SYNOPSIS: The seven trumpets of Revelation 8 and 9 have been shown to be symbols of war, referring definitely to the mighty irruptions from the barbaric hordes that swept over the Roman Empire, dethroning her from the position of proud mistress of nations.
The first trumpet symbolized the wars waged by the renowned Alaric and his victorious Goths. Hail, fire, and blood falling upon the earth is the prophetic description. Rome was pillaged, was humbled in the dust. The fulfillment of the second trumpet is found in the conquests of Italy and Africa by the Vandals under the terrible Genseric.
The third trumpet was fulfilled by the Huns under the leadership of Attila, called the "scourge of God." The fourth trumpet signified the career of Odoacer, leader of the Heruli and other tribes, and completed the downfall of Western Rome, putting an end to the rule of the Cæsars. Rome was now broken into fragments, and the modern nations of western Europe were planted.
WHILE western Europe, occupied by new nations, and infused with a new blood, had received a further lease of life, in the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, the same process of apostasy which had caused the ruin of the western empire was ripening into political and social decay.
"Since its baneful triumph under Constantine, the eastern Christian church had rapidly degenerated. Worldliness and pagan customs had taken possession of it; sectarianism and religious strife had smothered charity; the violent persecutions of the Christian emperors had exasperated the people who still held to the old [pagan] faith; and finally the simple and sanctifying religion of the first three centuries, or, in other words, worship in spirit and in truth, had given room to a mass of superstitious practices, of acts of veneration to the virgin, the saints, the martyrs, and their images."—Vulliet, "History of the Church," page 103.
"As regards morality, the Greek empire had made little progress since the times of Arcadius. The scepter passed into the hands of a succession of usurpers, many of whom owed their rank to crime and even parricide. The people, depraved by the example of its sovereigns, were made up of a half-pagan mass, only superficially changed by the teachings of Jesus Christ, their devotions consisting only in ceremonies, where the cross was everywhere in evidence, but the religion of the cross almost unseen. . . . The principal object of worship was the virgin Mary, honored in splendid processions, and adored in her images, above all by the population of the convents. . . .
Crumbling to Its Fall
"The court cultured, superstitious, and vile, the people ingenious and degraded, having a taste for art but devoid of genius; minds bowed down by the absolute power of the state on the one hand, and under the tyranny of the ecclesiastical power on the other,— such was the condition, at this time, of the Greek church.' . . . The pulpit uttered only grandiloquent and empty declamations on the virtues and the miracles of the saints, which led Alexis Comnenus to remark that if the nations living in his empire were profoundly ignorant of religion, it was because those who should teach them were either incapable or did not care. . . .
"The empire of Byzantium was . . . more than ever . . . a prey to the same languid condition, the same disorganization, which had formerly hastened the fall of the empire of the west. All kinds of despotism were heavy upon the unfortunate Greeks. Jews, Nestorians, Monophysites, dissenters of all classes, exposed to all kinds of vexations and persecutions, had not only lost their interest in defending the country against invaders, but longed for a new régime of whatever sort. In this situation, let this decrepit empire be the object of a sudden attack on the part of an impetuous nation, filled with the ardor of youth and with religious and military enthusiasm, and marked by a simplicity of life which the Greek had lost long ago,— and the result of the encounter will not be doubtful."—Chastel, "Hist. du Christianisme," volume 3, pages 13, 34, 35.
This is exactly what took place under the Arabian invasion, of which a graphic description is given, five hundred years before it began, in the language of the fifth trumpet. The splendid imagery of this prophetic description is universally recognized among interpreters as a fit picture of the Saracenic or Arabian conquests in the eastern, southern, and southwestern portions of the Roman world.
"And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven fall unto the earth: and there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss." Rev. 9: 1.
In the third trumpet, "a great star" had fallen "upon the third part of the rivers." This was Attila and his hordes, who covered "the third part" of the empire. Here the "star" falls indefinitely "upon the earth," east and west. And while Attila and his empire were to vanish as a meteor, the new conquerors were to continue "five months," or, as we shall see, one hundred fifty years. But in either case, the new masters of the world were to be led out by a great war genius called a star.
Mohammed, the founder of the Mohammedan power, appears not only as one of the great empire builders of history, but also as the originator of a new religion, which to-day claims the respect of one hundred eighty millions of adherents.
"And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." Verse 2.
"The pit of the abyss" designates the wild and barren regions of the Arabian deserts. The original word here is the one used elsewhere in the Scriptures to describe the earth in its chaotic condition before creation, and after the great earthquake at the second coming of Christ. See Gen. 1: 2 and Rev. 20: 3, where thehôm in the Hebrew and abussos in the Greek are translated "deep" and "abyss." The "key," or power to arouse their slumbering populations, is "given" to Mohammed.
"Roaming across their deserts [italics ours] and plains, with no social, political, or religious bond, the Arabian tribes consumed their strength in meaningless and bloody discussions. . . . They seemed to be condemned to an eternal sleep, when there appeared a man who was to change the face of the world. Legislator, warrior, and prophet, Mohammed . . . was to make out of these disorganized, nomadic tribes a people who should march to the conquest of the world; and out of a chaos of superstitions, a new religion whose devotees would cause the West to tremble for several centuries."—De la Jonquiere, "History of the Ottoman Empire," pages 63, 64.
