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| Home ¬ Previous Page ¬ THE SYMBOLS OF THE FIFTH TRUMPET ANALTYZED TO SHEW THE ORIGIN OF THE FIRST | ||||||||
I now proceed, as proposed, to the consideration of the symbols of the fifth Trumpet vision. It was a vision portending woe, as we are told, to the Roman earth and its apostatized inhabitants; and what the woe, and whence, and how originating, was all to be found intimated, if I mistake not, and this not indistinctly, in the description following.
"The fifth angel sounded: and I saw a star fallen' from the heaven to the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit: and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace. And there came out of the pit locusts upon the earth. And unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle. And on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold.
And their faces were as the faces of men: and they had hair as the hair of women: and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breast-plates, as it were breast-plates of iron: and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions; and there were stings in their tails. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads."
The quotation above given includes all the chief emblems of the vision: and in them an intimation as to the origin of this woe to Christendom, both as respects the people commissioned, their new and false religion, their commission to destroy, and their primary prophet and leader. These I propose to discuss in the present Section: reserving for another what remains of the prophecy; as it had relation chiefly to the subsequent progress and history of the emblematic locusts.
I And first, as to the country and people whence it was to originate; a point this for which the Section preceding, will have prepared us. For while, by the admixture of human similitude's in the hieroglyphic with the bestial, it was shewn that men were the destined scourge, not literal wild beasts, as in some of the ancient prophecies, there, was further indicated, as I feel persuaded, and in the manner illustrated by the examples in that Section, the very country and people intended.
Thus in regard of the animal resemblances. As the ground-work of these, if I may so say, in the hieroglyphic, there appeared the locust: with the following marked peculiarities, however, that it was in look movement and sound like the horse, in teeth like a lion, and in the tail and poison-sting like a scorpion. Now the qualities of the invaders thus prefigured were obvious. The locust-form indicated their swarming in numbers numberless;1 their being in their migratory progress rapid, far-ranging, and irresistible ; and moreover, except from some special preventive check, such as in this case, the prophecy foretold, would be actually given, being wide wasters of the herbage and vegetation.
The horse-like appearance seemed to imply that they would be hordes of cavalry; the likeness to the lion, that they would be savage destroyers of life; and the scorpion likeness, that of the men in Roman Christendom whose lives they spared, they would be the tormentors, even as with a scorpion's poison sting. All this, I say, seems obvious. But, passing this for the present, let us look to we, as suggested, what the local or national indications contained in these animal symbols. On doing we shall find, I doubt not, that they pointed the Evangelist and that not obscurely, to Arabia and the Arabs.
First, and chiefly, the locust, the ground-work of the symbol, is peculiarly Arabic. So the sacred history of ancient times informs us." It was the east wind, it say which brought the locusts" on Egypt from which inference arises, that the country they issued from must have been that which, in all its extent, lies east of Egypt, that is Arabia. Such too, in modern times, is the testimony of Volney "the most judicious," as Gibbon calls him, "of Syrian travelers."
The inhabitants of Syria he observes, "have remarked that locusts come constantly from the desert of Arabia." Lebruyn, from the convent at Rama, gives the same report, and the Moorish writer Leo Africanus, from western part of North Africa, one not dissimilar. Besides that the very name for locust, and similarity of names is a thing not unattended to, as we have seen, in scripture symbols, I say the very word for locust might almost to an Hebrew suggest Arab: the names of the one and of the other being in pronunciation and in radicals not dissimilar; of the locust (arbeh), of an Arab (arbi). And indeed the locust-simile is one used in other and earlier scriptures, with its usual appropriateness, to designate the numbers and character of an invading Arab horde.
Again as of the locust, so of the scorpion, the native locality was by the Jews considered the Arabian desert. Witness Moses' own words to. the Israelites, on emerging from it after forty years wandering; "that great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery serpents and scorpion."
And who know not, if facts so notorious be worth mentioning, that it is Arabia, still Arabia, that is regarded by natural iota as the original country of the horse; "and that its wildernesses are the haunts also of the lion? The Zoology of the hieroglyphic is all Arabian:
Next as to what was human in the appearance of the symbolic locusts: viz. their faces as the faces of men, their hair as the hair (the long hair) of women, with crowns as of gold on their heads, (or, it might be, adorned turbans,) and breast-plates like iron breast-plates. The qualities and character indicated, are here too sufficiently plain. There was indicated man-like courage, but united apparently with effeminate licentiousness; a combination somewhat singular: also invulnerability in war, and I did and constant victory.
