1. The Outpouring of Wrath upon Euphrates
“And the Sixth Angel poured out his Vial upon the Great River Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up that the way of the Kings, who are out of a Sun’s risings, might be prepared.”
In these words, “the Great River Euphrates” is indicated as the subject of the wrath. Wrath is not poured out upon rivers as such; but upon peoples in some way related to them. In the figurative prophecy before us, “the Euphrates” is a sign representative of something analogous to “the flood,” or “the river,” of that name, well known in the geography of the East. In the days of Isaiah, the Euphrates was the principal river of Assyria; and is therefore used by that prophet, in ch. viii. 7, as a sign, or symbol, of the many and strong peoples of the Assyrian empire. Because the Ten Tribes of Israel rejoiced in Retzin and Remaliah’s son, instead of rejoicing p. 533 in Yahweh, he therefore threatened both Damascus and Samaria with an Euphratean invasion and inundation, predicted in these words—“Behold Yahweh bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks; and he shall pass through Judah: he shall overflow and go over; he shall reach to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings (the wings of his armies) shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.”
We see, then, that in Scripture there are two Euphratean rivers analogically related to each other—the one, the natural; the other, the political Euphrates. The waters of the natural, are representative of the peoples of the empire to which the natural river belongs. This, in the rainy season, overflows its banks; which, by analogy, represents the armies of Assyria crossing the river for the invasion of adjacent countries.
When the Ninevite Dynasty was abolished, Assyria was annexed to Babylon. The Euphrates then became a river of Babylon. It flowed into and through this great city and province. For this reason, as Babylon is introduced into the apocalypse as symbolical of the Fourth Beast, whose dominion migrated from Babylon to Rome and Constantinople, so the Euphrates is also introduced there; for a figurative Babylon without a figurative Euphrates, would be in violation of the analogy and fitness of things. Babylon of old was a city and empire, with the Euphrates flowing through the latter into the former; so, apocalyptically, the Great City of Babylon is OLD ROME and its Ten Kingdoms, with its political Euphrates flowing up to the Danube, and confining upon Hungary, the Austrian empire, the Adriatic and Greece; with “NEW ROME,” or Constantinople, also built on Seven Hills, for the centre of its population, the great majority of which, though Antipapal, is “catholic.” Thus, the political Euphrates flows right into the city; and, at the opening of this sixth vial, in addition to the populations inhabiting the countries through which the natural Euphrates meanders its way to the Persian Gulf, there were reckoned among its waters, the peoples of Egypt, Algiers, Asia Minor, Greece, Roumelia, Albania, Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Moldavia, and certain islands of the sea.
The Ottoman Power being “the Great River Euphrates” of the symbolical Babylon, we have a subject before us capable of receiving, and as its sanguinary and earth-destroying history proves, well deserving, the indignation and wrath of Deity. As the fourth of the Euphratean Angels (ch. ix. 15) loosed against the Greek Catholic division of the Babylonian Apostasy, it has judicially and terrifically executed its mission. In performing the part allotted to it, it has p. 534 repaid justice the debt incurred by the dæmon-worshiping and idolatrous Greek catholics, who, when they reigned in Constantinople, were more wicked, and less tolerant of truly good men, than the Turks. The Osmanlis are not idolators. Their zeal was great against all such; hence their contempt of catholics, both Greek and Latin, and their greater tolerance of protestants. Still, the Euphratean is only a Sin-Power, well and heavily laden with its own peculiar offences. One of its its greatest offences consists in the treatment Yahweh’s land, and people Israel, have experienced at its hand. As the modern representative of the Little-Horn-of-the-Goat power, it has “parted his land” “for gain” (Joel iii. 2; Dan. xi. 39); and ruling over Israel, hath made them to howl; so that His name continually every day is blasphemed—Isai. lii. 5. No man likes his property to be laid waste, and his slaves to be abused. Of both these counts the Constantinopolitan Little Horn has been so intensely guilty in regard to Yahweh’s inheritance, that it has acquired the scriptural epithet of שׁוֹמם, Shomaim, THE DESOLATOR—Dan. ix. 27. It is true that appearances would seem to justify the conclusion of some, that the Deity has ceased to take any interest in the land of Palestine, and in the natural Israel. But let such remember the words of Christ, who says, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge true judgment.” The appearance of things is not their real nature. It is the testimony of the prophets, that “Yahweh will be jealous for His land, and pity his people; . . . and will no more make them a reproach among the nations”—Joel ii. 18, 19. But they still are a reproach among the nations: it is therefore evident that the divine jealousy for the land, and pity for the people in reproach, are things pertaining to a future situation of the world’s affairs. Hence, the political Euphrates standing in this antagonism to Deity, it is for this, and not because of its severity upon the Greeks, that the wasting wrath of the sixth vial is poured out upon it.
“And the waters thereof were dried up.”—The effect of the outpouring of the vial is to dry up “the water” of the political Euphrates. The Euphrates being a political channel, the water flowing therein must be political also. Waters apocalyptically signify “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues”—ch. xvii. 15; but, in the text before us, it is not waters but “water,” in the singular. The prophecy, then, doth not signify a drying up of population. The Euphrates represents a power of the apocalyptic Babylon; and as the name is indicative of water flowing in a certain channel, “water” must signify the power of the Euphratean empire, expressed, as governments ordinarily express it, by force and arms.
There is one other place, and one only, in the apocalypse, where p. 535 water is used in the singular; as, in ch. xii. 15, in the words, “the Serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the Woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.” In this place “water” signifies power incorporated in armies, sent forth from government to sweep away, as by a flood, the objects of its displeasure. Hence, the water of the Great River Euphrates, in like manner, represents the military power of the Ottoman empire; which is dissipated by a process of evaporation, a drying up; a gradual exhaustion, so as at last to leave the channel of the river in the heart of the Great City, empty; and devoid of all power to impede, or interfere with operations developing in the southeastern recesses of the empire.
