusts who had a king are not literal locusts, as some ignorantly affirm who deny the symbolic character of the apocalypse. John records the truth of the locusts he saw in vision; and Solomon writes the truth concerning literal locusts. These have no king; but John’s had, and he was apocalyptically named “the Angel of the Abyss;” not the angel of the Pit of the Abyss, but of the abyss at large. The locust king-power is styled angel, because it was a messenger of heaven against the unsealed—a destroying angel-power; and, therefore, named Abaddon and Apollyon, names which signify in English, DESTROYER. The locust king-power was the destroyer of “the abyss”—“the dwellers upon the earth,” against whom the woe-plague was commissioned, and in the midst of whom it scattered destruction for three hundred years. In history, the succession of men who reigned over the locusts are styled CALIPHS and Commanders of the Faithful.

14.—Abaddon—Apollyon

But why are we informed that the destroying power is called “Abaddon in Hebrew, and Apollyon in Greek,” and not told what it would be called in Latin, or any other tongue? The answer is, because it was commissioned primarily and chiefly against the countries to which the Hebrew and Greek belonged. We are not told what its name was in Latin, because it was not sent against Italy to “torment” the Italians. It was the Greek empire, which included p. 463 Palestine and Syria, upon which the locusts were to fall with their most destructive energy.

There is another instance where our attention is claimed to the name of a thing “in the Hebrew,” and for the same reason. In ch. xvi. 16, the sixth angel-power gathers the kings of the earth and of the whole habitable, “into the place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.” This is equivalent to saying that Armageddon is in the land where Hebrew was wont to be spoken. So “the abyss,” where the destroying angel was to torment, was the Holy Land and the Greek empire, in which he would help to “set up an abomination making desolate 1,290 years”—Dan. xii. 11.

“THE death” which “THE men” of the apostasy so earnestly desired (ver. 6) was not natural death. This death did not flee from them, but pursued them on every side, and overtook them by thousands. It was “the death” which could only be arrived at by the woe-plagues of the sixth trumpet, which was for the slaying of “the third of the men” of the catholic world. It was political death they desired, the bitterness of which they had not experienced. Subject to this, they hoped to find peace and protection from the conqueror, who would cease to torment and injure them as enemies and foreigners to his rule and institutions. “The death” at length came in aftertimes; and, when it came, it reduced “the men” of the Greek catholic superstition and empire to the condition of Rayahs—mere dogs and slaves in the estimation of their Ottoman superiors. In the depth of this abyss, they have been prostrated without political life for upwards of four hundred years. This is their present condition, and will so continue to be, until “Yahweh shall have bent Judah for himself, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made Zion as the sword of a mighty man.” This will change the situation, and be “life from the dead,” not to the Greeks only, but “to the world”—Zech. ix. 13; Rom. xi. 15.

II.—Synthetic Exposition of the First Woe

In the previous section, I have analysed in detail the symbols of the first woe-trumpet. I have resolved them severally into the things they signify. In this section, I shall put their significations together, and thereby show what the apostle predicted if he had recorded what he saw in plain unsymbolical terms. This is what I mean by a synthetic exposition of the first woe.

p. 464 1. “And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw one who had acquired power, and become a king, precipitate the forces of his kingdom upon the territory of the eastern Roman empire. And to this king was yielded the power of Arabia. 2. And he removed the barriers by which Arabia was shut up from the world without, and a fiery host issued forth, and, by reason of the smoking fierceness of their wrath, subverted the imperial Byzantine authority, and changed the political aërial constitution of the catholic countries they overrun.

3. “The wrathful hosts that invaded the eastern Roman empire were Arabians like locusts for multitude; and they had power fatal as the power of scorpions. 4. And it was commanded them by one, styled the Commander of the Faithful, that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only those men who have not the truth of the Deity in their understandings. 5. And to the Arabians it was given that they should not extinguish the sovereignty of these men, but that they should be tormented in war during one hundred and fifty years, with a scorpion-like torment.

6. “And in those days shall these ignorant professors of christianity seek political extinction, and shall not find it; and shall earnestly desire to be a conquered people, and political death by conquest shall flee from them.

