Chapter 9

The time had now arrived for the Star-Kingdom-Power of the Arabian Pit to “fall into the earth,” and to open it completely and per­manently for the egress of the smoke with its clouds of locusts, for “the darkening of the sun and the air.” At this crisis, as we learn from the fourth verse of the chapter under consideration, “it was commanded them (the smoke issuing locusts) that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree; but those men only who have not the seal of the Deity in their foreheads.” This is explained by what foll

When Heraclius, emperor of the Roman world, returned victorious from the Persian war, A.D. 629, Mohammed having conquered and converted the idolators of Arabia, and thereby united them into one kingdom, judged that the time had come to invite the princes and na­tions of the Catholic Idolatry to abandon the worship of images and de­mons, commonly known among the ignorant as the ghosts of dead men and women. He beheld with great disgust and contempt the condition of the catholic apostasy from the religion of Christ.

The choice of an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca to the rank of a sovereign; so that he was now invested with the prerogative of forming alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war. In other words, being now the Star of the Pit he possessed the power of kindling within its limits a burning furnace, in which might be melted down into one homogeneous mass, all the tribes of Arabia.

1. Origin of the Star

Justinian was invested with the majesty of the Sixth Head of the Dragon, or in other words, clothed with the sun, during a reign upon the Constantinopolitan throne of thirty-eight years, from A.D. 527 to A.D. 565.

In the previous section, I have analysed in detail the symbols of the first woe-trumpet. I have resolved them severally into the things they signify. In this section, I shall put their significations together, and thereby show what the apostle predicted if he had recorded what he saw in plain unsymbolical terms.

But why are we informed that the destroying power is called “Abaddon in Hebrew, and Apollyon in Greek, ” and not told what it would be called in Latin, or any other tongue? The answer is, because it was commissioned primarily and chiefly against the countries to which the Hebrew and Greek belonged.

“The locusts,” says Solomon, “have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” As we must not set scripture against scripture, these opposite sayings concerning locusts must be interpreted so as to har­monize. The apocalyptic locusts who had a king are not literal locusts, as some ignorantly affirm who deny the symbolic character of the apocalypse. John records the truth of the locusts he saw in vision; and Solomon writes the truth concerning literal locusts.

The locusts were to torment the men of the catholic apostasy in church and state “five months” — ver. 5; they were also to “injure” them for “five months”—ver. 10. This is, of course, symbolic time. The fitness of things requires that the time allotted for symbolic action should be expressed symbolically and analogically.

In this the thing covered is put for the covering.

This indicated their ferocity. Nothing could successfully resist them in their ravening upon the prey. The Star styled his first vizier, Ali, the Lion of God. “Who,” says Mohammed, “will be my Vizier and Lieuten­ant?” “O prophet,” replied Ali, “I am the man. Whoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly.