“The kings from the rising of the sun”

(The post below dates back to April 2008 where it was first submitted on the blog of the Mail on Sunday's journalist Peter Hitchens - on his blog thread dealing with the Second World War entitled, The Gathering Storm. I reproduce it below in its entirety with a few minor corrections).

In 1942 Churchill remarked that he had not become “the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

Perversely, while the ending of the First World War saw the dissolution of the the empires of the defeated Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey; the ending of the Second World War would ring in the death knell of the victorious British Empire.

At the expense of the defeated Central Powers, the First World War saw the British Empire make its last great imperial acquisitions. But the former age of empire-building had in fact come to a close – all of the newly won territories captured by the Allies were to be held in “trust” as “Mandates”, under the auspices of the, then, newly formed League of Nations.

When it came to sharing-out the spoils of that first, great conflict of the 20th century, Great Britain and her Empire were in a position to take the “lion's share”. From the defeated German empire, fell the following spoils:

German East Africa (modern-day Tanzania – excluding Zanzibar): vast majority to Great Britain (the remainder to Belgium). Togoland: jointly divided between Great Britain and France. German West Africa (Cameroons): two thin strips to Great Britain (majority to France). German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia): to the Union of South Africa. German (north-eastern) New Guinea: to the Commonwealth of Australia. German (western) Samoa: to the Dominion of New Zealand.

But it was in – what was then termed the “Near East” – the modern-day Middle East, that the most far-reaching repercussions would be felt. In 1882 Great Britain had occupied Egypt (though it was still nominally under Ottoman suzerainty). In 1914, with the start of the First World War, Egypt was declared a British Protectorate – as was the Ottoman province of Kuwait to the east; and in 1915 with the entry of Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers, the former Ottoman held island of Cyprus (leased and administered by Great Britain since 1878) was also declared a British Protectorate.

By the war's end the British Empire had acquired for herself a swathe of territory captured from the defeated Ottoman empire (and now held by her under the proviso of the newly formed League of Nations): stretching from Palestine (which originally included Transjordan), on the Mediterranean seaboard; on through the vast, oil-rich deserts of Iraq, to the shores of the Persian Gulf in the east. And incorporated within the League of Nations' remit for British Mandate Palestine was the proviso to establish within that land a “Jewish National Home”, as had been first echoed by the so-called Balfour Declaration of November 1917...

In the explanatory notes of our family's nineteenth century Bible (which does not contain the year of its publication – but is inscribed with the year 1866 in a hand-written presentation), is the following note concerning Revelation 16:12 – and the final exhaustion of the Ottoman empire:

“The Euphrates is here used for 'the empire founded by the Euphratean horsemen [the Turks] of the sixth trumpet,' and the drying up of its waters 'to imply the exhaustion of all the political sources of wealth and power which contribute to the strength and greatness of . . . [that] empire . . .'”.

In Isaiah 8:7, God compares the conquests of the Assyrian empire to a river in flood: “Now therefore, behold, the Lord 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.”

In Revelation 16:12, the same imagery is used – but in reverse – to show the drying up of an empire. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) wrote the following concerning this interpretation:

“Analogous to the loosing of these [four] Angels [of the sixth Trumpet (Revelation 9:13-21) – being the second, and Turkish phase of Islam's conquests] is the drying up of the waters of [the] Euphrates in the sixt[h] Vial. For these two actions must correspond because the beginnings of this Trumpet & Vial which are contemporary. Now by the waters of this river we are to understand the people situate upon it . . . that is, the Turkish Sultanies. And by the pouring [out of] a Vial upon this River the inflicting of some great calamity upon that people: such as was the Tattarian invasion. And by the consequent drying up [of] the waters thereof the wasting of the power & dominion of that people . . . that is, the [final] dissolution of the Turkish Sultanies by that invasion.” (Untitled Treatise on Revelation by Isaac Newton. Source: Yahuda Ms. 1.8, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. From online transcript on the University of Sussex's “The Newton Project”).