7. “And the resemblances of these Arabians when embattled exhibit them as cavalry prepared for war; and on their heads they wore yellow turbans; and their faces were bearded, and they had long flowing hair like the tresses of women; and their spirit was ferocious as lions. 9. And they had on polished steel cuirasses; and the sound of the right and left wings of their armies were of multitudes of cavalry rushing into battle. 10. And they trailed in their rear, or tails of their hosts, scorpion-artillery for destruction; and their power to hurt the rest of men westward was also one hundred and fifty years.

11. “And they had over them a king styled a CALIPH, the Messenger of Destruction among the subjects of the eastern Roman empire, or “the abyss.” In the land of the Hebrew, he earned the name Abaddon, or Destroyer; and in the land of the Greek, that of Apollyon, which signifies the same.

12. “One woe, that of the fifth trumpet, is passed away after three hundred years; and, behold, there come two woes more before the consummation—the sixth and seventh trumpets, after these things.”

p. 465III.—Historical Exposition

1.—Origin of the Star

Justinian was invested with the majesty of the Sixth Head of the Dragon, or in other words, clothed with the sun, during a reign upon the Constantinopolitan throne of thirty-eight years, from A. D. 527 to A. D. 565. The triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine afflicted his subjects, and “his reign is disgraced,” says Gibbon, “by a visible decrease of the human species, which has never been repaired in some of the fairest countries of the globe.”

After Justinian’s death the Byzantine throne was occupied by Justin II., Tiberius II., Maurice, Phocas, and Heraclius. Phocas reigned from A. D. 602 to A. D. 610; and his successor Heraclius till A. D. 642. It was in the reign of Heraclius that the fifth trumpet began to sound; and that “the abomination of desolation” established itself as the normal condition of things in the Holy Land.

The events transpiring in the Pit of the Abyss until it was opened by the Star, were contemporaneous with the first twenty-three years of the reign of Heraclius. Mohammed, who was the principal agent in the development of the Star-Power, began his career at Mecca, A. D. 609, by proclaiming the unity of God, and his own apostleship. In three years he had made fourteen proselytes; and in 613, assumed the prophetic office. On this occasion he said: “Friends and kinsmen, I offer you, and I alone can offer, the most precious of gifts, the treasures of this world, and of the world to come. God has commanded me to call you to this service. Who among you will support my burthen?” His uncle, Abu Taleb, tried to turn him from what he considered his impracticable design. “Spare your remonstrances,” rejoined Mohammed; “if they should place the sun on my right hand, and the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my course.” Like Alexander and the Napoleons, first and third, he felt within an impulse irresistible, which impelled him blindly upon a course, which had been marked out for him to run in the preparation of a power, that should torment and destroy the corruptors and enemies of the truth.

For ten years after, he labored in Mecca to turn the Arabs from idolatry to the belief and worship of a sole Deity. “Citizens and pilgrims,” said Abu Taleb, “listen not to the tempter, hearken not to his impious novelties. Stand fast in the worship of Al Lata and Al Uzzah.” Nevertheless, Abu Taleb, the prince of the republic of Mecca, protected his person from violence. The leaders of the p. 466 people repeatedly reproached him for this. “Thy nephew,” said they, “reviles our religion; he accuses our wise forefathers of ignorance and folly; silence him quickly, lest he kindle tumult and disorder in the city. If he persevere, we shall draw our swords against him and his adherents, and thou shalt be responsible for the blood of thy fellowcitizens.”

On the death of Abu Taleb, and the accession of Abu Sophian, a zealous votary of the idols, protection was withdrawn from the deserter and denier of the gods of Arabia; and Mohammed found it necessary to take flight from Mecca, accompanied by Abubeker who afterwards succeeded him, and to seek refuge in Medina. The flight of Mohammed occurred A. D. 622, and has fixed the memorable æra of the Hegira, which still discriminates the lunar years of the Mohammedan nations.