“That the way of the Kings who are out of a Sun’s risings, might be prepared.” This is the exact rendering of ἵνα ἑτοιμασθῇ ἡ ὁδος των βασιλεων των απο ανατολων ἡλιου—which is the received text; and, though objected to by some commentators, who can see nothing in it but the natural sunrising, is no doubt perfectly correct. The military and political power of the Ottoman empire was to be dried up by the wrath of the Sixth Vial, that the way for a certain class of kings might be cleared of all hindrances and impediments to their enterprize in its beginning.
The reader will note, that in this sixteenth chapter there are two suns introduced into the prophecy; and that both of them are symbolic, but of different things. The first is the Sun of Europe, upon which was poured out the wrath of the fourth vial: the other Sun, on the contrary, is not the subject of wrath; but one which rises above the world’s horizon, some time during the period of the sixth vial. During the five preceding vials and much even of the sixth, He is below that horizon concealed from view, and we know, that before the sun rises it is dark—“darkness covers the earth” (Isai. lx. 2)—and that it is while he is rising that the darkness is receding; and the objects upon the earth gradually become visible.
Further, it may be remarked, that the Sun of this twelfth verse, is the illustrious personage of the fifteenth, who says, “Behold, I come as a thief.” No one, I believe, doubts, that the subject of this thieflike manifestation is THE ANCIENT OF DAYS—He whom the ETERNAL FATHER by his power, “made both Lord and Christ,” when he transformed the risen, earthborn, body of Gethsemane, into a life-engendering Spirit. This being beyond dispute, we have next to consider certain testimonies concerning him.
In the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah, we are informed, that at a time when darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the peoples, Yahweh shall arise upon Zion; that His glory shall be seen upon p. 536 her; and that kings shall come to the brightness of her rising. Here, Yahweh is the Light arising who sheds forth brightness, which, among other objects previously enveloped in gross darkness, brings Zion into view. She is seen “rising” before it can be said she is risen. Her coming into view is progressive, as objects come into view in the dawn. Hence she is a rising of this Rising Light, which shines her out of darkness, the gross darkness of Mohammedan, or other Gentile, down-treading, into his marvellous brightness, as by his rising it becomes developed.
“His glory shall be seen upon Zion.” Whose glory? The glory of the Redeemer, who comes to Zion, to turn away ungodliness from Jacob—Isai. lix. 20; Rom. xi. 26. The glory which shall be seen there, is figuratively exhibited in Apoc. xiv. 1, as “the Lamb on Mount Zion with 144,000” Sons of his Father, whom He had “redeemed from the earth”—from among all peoples; and from the very dust thereof. In the period of Zion’s rising out of present darkness into future light and glory, she is manifested as the metropolis, or Mother City, of a rising world, styled in the English Version, “the world to come;” but in the original, ἡ οικουμενη ἡ μελλουσα, the future inhabited (earth) or, habitable. This New Constitution of Things, which was the great burden of Paul’s discourse, (Heb. ii. 5) will comprise the “NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH” to be created by the Eternal Spirit, through Christ Jesus and his Brethren, in the development of which, He will “create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy”—Isai. lxv. 17—a New Government, and a New civil, ecclesiastical, and social organization of the nations of the earth. Concerning this new government, or “Economy of the fullness of the times (Eph. i. 10), it is written in Ps. xix. 1-6, “The heavens declare the glory of AIL (the Invisible Power), and the work of his hands the firmament shews. Day unto day will utter speech; and night unto night will shew knowledge. There is no language, nor any words, where their voice is not heard. Their line hath gone out in all the earth; and their words to the ends of the world. In them he hath set a tabernacle for the Sun; who as a Bridegroom coming out of his covering (or place where he was hid from view), will rejoice as a mighty man to run a course. His going forth is from the end of the heavens, and his circuit unto the ends thereof; and there is nothing hidden from his heat.”
This Sun is the great illuminator, who “enlightens the earth with his glory” (Apoc. x. 1; xviii. 1; xxi. 23); and who, in the days of his flesh, said, “As long as I am in the world, I am the Light (or Sun) of the world”—a Light which shone into the darkness, but p. 537 was not comprehended by it—Jno. ix. 5; i. 5. It is this “Great Light;” once seen by them “who sat in the region and shadow of death,” which is styled in Mat. iv. 2, “THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,” who arises with genial influences upon all who fear the Name of Yahweh Elohim; but with intensely scorching effect also upon the wicked who serve him not.
But who are “the Kings out of a Sun’s risings?” Some say, they are the Jews returning from the east; others, eastern potentates in general; others change kings to “king,” and explain it of Christ, as “King from the East;” others expound it as kings coming from the East to take part, as actors and sufferers, in the slaughters of the great day of slaughter; and lastly, it is said, that the Kings from the East signify “Christian Preachers,” or the Clergy commissioned from Christ the Sun of Righteousness, for whose missionary operations an opening is made by drying up the power of Babylon for opposing the truth; and who are called kings, from their zeal in ruling both themselves and the church!
But none of these “orthodox” replies to the question throw any light upon the subject. Time and space are too precious to be occupied in stating objections to them, or in arguing against them. The shorter and more satisfactory course will be to ignore them altogether; and to present an answer that cannot be scripturally gainsaid.
If we understand what “the risings of a sun” are, we shall perceive who are “the Kings” that proceed therefrom. The word ανατολη rendered “rising,” is derived from the verb ανατελλω, “to rise, to cause to rise, to spring up.” All that springs up out of the earth is caused to rise by the power of the sun acting upon the seeds therein. Every thing therefore brought up from beneath, or from darkness, into view is “a rising of the sun.” Hence, “as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so Adonai Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations”—Isai. lxi. 11. The earth brings forth, and the garden causes to spring forth, as the result of the sun’s power; so that the earthborn products of the garden, are the sun’s risings. After this analogy, the Sun of Righteousness, who rises only once to set no more, causes righteousness to spring forth from the earth, in causing righteous men to spring forth from the grave; who, when “clothed upon with their house from heaven,” will praise him before all the nations. The righteousness first pours down from heaven, then the earth opens, salvation is brought forth, and salvation and righteousness spring up together—Isai. xlv. 8: thus “truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven”—Ps. lxxxv. 11. p. 538 The wings of the sun are his rays or beams. It is with these potent radiations that he causes things to spring forth from the earth. But, all he causes to spring forth are not good risings. Some are very noxious, poisonous weeds, which are not healed of their evil qualities by the brightness of his shining. Hence, his natural risings are some good and some bad, according to the seeds in embryo. Nor do the best and choicest of his risings spring forth in their perfection. They spring forth with bodies altogether unlike the bodies they will be, when clothed in the brilliance of their flowering glories. When they spring forth, these risings of the sun are only distinguishable from weeds by a well practised observer. As Paul indicates, they spring forth “not that body that shall be . . . but the Deity giveth a body that pleaseth him, and to every seed his own body.”
So, after this analogy, are the risings of the Sun of Righteousness out of, or from which proceed “the Kings,” whose way is prepared by the drying up of the political and military power of the Ottoman empire. The rays of his power shine forth with creating and formative energy. Men and women are created in the earth, and projected from it. At this stage of the wondrous operation, they have “not the bodies that shall be;” but “come forth” (Jno. vi. 29), with bodies corruptible, without honor, weak, soulish, and earthy; for, that which is, “out of the earth, is earthy,” εκ γης χοϊκος. Each one is the Sun’s rising, because the Sun of Righteousness is “the resurrection”—Jno. xi. 25; and so long as he is below the horizon, there can be no springing forth. But those people who have sprung forth into existence, “must all,” both good and bad, “be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things through the body, according to what he hath done, whether good or bad”—2 Cor. v. 10. That which makes manifest is light—Eph. v. 13. The light thrown upon the case of each individual is his account of himself to the Deity; “for we shall” not only “all stand before the judgment seat of Christ;” but “every one of us shall give account of himself to the Deity”—Rom. xiv. 10, 12. This self-rendered account manifests the character of the reporter, and determines his case for better or worse. If he be approved by “the Judge of the living and the dead,” he is recognized as “the blessed of his Father,” and being quickened, is authorized to “inherit the kingdom prepared for” such as he; to sit with him in his throne; and to exercise power over the nations—Matt. xxv. 34; Apoc. ii. 26; iii. 21. Now, he that inherits a kingdom, sits upon a throne, and rules nations, is “a king;” and such a king, who was once dead, and sprung forth from the earth by the power of the Sun of Righteousness; p. 539 and was selected from a crowd of people newly born of the earth, is “a king from, or out of, a Sun’s risings.”
But, though there is “healing in the wings of the Sun of Righteousness,” all are not healed who spring forth from earth, by the potency of his formative and life-imparting beams. “Many,” saith Daniel, “dust of the ground, shall awake from sleeping; some for living ones of the Olahm (the Millennium) and some for the objects of reproach and contempt of the Olahm”—ch. xii. 2: an arrangement in the resurrection-state endorsed by Christ, who, in Jno. v. 28, saith, “the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs (μνημειος ‘retained in memory’ there) shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth; they who have done the good things, ‘for a resurrection of life; but they who have practised the evil, for a resurrection of condemnation.’” All these whose destinies are so diverse, are “risings of the Sun;” but, we see, that they do not all attain to the kingdom; for none can possess this, who, having “come forth,” are condemned. The condemnation leaves them corruptible, without honor, weak, soulish, and earthy; and such, Paul testifies, in 1 Cor. xv. 50, “cannot inherit the kingdom of the Deity.” They are repudiated by the Judge; and consigned to a common fate with the Beast and the False Prophet; who are subjected to the sword and burning flame by “the Kings” “chosen” “out of the risings of the Sun;” to prepare whose way, the wrath of the sixth vial is drying up the power of the Euphratean Ottoman Dynasty of the Goat’s Little Horn.
“The Kings,” then, are the sanctified ones, “the called and chosen and faithful,” of whom Christ Jesus is the Imperial Chief, and therefore styled, “KING of kings”—Apoc. xvii. 14; xix. 16; 1 Tim. vi. 15. They are the same, who, at the outset of their arduous, glorious, and ultimately victorious, career, sing the new song in which, addressing the Great Captain of their redemption who leads them to glory (Heb. ii. 10), they say, “thou hast made us for our Deity kings and priests; and we shall reign as kings (βασιλευσομεν) upon the earth”—ch. v. 10. They begin their career under this sixth vial, and “turn not” from “the way,” ἡ ὁδος, (Ezek. i. 9, 12, 17) opened to them by the drying up of the Euphratean Power, until they have taken the Great City Babylon; and possessed themselves of all its thrones—Apoc. xx. 4; xi. 15; Dan. vii. 9, 18, 27. The consummation of their “way” will be, that “the kingdoms of the world become our Lord’s and his Christ’s; and he shall reign king (βασιλευσει) for the Aions of the Aions.”
Whither the Spirit is to go they go, and they turn not when they go. These kings go their way, every one straight forward; for p. 540 “their feet are straight feet,” and consequently there is no deviousness in their way. “They accompany the Lamb whithersover he goeth;” and his purpose is not crooked. His way is into the midst of the Great City, where, after the example of Cyrus, his prototype in the capture of Babylon, and the deliverance of the Jews, he hurls the Papal Belshatzar from his throne, and seizes upon his dominion for himself.
