“The Wonders of Foretold History” (1890)

A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE

‘Har-Magedon (or Armageddon) is simply the “hill of Megiddo,” marking the great battle plain where the fate of armies has so often been decided. And so through the telescope of prophecy we see looming up in the not [too] distant future, a great world-crises, a mighty and decisive conflict between the forces of good and evil.

‘And as a result and culmination of this conflict we see approaching a period of tremendous social convulsion, war and revolution. This is inevitable. “Think not,” said Christ, “that I am come to send peace on earth; I come not to send peace but a sword.” Error will never consent to quit the field without an appeal to the sword, and by the sword it must finally perish.

‘Apostate Judaism fell in a mighty war. The great Reformation triumphed only through fields of blood. And slavery in America was overthrown in a conflict that shook the continent. And the crowning conflict, like others before it, must be accompanied by a social convulsion proportionate to its greatness.

‘And no sooner does the prophet see the hosts gathered in the “valley of decision,” than he writes: “AND THE SEVENTH (angel) POURED OUT HIS BOWL UPON THE AIR; AND THERE CAME FORTH A GREAT VOICE OUT OF THE TEMPLE, FROM THE THRONE, SAYING, IT IS DONE: AND THERE WERE LIGHTNINGS, AND VOICES, AND THUNDERS; AND THERE WAS A GREAT EARTHQUAKE, SUCH AS WAS NOT SINCE THERE WERE MEN UPON THE EARTH, SO GREAT AN EARTHQUAKE, SO MIGHTY.”

‘If the tremendous Thirty Years War is spoken of as merely “an earthquake,” and that mighty and most bloody revolution by which Constantine overthrew the pagan emperors is still only “a great earthquake,” how surpassingly great must that revolution prove whose symbol is an earthquake such as never was since there were men upon the earth!

‘We are not surprised that the next feature that rises upon our view is a scene of unexampled horror and carnage. “AND EVERY ISLAND FLED AWAY,” (we are told) “AND THE MOUNTAINS WERE NOT FOUND. AND GREAT HAIL, EVERY STONE ABOUT THE WEIGHT OF A TALENT, COMETH DOWN OUT OF HEAVEN UPON MEN: AND MEN BLASPHEMED GOD BECAUSE OF THE PLAGUE OF THE HAIL; FOR THE PLAGUE THEREOF IS EXCEEDING GREAT.”

‘If the terrible raids and sack of Rome by the Goths is called a “hail,” and the tumult and carnage of thrice ten years of blood is only “great hail,” what must be the scene that shall be witnessed on the earth when war's destruction shall become so stupendous and overwhelming that it can only be compared to the showering down out of heaven of solid globes of ice of a hundred pounds weight!

‘And yet we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that already the conditions exist for just such a conflict. The weapons of destruction have been brought to a point of tremendous energy. Armored ships, rifled cannon, sea-coast guns that hurl six hundred pounds of iron fifteen miles, dynamite bombs, repeating rifles, Maxim guns, capable of discharging sixty balls per minute, are fast revolutionizing the art of war. Steam and electricity have almost annihilated time and space, so binding the nations together that any great shock is instantly felt to the world's end. Europe is an armed camp. Sixteen millions of trained soldiers are ready at the war-signal to fly at each others throats.

‘. . . The antitypical Euphrates, the Turkish empire, is rapidly drying up; and it is easy to see that the rich prize which is slipping from her grasp is liable at any hour to prove the spark which shall fire the train, and when the explosion comes (from this cause or some other) then shall begin a carnival of blood and death such as the world has never witnessed – a mighty hailstorm of retributive judgment.’ (pp. 317-319).

WHEN? OR PROPHETIC DATES

‘. . . [T]he papacy is not the only form of false religion dealt with in prophecy. There is another “little horn” (and only one other) which is mentioned in Dan. 7: 9-14, as destined to “take away the daily sacrifice,” and “give the sanctuary to be trodden under foot.” This is Mahometanism which arose simultaneously with the papacy, and keeps pace with it till both perish at the advent. But before Mahomet arose in the East the Syrian kings appeared, of whom was Antiochus Epiphanes, known as the bitter enemy and persecutor of the Jews. He was a precursory “little horn;” the prophetic symbol evidently including both. And the whole period thus defined is declared to be two thousand three hundred years. From what point do they begin? Not earlier certainly than the decree of Artaxerxes B.C. 457, from which begin the seventy weeks, or four hundred and ninety years to the resurrection of Christ. From this date two thousand three hundred years bring us to A.D. 1844, noted as the very year when by the determined intervention of England the Turkish government reluctantly consented to cease persecuting its Christian subjects, and actually issued (for the first time) an edict of toleration. In thus yielding to foreign dictation it virtually surrendered its independence, and appeared as already practically fallen.

‘But there is another point from which it is still more natural to reckon this period, and that is B.C. 312, the date of the rise of the Syrian kings (called the Seleucidæ) just referred to. And from this point (reckoning by lunar years, because this was customary with Mahometans) the period extends to 1919 – exactly seventy-five years later than in the first case – indicating this date as likely to be a marked one in the decline of the Turks, the freeing of Palestine from Mahometan thraldom, and the restoration of the Jews; but if solar years are reckoned we are brought to 1988. . . .

‘Thus the very nature of prophetic dates renders it impossible to lay down with rigid certainty the time of the end. We are not sure which one of several starting points is to be preferred; and we do not certainly know whether we are to reckon by lunar or by solar years. Still the variations of reckoning thus caused are all comprised within comparatively narrow limits; and so we are well assured that the “time is at hand” – it may be at the very doors.

‘If it shall be (according to the reckoning already given) that the dawning years of the next century shall see the fall of the Turkish powers; [it could be most likely] that by 1919 the ancient people of God shall again possess the promised land . . .’ (pp. 343-345).

The Kings of the Earth v The Kings of the East

In his Lectures on the Apocalypse: Critical, Expository, and Practical (1849) Canon Wordsworth (later the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln), writes, after first stating that in his opinion, the term ‘Kings of the East’ was ‘figurative, and [was] to be understood spiritually’, that:

‘[T]he Kings from the East, or Sun-rising, whose Way is prepared, are the faithful soldiers of Christ. Their Kingdom is to serve Christ’; and ‘[The] Kings of the Earth are opposed to [the] Kings of the East . . . Such, then, is the Plague which St. John announces to the World in the Sixth Vial.’ (pp. 434, 436-437, 440).

As can be seen by the title-pages of the two books heading this post: the rivalry between the German Empire and its jealousy of the Imperial splendour and vastness of the British Empire, was one of the factors (taking place under the drying up of the Turkish Empire under the Sixth Vial) that contributed to the destructive passions let loose in the outbreak of the First Word War.

In a recent work concentrating on this aspect of the First World War its author Sean McMeekin remarks:

‘[Kaiser] Wilhelm [viewed himself] strutting across the world stage as a true modern Alexander, taking in Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Persia and toppling the British Raj. . . . Whereas Hitler was willing to concede the British their global, sea-based empire in exchange for recognition of his own domination of the Eurasian landmass, Wilhelm wanted the British Empire too, including its crown jewels of Egypt and India.’ (The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power 1898-1918; Allen Lane/Penguin Books, 2010; pp. 2-3).

And in the chapter entitled “A Gift from Mars: German Holy War Fever” Sean McMeekin writes:

‘We may never know for sure what was said behind closed doors in Berlin as the European diplomatic crisis heated up in July 1914. The key German policy-makers, including Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, all burned their private papers from the period. Although there is clear evidence that Bethmann Hollweg (on Kaiser Wilhelm’s instructions) issued a ‘blank cheque’ inviting Vienna to retaliate against Serbia on 5 July, the extent to which the Germans deliberately sought to provoke a general European war remains controversial. . . .

‘If the evidence of premeditation in July is inconclusive, however, the extraordinary war fever which overcame the German government in August can be documented without a shadow of doubt. Audacious plans for world conquest were openly bandied about in once-conservative government ministries. The ‘gift from Mars’ meant that the gloves were finally off in Germany’s battle with Britain for global supremacy.’ (ibid. pp. 85-86)

And goes on later to state, that:

‘Because of the central role [that] the Kaiser’s jihad stratagem plays in Fritz Fischer’s controversial indictment, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, it has become customary for Fischer’s critics to dismiss these plans as peripheral to Germany’s overall war strategy. In a work still considered the gold standard, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918, Ulrich Trumpener writes that, although the anti-British holy war idea was a ‘recurring theme of the Kaiser’s famous marginalia, there is no evidence that Berlin had any coherent action plans on hand when World War I broke out’. Any measures the Germans did take to launch jihad-style uprisings against the Entente powers in August 1914, Trumpener writes, ‘bore all the hallmarks of hasty improvisation’. Those who have followed Trumpener’s analysis, such as David Fromkin, have likewise dismissed the importance of the jihad campaign, arguing that it had little bearing on either Turkey’s entry into the war or on the way the war was really fought.

‘To dismiss the importance of pan-Islam in Germany’s wartime plans, however, is to fall victim to hindsight. In 1914, if not when they were writing post-war memoirs, Germany’s leaders saw in Islam the secret weapon which would decide the world war.’ (ibid.pp. 86-87).

The quotes that follow below are taken from the two works whose title-pages are reproduced in the heading to this post - both of which were written whilst the First World War was still raging. First, from the uppermost work:

‘Backed as the [Baghdad Railway] project was by the German government, steadily growing in power and aggressiveness since the establishment of the united German Empire, it added to the already complicated Eastern Question an aggravating factor that contributed largely to the outbreak of the great war. The present struggle for supremacy among European powers resolves itself in its ultimate analysis into a rivalry for the control of the East as an adjunct to commercial expansion. The “trend towards the East” did not originate with modern Germany. It began with Greece, was taken up by ancient Rome and has actuated every Western power with ambitions to extend its commerce and its sphere of influence — Spain, Holland, England and France, and in days nearer to us Russia and Germany, Austria and Italy. Through a curious combination of circumstances, superinduced by the gradual weakening of the once dominant Turkish Empire, the struggle has shaped itself into its present aspect for a control of the great highway that is the key to the East — the nearer and the farther East.

‘A survey of the history of Asia Minor, as a resultant of the geographical contour of the region, furnishes the illustration to the thesis that the most recent events are merely the repetition on a larger scale of such as took place thousands of years ago, and at frequent intervals since. The weapons have changed, new contestants have arisen to take the place of civilizations that after serving their day faded out of sight, but the issue has ever remained the same. We are confronted by that issue to-day — the control of the highway that leads to the East. Through the war archaeological investigations and historical researches have been removed from their academic isolation to furnish the explanation for the political import of the Bagdad Railway project. The study of the remote past, so energetically pursued by European and American scholars during the past decades, is brought into the foreground through the stirring events of our days to illumine the bearings of the historic highway of Asia Minor on the issues at stake in the present world conflict. The decisive battlefields for the triumph of democracy are in the West, but the decision for supremacy among European nations lies in the East.’

(From: The War and the Bagdad Railway: The Story of Asia Minor and Its Relation to the Present Conflict; by Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D.,; published J. B. Lippcott Company, Philadelphia and London, 1917; pp. 29-30).

And from the second work:

'[T]here is a very serious and a real cause for this great world battle. That cause above all others was the colonial and commercial rivalries of the several nations of Europe as they center, in their interests, around England and Germany[1] who stand at the head of the Triple Entente, and the Triple Alliance respectively. “It has long been evident to students of world politics that there is only one international situation which threatens the peace of the civilized world. That is the rivalry between England and Germany. There is no other rivalry, dispute, or misunderstanding between nations that could not be settled peacefully and quickly if this Anglo-German problem did not, directly or indirectly, retard such a settlement. German and British policies on four continents are determined or conditioned by the mutual enmity and fear of these two powers. Because British policies and interests clash with German policies and interests, Europe is divided into two great groupings of nations, which during the past half decade have almost evenly balanced the military strength of the continent, and it has been the fear of disturbing this balance that has prevented the settlement of more than one grave political and economic and social question.”[2]'

(From the Introduction to The Anglo-German Commercial and Colonial Rivalry as a Cause of The Great War; by Oscar Albert Marti, M.A.; The Stratford Company, Publishers, 1917; pp. xiii-xiv).

From footnotes:

[1] “England with her long history of successful aggression, with her marvelous conviction that in persuing her interests she is spreading light among nations dwelling in darkness, and Germany, bone of the same bone, blood of the same blood, with a lesser force but perhaps a keener intelligence, compete in every corner of the globe. In the Transvaal, at the Cape, in Central Africa, in India and the East, in the islands of the South Sea, and in the far Northwest, wherever — and where has it not? — the flag has followed the Bible, there the German bagman is struggling with the English pedlar. Is there a mine to exploit, a railroad to build, a native to convert, from breadfruit to tinned meat, from temperance to trade gin, the German and the Englishman is struggling to be first. A million petty disputes build up the greatest cause of war the world has ever seen. If Germany were extinguished tomorrow there is not an Englishman in the world who would not be richer. Nations have fought for years over a city or right of succession. Must they not fight for two hundred fifty million pounds of commerce.” — Rohrbach, “German World Policies,” p. 180. Quoted from the “Saturday Review,” September, 1897.

[2] “Review of Reviews,” XLV, p. 281.

And from Chapter I of the same work (entitled, “The Colonial Ascendancy of Great Britain”):

'The tendency of the political development of the English People according to her own historians, and Anglophiles in general, has been one steady trend towards liberty and democracy. The English speaking people have regarded themselves as the torchbearers of that civilization which the world, at the first decade of the twentieth century, realized it had attained. From the standpoint of the Germans, however, England is viewed as the great robber state that, having taken advantage of the misfortunes of the other nations, gobbled up one-fifth of the land area of the habitable world and insists on holding possession, not by virtue of her power to defend, but by reason of her ability to bluff. Germany, also, regards herself as the heir presumptive to the colonial kingdom of the world. To her, England is a colossus with feet of iron mixed with miry clay; while Germany is the stone destined to smite the image on the feet, to its utter destruction, and eventually to become the great mountain that will fill the whole earth.' (ibid. p. 1).

(For other posts on the “Kings of the East” click on the link in the Index below).

Interlude: The Rise of Islam (Part II)

In Part I of this post, I wrote that: “one of Islam's major victories in the East: the capture of Constantinople, would be a part of a series of events, that would have a profound and revolutionary affect on Christianity in Western Europe...”

The main thrust of Islam into Europe after its defeat at the hands of Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in AD 732, was to be in the East – via its centuries long campaign against the Byzantium Empire – the eastern continuation of the Empire of Rome. After the Crusades, the Turks were delayed no further and rapidly advanced into Europe. Bulgaria fell in 1389; Salonica in 1430; Serbia in 1438; and Greece in 1446. In 1453, Constantinople finally fell to the armies of Islam.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), wrote the following concerning the Sixth Trumpet of the Apocalypse (which he believed symbolically heralded the rise of the Turks), and their eventual capture of Constantinople:

“The sixth trumpet [of the Apocalypse (Revelation 9:13)] sounded to the wars, which Daniel's King of the North made against the King [of the South]... In these wars the King of the North, according to Daniel, conquered the Empire of the Greeks, and also Judea, Egypt, Lybia, and Ethiopia: and by these conquests the Empire of the Turks was set up... These wars commenced A.C. [Anno Christi] 1258, when the four kingdoms of the Turks seated upon Euphrates... were invaded by the Tartars under Hulaeu, and driven into the western parts of Asia minor, where they made war upon the Greeks, and began to erect the present Empire of the Turks.... They slew the third part of men [i.e. in prophetic language – they captured a third part of the land area of the old Roman Empire], when they conquered the Greek Empire, and took Constantinople, A.C. 1453. and they began to be prepared for this purpose, when Olub-Arslan began to conquer the nations upon Euphrates, A.C. 1063. The interval is called an hour and a day, and a month and a year, or 391 prophetic days, which are years....” (From: Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John; published posthumously, London, 1733).

