The water of the Euphrates represents the people or power ruling by it. When anciently the Assyrians dwelt by that river and were about to invade Israel, the prophet said, "The Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria." Isa. 8:7. The waters of the Euphrates meant the Assyrian power.
Just so in this prophecy, the river stands for the people. As the Nile stood for Egypt, and the Tiber for Rome, so in all modern times the Euphrates has stood for Turkey. The "drying up" of the Euphrates must mean the ending of the Turkish power. And in the verses immediately following, Revelation pictures the gathering of the nations of the whole world to Armageddon—"the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Following Turkey's end comes the final clash of nations. The earth quakes, the cities of the nations fall, and the last judgments of God come upon a warring world.
Here, as in Daniel 12, is pictured a time of trouble for the nations such as never was, and the end of the world, when the power ruling in Syria, by the Euphrates, comes to its end.
The Approaching End
For years statesmen and observers have discussed the approaching dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers in Turkey have reported that thoughtful Turkish people held the conviction that the crisis of their nation was near at hand. Years ago Mr. Charles MacFarlane wrote:
"The Turks themselves seem generally to be convinced that their final hour is approaching. 'We are no longer Mussulmans,—the Mussulman saber is broken,—the Osmanlis will be driven out of Europe by the gaiours, and driven through Asia to the regions from which they first sprang. It is Kismet! We cannot resist destiny!' I heard words to this effect from many Turks, as well in Asia as in Europe."—"Kismet; or the Doom of Turkey" (London, 1853), p. 409.
A later Turkish traveler, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, says:
"Ancient prophecy and modern superstition alike point to the return of the Crescent into Asia as an event at hand, and to the doom of the Turks.... A well-known prediction to this effect, which has for ages exercised its influence on the vulgar and even on the learned Mohammedan mind,... places the scene of the last struggle in northern Syria, at Homs, on the Orontes. Islam is then finally to retire from the north, and the Turkish rule to cease. Such prophecies often work their own fulfilment."—"Future of Islam," p. 95.
Thus native tradition and human forebodings have contemplated the break-up of the Turkish power, as the course of the years has witnessed the shrinkage of its territory and the ever-increasing difficulty of its position.
Now and then there has been a renewal of Turkey's vigor and prestige; then again its situation has been rendered yet more precarious. It has been a buffer between the clashing interests of the great powers. Speaking of Turkey's difficult position in this respect, the London Fortnightly Review, May, 1915, expressed a common view thus: