Commentators on the Second Woe

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The Creation Concept


Introduction
Charles D. Alexander
Henry Alford
William Barclay
G. K. Beale
Henry Bechthold
I. T. Beckwith
E. W. Bullinger
William Burkitt
Adam Clarke
Augustus Clissold
Thomas Coke
James B. Coffman
John N. Darby
Austin Farrer
William Fulke
Andrew Fuller
William Brown Galloway
John Gill
James Gray
David Guzik
George Leo Haydock
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
John Hooper
H. A. Ironside
Franciscus Junius
William Kelly
A. E. Knoch
Paul E. Kretzmann
George Eldon Ladd
John Peter Lange
Clarence Larkin
Joseph Law
John MacArthur
James M. MacDonald
William Marsh
Fredrick Denison Maurice
Heinrich Meyer
J. Ramsey Michaels
William Milligan
Henry M. Morris
William R. Newell
John H. Ogwyn
Ford Cyrinde Ottman
David C. Pack
Jon Paulien
J. Dwight Pentecost
Peter Pett
John A. Pinkston
Matthew Poole
Vern S. Poythress
James Stuart Russell
Ray Stedman
Joseph Augustus Seiss
Justin Almerin Smith
John Trapp
John F. Walvoord
Daniel Whedon
Christopher Wordsworth

John Trapp, Complete Commentary


16 And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

Ver. 16. Two hundred thousand thousand] Not so many at any one time, but in several ages and battles. Howbeit the Turk goes usually into the field 200,000 strong; many times he hath more, as in that famous battle fought by Bajazet against Tamerlane, where he had well-nigh a million. Of his common soldiers called Asapi (which for the most part are miserable Christians), he makes no great reckoning or other use than to blunt the swords of his enemies, or to abate their first fury, thereby to give the easier victory to his janizaries {a} and better soldiers, which are all cavalry for most part.

{a} One of a former body of Turkish infantry, constituting the Sultan’s guard and the main part of the standing army. The body was first organized in the 14th century, and was composed mainly of tributary children of Christians; after a large number of them had been massacred in 1826, the organization was finally abolished. ŒD

...

17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

Ver. 17. Breastplates of fire, &c.] Muskets, arquebuses, pistols, and other spitfires; but especially those great guns and murdering pieces, so much used by the Turks, those mighty ordnance they brought before Constantinople, Rhodes, and other places, nothing inferior to those two that were cast by Alphonsus Duke of Ferrara, the one whereof he called the earthquake, the other Grandiabolo, or the great devil. (Chalcondylas. Peacham’s Valley of Vanity.)

{a} The early type of portable gun, varying in size from a small cannon to a musket, which on account of its weight was, when used in the field, supported upon a tripod, trestle, or other ‘carriage’, and afterwards upon a forked ‘rest’. The name in German and Flemish meant literally ‘hook-gun’, from the hook cast along with the piece, by which it was fastened to the ‘carriage’; but the name became generic for portable fire-arms generally in the 16th century, so that the type with the hook was subsequently distinguished as arquebuse à croc:

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