Richard Lattimore, who was for many years Professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr, made a translation of the Revelation in the 1960s. In the Preface to a reprint of his translation he remarks:

“It was while I was teaching various Greek texts to beginning students that I was struck by the natural ease with which Revelation turned itself into English. . . . [In my translation] I have held throughout to the principle of keeping as close to the Greek as possible, not only for sense and for individual words, but in the belief that fidelity to the original word order and syntax may yield an English prose that to some extent reflects the style of the original.” (From, The Four Gospels and the Revelation: Newly translated from the Greek by Richard Lattimore, Hutchinsons of London, 1980).

Richard Lattimore translates Revelation 16:12 thus:

“And the sixth [angel] poured out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates; and its water was dried, so as to make ready the way of the kings from the rising of the sun.”

For comparison, the Authorised (King James) Version translates the above passage so:

“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 of the east might be prepared.”

Who then are these eastern kings – “the kings from the rising of the sun” ? In his book End Time Delusions, Steve Wohlberg makes the following observation: “Cyrus came from 'the east' to conquer ancient Babylon (see Isaiah 44:26-28; 46:11).” He also observes that, “the name 'Cyrus' [in Persian] means 'sun'.”

For an explanation of the apocalyptic imagery used in the Revelation, it is to the Old Testament that we must turn . . .

Between 606-604 BC, the Babylonian empire conquered Jerusalem and carried the Jews off captive to Babylon. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, the king of the Medes and Persians, conquered the ancient city of Babylon. And in the succession of “world” empires (which was given in an apocalyptic revelation to Daniel), the Babylonian empire was replaced (at its appointed time in the prophetic scheme) by that of Media-Persia.

In the British Museum is the ancient Cyrus Cylinder, which records Cyrus' conquest of Babylon. The river Euphrates ran through double doors into the ancient city of Babylon. Cyrus and his army had earlier dug trenches up-stream to divert the flow of the river. During the night of Belshazzar's drunken feast, the waters of the Euphrates were literally “dried up” and thus allowed Cyrus and his men access under the double doors, and into the city. The Babylonian empire had been, “weighed in the balances” and “found wanting”; that very night – the night of the “[hand]writing on the wall” - it was to be no more . . .

I am of the opinion that this eastern power, which in the Revelation is symbolised by the sun, is none other than that of the British Empire – it was the British Empire, which after the First World War took the “lion's share” of the former territories of the Ottoman empire from the Turks. But more importantly: it was the British Empire – like Cyrus' empire, two and a half millennia before – that would have a policy of allowing the Jews to return back to their ancient homeland.

I can think of a no more fitting symbol for the British Empire than that of the rising sun: for due to its vastness there was always a corner of the world, over which – from dawn to dusk each day a Union Flag – fluttering in the breeze, would be flying. During its heyday, the British Empire was truly, “an empire on which the sun never set . . .”

“The sun never set on the British Empire, Because the sun sets in the West, And the British Empire was in the East.” Anon.

It was Disraeli who bestowed upon Queen Victoria the title, Empress of India, and it was Disraeli who said that Britain was an ORIENTAL and not a EUROPEAN power. Lord Curzon remarked that, “As long as we rule India we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall drop straightaway to a third-rate power.”

The Oxford Dictionary of Current English gives the following definition:

“orient 1 . . . n (Orient) the East, the countries east of the Mediterranean, esp. E. Asia. [F f. L oriens . . . rising sunrise, east]”.

During the days of the British Raj, the Viceroy of India's flag was a Union Flag, in the centre of which, on the St George's cross, was superimposed “The Star of India”, surmounted by the Royal Crown. This, “Star of India” badge was a SUN-BURST in the centre of which was a five-pointed star, surrounded by a garter, bearing the motto: “Heaven's Light Our Guide”.

But does not the Revelation say “kings (plural) from the rising of the sun”? The capture of Palestine was a joint venture – which not only involved troops from Great Britain and her Indian Empire; but also troops from her far-flung, and more easterly dominions of Australia and New Zealand. The troops from these fledgeling dominions would play a major rôle in the conflict.

Also the following information is of interest: In 1619, Shah Abbas of Persia, granted the English East India Company a monopoly in Persia's silk trade and the Persian port of Bandar Abbas became the Company's headquarters in the region.

