Commentators on the Second Woe

Joseph Law, Consistent Interpretations of Prophecies relating to the House of Judah; the Church of Christ; the Romish Papacy and its Church, etc. 1865.

Law's book included a critique of the interpretation in Horæ apocalypticæ by Edward Bishop Elliott. Law wrote:

THE Turkish application of this woe is the one generally received. Mr. Elliott, in his “Horæ Apocalypticæ,” and Mr. Galloway, in his “Gate of Prophecy,” so interpret it as if it were a repetition or continuation of the first woe. Not being able to concur in this application of the woe, I am led to attempt an exposition of it; but in order to this it may be expedient to remove out of my way this Turkish application of the woe. In doing this I shall confine my notice to Mr. Elliott’s Exposition, in his work on the Apocalypse, fifth edition, recently published.

Mr. E. has a chapter on the “Forewarnings of the Coming Woe," in which he states from historical records certain signs of the times or age immediately preceding the first woe. This woe he satisfactorily makes out to be Mahometan. But his signs of coming woe equally answer for the coming of a Papal woe; for they relate chiefly to the manifestation of Antichrist in the Church, a manifestation which took place soon after the rise of the Arabian impostor. And if the two first woes of St. John be Mahometam—the one Saracenic, the other Turkish,—the appearance and establishment of Antichrist on the platform of the Church would then appear to be a woe of less consideration than the establishment of the Turkish empire at Constantinople seven or eight hundred years afterwards. This latter event was indeed a terrible woe; but spiritually the extensive dominance of the Popish system of lies has been, and is, of far more fearful consequence, substituted, as it has been, in the place of Christ and His Church. (2 Thess. 8—12.) Hence there is a strong presumption that if the first woe is found to be Mahometan, the second woe will be found to be Papal. The Mahometan imposture and the Popish almstasy are two sister systems of imposture and delusion, arising nearly at the same period, although very different in their character and workings, which goes to confirm the presumption that these constitute, in their rise, progress, and establishment, the two first Apocalyptic woes. True, the armies perpetrating the second woe being so exceedingly numerous, and their being considered as all horsemen, does at first sight militate against the supposition of the woe being Papal, and seems much to favour its being Turkish; but these appearances, on examination, soon dissolve and pass away. Indeed, the forewarnings specified by Mr. E. lead us to look earnestly for the manifestation of the predicted Antichrist about that period, and that also in the form in which the perpetrators of the second woe were presented to St. John’s scanning gaze. Some extracts from his chapter of prognostications would be a great gain to me in establishing my application of the woe; but I must refer the reader to Mr. E.’s chapter itself, and shall content myself with a very condensed statement on the subject.

Mr. E. shows that the predicted destruction of the Roman empire had ever been regarded by the early Church as an event to be attended with awful consequences, especially as the let would then be removed, and the Antichrist would be manifested. Hence its continuance was regarded with intense interest, and its apprehended fall with the greatest alarm. This conviction and fear continued through the fourth and fifth centuries. But the presages respecting coming events, gathered out from the letters of Pope Gregory the Great towards the close of the sixth century, are very remarkable; and these were made known in the most diffusive and influential manner. Especially were his sentiments and fears called forth by John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, who just then assumed to himself the title of Universal Bishop. Gregory declared before Christendom that whosoever called himself or sought to be called Universal Bishop or Universal Priest, that man was the likeness, the precursor, and the preparer of Antichrist; for such assumption tended to withdraw all members of the Church from its only true Head, Jesus Christ. Moreover, that so far as the priesthood might have acquiesced in it, there had been prepared an army, not of soldiers, but of priests, to assist him in carrying that design into effect. After these and other declarations of like import on the part of Gregory, how remarkable was it that, within ten or fifteen years after, this very title should be ofiicially conferred by the Greek Emperor himself, Phocas, A.D. 606, on Gregory’s own successor in the Roman episcopate, and be assumed by him, not in its restricted meaning, but in its full, plain import of universal episcopal supremacy over the whole professing Church on earth, or as a title never to be abandoned.—Hor. Apoc., Vol 1., pp. 388-404.