As a brief aside: the reprint of Newton's above work that I have, is an exact photographic duplicate of Thomas Jefferson's personal copy. In the 1991, Introduction to this facsimile edition, Arthur B Robinson writes the following:

“In 1988, having learned of this book in the rare books card catalogue of the Library of Congress, I asked to read it. I was astonished when, a few minutes later, I was handed Thomas Jefferson's personal copy. (The book is in excellent condition and has Thomas Jefferson's initials on pages 57 and 137. Two hundred and fifty years ago it was common practice for printers to label the page signatures with capital letters at the bottom of the actual text. Jefferson would turn to the 'J' signature and add a 'T' before the 'J' and then turn to the 'T' signature and add a 'J' after the 'T'. In this way he identified his personal books.)”

In the aforementioned quote, Newton writes: “The interval is called an hour and a day, and a month and a year, or 391 prophetic days, which are years....”, basing his calculation on the Protestant Reformers' Historicist interpretation of Bible prophecy. (In which – unlike the Futurist interpretation predominant in the Church today – these time periods are taken as being symbolic: where a day = a year; rather than being a literal time period. The Reformers' interpretation is based on, Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6). Francois du Jon, the Huguenot leader, lawyer, theologian and preacher, wrote thus:

“Daies is commonly taken as yeares, that God in this sort might shew the time to be short, and that the space of time is definitely set downe by Him in His counsaile. The daies must be reckoned for so many yeares, after the example of the Prophets Ezechiel and Daniel.”

Some Historicist interpreters see in the, “hour and a day, and a month and a year” time period given above, a far more accurate, “space of time... set downe by Him (God) in His counsaile”; for they point out, that in the Greek the word translated “year” in Revelation 9:15, is not used elsewhere in the biblical prophecies, and that a more exact translation would be, “that which returns into itself... a full year of three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days, in which time the solar orb returns to the same spot...”; rather than the traditional reckoning of the biblical year, as being a year consisting of three hundred and sixty days.

Using the above measurement, and deducting three days for every 130 years, to keep the Gregorian calendar accurate. And by reckoning, “an hour” as a twelfth part of a day, i.e. a twelfth of a prophetic year, or thirty days – for Christ says (bearing in mind the different method of reckoning time in Eastern lands): “Are there not twelve hours in the day?” (John 11:9); which would give the following figures:

A year = 365 years 91 days

A month = 30 years

A day = 1 year

An hour = 30 days

Less 3 days

A total of 396 years and 118 days.

On the 18th day of January, AD 1057, Togrul Beg and his Turkish cavalry crossed, “the great river Euphrates” to wage war on the Byzantium Empire. Exactly 396 years and 118 days later (to the very day, as ordained by God's word), on the 16th day of May, AD 1453, the prize of Constantine's city of “New Rome”, Constantinople, fell to the forces of Islam under the command of Mohammed II.

Now to move on to what I wrote near the beginning of this post (and at the end of Part I) when I stated that, “the capture of Constantinople, would be a part of a series of events, that would have a profound and revolutionary affect on Christianity in Western Europe...”

The following is quoted from the book, The Jeremiah Diagnosis (published by Highland Books, 2000) and written by Derek Frank – who at the time of its writing was the Anglican Chaplain of All Saints', Vevey with St Peter's, Château-d' Oex, in Switzerland. In the first chapter, he writes the following:

“With the eye of faith it is not hard to see the sovereign hand of God throughout the story of the sixteenth century Reformation... [With] the emergence of the Renaissance.... scholars were consciously living a 're-birth' of classical learning... Though certain classical authors had been known through the Middle Ages, the study of Greek had been almost unknown in Western Europe before 1400.”

Now, here's the part that I find so fascinating: continuing straight on from the above, Derek Frank writes the following:

“However, when in 1453 Constantinople was sacked by the Turks, its classical scholars fled westwards, taking their books with them. With the arrival of both Greek manuscripts and academics who could read them, came two things. One was the opening up of the rational ways of Greek thinking, which was to have such great upside and also such great downside for the Reformation. The other was the technique it brought of going back to the original text, to ask what it originally meant. It was this which was to be critical in Luther's seminal discovery that the Greek word dikaios, 'just', contained two meanings, 'justice' (actually being just) and 'justification' (being counted as just).”

In Revelation 10:1-2, immediately after the Turkish second “woe” of the Sixth Trumpet, there appeared to John a vision of a, “mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open...”: The “Open Bible” of the Reformation.

After the first “woe” of the opening of the “bottomless pit” in the Apocalypse, and its ensuing plague of symbolic “locusts”, Revelation 9:12, states: “One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter”. Having dealt with the second, or “Turkish” woe above; the last or Seventh Trumpet “woe”, was to be subdivided up into seven vials or bowls of wrath, that are poured out upon the earth.

Concerning the Sixth Vial which is: “poured out... upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up...”, in the explanatory notes of our family's Bible (which does not contain the year of its publication – but is inscribed with the year 1866), the following is stated about this vial:

“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!

All of the Ottoman provinces in North Africa passed into the hands of the European Powers before the outbreak of the First World War. France conquered Algeria 1830-47; Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881; in 1912 Morocco ceased being an independent sultanate and became French and Spanish protectorates; Libya was conquered by Italy in 1911; and Egypt was under British occupation from 1882.

It was in the dried up left overs of the Turkish Empire in the Balkans – with its ethnic mix and its imperfectly formed borders – that the shots that would throw the world into the horrors of the First World War were fired. Whilst touring Sarajevo, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand gang.

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.”

Borijove Jevtic, another 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.... 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!”

In the First World War, for the first time in human history, warfare's reign would no longer be confined to the land and the sea – for it claimed for itself a new realm in which to rage its rain of fire, death and destruction: that of the air.

“And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.” (Revelation 16:17)

Ferrar Fenton translates the proclamation as:

“It has come.”

Interlude: The Rise of Islam (Part I)

The Protestant Reformers were of the opinion that the prophecies of the Bible foretold of two great apostasies that would arise during the Christian era. They believed that the first great apostasy had, amazingly, arisen within the very body of the Christian Church itself; and concerning the second: they were overwhelmingly of the opinion that it had arisen within the fiery deserts of Arabia under the tutelage of the prophet Mohammed.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), in his, Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (published posthumously, London, 1733), wrote the following concerning Revelation 9, chapters 1-12:

'The fifth trumpet [of the Apocalypse heralded]... the opening of the bottomless pit, which denotes the letting out of a false religion: the smoke which came out of the pit, signifying the multitude which embraced that religion; and the locusts which came out of the smoke, the armies which came out of that multitude. This pit was opened, to let out smoke and locusts into the regions of the four monarchies... The King of these locusts was the Angel of the bottomless pit, being chief governor as well in religious as civil affairs, such as was the Caliph of the Saracens. Swarms of locusts often arise in Arabia fælix, and from thence infest the neighbouring nations: and so are a very fit type of the numerous armies of Arabians invading the Romans.'

The great Scottish specialist in oriental studies, Sir William Muir (1819-1905), who in 1888 delivered the Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge on the subject of The Early Caliphate and Rise of Islam, wrote the following in one of his classic historical works concerning the rise of Islam and its rapid conquests of its neighbouring lands:

'Onward and still onward like swarms from the hive, or flights of locusts darkening the land, tribe after tribe issued forth and hastening northward spread in great masses to the east and to the west.' (From: The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline and Fall).