On his establishment in Medina, this Unitarian Prophet assumed the exercise of the regal and sacerdotal office. He was now a Pontiff-King in the Pit of the Abyss, rising into great power and dominion, like that other Pontiff-King in Rome, who was at the same time, as the spiritual chief of the image-worshippers of “the abyss,” assuming divine supremacy over “the earth.” Of the two, Mohammed was, doubtless, less of an impostor than the prophet of the west. The pope is an idolator, and the prince of idolators; but the Prince of Medina among his companions was the champion of the Divine Unity; and the uncompromising enemy of idolatry in every form. He was now “a star in the heaven,” where he shone without a rival till A.D. 632. After a reign of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the field, renewed their oath of allegiance. The deputy of Mecca witnessed the review, and was astonished at the devout fervor of his attendants. “I have seen,” said he, “the Chosroes of Persia and the Cæsars of Rome, but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mohammed among his companions.”

2.—The Pit becomes a Burning Furnace

The choice of an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca to the rank of a sovereign; so that he was now invested with the prerogative of forming alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war. In other words, being now the Star of the Pit he possessed the power of kindling within its limits a burning furnace, in which might be melted down into one homogeneous mass, all the tribes of Arabia. This was the arduous work before Mohammed in the last years of his reign—to eradicate idolatry, p. 467 subdue the Jews, and to conquer the Arabs, so as to unite all under his standard. His former moderation, the effect of weakness, was superseded by a fiercer and more sanguinary tone; and he gave out that he was commanded to propagate his religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments of idolatry, and to pursue the unbelieving nations of the earth. The martial prophet fought in person at nine battles, or sieges; and fifty enterprises of war were achieved in ten years by himself or lieutenants. “The Key of the Pit of the Abyss was given to him;” nor was he ignorant of the nature of the key bestowed upon him. “The sword,” said he, “is the key of heaven and of hell.”

It was not long before the fire was kindled in the furnace of the pit. The battle of Beder, A. D. 623, was the spark that set the fuel all ablaze. This led to the battle of Ohad, six miles north of Medina. In this, Mohammed was wounded. In A. D. 625, Medina was besieged by the troops of Mecca, but without capture; and on retiring, the enemy no longer hoped to subvert the throne, or to check the conquests, of the invincible exile.

By exciting and joining in this attack upon Medina, the Jews of Arabia brought upon themselves the fierce wrath of the Star of the Pit. The fiery furnace he had kindled consumed them. Their castles were reduced, and Chaibar, the seat of the Jewish power in Arabia, submitted to the yoke. Under the reign of Omar, the Jews of Chaibar were transplanted to Syria; in justification of which he alleged the dying injunction of Mohammed, that only the one true religion should be professed in his native land Arabia.

The attack upon Medina was retaliated upon Mecca. Mohammed assembled ten thousand soldiers for its conquest. The idolators being hopeless of success, surrendered at discretion. Their prince, the haughty Abu Sophian, presented the keys of the city, observing, that the son of Abdallah had acquired a mighty kingdom, and confessing, under the scymitar of Omar, that he was the Apostle of the true God. Mohammed forgave the guilt, and united the factions of Mecca. The chiefs of the idolators were prostrate at his feet. “What mercy,” said he, “can you expect from the man whom you have wronged?” We confide in the generosity of our kinsman.” “And you shall not confide in vain: begone! you are safe, you are free!” The people of Mecca deserved their pardon by the profession of Islam; and after an exile of seven years, the fugitive missionary was enthroned as the prince and prophet of his native country.

The conquest of Mecca determined the faith and obedience of p. 468 the Arabian tribes. Yet an obstinate remnant still adhered to the idolatry and liberty of their ancestors. Four thousand pagans descended into the valley of Honain hoping to take the prophet at disadvantage. At first, the battle prevailed against the Moslems, and their prophet greatly endangered; “O my brethren,” he repeatedly cried with sorrow and indignation, “I am the son of Abdallah, I am the apostle of truth! O man, stand fast in the faith! O God, send down thy succor!” The flying Moslems returned from all sides to the holy standard. The tide of battle had turned against the idolators, which Mohammed, standing in his stirrups to overlook the conflict, perceiving, clapped his hands with joy, and exclaimed, “at last the fire is kindled in the furnace.” His conduct and example had restored the battle, and he animated his victorious troops to inflict a merciless revenge.