Such is the substance of Mr. E.’s statements. It is very remarkable; and certainly the testimony of Gregory the Great as to the signs of his times in reference to the predicted Antichrist and the form in which he might appear is truly marvellous. Mr. E. goes on to point out other prognostications of the coming woes in the religious signs of the times; and then sums up the whole with this concentrating sentence:—“Finally, as to this predicted Antichrist, it seems to me that when considered in respect of their history, character, pretensions, episcopal site, and relation to the too generally apostatized Church and priesthood in Christendom, there was that in the see and Bishops of Rome which might have struck the reflecting Christian as wearing to that awful phantasm of prophecy a most suspicious likeness. Considering various resemblances” (which Mr. E. had just enumerated), “in respect of place, time, titles, pretensions, power, might not the thought have well occurred that the Bishops of Rome, regarded in their succession and line, might very possibly be the Antichrist predicted, he whose incoming was to be with lying miracles; he who was to sum up in himself, as their head, all the particulars of the previously long progressing apostacy, and to be, in short, as Justin Martyr had called him, ’the Man of the Apostacy,’ as well as, in St. Paul’s language, ‘the Man of Sin’!”—pp. 411-413.

I am indeed highly obliged to Mr. E. for the valuable information thus derived from his learned and elaborate volumes, which so strongly confirms the presumption that the manifestation and establishment of the predicted Antichrist would constitute one of the two first woes; and it is to me inconceivable how Mr. Elliott, after making all these investigations and statements, and after having adduced the remarkable prognostication of Pope Gregory the Great as to the unexpected fashion in which the Antichrist would probably come forth, should overlook the conclusion to which they all so forcibly directed his attention. The Antichrist was about to come forth; he would rise up in the midst of the Christian Church, he would have his seat on the throne of the Bishop of Rome, and there was an army of priests ready for him and prepared to do his work. Thus Mr. E. had got in his hand the key to the right interpretation of the second woe; but he lays it by on the shelf, and he strangely hastes away to the shop of some previous interpreters for cannon and powder to batter down the walls of Constantinople.

In Mr. E.’s interpretation of the first woe as being fulfilled in the overturning outburst and establishment of the Mahometan imposture, I concur. But when he proceeds to interpret the second woe as being Mahometan also and Turkish, I find many objections to his solution of the prophetic solution; for,

1. It does not respond to his own prognostic warnings. The preparatory signs of the times pointed to the manifestation of a Papal Antichrist as a coming woe, and near at hand; but Mr. E. passes over these premonitions, and hastens to a far distant Turkish scourge.

2. The second woe commences at ix. 13, and concludes at xi. 14. All the intervening statements, therefore, are to be regarded as connected with the second woe. Mr. E. interprets x. and xi. to ver. 13, as relating to the doings of the Antichristian Papacy, and to Popery, and yet makes the former portion of the woe to be entirely Turkish and Mahometan. But the woe is one, and should be interpreted uniformly; hence either the former part or the latter part of Mr. E.’s interpretation must be given up. Mr. E. will not resign the latter, and therefore he ought to interpret the former part as being Papal also. If Antichrist is found busy in his work upon the stage in the latter part of the woe, doubtless the first part of the woe has previously introduced him there, “for St. John is very particular in his representations.”

3. As to the locality of the woe, it is in or at “the great river Euphrates.” Mr. Galloway, in his “Gate of Prophecy,” remarks on the inconsistency of interpreters making the Euphrates here the literal Euphrates. It is introduced here by St. John, as the river of Babylon, and to mark the locality. But the Babylon of the Apocalypse represents mystically the Papal Church, therefore the Euphrates of the Apocalypse must be similarly understood—in a figurative or mystical sense. Now, Mr. E.’s interpretation contravenes this necessary requirement. Mr. E. first takes the river as the literal Euphrates, and then transforms it into the inhabitants of the Turkish Empire in these latter days—in despite of St. John.