Another historian, Herbert Adams Gibbons also uses the same descriptive language – he too likens the armies of Islam to an overwhelming swarm of locusts:

'Like locusts, the Osmanlis swarmed in all directions and no village missed their notice up to the very walls of Constantinople.' (The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Osmanlis up to the Death of Bayezid I, 1300-1403; first published 1916).

In AD 633, having raided Persia, the Arab armies – energised by the new faith of Mohammed, turned their attention to Syria – the eastern flank of the the empire of Rome. In AD 632, on the death of Mohammed, Caliph Abu Bakir – Mohammed's successor took charge. In his seminal work Edward Gibbon (1737-94) recounts Abu Bakir's eve-of-battle address to his troops:

'As soon as their numbers were complete, Abubeker [Abu Bakir] ascended the hill, reviewed the men, the horses, and the arms, and poured forth a fervent prayer for the success of their undertaking... “Remember”, said the successor of the prophet, “that you are always in the presence of God, on the verge of death, in the assurance of judgement, 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 field of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. When you make a covenant... 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 Mahometans or pay tribute.”' (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V).

In the Revelation the symbolic 'locusts' are given a command, which is opposite in nature, to the actions of the natural locusts that arise out of the deserts of Arabia.

'And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree...' (Revelation 9:4)

'Destroy no palm trees, nor burn any field of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees...' (Abu Bakir; op. cit.)

In Revelation 9:4 the symbolic 'locusts' are instead commanded (by their leader) to 'hurt... only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.'

'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...' (Abu Bakir; op. cit.)

In the Authorised (King James) Version the locusts are described as having 'the faces of men'; but in contrast to their manly (or bearded) faces they are described as having 'hair as the hair of women...' (Revelation 9:7-8).

Illustrative of the fact – that in contrast to the customary clean-shaven and short-haired Romans of that time – that the Arabs of Mohammed's day took great pride in their beards and long-flowing hair, are the following lines from the famous Arab poem 'Antar':

'He adjusted himself properly, twirling his whiskers, folded up his hair under his turban drawing it from off his shoulders...', and 'His hair flowed down his shoulders...'.

The NIV (New International Version) renders the Authorised Version's, 'the faces of men', as the gender-neutral: 'their faces resembled human faces'; and thus the contrast with 'their hair... (being) like women's hair', is somewhat obscured in this modern translation.

I have a copy of, The Unity of the Pentateuch: An Examination of the Higher Critical Theory as to the Composite Nature of the Pentateuch, 3rd Edition (1928), by the Rev A H Finn, (of whom, on the title page, we're informed, was, 'Lately Chaplain in Burma and India; at one time Hebrew Lecturer, Leeds Clergy School'). The preface to this work, is by the Right Rev H C G Moule, DD, Bishop of Durham – from which I quote the following:

'Not for a moment does [a book like this]... ask us, for example, to read the first few pages of the Bible with the assumption of a literalism which excludes the presence of symbol and of poetic phrase. But that is a wholly different matter from the other assumption that the majestic narratives [of the Bible] are little more than folk-lore cast into a certain form, or again are due to the halting and inconsistent editing of divers streams of tradition...'

In John Stott's Understanding the Bible, in a chapter on biblical interpretation, he writes:

'The serpent and the tree of life [from the biblical book of Genesis]... both reappear in the Book of Revelation, where they are clearly symbolical, the serpent representing Satan and the tree eternal life....

'In Romans 5:12-21... I have a biblical (New Testament) reason for believing that Adam and Eve were historical, and an equally biblical reason [from the Book of Revelation] for supposing that the serpent and the trees in the [Genesis] story may in some sense be meant to be figurative....'

Since the mid-part of the 19th century, the Protestant Historicist interpretation of the Revelation has sharply fallen out of favour: the overwhelmingly predominant interpretation found in most churches nowadays, is that of the Futurist version – where nearly all of the apocalyptic imagery, and all of the time-periods, are interpreted in a literal fashion.