From the field of Honain, he marched to the siege of Tayef, sixty miles southeast of Mecca. After a siege of twenty days, he sounded a retreat, but he retreated with a song of devout triumph, and affected to pray for the repentance and safety of the unbelieving city. He was followed by the deputies of Tayef, who dreaded the repetition of the siege. “Grant us, O apostle of God, a truce of three years, with the toleration of our ancient worship.” “Not a month, not an hour.” “Excuse us at least from the obligation of prayer.” “Without prayer religion is of no avail.” They submitted in silence; their temples were demolished, and the same sentence of destruction was executed on all the idols of Arabia. His lieutenants, on the shores of the Red Sea, the ocean, and the gulph of Persia, were saluted by the acclamations of a believing people. Thus, the fiery wars of this “great furnace” of the pit destroyed idolatry, and brought the Arab nation to submit to the God and sceptre of Mohammed. The sword of Arabia was the sword of God, forged and sharpened for judgment upon the idolators of Syria and Greece. Hitherto, the Pit of the Abyss was closed. The wars raging within were internal fires, whose smoke had not drifted toward the west. The star-power that had kindled the furnace, had first to subdue all enemies within the pit of the abyss, before it could issue forth, and precipitate its incendiary fires upon the nations of the abyss itself.

The key-sword of power was not only given to the Star of the Pit, but he was to use it in opening the pit. The fact that the reigning star power in the heaven did open the pit, the manner in which he opened it, and in what sense the smoke arose from the pit, and locusts issued out of it “into the earth,” as the falling of the star therein—is illustrated by what follows.

p. 4693.—The Pit of the Abyss Opened

When Heraclius, emperor of the Roman world, returned victorious from the Persian war, A.D. 629, Mohammed having conquered and converted the idolators of Arabia, and thereby united them into one kingdom, judged that the time had come to invite the princes and nations of the Catholic Idolatry to abandon the worship of images and demons, commonly known among the ignorant as the ghosts of dead men and women. He beheld with great disgust and contempt the condition of the catholic apostasy from the religion of Christ. He saw what Gibbon relates. “The christians” (!) says he, “of the seventh century had relapsed into a semblance of paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the east: the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridion heretics who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess.” In the Koran, or Mohammedan Bible, ch. v., the catholics of the Roman empire are distinctly charged with worshipping the Virgin Mary as God; and in ch. ix., it is said of the priests and monks specifically: “Very many of the priests and monks devour the substance of men in vanity, and obstruct the way of God.” This referred to their fraudulent gains by the sale, exhibition, and false miracles attached to relics. Mohammed was right; these shaven crowns “obstructed the way of God,” as the clergy of all orders and degree in “christendom” have been doing, and are doing, ever since, even to this day. Though originally an ignorant pagan Arab, and afterwards but imperfectly instructed in the scriptures, he had become wiser than the whole catholic world. He not only spurned the gods of his native land, but he vindicated the Divine Unity against “the infidels” who darkened the Almighty’s throne by the senseless objects of their disgraceful and demoralizing superstition. Being the providentially developed military apostle of the Divine Unity, he offered all idolators, or worshippers of demons, the alternative of conversion and peace, or idolatry and war. Hearing of the presence of the Roman emperor at Emesa, he sent an ambassador to him, and invited him to the profession of Islam. At first their intercourse was amicable, but their friendship proved of short continuance. One of his envoys had been murdered; and the rapacious spirit of the Saracens—the lion tooth characteristic of the locusts—inflamed by the new religion, or smoking in the pit, burned to be avenged. The murder afforded their star-king a decent p. 470 pretext for gratifying it; and he forthwith ordered the invasion of the territory of Palestine eastward of the Jordan, A.D. 630. A small force of three thousand Saracens encountered the Roman army at Muta. After losing three generals, they effected a safe retreat under Caled, who afterwards was renowned as “the Sword of God.” This was the first military action that tried the valor of the Moslems against a foreign enemy. It was an opening of the pit; the initiation only of the enterprise in which the forces of the Star may be said to have got the worst of it.

Mohammed now solemnly proclaimed war against the Romans. The Moslems were discouraged. They alleged the intolerable heat of the summer. “Hell,” said the indignant prophet, “is much hotter.” He advanced at the head of ten thousand horse, and twenty thousand foot. After a painful march, in which they suffered much from lassitude and thirst, aggravated by the scorching and pestilential winds of the desert, they arrived at Tabuc, midway between Medina and Damascus. Beyond this he did not advance. Caled, however, spread around the terror of his name, and the prophet received the submission of the tribes and cities, from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. The power, styled by Schlegel, “the new power of hell,” was still restricted to “the pit of the abyss.” An expedition against Syria had been set in motion, but was arrested in its march at Medina, by the death of Mohammed in that city, A. D. 632.