4. There was a leader in the first woe, emphatically characterised in Hebrew and in Greek, an “Abaddon,” an “Apollyon”; in English, “The Destroyer.” For the second woe, with its immense armies, Mr. E. finds no specific leader, although St. John sets before his eyes in limine a most characteristic leader, but Mr. E.’s interpretation quite ignores him. Thus he misses the woe.

5. As to the hundred millions of horses seen by St. John, Mr. E.’s interpretation makes a comparatively small affair of them.

6. St. John’s horses have breastplates on them, similar to those worn by their riders. Mr. E. does not notice these.

7. The riders on the horses had on them breast-plates, fiery, and smoky, and brimstony; in short, a compound of the same stinking stuff that issued out of the mouths of the horses themselves, and by which they killed men; but Mr. E. makes out this strange defensive armowr to be the red, blue, and yellow-coloured clothing in which the Turkish cavalry were usually arrayed. A pretty kind of defensive armour, but certainly not that seen by St. John for defending his symbolic horses.

8. The millions of horses seen by St. John had lion-like heads. What does Mr. E. see in these? He sees them to be, not the heads of the horses themselves, but the leaders of the Euphratean armies, who of course spit out fire and flame, like conjurers. Having ignored the leaders or horsemen marked out by St. John, he now ignores the horses on which they ride.

9. Then as to the way in which these strange beasts killed the third part of men, which St. John most expressly tells us was by the fire, the smoke, and the brimstone that issued out of their mouths—a wonderful characteristic of the equine brutes; Mr. E. first regards the horses as figurative, and then converts these millions of them into a few cannons or mortars, and fires balls out of them, thus following Mede and other interpreters. But he forgets that he had just before turned their heads into the leaders of the armies. St. John calls these animals horses;—Mr. E. first makes their heads into their riders, and then the whole horses themselves into cannon. Yet he declares that in this part of the symbolic description the allusion to the modern artillery, first used by the Ottomans, is so obvious and so striking, that he cannot but wonder that any one should have objected, or even hesitated about it, whereas St. John saw and speaks of horses only, which had both heads and tails. Interpreters have invented the cannon for him.

10. While St. John says little or nothing about the bodies and legs of his symbolic horses, he represents them as having most curious and very puzzling tails—for these were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with these “they do hurt.” What does Mr. E. make of the millions of these strange tails? He makes the saddest havoc of them. First he forgets his own dicta, that “St. John is very particular in his representations,” and that he (Mr. had a deep persuasion in his mind of the duty of noting most carefully every single point and peculiarity in each of the prophetic symbolizations. Next he proceeds to cut off the tails of these cannon horses, and then converts these tails into a few warlike standards for the Turkish armies, fastening them by twos and threes on suitable flagstaffs, and, having achieved this, he then holds them up as symbols or representatives of the oppressive and cruel pashas. With this surprising discovery Mr. E. seems mightily delighted. But surely such an application does great injustice to St. John’s description of the noble tails of his symbolic horses—tails in which much of the power of the horses themselves consists, and which they would lose when thus docked by Mr. E., for it is by the moving of their tails they do much hurt.

In all these particulars Mr. E.’s interpretation fails, and, when taken together, they will warrant me in saying that Mr. E.’s learned and elaborate attempt to explain the second woe as Turkish is defective, anomalous, and, notwithstanding some surprising and very promising contingencies, quite a failure. This is the light in which it will be regarded by every considerate mind—it fails to bring out in a consistent manner the peculiar points of St. J ohn’s symbolic representation.

Having thus, I trust, effectually set aside the Turkish explanation of the second woe, and assuming that Mr. E.’s interpretation of the first woe of St. John as Mahometan and Saracenic is the right one, I shall attempt to give a consistent interpretation of the second woe, in accordance with the striking prognostication of the coming Antichrist by Gregory the Great.