Cyrus, and the “sanctified ones,” his Medes and Persians, were typical of Christ and his Kings in “the way prepared,” through the drying up of “the Great River Euphrates” by the sixth vial. Cyrus was named by Deity, and mentioned by name, about one hundred and sixty years before the capture of Babylon. His name and office are both representative as well as his mission. The name given was כוֹרשׁ Coresh, which some interpret by the word sun; on the ground that the Greek writers affirm that the name in Persian signified the sun. Gesenius says, they were correct. But, should we go to pagan Greeks and Persians to learn the meaning of a Hebrew name conferred upon a man whom the God of Israel intended to raise up to accomplish a work upon Babylon, which was to find its antitype over 2400 years after? My answer is, no. Coresh in Hebrew does not signify the sun, which is there represented by שׁמשׁ, shĕmĕsh. Coresh is a proper name compounded of כ, like, and יוֹרשׁ, yoraish, the participle of ירשׁ yărāsh, which signifies, to seize, to take possession of, to occupy, mostly by force. Hence, Yoraish comes to signify one who takes possession of his inheritance by conquest. This definition of Cyrus’ Hebrew name accords with the facts of his history. The Deity had predetermined, that he should inherit the Babylonish Empire, which included the Holy Land; and that he should take possession of it by conquest. He therefore made Yoraish a part of his name; and, as he intended his career to be typical of His own Son’s, whom he hath constituted “the Heir of all things” terrestrial; and who is also to acquire possession of his inheritance by conquest; he added the letter כ, caph, and, condensing the three syllables into two, named him Coresh, or Koraish, signifying Like the Heir.
Now, let the reader note what occurred before Cyrus and Darius, with their “sanctified ones” (Isai. xiii. 3), the kings of the north, could take possession of Babylon. It was necessary, that “the Great River Euphrates,” which flowed into and through the city, “should be dried up; that the way of Yahweh’s Anointed Shepherd and his flock, might be prepared”—Isai. xliv., 25; xlv. 1. “A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up;” “I will dry up her great river את ימה, eth-yammah; and make her springs dry”—Jer. l. 38; li. 36. This was literally accomplished by Cyrus, who turned p. 541 the Euphrates from its course; left the channel of the river dry; marched his troops along the dried way in the night into the very heart of Babylon; and, coming upon the king and nobles “as a thief,” put them without discrimination, or mercy, to the sword.
Such was the practical representation of the entrance into the apocalyptic Babylon by Yahweh’s Anointed Shepherd, the all-conquering Heir of the World, and the Kings, whom he will have raised to consubstantiality with himself (1 Jno. iii. 2), and constituted his coöperators, and companions in arms. He has been, so to speak, besieging Babylon, and inflicting upon her all the miseries of a besieged city, by the forces engaged in the execution of the plagues of the first five vials; but, as in the typical operations of Cyrus, “the sanctified ones” of the Eternal Spirit have not come into the possession of the apocalyptic Babylon by direct assaults. The Divine purpose required that the European Babylon should be entered by a coup de main, or unexpected attack. Cyrus entered thus. Since the commencement of the sixth vial, Christ Jesus has been, by his agents, drying up the Great River of Babylon, the Ottoman power; which, undried, would have been an inconvenience, and an embarrassment, in the development of those judicial household-arrangements, which must precede the manifestation of “the kings of the Sun’s risings,” to the world. Before the outpour of this vial, the Ottoman was a power, overshadowing Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Syria, in great force. It could have concentrated its armies upon any of these provinces in great numbers; and with powerful and embarrassing effect, upon any unwarlike crowd that might be convened for the purposes of judgment, organization, and legislation, the necessary preparation for all great enterprizes in a world like this. It is true, that the Deity could destroy them all, however numerous and powerful, as he did the army of Sennacherib, in the reign of Hezekiah: there is here no question about what he could do; he can do what he pleases: but it is not according to his revealed plan of operations in the work of manifesting his sons, to have that judicial and preparatory work interrupted by battle, and the burial of a host of corpses. To prevent this embarrassing inconvenience, he deemed it necessary to dry up from those countries the overflowing power of “the Desolator”—to diminish it, and hold it in check by other jealous powers whose mutual distrust should reduce “the Sick Man” to a nullity.
But, shall it be said, that the wrath of the sixth vial was designed to dry up the great Turkish power, in order to put in its place a stronger and greater power, the Muscovite, before the coming of Christ and the manifestation of his Kings? The sixth vial is in part to remove Gentile Power to a convenient distance—to diminish, not p. 542 to increase it, in the region of Sinai, and Teman, and Mount Paran —Hab. iii. 3; Deut. xxxiii. 2: but, to substitute the Russian in Constantinople for the Turk; and to give the Czar dominion over the Ottoman empire before Christ comes, would render nugatory the drying up process of the past forty-eight years. My present conviction therefore, is, that the gathering together of the national armies against Jerusalem (Zech. xiv. 2) is after the appearance of Christ in the South; that is, in Teman; where he begins his career as “THE KING OF THE SOUTH” (Dan. xi. 40); and before he appears upon Mount Zion. Hence, we have not to wait the advance of the Russian Gog against Constantinople, and his overflowing and passing over, and stretching forth his power over Egypt, and the Holy Land. This will certainly come to pass; but it will all be consequent upon, not antecedent to, the appearing of Christ in Teman. The Great Euphratean Ottoman Power is not dried up to prepare the way of the greater power of Gog; but, “that the way of the Kings out of the Sun’s risings might be prepared.”