Mohammed was succeeded in the throne of the kingdom of Arabia by the venerable Abubeker, who was now “Successor of the prophet, Caliph, and Commander of the Faithful.” But the death of Mohammed was the signal of independence; and Abubeker found himself the chief of a power and religion which tottered to its foundations. He forthwith assembled an army of forty thousand men to subdue the rebellion, which sought the reëstablishment of the old idolatry. Thus the furnace was rekindled in the pit of the abyss, and smoke ascended toward the heaven. After exhorting the Moslems to confide in the aid of God and his apostle, Abubeker attacked the idolators vigorously. Though unsuccessful at first, he at length broke the power of the rebels, who, without chief or cause, were suppressed by the power and discipline of the rising monarchy; and the whole nation again possessed, and more steadfastly held, the religion of the Koran.

4.—The Smoke and Locusts Ascend out of the Pit

The time had now arrived for the Star-Kingdom-Power of the p. 471 Arabian Pit to “fall into the earth,” and to open it completely and permanently for the egress of the smoke with its clouds of locusts, for “the darkening of the sun and the air.” At this crisis, as we learn from the fourth verse of the chapter under consideration, “it was commanded them (the smoke issuing locusts) that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree; but those men only who have not the seal of the Deity in their foreheads.” This is explained by what follows, Abubeker, who was the first caliph, by his victory over the rebels had restored the unity of the faith and government; and he now resolved, A. D. 632, to provide immediate exercise for the restless spirit of the Saracens, in the prosecution of a holy war. He accordingly despatched a circular to the locusts of the pit, saying: “This is to acquaint you that I intend to send the true believers into Syria, to take it out of the hands of the infidels” (or to darken their sun and air); “and I would have you know that the fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God.”

The summons was responded to by numerous intrepid bands of Saracens, who flocked to the camp at Medina, where they were reviewed by the Caliph. In his instructions to the chiefs of the army, he said: “Remember that you are always in the presence of God, on the verge of death, in the assurance of judgment, and the hope of Paradise. Avoid injustice and oppression; consult with your brethren, and study to preserve the love and confidence of your troops. When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood of women or children. Destroy no palm trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. When you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons who live retired in monasteries, and propose to themselves to serve God that way: let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy their monasteries. And you will find another sort of people that belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shaven crowns: be sure you cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter till they either turn Mohammedans or pay tribute.”^a These shaven crowns of the synagogue of Satan were p. 472 THE MEN WHO HAD NOT THE SEAL OF GOD IN THEIR FOREHEADS; and the alternative of death by the sword, conversion, or tribute, was the “torment” to which they were to be subjected during “five months” of years.

5.—The Sun and the Air Darkened

After these things, the earth was invaded, and Damascus, the capital of Syria, attacked. An army of seventy thousand succors—indifferently styled Syrians, from the place of their birth or warfare; Greeks, from the religion and language of their sovereign; and Romans, from the appellation still assumed by the successors of Constantine—were encountered and dispersed; and, after a siege of seventy days, Damascus was taken by storm and capitulation, A. D. 634. While being surrendered in one quarter, the city was betrayed and taken by assault in the opposite. Caled, the Sword of God, rushed in with his rapacious and sanguinary lion-toothed locusts. “No quarter,” he cried, “no quarter to the enemies of the Lord;” his trumpets sounded, and a torrent of Mariolatrous blood was poured into the streets of Damascus. A large majority of the people accepted the terms of toleration and tribute offered by Abu Obeidah, the general in chief; but Caled, “the lieutenant of the Commander of the Faithful,” was for a general massacre. The fury of “the Sword of God” was at length appeased; nevertheless he sternly declared that, after a respite of three days, all who left the city as exiles, with Thomas, their valiant, though unsuccessful, defender, might be pursued and destroyed by the Moslems. On the fourth day, he issued from Damascus in pursuit. Having overtaken the promiscuous multitude of priests, monks and citizens, encamped in a pleasant valley, insufficiently provided with arms, and already vanquished by sorrow and fatigue, Caled and his cavalry rushed upon them, smoking with fury. Except a captive who was pardoned and dismissed, the Arabs enjoyed the satisfaction of believing that not a Virgin-Mary worshipper of either sex escaped the edge of their scymitars.