The following quotes dealing with the 'locusts' of the Apocalypse (from a book with 'NEVER BEFORE so crystal-clear and current an explanation of the last book of the Bible' emblazoned on its front cover) are typical of this now predominant school of interpretation:

'Locusts thrive by devouring rapaciously that which grows and is green; but here these Infernal Locusts will not eat grass or tree leaves. They will, rather, sting and bite humans as do mosquitos. Yet amid the seemingly indiscriminate biting done by these, there is an unseen discrimination! They will in some divine way not be able to bite those who have been sealed.... These locusts shall be armed with the fearful sting of a scorpion. Those on earth will certainly be in torment with such creatures roving....

'These “locusts” may be of the insect or animal variety. Or they may be men... perhaps an army being unleashed from an underground complex.... There already has been invented a flying jet belt. When worn it can fly men at various speeds and altitudes. These men can carry a cylinder on their back which can emit a chemical substance from their exhaust openings. If one of the biological chemicals were used – from this tail area could be sprayed a substance which could cause painful stings.' (From: Revelation Visualized, by Dr Gary G Cohen and Salem Kirban, Future Events Publications, Chattanooga, TN, USA, 1981).

This overtly literal school of biblical interpretation has not confined itself solely to the last book of the Bible - it has also had an immense influence on the interpretation of the Creation account found in the biblical book of Genesis (especially within the United States). But it was not always so – as Dr E K Victor Pearce informs us:

'It is admitted by the present 24-hour Day protagonists that the founders of Creation Science were mostly advocates of Day Periods of unspecified length for the days of Genesis. These founders named their organisation The Evolution Protest Movement. It was founded in 1932 by Sir Ambrose Fleming, a famous scientist. He was joined by other scientists who were Christians. That was the time I joined. Much later, the chairman of the movement, D.T. Rosevear with his committee, renamed the organisation Creation Science Movement, which was better and a more positive title but unfortunately they adopted an exclusive Young Earth policy of 24-hour creation days.

'In his explanation in the Creation Journal, the chairman admits that most of their founders were period-day advocates and he gives their names: Dr Merson Davies, D. Dewar, Professor F.A. Filby, Dr R.E.D. Clark, Walter Beasley and Professor Rendle-Short. The astonishing news is that now the movement only propagates Young Earth theories. It does not allow on its platform anyone who believes that the days were long periods of time. Anyone who holds this opinion is rigorously condemned even though he is a creationist. This greatly harms the effectiveness of the movement and allows the entrance of some serious inaccuracies. My prayer is that they will return to the original policy. This will honour the founders and concentrate on the essentials of God's truth.' (From, Evidence for Truth: The Origin and Destiny of Life, Eagle Publishing, 2001).

I have read an opinion that the two books of the Bible that Satan most hates are Genesis and the Revelation. During the last century and a half, the Historicist interpretation of the Revelation has been overwhelmingly superseded by that of the Futurist school.

So that rather than encompassing the whole of the Church Age (commencing from shortly after their delivery; Rev. 1:1, 'things which must shortly come to pass') the prophecies leading up to the Second Coming have now - by means of the Futurist interpretation - been 'compacted', so that the vast majority of the prophecies of the Revelation are now only applied to a literal seven year (sometimes three and a half year) period at the close of this age.

A not too dissimilar scenario also applies to Genesis, where again the interpretation (in the majority case) is 'compacted', and, is in the main, now confined to a literal 24-hour day; six day creation period.

In Part II of this post (to follow at a later date) I'll delve into the startling fact that one of Islam's major victories in the East: the capture of Constantinople, would be a part of a series of events, that would have a profound and revolutionary affect on Christianity in Western Europe...

In it I'll quote once more from Sir Isaac Newton's writings - this time concerning the Sixth Trumpet of the Apocalypse; which he believed represented the second phase in the conquests of Islam - which recommenced with the conversion of the Ottoman Turks to the new faith that had been revealed unto Mohammed... and which burned relentlessly outwards from the fiery heat of Arabia in its fierce desire to consume the world...