2. The Commencement of the Sixth Vial
It is written in Dan. ix. 27, “and because of an overspreading of abominations (there shall be) a desolating, even to destruction; and that determined shall be poured out upon the DESOLATOR.” The subject of this desolation by successive abominations, begun by the old Roman power, is the Holy Land. It is to continue under the tramp of the Desolator to the consummation; and, “until that determined” against the desolating power, by whatever name it may be known at the consummation, shall be “poured out upon” him.
The Desolator is unquestionably the Little Horn of the Goat, which, in the days of Constantine, transferred its residence and Court to Constantinople, while its Senate continued to hold its sittings in Rome. In the days of Jesus and the apostles, Rome was the residence of Cæsar and his Court, as well as of the Senate. It was then the exclusive capital of the Little Horn of the Goat; but, in the subsequent division of the Roman empire into the Greek and Latin empires, Rome became in the days of Charlemagne, the capital of the Little Horn, having “Eyes like the eyes of a man, and a Mouth speaking very great things” (Dan. vii. 8, 20); while Constantinople continued the sole capital of the Little Horn of the Goat—Dan. viii. 9.
Of this Little Horn of the Goat while its empire was as yet undivided, and the seat of its government not yet transferred from p. 543 Rome, it was predicted, that he would “magnify himself against the Prince of the Host” of Israel; this he did in condemning and crucifying the Lord of Glory; and furthermore, “by him the Daily should be taken away, and the place of his sanctuary cast down;” and that he should “destroy wonderfully, and prosper, and practise, and should destroy mighty ones, and the people of the Holy ones.” It is this power that Daniel refers to when he says, in ch. ix. 26, “and the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the city (Jerusalem), and the holy” or temple. The people was “the host given against the Daily” (ch. viii. 12) by the Nahgid, or prince, who sent them to destroy the city of the murderers of the Son of God—Matt. xxii. 7. When this people encompassed Jerusalem, and “cast a trench about her, and kept her in on every side,” it was given to that generation as a sign, that her destruction was imminent; and in warning his disciples of what was predetermined against Judah’s commonwealth, Jesus referred to this prophecy of Daniel, saying, as it stands in Matt. xxiv. 15, “when ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (“where it ought not”—Mark xiii. 14) whoso readeth, let him understand—then let them that be in Judea flee into the mountains,” and so forth, “for then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the State to this time, no, nor ever shall be;” that is, upon Judah. This prediction was fulfilled about A.D. 70.
This was the first of the series of abominations of desolation that overspread the Holy Land. Its existence there was signalized by the abolition of the Jewish State; the taking away or suppression of the Daily Sacrifice; the ruin of the city; the burning of the temple to the ground, and the scattering of the power of the people of the Holy Ones. The Daily, or continual, evening and morning sacrifice, was taken away to make room for this series of abominations, of which the principal have been the pagan Roman, the Greek catholic, and the Mohammedan; all of them constituents of the Little Horn of the Goat; so long as these abominations overspread the land of Israel in power, the power of the people of the Holy Ones will be in a scattered state: that is, they will prevail until the consummation, “and that determined shall be poured out upon the DESOLATOR.”
But, what marks the consummation? That which is expressed in the words, “when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the people of the Holy Ones”—Dan. xii. 7. At the time of this writing, February, 1868, this “consummation devoutly to be wished,” has not arrived. How many weeks, or months, or years p. 544 beyond the current year of the time appointed, yet remain to be consumed in waiting I know not; but, it would seem impossible that it can be long. Of this, however, we may be certain, that the consummation, as signalized by the coming of Christ, will transpire under the outpouring of the wrath of this sixth vial. This is plainly and clearly revealed in this sixteenth chapter. The consummation is also indicated by the phrase, “that determined shall be poured out upon the Desolator.” This would seem to declare, that the consummation will be when all determined against the Desolator shall have been poured out. But, how long is this outpouring to last? Who can tell? When did the outpouring begin? This is the question to be determined now.
It is written in Dan. xii. 11, “and when the Daily hath been removed, even for to set up an abomination of desolation (there shall be) a thousand two hundred and ninety days.” Here is a long period without any other beginning indicated than that of its setting up. Its continuance is stated at 1290 years. This is the whole length of time during which the abomination was to prevail upon the land of Israel without beginning to dry up; in other words, when the 1290 ended, the drying up process would commence; but, as to the exact number of years that would be consumed in the progressive outpouring of “that determined” before the consummation would be reached, we are not informed; of this, however, we may be assured, that the outpouring of “that determined” upon the Desolator of the Holy Land, will not have reached its consummation, until Gog falls upon the mountains of Israel in the war of ARMAGEDDON; which is the great climacteric of the sixth vial.
The period of the sixth vial, the wrathful contents of which are “that determined upon the Desolator,” is not included in the 1290 years of the last desolating abomination of the series. The end of these terrible years connects with the beginning of the sixth vial; because there was to be a desolating by the ascendant abomination, until that determined should come to be “poured out upon the Desolator.” Now, what is the fact in regard to the abomination in the ascendant? It is, that the power enthroned in Constantinople, the Little Horn of the Goat, in the spasmodic grasp of Greek, Saracen, Latin, and Turk, summarily expressed in the terms Catholic and Mohammedan, has been the Desolating Abomination of the Holy Land for 1290 years, ending in 1820–’3. The condition of the country between the reign of Adrian, A.D. 137, and the beginning of the reign of Justinian, A.D. 527, was as prosperous as any other province of the Roman empire; but, a change of fortune ensued in the epoch of his p. 545 reign, A.D. 529–’33, which was signalized by a desolating war between the empires of Persia and Constantinople, in which the Euphratean countries, including Palestine, were the seat of conflict. A peace was made in 533, which proved only a suspension of arms. The war was renewed in 540, and thenceforth continued its destructive course for twenty years, For 1290 years, wasting and desolation progressed with ruinous effect; especially since the adherents of Mohammed made Syria and Palestine (both included in the land promised to Abraham and his Seed) their battleground with the Greeks and Latins. The Ottoman Turks possessed themselves of Constantinople under the sixth trumpet, in 1453; and they will be expelled from it under the sixth vial, when “that determined” shall have had its full effect upon them. They were, as Mohammedans, identified with the 1290 years of desolating abomination for a long series of ages and generations; hence, being found in occupation of the Holy Land, and filling the throne of the Little Horn of the Goat, or Dragon, at the end of the 1290 years, they have become obnoxious to the wrath, which has reduced their power to the nullity we behold in 1868. If, then, we have correctly located the beginning of the 1290 years in the epoch 529–’33, the termination of the period will be 1820–’23, which is signalized by the commencement of the sixth vial, or of “that determined upon the Desolator.”