Thus, the Pit of the Abyss was effectually “opened” by the key-sword in the hand of the first of the Caliphs. The “smoke of the pit” was curling and drifting over “the earth” in the direction of the Great Sea. After the battle of Yermuk, the conquest of Jerusalem, and then of Aleppo and Antioch, Heraclius fled from the country, and bid an eternal farewell to Syria, which, A. D. 639, bowed under the sceptre of the Caliphs seven hundred years after p. 473 Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings. Thus, the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit; and Syria, now become Arabian, became the seat and support of the house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom, were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of the caliph-kings of the locusts, “the angel of the abyss,” the ABADDON, in the land of the Hebrew tongue.

But the “torment” of the catholic worshippers of images and dæmons was not to be confined to the land of Israel; it was to extend to the countries where Greek was the vernacular, and there the caliph-power was to be revealed as the most potent and absolute of the globe. It was to torment with an intensity that should acquire for it in Greek the name APOLLYON, the destroyer. In the ten years of the administration of the caliph Omar, the Saracens reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches or temples of the unbelievers, and erected fourteen hundred mosques for the exercise of the religion of Mohammed. One hundred years after his flight from Mecca, the arms and reign of “the Angel of the Abyss” extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the various and distant provinces which may be comprised under the names of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain. Their armies, which consisted chiefly of cavalry and archers, advanced with the speed of horses, and fought with the courage of lions; and it excites no little perplexity in the mind of the historian to explain by what means the church and state of the Roman world were saved from destruction by so invincible a foe. But their preservation is attributable, not to the virtue, skill and power of those establishments, but to the fact that “to them it was given that they should not kill them.” The Greek Church and State were not to be broken up and to become politically extinct; and therefore, though Constantinople was twice besieged by the Saracens, the first time for seven years, and the last for thirteen months, they could not capture it, and abolish its dominion. They were not to inflict political death upon the Byzantine Empire, which they would certainly have done had they captured Constantinople. This consummation was reserved for the Four Angel-Powers of the Euphrates, under the sixth trumpet. The horse-like locusts were only to darken, torment, and injure, for a specific period; and when this was passed, according to the analogy of the insects to which they were likened, to settle down so as at length to be found no longer tormenting “the earth.”

p. 4746.—The Torment and Injury

The words used by John with respect to their mission are βασανιζω, and αδικεω. The first is rendered torment, the last, injure. The Spirit, doubtless, intended different ideas to be represented by the different words. They were to torment, but not to kill. It is clear from this that killing was not an element of the torment. Basanidso signifies to rub upon the touchstone, or basanos; hence, to try the genuineness of a thing. The touchstone used by the Saracen Locusts was “the Koran, tribute, or the sword.” They rubbed all the unsealed upon this; and according to the result, was the genuineness, or true character, of the party in their estimation. If they accepted the Koran, they were then fellowshipped as devout Moslems, and subjected neither to tribute nor death; but if they rejected the Koran, or refused to become Mohammedans, which was the same thing, then they must either pay tribute or be put to death. Such a touchstone as this could not seriously affect those who had the seal of the Deity in their foreheads. The Saracens were particularly favorable to all who were persecuted by the constituted authorities of the Greeks. They became their protectors and allies, not their tormentors. To the Saracen touchstone they replied after this sort: “The Greeks are determined to abide the determination of the sword; but with the Greeks we desire no communion, either in this world or in the next, and we adjure forever the Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and his Melchite slaves. For ourselves, we are resolved to live and die in the profession of the gospel and unity of Christ. It is impossible for us to embrace the revelations of your prophet; but we are desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit to pay tribute, and obedience to his temporal successors.”

The word adikeo contains no idea answerable to that of using a touchstone of any kind. To injure, without defining how the injury should be inflicted, conveys all the meaning of the word in the text. They were to apply the touchstone five months of years; and they were to injure, or commit offensive operations, for an equal length of time. This we shall find was the fact. Power to torment and injure was divinely appointed to “the Angel of the Abyss” for three hundred years; and beyond this limitation he could not destroy.

