Commentators on the Second Woe

William March, Apocalyptic sketches: being a condensed exposition of the views of the most eminent writers upon the prophecies of Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah, &c., respecting the second coming of our Lord with all his saints at the first resurrection. 1860. pp. 60-64.

When the angel sounds the sixth trumpet, a voice is heard from the four horns of the golden altar; which reference to the temple receives explanation from chap. vi. 9, when the souls of them that were slain for the word of God are represented as crying out for vengeance. This introduction, therefore, of the second woe, is to be regarded as an answer to their prayers; and the commission proceeding from them, to loose the four angels that are bound in the great river Euphrates, teaches us that it is to God's faithful servants that the administration of justice is intrusted. "Shall not God avenge his own elect?"

The river Euphrates is mentioned by name, to point out the locality of the nation here referred to; and which can receive but one interpretation, and that to be the Turkish power. The four angels are the four sultanies, or kingdoms, of the Turks; bordering upon the river Euphrates; namely, Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, and Iconium, all of which were established between A. D. 1055 and 1080. The Turkish power therefore was made the executioner of this new woe.

The woe of the Saracenic locusts did not extend to extermination, but only to torment men; but the commission given to the Turkish horsemen, is to slay the third part of men,--that is, to annihilate and dispossess the Roman Empire of her dominions in the East, where the Christian Church had reached its height of corruption. Accordingly all Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Thrace, Macedon, Greece, and all the countries which formerly belonged to the Greek or Eastern Caesars, the Othmans have conquered and subjugated to their dominion. The duration of this woe is given in the text, and which we interpret agreeably to the prophetic Scriptures: thus a year of three hundred and sixty days, a month of thirty days, and a day and an hour, each day for a year (Numbers xiv. 34), is three hundred and ninety-one years and fifteen days. Constantinople fell into their hands A. D. 1453, in the reign of Mohammed, their seventh emperor: at which date we may consider their dominions in the East as fully established, and reckoning back these three hundred and ninety-one years will bring us to 1062, which we have seen is the average date of the constitution of their four sultanies. So that the whole period of the Othmans slaying the third part of men, or subduing the Christian states in the Greek or Eastern Roman Empire, is three hundred and ninety-one years and fifteen days. But though the time is thus limited for their slaying men, yet no period is fixed for the duration of their empire; only this second woe will end, when the third woe (chap. xi. 14) shall be about to commence, when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ. In the full anticipation of the nearness of this glorious epoch in the world's history, we anxiously turn our eyes towards this power, and we find that her present situation amongst the surrounding nations tells full well of her speedy downfall; for we read in chap. xvi. 12, that the sixth vial takes effect upon the river Euphrates; and she is thus affording to Europe a momentous and magnificent synchronism in the prophecies, by which all men may learn, if they will, that the last woe is about to be inflicted, the grand consummation of God's wrath upon the nations.

Their armies are represented in history as very numerous, consisting of myriads of myriads. At the siege of Constantinople, Mohammed the Second had in his army about four hundred thousand men, besides a powerful fleet of thirty larger and two hundred lesser ships. They are described as horsemen; and it is well known that their armies consisted chiefly of cavalry, especially before the order of Janizaries was instituted by Amurath the First.

In the Apostle's vision, that is, in appearance, not in reality, they had breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and of brimstone; the colour of fire is red; that of jacinth, or hyacinth, blue; and of brimstone, yellow; which three warlike colours are particularly conspicuous in the dress of the Othmans. In appearance also, the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, to denote their strength, courage, and ungovernable fierceness. Out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. This is a manifest allusion to guns and gunpowder, which were invented under this trumpet, and were of such signal service to the Othmans in their wars. Indeed a large army of horsemen drawn up and discharging artillery could scarcely receive a more accurate representation than that of fire and smoke proceeding from their mouths.

Amurath the Second broke into Peloponnesus, and took several strong places, chiefly by the means of his artillery. But his son Mohammed, at the siege of Constantinople, employed such great guns as were never made use of before. One is described to have been of such a monstrous size, that it was drawn by seventy yoke of oxen, and by two thousand men. This cannon discharged a ball of three hundred pounds weight; and the report is said to have been so great, that all the country round about was shaken, to the distance of forty furlongs. For forty days the walls of Constantinople were battered by these guns; and so many breaches were made, that the city was taken by assault, and an end put to the Grecian Empire. [Dissertation on the Prophecies, by Bishop Newton, p. 554]

Having described their power in their mouth, to consist in that tremendous artillery with which the Othmans made such havoc and destruction in the Greek or Eastern Empire, we find them likewise represented as having tails like unto serpents, with which they do hurt. This figure, as in the Saracenic woe (verse 10), denotes the corrupt and poisonous doctrines, which should accompany the establishment of their dominions. The Turks profess and propagate the same imposture as the Saracens. In the text, the tails are accommodated to the different creatures; the tails of scorpions to locusts; the tails of serpents, with a head at each end, to horses. How well the Euphratean horsemen or Turkish power has fulfilled its commission against the Eastern Church and Empire, we have little occasion to record. The history of their wars and government is filled with enormities exercised over the subdued Greeks; and in our own times they have exhibited such barbarous oppression, that having first elicited the sympathy of all men, we have seen within the last few years, an association formed amongst the European powers, to interfere on their behalf. It may be asked, why did not the condition of the Greek nations excite the commiseration of the civilized world at an earlier period, when the same cause had so long existed, which now has occasioned such universal sympathy? and the answer is, because she had not yet drunk the cup to the dregs, which God had given her in his wrath. But the time has now arrived, and God, who "is governor amongst the nations," and presideth in the counsels of every cabinet, though unseen, and may be unregarded, hath so guided the hearts of these princes and peoples, as shall best promote the accomplishment of his own mighty purposes. It would be well if we could regard the evolutions of empires less with a political eye, and with a greater deference to the will and mind of Him who ever maketh the wrath of man to praise him, in whose eyes the nations are "as the drop of a bucket, and who taketh up the isles as a very little thing."

Having arrived at the end of the sixth trumpet or second woe, we find the history of the trumpets, or Eastern branch, synchronises in time with that of the seals, or Western branch of the Roman Empire. Accordingly, these two-verses contain and a similar notification to that in chap. vi. 15--17; by which mark, we perceive that both histories are now brought to the eve of that great day, which is the subject of the seventh seal and trumpet, contained in the seven subdivisions of the vials of wrath. (See chap. xvi.) Though the Greek Church had thus been desolated and ruined in the sight of all nations, yet we learn that the rest of the men, (that is, the Latin Church, which had pretty well escaped these calamities,) repented not of their evil deeds. There is scarcely any description of the Papacy in the Holy Scriptures which presents to us so full and genuine a representation as that contained in these two verses.

They still maintained the worship of saints, ascribing to them a mediatorial office, when there is but one Mediator, even Christ, and blindly persisted in their adoration of idols of gold and silver, by which miserable superstition Satan has procured for himself that worship due only to God. Neither repented they of their murders, their persecutions and inquisitions, nor of their sorceries, their pretended miracles and revelations, nor of their fornication nor of their thefts, their exactions and impositions on mankind; and which condition of hardened impenitence has fully ripened the Western Roman Empire or Papal Christendom, for that tremendous act of vengeance which is about to be poured down upon her, with such unmitigated severity.