In concluding this section, I may add, that Dan. xii. 11, has given the commentators much trouble. The Daily Sacrifice was taken away A.D. 70. As the passage stands in the English Version, it would seem that the 1290 should begin there. This would bring the end of the period in 1360, the very midnight of abominations making desolate. Not being able to work out the arithmetic in that line, they have turned “the Daily” into a figure of the Romish Apostasy, or sanctuary to be cleansed, and so forth. We need not, however, trace out their theories, and consume time and space in arguments against them. It may suffice to remark, that the obscurity of the text is referable to the loose rendering of the word מעת, maiaith, and the tense of the verb הוסר, husar. The former is translated “from the time;” but Gesenius, without particular reference to this text, gives “more than in the time when,” as a good rendering. In our text, more than from the time would be the exact signification, in the sense of when or after. The other word husar is in the perfect, not the future tense, as in the C. V.—maiaith husar hathtamid, after the Daily has been removed. It was removed to make way for the overspreading of abominations of desolation; but how long after its removal to the beginning of that particular abomination that was to continue 1290, it gives no information. The beginning of the p. 546 period would be known by those who should be able to perceive the opening of the sixth vial at its termination, and from thence reckoning back 1290 years. It had a contemporary beginning with the 1260, ending in the fall of “the tenth of the great city,” and resurrection of the Witnesses, 1790–’93; and with the 1335 of Dan. xii. 12, ending 1868. If the Justinian epoch 529–’33, be not the correct beginning of these periods, I know not what other historical epochs can have any reasonable claims to be true.
3. Historical Summary of the Drying Up of the “Great River Euphrates”
Tillinghast, a commentator who wrote over 200 years ago, and quoted in Elliott’s notes, in exposition of this vial says, “By the river Euphrates we are to understand the Ottoman or Turkish empire. It is called the great river because of the multitude of people and nations therein. The people who at the present time are of all others accounted the greatest are the Turks; who therefore, and no other, are here to be understood; especially as the Euphrates in Apoc. ix., under the sounding of the sixth trumpet, by general consent of expositors, has reference to the Turkish power.”
The revolutionary wars of Europe, which had darkened the kingdom of the Beast, and scorched the worshipers of his Image with great heat, had passed away without seriously injuring the power of the Turks. It is true, that under the operation of the second vial, the French had conquered Egypt in 1798; but they were expelled by the British in 1801, who gave up the country to the Sultan; so that the political state of the Little Horn of the Goat’s dominion became as before. This was so manifest that a Protestant writer in the year after, in speculating upon this vial, expressed his wonder how the prophecy was to be fulfilled; and a dominion, still so mighty in arms and population, could be wasted and dried up. “By what means,” says he, “the Turkish empire shall be reduced to this helpless state (an empire formerly distinguished for its enthusiastic loyalty, ferocity and valor; and which is even at this day—1802—as populous as any other upon earth, the Chinese excepted), is not intimated in this verse; and will perhaps remain concealed until the events themselves shall remove the veil. However, this is certain, from the evident purport of the text, that a very extraordinary indifference or disaffection in the people to the government must take place to fulfill this part of the prophecy.”
Affairs continued generally prosperous with the Turks till the commencement of 1820. “That year,” it has been remarked, “the p. 547 Ottoman empire, by unwonted good fortune, found itself freed at once from foreign war and domestic rebellion.” But before the year was closed, the scene was wonderfully changed; and causes of exhaustion and distress were then introduced, which have continued their incessant operation, until at length the mighty empire of the Osmanlis, which used to make the heart of Babylon to faint, and her knees to tremble, has passed into a proverb as “the Sick Man,” soon to give up the ghost, and to leave the fragments of his estate to others.
The first cause that operated thus, was, as had been surmised, internal revolt and insurrection. The terminal epoch of the 1290 was now on hand. In the summer of 1820, Ali Pasha of Yanina asserted his independence; and by his revolt, the Greek insurrection, which had been for some time silently progressing, was precipitated. The inhabitants of the Greek islands called in their merchant ships; and in November, the Suliote Greeks returned to their country from the Ionian islands, and raised the standard of revolt against the Sultan, in alliance with Ali Pasha their former oppressor. In February, 1821, Chourshid Pasha of Tripolizza, having marched from thence against Yanina, leaving the Morea almost destitute of Turkish troops, the Moreote Greeks broke out into insurrection, which quickly extended to the Ægean Isles and districts of Northern Greece, Epirus, and Thessaly; while, at the same time, the standard of revolt was raised also in the trans-Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia.