Due to instability in the region and Arab piracy, the East India Company, in 1763, moved its Persian headquarters from Bandar Abbas to the more secure port of Bushire. Here a British Resident was installed. The “British” presence in the region originated from her Indian Empire – for a while in the 19th century there were rival British legations in Teheran: one from HM Government in London; and the other from Britain's Indian Empire. Brian Lapping in his 1980s book End of Empire, (which was based on his Channel 4 TV series of the same name) included a chapter on the ending of “British rule” in Iran (Persia) – though nominally it wasn't even part of the British Empire, he felt that it warranted an inclusion due to the high level of British influence in the region.

In 1839, the East India Company extended its power still further, when – with 700 men, supported by a couple of Royal Navy sloops, Captain Stafford Haines of the Indian Navy annexed Aden to the Company's Bombay Presidency. This act made Aden the first imperial acquisition of Queen Victoria's reign.

In the May/June 2007 edition of Sword magazine (the successor magazine to Prophecy Today / Prophecy Today International), the Australian Kelvin Crombie – in the first part of an on-going article on “Britain's Destiny: Restorer of Israel?”, wrote:

“In . . . [the] ancient power play [of Cyrus' Persian empire allowing the Jews to return to their land] we see already the seeds of Britain's role several thousand years later – as the restorer of Israel. Three elements are present in this Persian connection: 1) the Land of Israel as strategic centre-point of the geo-political axis; 2) the Land of Israel as critical economic centre point and 3) the restoration of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel as a proxy group to fit in with the geo-political policy of an Empire.”

Returning back to the “[hand]writing on the wall” of Daniel chapter 5: it has been pointed out by W Edmund Filmer in his book, Daniel's Predictions (Regency Press, London, 1979), that:

“'The inscription actually contains a string of weight names, viz mene, tekel and peres, with the meaning mina, shekel and half mina, the last named word being documented in the Mishna and other Jewish writings', peres signifying the half mina. Since a mina consisted of fifty shekels, a shekel of twenty gerahs, the total weight in gerahs signified by the writing was:

Mina (MENE) 1,000 gerahs; Mina (MENE) 1,000 gerahs; Shekel (TEKEL) 20 gerahs; Half-mina (PERES) 500 gerahs: Total 2,520 gerahs”

On the [Peter Hitchens' blog] thread “Gaza proves that any Middle East deal will fail” (in the Archives for March [2008 on that blog]); I posted some quotes from Dr H Grattan Guinness' 1886 book, Light for the Last Days, in which he was expectant that the year 1917 (AD) would mark the terminus of the 2,520 solar years or “seven times” (i.e. 7 x 360 years) of biblical prophecy concerning the treading down of Jerusalem. In the same post I also quoted the following words of Dr H Aldersmith, MB, FRCS, written during the closing years of the 19th century:

“One day, some slight trouble may light up a great European war, which in the end may see the fall of Turkey . . . and Great Britain in possession of Palestine. . . . If so, as students of the prophetical Word are agreed that, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and Jerusalem ceases to be trodden down [by the Turks]; we may expect it to [then] pass . . . into . . . [British] hands . . . this period may end about 1917 A.D. Time only will show . . .” (The Fulness of the Gentiles, 2nd edition, 1896).

In Revelation 16:13, following immediately on from the drying up of the Euphrates, three unclean spirits like frogs are mentioned which “go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. . . And he gathered them together into a place called . . . Armageddon.” (Revelation 16:14-16).

Each of the judgements in the Revelation are mirror images of those that fell upon the gods of ancient Egypt at the time of the Exodus.

In ancient Egypt the frog-headed goddess Hekt was regarded as a form of the goddess Hathor. Greek writers have preserved significant Egyptian lore regarding the frog. According to Horapollo (I, 25) the frog symbolised an imperfectly formed man. The Greeks accepted the view that the slime-coated frogs were half-formed – part of their bodies being still mud as they crawled about or squatted awkwardly. They believed that if the river dried up, the frog would be incomplete – half mud, half frog. Ælian (II, 56) mentions a shower of incomplete frogs.

