|
Isaac Newton | Protestant History | 3 Interpretations | Daniel | Revelation | Armageddon | Audio Links | Site Index |
| Home ¬ Previous Page ¬ Who The Four Angels Loosed | ||||||||
"And I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, saying, Loose the four angels that are bound by the great river Euphrates
And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for to slay the third part of men." The question now comes before us, Who, or what, might be these angels: angels four in number; angels commissioned in the work of judgment, specially, in the present case, for the destruction of the third part of the men of the Roman Christendom; angels that had been bound previous to the blast of this Trumpet, apparently as if in action before the act of binding; and whose binding had begun and continued by the great and famed river Euphrates? I say, by the actual famed river so called.
For that the local appellative is to be taken thus literally seems clear to me, alike from that common scriptural habit of intermixing such literal local designations with symbolic prophecies, which I have sometime since remarked on and illustrated; 1 and also from the unreasonableness of attaching any figurative sense to it, so as some have done, as if the figurative river of Rome, the figurative Babylon: seeing that Babylon is but one out of three Apocalyptic designations of Rome; the other two being Sodom and Egypt; and consequently the Nile, just as fit as the Euphrates, to be made its figurative river.
But who then, I repeat, or what, these angels? The notorious fact of Turks from the Euphratean frontier having subverted the empire of Eastern Christendom, has naturally and reasonably suggested a reference to them, as the grand subject of the sixth Trumpet-vision. And, led by this conviction, the majority of Protestant interpreters, I mean of those who regard the Apocalypse as already in great measure fulfilled, have sought to explain the four angels of four Turkmen, or, at least four Mussulman powers, that, in succession, or cotemporaneously, took part in this work of destruction. But the interpretations are found on examination to be, one and all, inadmissible. As the commissioning and loosening of the four angels in vision was but a single act, so the agencies symbolized must necessarily have been at one and the same time loosed or commissioned: by which consideration alone all such successions of destroying agencies seem excluded, as Vitringa, and after him Woodhouse, have suggested in explanation. 2
And as to cotemporary Turkmen dynasties, whether we refer to the list given by Mede and by Newton after him, or that by Faber and by Keith from Mills and Gibbon, 3 there is no quaternion of them that can be shown either to have combined together in the destruction of the Greek empire, to have been all locally situated by the Euphrates, to have had existence at the time asserted to be that of the commissioning of the four angels, or to have continued in existence tip to the time of the completion of the commission given, in the destruction of the Greek empire. 4
In short the manifest inconsistency with historic fact of every such attempted solution, has been hitherto, in the minds of the more thoughtful and learned prophetic students, like as it were a mill-stone about the neck of the whole Turkish theory of interpretation.
But who then, we must repeat, or what, these four angels? And does the impossibility of finding four Turkmen powers answering to the four angels, affect the truth of the general reference of the vision to the Turks? By no means. We need only, I think, to look at the nature and use of angels, as represented in the apocalyptic figurations, to have suggested to us a view of the point in question very different, and one that will leave the rest of the Turkish interpretation altogether unencumbered. For in the apocalyptic prophecy, just as in all other revealed Scripture, the angels figured as acting on earth seem to mean, almost uniformly, superhuman angelic intelligences, bearing commission from God as the executors of certain defined purposes in his providential government; and in execution of them making use of, directing, controlling, and over-ruling certain earthly and human agencies subordinate. In such case the number of angels specified is not conformed to the number of earthly agents subordinately employed, whether national or individual.
For example, the circumstance of its being one angel, (Rev. 14: 6,) that was seen flying in mid-heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to every nation under heaven, (and the remark applies to the other two angels also that in succession followed,) did not imply that it would be one individual, or one nation only, that would furnish the earthly agency. Many probably might be cooperators in the work. Again, the specification of four angels in Rev. 7, as appointed to desolate the Roman empire, was no intimation of four nations, exactly and only, being intended to combine in that desolation. Rather the number four was chosen in accordance simply with the propriety, or what older commentators call the decorum, of the figure. The thing intended to be figured being that from every side fierce tempests of invaders would fall on the devoted empire, in the course of the then about commencing Trumpet-judgments, four angels of the winds was the number depicted on the apocalyptic scene; in correspondence with the well known fact that four winds from the four corners of the heaven are the proverbial representatives of all the winds. 5
From the above there follows this obvious inference, with respect to the passage before us, that there is no necessity to suppose four earthly powers to be prefigured as combining in the work of the sixth Trumpet, because four angelic agencies are represented as concerned; rather that the number of the latter may have been chosen from considerations altogether different. Moreover there is suggested yet further a suspicion that, as the number of judgment angels here mentioned is the same with the number mentioned in Rev. 7, (and it is mentioned, let me add, no where else in the Apocalypse,) so it is not unlikely that they may be, the one and the other, the very same identical quaternion of angels. Which idea once suggested, it will I think only need that we trace out the characteristics either stated or implied respecting the first-mentioned quaternion, and compare them with those stated or implied respecting the other, in order to recognize their identity, and to see that this is indeed the true and simple solution of the whole matter.