The progress and successful issue of the Greek insurrection is well known. This result was favored by an eruption of the Persians into the Asiatic provinces of Turkey in 1821 and 1822, when the Turks were subjected to heavy loss. The Greeks held the country in the Morea, while the Turks were shut up in the fortresses; and a Turkoman army of 30,000, that entered to reconquer it, having been destroyed in detail in 1823, the freedom of the Peninsula was nearly completed by the insurgents. The insular Greeks were attended by almost uniform success in their maritime encounters with superior Turkish and Egyptian fleets, especially in their victorious engagements of September, 1824, in which the Turks lost twelve frigates, twenty brigs, and more than eighty transports. At length the sympathies of the European Babylon were awakened in their behalf, by the dreadful massacres perpetrated by the Turks, who spared neither men, women, nor children, in their terrible and remorseless warfare. In the Morea, Ibrahim Pasha being successful in reaching Patras, indulged in the indiscriminate slaughter of the inhabitants, and in the commission of irreparable and wanton devastation, by destroying p. 548 the olive-trees and vineyards, and other productions of the soil. At this crisis, the tide of success seemed to be turned in favor of the Turks by Ibrahim’s Egyptian government, which had almost completed the reconquest of the Morea. But, the decree of Heaven was against the Euphratean power; and the prophecy which the Greeks could not accomplish singlehanded, England, France, and Russia, in contravention of all their principles of policy, interposed to fulfill. Their friendly mediation between the belligerents being obstinately and persistently rejected by the Sultan, they determined to put a stop to his butcheries by force. They sent a fleet of twenty-six sail to Navarino, where they found the Turco-Egyptian armament of seventy sail drawn up in order of battle to receive them. The allies sought to avoid a conflict by friendly conference with the Turkish admiral; but the messenger was wantonly put to death, and a shot of defiance sent booming at the Asia, an English ship of the line. The salutation was promptly returned, and in a little time the action became general. The bloody and destructive battle raged for four hours, and the scene of wreck and devastation was such as has been rarely witnessed. Sixty-two of the seventy Turkish vessels were burnt, sunk, or driven on shore complete wrecks. On board of the two line of battle ships, each with a crew of 850 men, there were killed, in one ship, 650, and in the other 400. The loss of the English and French was 118 killed and 341 wounded. Thus, in 1827, Greece was saved, and erected into a kingdom under the protection of the Allies; and by the destruction of the Turkish fleet, the way was prepared for other disasters, which quickly followed upon the devoted empire.
But, the Greek insurrection and foreign intervention simply would have still left the Ottoman empire a great and strong current of water. Its evaporation was to be expedited by the fatuous and suicidal policy of its own Sultan, Mahmoud. This imperial reformer of the state perceiving that his haughty, tumultuous Janizaries, once the terror of the nations, were incapable any longer of contending with the order, discipline, and weapons of modern tactics, determined to subject them to a new military system. But to such an innovation they resolved not to submit. Finding, therefore, the hope of reforming, and thereby rescuscitating the Turkish military power, vain, the Sultan determined to destroy those troops whose ancestors had been to the Porte its chief arm of victory. While the Greek insurrection was in progress, he assembled 30,000 of them in Constantinople; and, on July 15, 1826, caused them to be surrounded in the square of the Etmeidan, and massacred by discharges of grapeshot; and on their retreating to their barracks, the p. 549 barracks were set on fire, and the cannonading was continued against them the whole night following, until there remained no more victims or fuel for the one and the other. “The morning,” says Mr. Walsh, “presented a frightful scene of burning ruins slaked in blood;—a huge mass of mangled flesh and smoking ashes.”
To this destruction of its own power was added a most disastrous foreign war excited by its own infatuation; so true is it, “Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat”—whom the Deity wills to perish he first infatuates. The Sultan appealed to the fanaticism of the Mohammedan population against Russia; and, in April, 1828, Russian “orthodoxy” being thus insulted, appealed to arms in vindication of its honor. Prince Paskewitch pressed on from the Caucasian frontier to Erzeroum; while Count Diebitch, with varied success, in the campaign of 1829 took the entrenched camp of Schumla on the Danube; crossed the Balkan; entered Adrianople; and, in spite of the unfurling of the Prophet’s Banner against him, threatened the immediate investment of Constantinople. But, the time, if ever, had not come for the transfer of the Little Horn of the Goat’s capital, to the Autocrat of all the Russias. The diplomatic “Dæmons” therefore of the other powers interposed their “good,” but really jealous, offices, and peace was made. It was a peace, however, by the articles of which “the drying up of the Great River Euphrates” was greatly advanced. The treaty secured emancipation from the Ottoman yoke to the catholic principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia under the guardianship משמר, mishmar, of the Russian Gog—Ezek. xxxviii. 7. The independence of Servia was also assured, and no Turk permitted to reside north of the Danube. But, this was not all the drying up of Turkish power at this period. In this same year, 1829, the French government landed an army of 40,000 on the African coast, and having defeated an equal force of Turks and Arabs, captured Algiers; and converted the Turkish province into a colony of France; thus, another of the sources of “the water of the Great River Euphrates” was “dried up.”
Again, very soon after the termination of the war against Russia, Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of the Egyptian province of the Little Horn of the Goat, asserted his independence of the Sultan. He attacked and conquered the Turks in Syria and the Holy Land, in the three great battles of Hems, of Nezib, and of Iconium, in 1832 and 1833. He now aspired to the throne of the Sultan, and in 1838 advanced as far as Smyrna on his march to Constantinople, “Man proposes, but God disposes.” The wrath of the sixth vial was to dry up, not to invigorate and renovate, “the water” or power, of “the great river Euphrates.” Had Mehemet Ali been allowed to depose the Sultan, and to set himself upon his throne, the Ottoman empire would have been p. 550 vastly strengthened: Providence, therefore, caused the diplomatic “Dæmons” of the Great City Babylon to interfere, that they might unconsciously “establish the vision.” Russia, Austria, Prussia, and England, weary of the war between the Pasha and the Sultan, interfered, and ordered Mehemet Ali to return to Egypt. They then proceeded to regulate the affairs of the East in accordance with their own policy. They ordered the Pasha to surrender Syria and the Holy Land to the Sultan, and to restore the Turkish fleet which had revolted to him during the war. Mehemet Ali refused to do either, contending that these countries were his by right of conquest for ever, and the fleet as the spoils of war. The four powers, however, (France was not consulted in this affair,) were not to be trifled with. They were willing that the Egyptian Pashalic should be hereditary in his family; but resolved that he should only be Pasha of Syria for life. But even this was contrary to the Divine arrangement; his heart was therefore hardened against such an accommodation, and he refused to yield. The result was that the Allied Fleet bombarded the cities of the Syrian sea-board, and took possession of St. Jean d’Acre. They again offered him “all that part of Syria, extending from the Gulf of Suez to the Lake of Tiberias, together with the province of Acre for life,” if he would restore the Turkish fleet. But this offer did not suit the Deity; he was therefore still hardened to refuse, and to maintain what he considered his rights. Seeing that negotiation availed nothing, they proceeded in the autumn of 1840, to compel the Egyptians to evacuate the Promised Land, and determined that he should not have it at all; and threatened furthermore, that if he did not restore the fleet in ten days, they would make Alexandria too hot for his continuance there. Such a conclusion being in harmony with the Divine purpose, he was led to comply. He evacuated the country, and surrendered the ships within the time; thus he was forced back within the limits of his Turco-Egyptian Pashalic, which he was allowed to retain as the hereditary inheritance of his family under the suzerainty of the Porte; while Syria and the Holy Land to the shores of the Red Sea, were restored to the Constantinopolitan jurisdiction, which is more nominal than real in all the land.
To the operation of political and military causes in the drying up of the Great River, may be noted in addition, the depopulating judgments of the Deity himself. In the great Syrian earthquake of 1822, the walls of Aleppo, the capital, were thrown down, and 14,000 buried in the ruins; and at Antioch, and other towns and villages in the province, the sufferings and loss of life were in proportion. In 1821 the cholera broke out at Bussora, and carried off some 16,000 persons—near a fourth of its population: then ascending the Tigris to p. 551 Bagdad, swept away a third of its inhabitants: and then, in 1822, advanced into Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, with a like fearful mortality everywhere attending it. At the same time, the plague was in its usual way wasting the Turkish population; and besides it, other extraordinary and mysterious epidemics. The cities of Mecca and Bagdad, more especially, were fearfully desolated. In the Bombay Gazette, of August, 1831, the report is given that Mecca and Medina had been completely depopulated by a dreadful disease, the nature of which was unknown. It broke out among the Mohammedan pilgrims, 50,000 of whom it carried off, including the governor of the Holy City of the Mussulmans. In Bagdad also, the ancient capital of the Caliphs, 50,000 of the inhabitants perished by the plague. To the horrors of disease were here added the desolation of the flood and of the sword. The missionaries stationed there thus narrate the terrible story: “The plague prevailing to a fearful extent among the inhabitants, part of them attempted to escape into the country: but they were arrested by a sudden inundation of the Tigris, by which numbers perished; and the rest were driven back into the city. When at length it pleased God to stay the hand of the destroying angel, it was found that out of 80,000 human beings not more than 25,000 survived.” The judgment of the sword then followed. “The plague had scarce ceased, and the waters subsided, when troops arrived in the name of the Sultan to depose the Pasha; and fierce and bloody contests succeeded.” In another letter bearing date, Bagdad, April 23, 1831, they say, “Surely every principle of desolation is operating in the midst of the Ottoman empire; plagues, earthquakes, and civil wars. The Pasha’s palace is left open, without a soul to take care of anything. His stud of beautiful Arab horses are running about the streets. Enquire what you will, the answer is, The City is desolate.” With regard even to Constantinople, the chaplain of the British Embassy resident there from 1821 to 1831, thus writes, “Within the last twenty years Constantinople has lost more than half its population. Two conflagrations happened while I was there, and destroyed 15,000 houses. The Russian and Greek wars were a constant drain upon the Janizaries of the capital. The silent operation of the plague is continually active, though not always alarming. It will be no exaggeration to say that, within the period mentioned, from 300,000 to 400,000 have been prematurely swept away in this one city in Europe, by causes which were not operating in any other—conflagration, pestilence, and civil commotion.”
Admitting, then, that “the Great River Euphrates” is the symbol of the Ottoman Power to whose empire it belongs, who can doubt that its water has been drying up during all the past forty-eight years; and p. 552 that therefore we are assuredly contemporary with the outpouring of the sixth vial, in the course of which Christ reappears upon the earth? It is evident, that nothing supports the feeble remains of the once mighty power of Turkey, figuratively and proverbially styled “the Sick Man,” but the Policy of the Antichristian Powers, founded upon their mutual jealousies and ambitions. The declared intention of France and England to maintain the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire is evidence of its inability to defend itself against the strong. Its recent conflict in the little island of Candia illustrates its feebleness, and the shrivelled condition of its power. The judgments of the sixth vial have made it the weakest of all the powers, except, perhaps, the other Sick Man of Rome. These two sick men, the representatives of the Two Little Horns, have both fallen upon evil times together; and both bid fair to “give up the ghost” in the same epoch. They have both in times past made the world to tremble; and now, in the righteous retributions of the Deity, they are made to tremble before the world. They have both been made sick, and made to lie at the gates of death, in the interest of the Saints, who are to supersede them in all the earth. The power of the Sick Man of Constantinople is to the power of the Sick Man of Rome, and his family of kings, as the Great River Euphrates to the Great City of Babylon. Christ and his Brethren, the Cyrus and Sanctified Ones of the 19th century, are the divinely predetermined captors of this city. They are to enter it “as a thief,” and to seize upon its thrones; but to enable them to do this with all the facility the situation may require, the great river Euphrates has been dried up, and the way of the kings of the Resurrection-Sun duly prepared in all the region of “THE SOUTH.”