“One day, some slight trouble may light up a great European war . . .”, so wrote Dr H Aldersmith, in 1896.

In “The War of the World” television series (Channel 4, 19th June, 2006; based on his book of the same name), the British historian, Professor Niall Ferguson remarked:

“The difficult thing to work out, is how an act of terrorism [the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand] in an obscure corner of 'Ruratania', could have such massive consequences? How exactly could the gunshots . . . have sparked-off the first of the century's two world wars? A conflict that all over the globe raged and claimed nearly 10 million lives. After all, assassinations were ten-a-penny in the early nineteen-hundreds. Terrorism was all the rage amongst extreme nationalists. Why did this one criminal act have such vast world shaking consequences?”

(“There was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.” Revelation 16:18).

Professor Ferguson continued: “The answer is that when the Archduke was shot, he was driving over one of the world's great fault lines; the fateful historic border between the west and the east – the Occident and the Orient. The trouble with geological fault lines is as the earth's tectonic plates grind uneasily against one another, they're where earthquakes happen. There in Sarajevo it was the geo-political tectonic plates – known as empires, that were shifting. Turkey's was giving way [drying up!]; Austria's was pushing forward; and so too was Russia's . . .”

“Once, Bosnia had been a part of the Ottoman empire . . . but in 1908 Austria had annexed Bosnia. When a Serb murdered their Archduke, the Austrians . . . demanded redress from Serbia and the Russians felt they could not afford to see Serbia humiliated. All the ingredients were thus in place for an imperial war between Austria and Russia over the balance of power in the Balkans.”

It was in the dried up left-overs of the Turkish empire, with its ethnic mix and its imperfectly formed borders – in which many Serbs dwelt across the border in Austria-Hungarian annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, (remember, according to the lore preserved by Horapollo, the frog symbolised an imperfectly [or half] formed man [or nation]) – it was here, in this “cock-pit” of Europe, that tensions were running high; Borijove Jevtic, a Black Hand member, even went as far as stating that the very date of Franz Ferdinand's visit incensed him:

“How dared Franz Ferdinand, not only the representative of the oppressor but in his own person an arrogant tyrant, enter Sarajevo on that day? Such an entry was a studied insult. 28 June is the day on which the old Serbian kingdom was conquered by the Turks at the battle of Amselfelde in 1389. That was no day for Franz Ferdinand, the new oppressor, to venture to the very doors of Serbia for a display of the force of arms which kept us beneath his heel. Our decision was taken almost immediately. Death to the tyrant!”

It was in the Balkans – in the “dried up” left-overs of the Ottoman empire – that this volatile political and nationalist mix was ignited.

Writing after the fall of Jerusalem to British and Empire forces under the command of General Allenby, in December 1917 – but before the final close of the “Great War” of 1914-18 – M M'Intyre contemplated thus:

“Since the present world-war broke out, the question is sometimes asked, Are we in Armageddon now? It is possible that we are, but one cannot speak with decision on the point. Certainly, this war is like Armageddon in its extent . . . Russia has [now] abandoned us; and no one can foretell the future course of policy in that unhappy country. So far as we can see, there is nothing to hinder the war from undergoing fresh modifications, until it has assumed all the features of that dark struggle foretold in Scripture in such ominous terms. On the other hand, this [war] may be only the devastating prelude to still deadlier conflicts which will break out in the near future.” (The Starting Place of Glory, circa 1918).

And in Vol. VI of her “The Divine Calendar” series, Augusta Cook wrote the following prophetic words – a mere six years after the signing of the Armistice:

“The fifth volume of 'The Divine Calendar,' . . . was largely written while the Great War of 1914-18 was in progress. With that war, we entered the Era of Armageddon. We are still in that Era. To-day, we are not passing through a long period of peace: we are only in an Armistice – a lull before the greater storm.” (The Divine Calendar, Vol. VI: The Seven Golden Candlesticks, The Marshall Press, Ltd., 1924).

(“Star of India” flag image by Clay Moss from: “FOTW Flags Of The World Website” at http://flagspot.net/flags)