With regard then to the four tempest-angels of Rev. 7, the nature and range of the executive commission given them under the sixth Seal, was thus defined, "to hurt the land, trees and sea, of the Apocalyptic Roman world. A commission this, let us observe, of 'very general and large import, in so far as that world was concerned; and one possibly of long duration too; perhaps even as long as that of the 144,000 sealed, by way of protection from them: though liable of course to arrests and interruptions, such as in fact checked them at their time of first appearance; more especially in subordination to Christ's purposes and provision for the preservation and good of that his election of grace.
Which being their commission, and the angels figured as ready, with the winds in leash, to execute it, that instant that restraint was withdrawn, it could not surely be but that the process and results of their acting it out would enter into the subsequent figurations. 6Admitting which, and considering that on the next or seventh Seal being presently after opened, the judgments thereupon inflicted on the apostate world were pictured under the several tempest- like figures, 7 first and introductorily, of thundering, lightning, and an earthquake, then, on the two first trumpets Sounding, of hail and volcanic fire, affecting (as it is expressed with singular coincidence of phrase) " the land, and trees, and sea," considering this, it must, I think, be deemed scarce credible but that these selfsame judgments were the primary results of the acting of the above mentioned four tempest angels.-And, if so, why suppose their commission and their action to terminate with the second Trumpet?
Why not rather to go on under the third Trumpet, and the fourth; seeing that it is still the same third of the Roman world that is the scene of the infliction ; and that the meteoric judgment of the third Trumpet, at least, is as notoriously associated as those preceding, alike in poetic figure and in nature, with winds and tempests? 8
Thus have we advanced to the fifth Trumpet; and have only once more to inquire why, if the four destroying angels were in action thus far, we should negative the idea of their acting still; so as in fact, gathering round,9 to have brought the locusts on Christendom: 10 especially considering that the same body of Christ's sealed ones, that were originally noted in association with the four tempest-angels, are referred to as on the scene now also;11 and the same care implied in the charge given to the earthly agency of the scorpion locusts, that these sealed ones of Christ should not be harmed in the infliction, as in the tempest-angels' original commission. Nor can I see any reasonable ground or pronouncing against this view.
Thus much as to the probable acting of the four tempest angels. Then as to their restraining, let two things be observed. The one is, that in any case of the restraint being long and entire, (so, for example, as when the Saracen woe ceased,) the figurative phrase bound would be perhaps the most fitting of all others to designate it, considering the element they impersonated; whether judged of by classical or scripture usage. 12
The other is that, supposing the local spot of their arrest, and cessation to act, in other words, that of the earthly agency directed, by them lapsing into quietude, to be one very marked, then it would just be accordant with scriptural analogy to represent them as bound at that particular spot. So, for example, in the memorable instance of the angel of pestilence, commissioned against David and Israel. His course having advanced with the pestilence from Dan to Beersheba, be is described as with hand outstretched locally over Jerusalem to destroy it, at the time when the plague was there commencing to destroy; and also to have been arrested and stayed locally by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, when at that very spot, presently afterwards, the plague was stayed.13
Now then apply we this Scripture mode of speaking of angelic agencies, to the case of the Saracen locust plague figured in the fifth Trumpet. And supposing the four angels of Revelation 7 to have both acted in it during its progress, and ceased acting when it ceased, the locality at which their arrest might be fitly described as taking place, could be no other than that where the plague itself received its arrest, viz. Baghdad by the Euphrates:14 the place where they might be said to have remained afterwards fettered and bound, no other than that where the power of the Saracen caliphate remained paralyzed in its declension, and had at length its temporal power of the sword formally taken from it; still the same Baghdad by the Euphrates.
In fine the conclusion we are forced to is this; that both in respect of the local spot of their implied previous arrest, and in respect of the local spot of their subsequent continued restraint, a Scriptural description of those four tempest-angels of judgment, of whose original commission. we read in Revelation 7:1, must at this point of time (on the hypothesis of the prolongation of their commission and their acting,) have exactly answered to what was said, or implied, at the sixth's Trumpet's sounding, respecting that quaternion of angels that were to act in the new commencing woe: they too being said to have been bound, (after an implied period evidently of previous acting,) and to have also continued bound, by the great river Euphrates.
Thus the characteristics of the one quaternion of angels and of the other agreeing, it seems to me that they may be reasonably considered identical. And the Turkish interpretation of the sixth Trumpet being thus freed from the difficulty of showing four Turkmen nations answering to the four Euphratean angels, which has so long encumbered it, it only remains, in explanation of so much of the prophecy as stands at the head of this Section, that I show respecting the Turkmen power, or new earthly agency, as I presume, employed under the angelic,...