But, for the present, we would wish chiefly to inquire into is, here as before, the local significance of these features in the symbol; and whether any, and what particular nation, might seem to be figured by them. For in cases like this, as we have seen, the portraiture may be generally supposed to be drawn from life: and, considering all the particulars specified, it is assuredly very characteristic and distinctive. Applying this test then, by what is said of the faces as faces men, (i. e. with beard or moustache,) the Goths and other kindred barbarian tribes are set aside: the faces of these being very singularly noticed by a cotemporary of their earliest incursions, I mean Jerome, as having faces shaven and smooth ; faces, in contrast with the bearded Romans, "like women's faces.
Again, while from the usual habits of both Greeks and Romans in the empire, that which is perhaps most remarkable in the described appearance, viz. the hair as the hair of women (not to add the turban headcovering also) was abhorrent 2 there were two great neighboring nations, and I think but two,3 with whose national costume and habits both these and the other points of description well suited; I mean the Persians and the Arabs. Of the Persians, alike in the earlier times of their history and the later, the appearance is nearly thus represented, both by historians, and Urn ancient coins and the bas-reliefs still remaining.4 And of the Arabs, of whom I must speak more fully, as being the people indicated apparently by the points previously considered of the hieroglyphic, of them descriptions are given yet more exactly agreeing with that before us.
Pliny, St. John's cotemporary at the close of the first century, speaks of the Arabs as wearing the turban, having the hair long and uncut, with the moustache on the upper lip, or the beard; that "venerable sign of manhood," as Gibbon, in Arab phraseology calls it. So Solinus describes them in the third century; so Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth: so Claudian, Theodore of Mopsuesta, and Jerome,' in the fifth: of the last of which writers the acquaintance with the people he wrote of must have been most familiar; as he passed most of the latter years of his life at Bethlehem, on the borders of the Arab desert.
This was about two centuries before the great Saracen irruption. Yet once more, in the age immediately preceding that irruption, and which indeed included Muhammad's childhood, the same personal portraiture is still given of the Arab. In that most characteristic of Arab poems, Antar, a poem Composed at the time I speak of, we find the moustache and the beard, the long hair flowing on the shoulder, and the turban also, all specified.5 And let me add, in regard to turban-crown, it happens very singularly that Ezekiel (13:42) describes the turbans of the Sabaen or Keturite6 Arabs under this precise appellation; "Sabaeans from the wilderness, which put beautiful crowns upon their heads" and, still as singularly, that even the. perhaps hinted resemblance of them in the vision to crowns, or diadems, (they being spoken of as like gold) is one that has been made by the Arabs themselves. Of the four peculiar things that they were wont in a national proverb to specify bestowed by God upon the Arabs, the first was that their turbans should be to them instead of diadems. 7
The testimonies thus quoted refer to three out of the four points of personal appearance noted in the vision. And on the fourth, that of the locusts appearing breastplated with iron, both Antar, the Koran, and the history of Muhammad and the early Moslem Saracens, will also satisfy us. In Antar the steel or iron cuirasses of the Arab warriors are frequently noticed. 8
In the Koran, among God's gifts to the Arabs, their coats of mail for defense are specially particularized.9 And in Muhammad's history we read expressly of the cuirasses of himself and his troops.10 Individual Arabs, no doubt, like the one more early noted by Ammianus Marcellinus,11 might not seldom astound the foe by their "naked bravery."12 And hence by some, it has been fancied the general habit. But the Saracen policy was the wearing of defensive armour. The breast-plate of iron was a feature of description literally answering, like the three others, to the Arab warriors of the 6th or 7th century.
Thus, on the whole, the country whence the woe was to originate might seem almost fixed, by these concurrent symbols, to Arabia. And, turning from prophecy to history, if we ask whether there was then, about the times of Heraclius, and the opening of the seventh century, any correspondingly destructive irruption of Arabs on Roman Christendom, the agreement of fact with the prediction is so far notorious. A mighty desolating locust-like Arab, or Saracen13 invasion, is the chief topic of the history of that century. 14
II. But it is further said of the locusts prefigured, that they issued out of the smoke of the bottomless pit, or pit of the abyss; the pit having been just opened previously, and the smoke ascending thereupon, out of it, as the smoke of a great furnace. What might this mean? And does it apply to the origin of the Saracen invader's just mentioned? The point is one strongly marked in the hieroglyphic, and evidently most important.
The word , abyss, answers in the Septuagint most generally to the Hebrew. It is the same word that is used of the deep on which the primeval darkness rested, in Gen 1:2; and which seems to signify, most properly, that depth or hollow of the earth which is the bed of the ocean-waters, though often used also of those waters themselves.15 By an easy extension or change of meaning, it came to signify sometimes that deeper depth, in which opinion, if not Scripture, placed the receptacle of the departed; at least of the departed wicked. So it is used, for instance, in Ezek. 31:17, where it is rendered hell by our translators; "They went down into hell with him, unto them that be slain with the sword;" and it is thus connected with the supposed habitation, or rather destined habitation,16
of evil spirits.In the New Testament this seems to be the more general use of the word. In Luke 8:31, the abyss into which the devils entreated that they might not be sent, seems directly contrasted with the sea into which they precipitated the swine, immediately after entering and possessing them. And in Revelation, passing over those two passages that speak of the Beast from the abyss, in chapters 11 and 17, where its meaning might seem more equivocal, there remains that other at the beginning of chap. 20, in which the sense of the word, as signifying the prison place of evil spirits, can scarcely be mistaken; I mean that in which an angel that had the key of the abyss, is described as seizing the Devil, that old serpent, and casting him into the abyss, and there sealing him up. In the present case the word pit, ("pit of the abyss,") that is added, confirms this as the meant, For it signifies evidently an opening in the earth, a shaft of communication, as it were, between the earth and the infernal region beneath.
And it is yet more confirmed by the notice of the smoke, as of a great furnace, ascending from it. For in very case in Scripture, where the smoke as of a furnace is described as rising from out of, or from beneath the earth,17 the context shews that it is the smoke of penal fire. So in the case of Sodom; so in that predicted of the mystic Edom in Isaiah; so in that of the Apocalyptic Babylon. Thus, on the whole, the observer could scarce be mistaken in interpreting this smoke from the pit of the abyss as an emanation from the pit of hell: i. e. as some system of error and false religion thence originate originating, it would seem, all on a sudden; and of h the effect would be, almost instantaneously, to darken the moral atmosphere, and dim the imperial sun in the firmamental heaven.
Which being the thing predicted, we have again to recur to history, and to inquire, 1st, whether, about the opening of the seventh century, there arose any hellish and false religion in Arabia, in its manner of development sudden, and in strength such as almost at once to darken Christendom; 2ndly, whether it was out of it that the Arab invaders before-mentioned issued forth to be a woe to the Roman world.
And to both of these questions who knows not the answers? Who knows not of the sudden rise of Islam in Arabia, just at the very time we speak of: that most extraordinary invention of fanaticism and fraud which being, as it was, from beginning to end a lie, in its pretensions superseding the Gospel the Lord Jesus, in its doctrines inculcating views of the blessed God dark, cruel, and unholy, and in its morals a system of pride, ferocity, superstition, sensualism, indicated too well to any one that had eyes to see, that it had indeed its origin from hell, and was an emanation, like the pestilential smoke in the vision, from the pit of the abyss?
Again, who knows not the fact that it was after embracing Islamism that the Saracen cavalry hordes burst forth in fury on Roman Christendom; and yet more, that they were imbued from this very source with the qualities that the symbols in the vision indicated? For there is indeed a perfect fitness in the representation of the symbolic locusts as issuing forth, all formed in character, out of the smoke from the pit of the abyss. It was the religion of Muhammad in fact, that made the Arabs what they were.18
It was this that for the first time united them as one, in numbers countless as the locusts; this that gave them the locust-like impulse to speed forth as its propagandists over the world ; this which imparted to them, as to lions of the desert, the irresistible destroying fury of fanaticism;19 this, further, which, in case of their conquering the provinces of Christendom, as I shall notice in the next Section more at large, had already prepared in them a scorpion-like venom of contempt and hatred, wherewith to torment the subject Christian: that added sensualism to their ferocity; suggesting indulgence of their lusts in life, and bidding them look and fight for a heaven of lust beyond it. So that here, too, there was no one point in which the Saracen character and history did not answer to the prophetic emblems. It was the same
Thirdly in respect of the commission said to be given to the Apocalyptic locusts: the positive commission, to hurt the men that had not the seal of God on their foreheads; the negative, not to hurt the grass or trees. For, as regards the former, what do we read in the Koran but that Muhammad understood and declared his mission to be against idolaters; and that he urged his Saracen followers against the men of Roman Christendom, as being of the number? 20
Again, as regards the latter, the very restriction that in the prophecy was put on the destroying career of the locusts,----" It was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth,' neither any green thing, neither any tree," had its precise counterpart "in the Koran. The often-quoted order of the Caliph Abu Bakr, issued to the Saracen hordes on their first invasion of Syria, " Destroy no palm-trees, nor any fields of corn, cut down no fruit trees, nor do any mischief to cattle," was an order originating not from the individual character of the Caliph, but from the precept of Muhammad.21 It was dictated to hint, not by motives of mercy, but of policy. And its policy was soon evidenced, in the rapid formation of flourishing kingdoms out of the countries conquered by the Saracens; a formation that but for this could never have been accomplished. But what I wish here to impress on the reader's mind is its distinctiveness, as a characteristic of the Saracens. For let him but mark the direct contrast that they herein presented to other conquests and conquerors.
For example, in the invasions of the Goths, Huns, and Vandals, the desolation of the trees and herbage was a striking feature.22 The desert places, that abounded in the provinces conquered by them were long a memorial of it.23 Hence in the Apocalyptic prediction of the Goths, the wasting of the vegetation by them is made a distinct feature of prophecy; in that of the Saracen, now before us, there is the foreshowing of the direct reverse. 24
IV. But who, or what, that fallen star to whom the key was given wherewith to open the abyss? Hem is a difficulty that by some has been thought almost fatal to the Saracen solution. Various indeed, as Dr. Hales remarks, "have been the queries of commentators (i.e. a. of those who agree in our general view of the vision) concerning this star." By some it has been interpreted of Nestorius with reference to his heresy that prevailed at that time in Syria and the countries adjacent; by some of Sergius, a Nestorian monk, who is said, but on doubtful authority, to have furnished religious instruction to Muhammad.
Mede explains it of Satan: Lowman (almost always unhappy in his explanations) of an angel from heaven; the opener of the pit of the abyss on this occasion, as he was the sealer up of Satan in it at the commencement of the Millennium afterwards: Pareus, Willet, and, after them, Cuninghame, Faber, and others, of the Bishop of Rome, as being then completely fallen into apostasy: Keith of Chosroes, king of Persia; as having by his fall, consequent on the victories of Heraclius, removed the obstacle of effective Persian resistance, and so opened the way to the successes of the Saracens quickly following. On the other hand Daubuz, Bishop Newton, and Hales expound it of Muhammad. And certainly, unless Mede's interpretation be admitted, against which there lies the serious objection that Satan its never represented in the Apocalypse as a fallen star,25 it is to my mind inconceivable how the figure could with the least plausibility be referred to any other agent.
If, I repeat, the smoke from the pit on its opening symbolize Islam, then of human agents none but Muhammad can, in my opinion, be regarded as its opener. All this probably would be allowed, even by the disagreeing expositors above alluded to, but for the unsatisfactory explanations hitherto offered of Muhammad's resemblance to a fallen star. Thus Newton says the star must be considered as a meteor, and so fitly symbolizing Muhammad as a false Prophet. But it is plain that the emblem is not a meteor, or wandering star, such as is used in Jude to symbolize false teachers; but simply a firmamental star, and one at the opening of the vision fallen. Hales offers no explanation. Daubuz supposes it was meant of Muhammad, as heading rebellion against the emperor Heraclius. But, first, Heraclius was not the liege lord of the Arabs of Mecca; next, had he been so, the rebelliousness of one of his dependents could not constitute the rebel a fallen star.
And what then? Is there no explanation of the difficulty? Is the statement of Dean Woodhouse correct, "that by no interpretation, literal or figurative, can the crafty enthusiast Muhammad be said to have fallen from heaven;" and so, supposing Satanic reference to be inadmissible, our whole solution endangered? By no means. The reader will find, I believe, that the explanation is very simple. Bearing in mind that a star, as all agree, indicates properly a prince or ecclesiastical ruler, and therefore a fallen star a prince degraded from supremacy and power,26 he will only have to look with attention into Muhammad's early history to find it.