Gross Immoralities Glorified
"The smoke of a great furnace" that darkens the sun and the air, clearly designates the false religion of Islam, which seeks to obliterate Jesus Christ as the Sun of Righteousness7and "the Light of the world." "The essence of Mohammedanism is to repudiate Christianity — that is, the system of religion of which Christ is the center — and to substitute a system in which Mohammed holds a place next to God Himself. Our Lord is allowed [by the doctrine of Islam] to have been a holy man, a messenger from God; but His place as the object of man's worship, love, and hope is denied Him. His miraculous conception and birth are denied."
"Islamism," says a Mohammedan doctor, "rests on five foundations, of which the first is the confession of God, that there is no other God beside Him, and that Mohammed is His prophet; the second is the offering up of prayer at stated intervals; the third, the giving of alms; the fourth, fasting during the month Ramadan; and the fifth is the pilgrimage664to Mecca, which every person must perform who is able." In vain do we look here for a true appreciation of sin, for an atonement for God's broken law, for God's pardoning love, for the grace of regeneration. Prayer, almsgiving, and fasting — not faith — become the means of salvation.
A great part of the Koran is said to be nonsense, while some of it is grossly immoral and profane. Polygamy is allowed to the extent of four wives, while the caliph is permitted to choose as many as he wishes. Friday is made the day of rest, at the expense of the day of Jehovah.
As redeeming features, the Koran forbids the use of wine and swine flesh, and the worship and the veneration of images of any kind — a threefold protest against the abuses of Eastern and Western Christianity. Fatalism was used as a mighty factor in war, while Paradise was promised to every one who fell in battle, and Paradise is described as a place for the enjoyment of all the scale of sensual pleasures.
The Secret of Their Invincible Ardor
"And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power." Verse 3.
It was the smoke, or false religion, of the Arabian prophet which made warriors of his believers. It was in the name of Allah that the Mussulman hordes started upon the conquest of the world. It was the promise that those who should fall in war would go straight to Paradise which infused the Arabs with such invincible ardor in their battles. In his testament, Mohammed said: "Finish my work, extend everywhere the empire of Islam. The earth belongs to God; to you He offers it."
"Fight," he said, "even to extermination. Some few among you will fall in the struggle. For those who perish, Paradise; for the survivors, victory." "The Mussulman," says the Koran, "is a soldier in the service of God; he enrolls himself by conscience; the handling of arms is for him a religious duty."
With admirable fitness, the Saracen invaders are compared to locusts. "The inhabitants of Syria," wrote Volney, "have noticed that locusts generally come from the deserts of Arabia." We read the same fact in Ex. 10: 13. To the summons of the caliph, the king of Persia made this bold answer: "What leads you to make war upon us? . . . What are you but a nation of paupers scattered like vile insects [italics mine] upon the sand?" (Lamartine's "History of Turkey," volume 1, page 125.)
Conquered 36,000 Towns
"And power was given them" by the One who overrules human events, and whose decrees are beyond all human resistance. Mohammed called himself "the sword of God." The first battle in the Mohammedan conquest occurred in 623; in 630, war upon the Roman Empire was solemnly declared. Mohammed died two years later, and "was succeeded by Abu-Bekr, the father of his favorite wife Aisha. . . . Within thirty years from his death, his followers had conquered the whole of Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and had overthrown the empire of the Persians.
"The second of his four great successors, Caliph Omar, took Jerusalem in the year 637, and built on the site of the temple the mosque which has since been called by his name. It was he also who, three years afterward, destroyed the great library of Alexandria, declaring that no books were needed beside the Koran. 'During the reign of Omar,' says the Mohammedan historian, 'the Saracens conquered 36,000 cities, towns, and castles, destroyed four thousand Christian, Magian, and pagan temples, and erected fourteen hundred mosques.'"
"The third caliph, Othman, . . . extended the conquests of Omar, and with them the new religion. Persia was entirely subdued; the north of Africa, and some of the islands in the Mediterranean, . . . almost the whole of Asia [Asia Minor excepted], was subdued during the time of the first four caliphs; and in the reign of the caliph of Damascus [A. D. 675], the empire penetrated as far as Tangier and the Atlantic. A few years later, the entire north of Africa was part of the empire, as far as the straits of Gibraltar.
Swept from Persian Gulf to Atlantic
"In 711, Spain, on the north of those straits, was successfully invaded by the Arab conquerors, who retained possession of that part of Europe until 1492. Under Solyman, the greater part of Asia Minor was conquered — that is, in A. D. 717; . . . and about the same time, the northern parts of India were subdued. The armies had even penetrated into the south of France; and it was not until the defeat of Abdur Rahman by Charles Martel in 732 that there seemed any hope of preventing what Mohammed had directed his followers to accomplish — the subjugation of the whole world to his rule and religion. . . . For some centuries, the empire founded on the basis of this religion [italics mine] covered as large a surface of the globe as the Roman Empire had done in the most prosperous days of the Cæsars." ("Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," article "Mohammed.")
Summing up this whole conquest, a historian says: "One hundred years after the birth of this Arab Mohammed, his name, joined to that of the Almighty, was called out from ten thousand minarets, five times daily, from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic, and his new religion was sweeping everything before it in three continents."