7.—The Angel of the Abyss

The locusts had a king over them, the Angel of the Abyss—not the angel of the pit of the abyss, but of “the abyss” at large. The star was especially related to “the pit”; and the Angel-king, to “the p. 475 abyss. The star-power, as we have seen, was the kingdom of Arabia before its forces were precipitated upon “the earth”; while the Destroying Angel of the abyss was the Arabian Empire of the Caliphs, which, but for the Star-power of the pit, would never have existed in the world to torment and injure the nations of the abyss.

The caliphs united in their own persons the kingly and priestly characters. The first caliph was Abubeker, who began to reign on the death of Mohammed, A. D. 632. In A. D. 718, the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. They reigned by the right of conquest over the nations of the east. Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two hundred days’ journey from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic ocean. In the year 750, a revolution dethroned the caliphs of the house of Omniyah, styled the Omniades, and set up in their stead the descendants of Abbas, uncle to Mohammed, and known as the Abbasides. Hitherto, Damascus had been the throne of the Arabian empire; but it was removed by Almansor to Bagdad, “the City of Peace,” on the eastern bank of the Tigris, A. D. 762. This was a few miles beyond the old Roman Euphratean frontier. War was now no longer the passion of the Saracens; their stern enthusiasm was softened by time and prosperity, and it was no longer easy to allure them by the hopes of spoil and of paradise. The luxury of the caliphs relaxed the nerves and terminated the progress of the Arabian empire. The application of the touchstone now necessarily ceased. The power of the caliphs being established over “the abyss,” the alternative of “the Koran, tribute, or the sword,” could no longer be propounded to them. The “torment,” therefore, by this touchstone was no longer applied. It could not be in the nature of things. Power was given to them to basanize the Virgin-Mary and image worshippers five months; and beyond this period they could not “torment.” When did these five months begin? and how long a period do they represent?

In answer to the first question, I reply that they began when Abubeker, the first caliph, fulfilled the fourth verse of this ninth chapter, in commanding the generals and captains of his Syrian army to apply the touchstone according to his instructions. This was A. D. 632, which is doubtless the beginning of the five months of tormentation.

As to how long a period these five months represent, the key to this question is the nature of the torment. We now know what this is; and we know also, from history and the nature of things, p. 476 that the torment did not cease at the end of five months of days, but continued for many such terms of five months each. On the contrary, it continued until there were no more within the scope of the woe to be tormented, the power of the caliphs having reached the full. In the sanguinary civil war between the Ommiades and the Abbassides, the Greeks had seized the opportunity of avenging themselves, and enlarging their limits: so that, A. D. 781-2, found the Greeks arrogant, and the frontier of the Arabian empire diminished. This was five months of years, or 150 years, from Abubeker’s command to torment, or “cleave the skulls” of the shaven crowns of the synagogue of Satan, and to give them no quarter till they turned Mohammedans or paid tribute.

But, though the power to torment had passed away with the period assigned for tormentation, the Apollyon-Caliphs were still formidable, and powerful for offensive military operations, such as occur between hostile states. From A. D. 782 to A. D. 805, the caliphs Mohadi and Haroun al Rashid inflicted great calamities upon the Greeks, Haroun invaded their territories eight times; and, as often as they declined the payment of the regular tribute, they were taught to feel that a month of depredation, or αδικια, injury, was more costly than a year of submission. They were exposed to these hostile inroads so long as the caliphs held the sceptre of the east. In the national and religious conflicts of the two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite torture; and a catholic emperor relates with visible satisfaction the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil.