Let it be remembered then that Muhammad was by birth of the princely house of the Koreish, governors of Mecca.27 Originally the principality had been in the hands of the Jorhamites. But one of the Koreish had bought from them the keys of the Caaba,28 and that which went with the keys, the principality of Mecca; which from him descended lineally to Muhammad's grandfather, and was, in fact, in his hands at the time of the grandson's . birth. Now this principality and government was one of no small eminence among the Arabs. Of the many small states into which Arabia was divided at this time, "most seem to have looked up to Mecca," says Hallam,29 "as the capital of their nation, and chief seat of their religious worship." Nor could this eminence of the family have been unknown to the Romans.
For, although with the vast interior desert of Arabia they had little concern, and almost as little acquaintance, yet with the frontier tribes, whether on the Syrian border, or the Euphratis, or along the coasts of the Red and the Erythrean seas, comprehending both Hejaz, of which Mecca was the capital,30 and Yemen further south, with these frontier tribes they were well acquainted.31 Indeed on the Red Sea coast, not very far from Medina, they had a custom house only a few years before the birth of Muhammad.32
And besides the maritime traffic that connected the Arabs of those parts and the Syrian provincials, there were caravans that twice a year traveled between Mecca and Damascus. Thus, I say, the elevation of Muhammad's ancestors as the Governors of Mecca, must have been well known to the Romans. As Gibbon says, "The grandfather of Muhammad, and his lineal ancestors, appeared in foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of their country." They were in the view of the Syrian Greeks as among the stars on the horizon of the political heaven.33 But just after his birth his father died; and, very soon after, his grandfather also: and the governorship of Mecca, headship of the tribe, and keys of the Ka'bah, passed into the hands of another branch of the family.
His prospects of greatness seemed all blasted by their deaths. He found himself, so he recounted his own history afterwards, a neglected and destitute orphan.34 Though by birth a star on the horizon of the political firmament, he was now, at the opening of the seventh century, a star fallen to the ground; and must so have appeared to the Romans and Syrians, when, in the character of servant of the widow Cadijah, he came to traffic in the markets of Damascus.
But thoughts were even then working in his mind which were to raise him to an eminence (a bad eminence indeed!) immeasurably higher than that of Prince of Mecca. May I not say (so to the point is each trait in the Apocalyptic prophecy) that the fall of the star was probably the very cause of all that followed afterwards?35 Methinks, had he not lost the keys of the Ka'bah, the holy place of the Pagan religion of his ancestors and countrymen, he would have sought no other. But lost as these were, and with a mind brooding on his loss and fall, when another key, likely to lead to his re-ascendancy, that of a new and false superstition, was by the father of lies presented him, he eagerly grasped it. The secret cave of Hegira, three miles from Mecca, to which he withdrew each year, and where he consulted, says Gibbon, " the Spirit of fraud or of enthusiasm, whose abode was not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet," has not inaptly suggested itself to interpreters as the mouth, as it were, of that pit of the abyss whence the pestilential fumes and darkness were seen to issue. Then at length he declared his mission; first privately; three years after publicly. For a while the elders of the city, and uncles of Muhammad, affected to despise the presumption of an orphan.
They chased him from Mecca. His flight marks the Era of the Hegira. But soon fortune changed "After an exile of seven years, the fugitive missionary was enthroned as the prince, and the prophet (too), of his native country.
Thus does this point in the emblematic description, just as the three before considered, answer precisely to the history of the in, and originator, of the Mohammedan imposture in Arabia. And will only add, in conclusion of this Section, that the very emblem of the key, here figured as given him, might almost seem to have been selected in allusive contrast to its counterpart in the Koran. In the latter the key of God is asserted to have been given to the false Prophet; that which was to open to believers the portals of the true religion, and of heaven. Hence it was borne by his followers subsequently, at least by those of them who achieved the western conquests of Islam, even as the holy cross by Christians, as both a religious and a national emblem: I and the sculpture on the proud Gate of Justice in the Moorish Alhambra still retains and exhibits the symbol.36 But the Apocalyptic vision more truly represented it as the key of the abyss: and the smoke that rose from the abyss, on his opening it, as the fumes and the pestilential darkness of hell.37
http://www.answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol1/
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jmsarace.htm
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/WestEurope/Vandals.html
http://ccel.wheaton.edu/gibbon/decline/
http://i-cias.com/e.o/caliph.htm
kaba http://www.prs.org/books/book445.htm
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