sacred in these prophecies. Seven is symbolic of Christ, and ten is a multiple of God’s children. This is evidently a description of the rapture, when the Lord shall come in a cloud (1:7) and take up his people. Jesus says, in his sermon on the judgments (<402401>
Matthew 24), that He will appear as the lightning shining around the world, and flashing into all eyes. No wonder this will produce a terrible and universal alarm, superinducing a mighty awakening!
We have now reached the terminus of the sixth trumpet and second woe.
The current of Divine providence begins a tinkling rill. Augmented by innumerable tributaries, it soon becomes a swelling river. It then broadens out into a majestic arm of the sea; continues to widen and deepen, till it disembarks into the ocean. These seven trumpets proclaim the entire prophetic panorama. When we reach the fifth trumpet, Satan’s millennium is in full blast. Dark Age midnight fast culminated. The devil has shaken down every civil government on the globe, and so completely sidetracked the Apostolic Church as to get her literally turned around, so that she is running with all of her momentum straight down to hell. At this juncture Diabolus sends into the world his two favorite sons — i.e., Mahomet and the pope — dividing the world between them, giving to Mahomet the Eastern and to the pope the Western hemisphere. Oh, how the pandemonium rings with shouts upon the coronation of these two diabolical kings, as they sanguinely hoped, destined to rule the world forever, thus consummating Satan’s original scheme of augmenting the narrow limits of hell by the permanent accession of this world! In that case, there never would have been another civil government nor holy Church on the earth.
So momentous are the calamities transpiring in the fifth trumpet that it is denominated ‘the first woe. It embraces five months — i.e., one hundred and fifty years — culminating in the Saracen invasion of Europe,
threatening to sweep Christianity, which they had already driven out of Asia and Africa and exiled in Europe (at that time the wild West), from the globe. The defeat of the Saracens at the battle of Tours, France, by Charles Martel, in A.D. 732, was a sunburst on the hopes of Christendom, and the first decisive defeat of the Moslem invaders. Then a number of centuries
intervened, culminating in the Crusades, during which Christianity was frequently on the aggressive, but finally culminating in hopeless defeat, so far as the recovery of the Holy Land was concerned.
The second woe is to continue a year, a month, a day, and an hour; i.e., in prophetic time, four hundred years. This embraces the second great period of the Moslem conquest, during which they overran the great East and founded the Mogul Empire, which embraced the fairest portions of the known world, and stood two hundred years, ruled by Moslem princes.
Meanwhile they continue to press the war with indefatigable perseverance against Christian Europe, perfectly sanguine in their anticipation of conquering the world. The Chaldean, Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman Empires each in turn had conquered and ruled the world. Why shall not the Moslem warriors push the Islam conquest to the ends of the earth, unify the government of the nations under the broad pinions of the worldwide Turkish Empire, sweep idolatry from the globe, exterminate Christianity from the face of the earth, and concentrate all nations in the grand
Monotheism of the Koran and its inimitable prophet? Exuberant with a thousand victories, their path strewn with laurels, golden scepters,
crowns, from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic Sea, A.D. 1683, three hundred thousand panoplied Mussulmen lay siege to Vienna, the capital of Austria, and at that time the greatest city in Christendom. They coiled their
innumerable host, like a huge boa-constrictor, around the city. Cutting off all possible ingress and egress, they propose to starve them into speedy capitulation. With the flight of the last hope, the Viennese dispatch a courier to John Sobieski, the world-renowned Polish Aero, who was then in the meridian of his military glory, and celebrated afar on account of his enthusiasm for the cause of Christ. He receives the message with
unutterable gratitude to God for opening the door to serve His cause. He hastily rendezvouses seventy thousand Christian warriors, jubilant to march under the banner of the Cross to the relief of Vienna. But what shall they do with three hundred thousand Saracens? They outnumber them nearly five to one. Besides, they have everything possible in the way of arms and equipage; and last, though not least, they are flushed with a thousand victories, and feel certain of another, which will open all Europe to the Moslem conquest, and expedite the extermination of Christianity from the earth. The Poles are not only few in number and poorly armed,
but the outstanding memory of four hundred years, in which the Crescent has triumphed and the Cross trailed in the dust, throws an ominous gloom over the forlorn hope of Vienna’s relief. They arrive at five o’clock P.M.
on Sunday, October 12, 1683. Sobieski delivers them a powerful war speech, in which he asseverates his determination to whip the Moslems and relieve Vienna, or die on the battlefield. His men all imbibe the same spirit. He gives them the battle-cry, “Not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thee, be the glory!” He leads the assault in person at a sweeping gallop, waving his sword in the air and shouting aloud, “Not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thee, be the glory!” Meanwhile, the seventy thousand Christian warriors follow, shouting that thrilling battle-cry at the top of their voices. The terrible impetuosity breaks the Moslem phalanx, generates confusion, which speedily culminates in wild disorder, incorrigible panic, general skedaddle, and an awful stampede for life. In the good providence of God, it was the time of a total lunar eclipse. The full Moon rises in all her effulgent beauty and glory. The sky is perfectly serene and cloudless. The total eclipse comes on, and she literally fades away from the Orient. When the superstitious Mussulmans, utterly ignorant of astronomy, see their banner fade from the sky, they give way to universal consternation and precipitate flight, screaming vociferously as they run for dear life: “God has forsaken us; do you not see our banner fading from the skies?” Thus in pell-mell confusion they run over one another in the universal stampede, leaving the earth groaning beneath the burdens they have abandoned in their trepidation. The finest war-horses, draft-animals, all sorts of vehicles, with immense spoils accumulated on a hundred battlefields, are all
abandoned in the promiscuous flight for life. Then and there the tide of Saracen conquest, which had moved forward four hundred years, and bade fair to inundate the world, exterminating Christianity from the globe, began to roll back, and has been receding ever since. Within fifteen years from that signal and disastrous defeat, the Turkish Empire lost a dozen
kingdoms, and has been going down with the velocity of an avalanche ever since. Rome possessed the whole world. Having ruled it a thousand years, it took her three hundred years to die. The Moslem power conquered the time-honored empires of the globe, possessed the fairest portions of the world, and ruled them a thousand years, before she met her fatal doom at.
Vienna. Thus she has been dying two hundred years. She is now a political corpse, kept alive artificially by the jealousy of her neighbors. We are in
daily anticipation of her long-expected collapse. The prophetical epoch of her fall is 1897. Making due allowances for chronological inaccuracies, we may rest assured the end is nigh. When Turkdom falls, the Holy Land passes into Christendom; the children of Abraham will be gathered home, and speedily converted to Christianity.