Is not this a wonderful combination of symbols which can be carried out with surprising accuracy? What human ingenuity could have ever contrived such a marvelous series of events, and described them under such appropriate symbols? Finally, let me ask, Where in the whole compass of universal history can be found another series of events so perfectly meeting every requirement of the symbols? In this we must acknowledge the hand of God.
12. One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.
This announcement, that one woe is past, meaning that the period of one hundred and fifty years during which the Saracens were to continue their conquests has ended, serves an important purpose in enabling us to fix the chronology of the events described. It proves that they succeed each other.
13. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
14. Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.
15. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
16. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.
17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.
18. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.
19. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.
20. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
21. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.
At the sounding of the sixth trumpet, or the second woe trumpet, a voice is heard from the four horns (all the horns) of the golden altar. This probably denotes that the very same altar where incense was offered up to God with the prayers of all saints was now crying out to him for vengeance upon an apostate church. That church had reached the summit of apostasy and iniquity, the virgin Mary, the saints, and thousands of idols in the form of miserable relics being worshiped more than God. Because of these abominable idolatries, a voice is heard crying from the golden altar for the avenging judgments of Heaven, which were the loosing of the four angels bound in the river Euphrates. The symbols of this vision are also of peculiar character and drawn from different departments. We have four angels bound in the Euphrates, an immense army of horsemen, then a large number of horses with heads as of lions, and fire, smoke, and brimstone issuing from their mouths. The horses thus particularly described are evidently intended to have a definite symbolical signification, and being objects of nature, they would indicate a political or military power. The horsemen, being objects from human life, would point us to some religious body; while the angels signify the leaders that have control of these agencies. Their being commissioned "to slay the third part of men" show that they will overthrow some of the established institutions of society. We are to look, therefore, for some politico-religious power that should invade and overthrow the empire. We are, of course, directed to the Eastern empire; for the Western division was subverted under the symbols of the first four trumpets. With these specifications before us, we shall have no difficulty in identifying the power intended—the Turkish, or Ottoman, empire. Its agreement with the symbolic representations of the vision will be manifest from a statement of the facts of history.
"The Turks were of Tartar or Scythian origin, from the northern regions of Asia, whence also the Huns hived upon Europe during the fourth and fifth centuries. The latter passed to the north of the Black sea from Russia, and swept the regions of the Danube and the Rhine. The Turks, passing to the east of the same, fell upon the empire from that quarter. They took possession of Armenia Major in the ninth century, where they increased, and in the space of two hundred years became a formidable power, being at the end of this period combined into four Sultanies, the heads of which were at Bagdad, Damascus, Aleppo, and Iconium. The first of these was erected A.D. 1055; the two next A.D. 1079, and the last A.D. 1080—all of them within twenty-five years, and the three last within two."
These four Sultanies are doubtless signified by "the four angels" that were bound in the river Euphrates. The Euphrates here is employed as a symbol, not of the Turks themselves—for the horsemen are their symbol, as we shall see—but of the binding of the angels. The use of this word as a symbol is derived from a fact of history, being the object, according to Herodotus, that kept Cyrus back from entering the city of Babylon. While the Persian monarch surrounded the walls of that ancient metropolis of the Babylonian empire, with his army, he was held in restraint by the river Euphrates; and it was not until he had diverted its waters into an artificial channel that he gained an entrance. So, also, these Sultanies, or leaders of the Turks, were held under restraint as if bound by the river Euphrates, until the time appointed for them to go forth on their mission of conquest. Different causes held them back. For a long time they were involved in fierce and almost continuous wars with the neighboring Tartar tribes on the east and the north, and at the same time the Crusaders of Europe were carrying on a determined war with the Saracens for the possession of the Holy Land. For two centuries the armies of Christendom poured into Syria and Palestine to recover from the hands of the "infidels," as they were called, the holy sepulchre and the country that gave birth to Christianity; but when Europe finally abandoned the project, then went forth the command to loose the four angels, "which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of man." To kill men symbolically, I have already shown, signifies the destruction either of an empire as a political body or of the church (that is, the so-called church) as a religious body. The locusts under the fifth trumpet were to do neither; but the symbolic characters of this vision are "to slay the third part of men," by which is set forth the fall and subjugation of the Eastern empire and church; just as, under the fifth trumpet, the fall of the Western empire was described by the darkening of a third part of the sun, moon, and stars.