But, the time alloted for the Arabian and Greek empires to cease their sanguinary conflicts, in the beginning of the tenth century was drawing to a close. The destroying power of the caliph-angel of the abyss, as against the Greek empire, was limited to three hundred years, or the end of the second period of five months. It was to decline and fall. The luxury of the caliphs, the rebellion of the Carmathians, and the revolt of the provinces, at length deprived the Arabs of the sceptre of the east. The revolt of the provinces circumscribed the dominions of the caliphs within the walls of Bagdad; until the independent Persic-Moslem dynasty of the Bowides interposing on account of factions prevailing there, advanced A. D. 933, to Bagdad; stripped the caliph of his secular office and supremacy; and reduced him to his spiritual functions as Chief Pontiff of p. 477 Islamism, the mere phantom thenceforward of the departed power of the Destroying Angel of the Abyss. Thus died “Apollyon” by the suicide of his own hands twice five months of years, or three complete centuries, from the issuing of the smoke out of the pit of the abyss A. D. 632.

“The first woe is passed away,” A. D. 933; “behold, there come yet two woes after these things.”

Act II.—Sixth Trumpet or Second Woe

1.—Eastern Part

Summary

Still in response to the prayers of all saints, a voice from the four horns of the golden altar of incense commands the four messenger powers, confined by the great river Euphrates, to be loosed. They are prepared for successful aggression against the Byzantine empire during “the hour and day and month and year,” that, at the end of this period, they may slay with political extinction, the power of the men who ruled the Eastern Third of the Roman orb, and worshipped demons and images, and were murderers, and sorcerers, fornicators, and thieves; and had not been smitten by the judgments of the four winds.—See Tabular Analysis, page 103.

Time of Events

From April 29, A. D. 1062, to May 29, 1453—391 years 30 days.

Translation

Apoc. ix. 13-21.

13. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard one voice out of the four horns of the altar of gold which is in the sight of the Deity, saying to the sixth angel, who had the trumpet, “Loose the four angels, which have been bound by the great river Euphrates.”

15. And the Four Angels having been prepared were loosed for the hour and day and month and year, that they might kill the third of the men.

16. And the number of the hosts of the cavalry was two myriads of myriads; and I heard the number of them.

p. 478 17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision; and those who sat upon them having breasts fiery and hyacinthine and sulphurous; and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths there burst forth fire and smoke and sulphur. 18. By these three were killed the third of the men, by the fire and by the smoke and by the sulphur, bursting forth out of their mouths. For their powers are in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads, and with these do they injure.

20. And the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues changed not from the works of their hands, that they might not worship the dæmonials and idols of gold and of silver, and of brass, and of stone, and of wood, which can neither see nor hear, nor walk. 21. And changed not from their murders, nor from their sorceries, nor from their fornication, nor from their thefts.

Notes

In the above translation there are some variations from the English Version. Instead of “a voice,” I have rendered φωνην μιαν one voice; for, although it issued from the four horns of the altar, there were not four voices, but only one, as in the text.

Instead of “in the river,” I have preferred the rendering of επι τω ποταμω, “by the river;” the preposition is rendered in this sense in Matt. xxiv. 33, “He is near επι θυραις by or at the doors.”

In verse 17 and 18, I have rendered εκπορευεται and εκπορευομενοι by “burst forth” and “bursting forth,” instead of “issued,” or “proceeded,” as in the Bible Union version. I have so rendered it from the use of the verb in Apoc. iv. 5, where it is used in connection with lightnings and thunders from the throne; when they go forth, they do it burstingly.

The phrase το τριτον των ανθρωπων, I have rendered “the third of the men,” instead of “the third part of men,”—“part” is not in the Greek, and the definite article των, should be translated as referable to a certain class of men; those of the Byzantine Third, namely, not having the seal of the Deity in their foreheads. It was that third which was to be killed, not the third of mankind in general; but “the third of,” or belonging to, “the men who were unsealed.”

In verse 16, ὁ αριθμος στρατευματων του ἱππικου, is rendered in the C. V. “the number of the army of the horsemen.” This is a version very regardless of the original. I have translated it the number of the hosts of the cavalry—the number having regard to the individual troopers in the aggregate.

p. 479 In verse 19, the English Version reads “their power is in their mouth and in their tails.” Griesbach and Tregelles prefer, “the power of the horses is in their mouth and in their tails.” Greenfield’s edition of Mills, omits “and in their tails” from the text, and inserts it in the margin. I prefer the reading αι εξουσιαι αυτων εν τω στοματι αυτων εισι, και εν ταις ουραις αυτων, their powers are in their mouth, and in their tails; my reason for this preference will appear in the exposition.

I.—The Symbols Explained