See Ch. 9 – More Trumpets are Blown+

Anderson declared the prophecies of the fifth and sixth trumpets to be the most descriptive found anywhere in the Bible (UTE ps. 89); and, without a doubt, they surely are. Because prophecy usually covers such an expanse of time in such a short space of words it is found that quite often an event or series of events are little more than mentioned in a very general sense before the scene is changed to something else. However, when the fifth angel sounds his trumpet of warning John goes into some detail describing what he sees.

John says he saw a church that had fallen from a high place which is here referring to the fact that at one time Esau was in the rightful position to inherit the birthright and thus to become the progenitors of the Messiah. Esau’s impulsiveness, however, caused Jacob to be able to barter for the family’s birthright which had rightfully belonged to Esau since he was the eldest son. But for the price of a bowl of porridge Esau lost his birthright (GEN 25:32). Out of bitterness Esau sought later to regain his birthright, but was too late (HEB 12:16-17). His descendants have been making claims to the birthright, which is not theirs according to Hebrew scriptures, ever since.

This church, or religious group of followers of Mohammed, was given the knowledge of how to open the Abyss. Anderson reports that “Arabia has been called ‘the pit of the abyss,’ because of its deserts and empty areas. It was here that Mohammedism arose and spread like a smoke” (UTB pg 90). Thus began the endless destruction that seems so prevalent in the mid-eastern countries today.

Although most usually a church, a star, is mentioned in either the feminine or neuter gender; this one, however, is listed as being masculine, thus indicating it to be a political nation. When his (Mohammed’s) knowledge opened the shaft of the Abyss an enemy of the Truth arose from it. The true personalities of God and the heavens were disguised as the enemies of Truth assembled to do battle with them whom they had been persuaded were theirs to correct and chastise due to the ungodly corruption of scripture; or at least so they thought.

In 632 A.D. Abu Bekr, Mohammed’s uncle, gave the following order which, as Anderson reports, fits prophecy exactly (UTR pg. 90):

When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood of women or children. Destroy no palm trees, nor burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit trees, nor do any mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. When you make any covenant or article, stand to it, and be as good as your word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons who live retired in monasteries, and propose to serve God that way: let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy their monasteries: and you will find another sort of people, that belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shaven crowns; be sure you cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter till they either turn Mohammetans or pay tribute.
(HDF ch. 51, par. 10)

How accurate a description this is of The Revelation (9:4-9). Whether one wants to use a literal or figurative interpretation of the prophecies the fact that Arab, Islamic nations are here being described is quite evident.

It is considered the highest honor in the Mohammedan religion to die by causes of their faith, much as one can find to be true through the Christian martyrs. To do so supposedly assures the Islamic warrior a place at the side of Mohammed in Heaven. During this whole time of battle for Mohammed they destroyed faith in the true God of Love and served, instead, Abaddon and Apollyon—destruction and the destroyer (REV 9:11). That this is truly what happened is evidence by testimonies which have been voiced against the citizens of the Ottoman Empire.

Roderic R. Davison in his book titled, simply, Turkey, says that “the obvious progress made under the republic, and the better understanding of Turkish history now available to the world through scholarly research, have shattered the old western stereotype of the Turk — the ‘barbarian; the destroyer, rather than a builder,’ etc.” (TUR pg 13). However his statement was made after almost fifty years of difficult reform. It was the Allied Powers, Davison admits, who in 1919 recorded these words to the Ottoman’s delegation at the Paris peace conference for World War I:

There is no case to be found, either in Europe or Asia or Africa, in which the establishment of Turkish rule in any country has not been followed by a diminution of material prosperity, and a fall in the level of culture…. Neither among the Christians of Europe, nor among the Moslems of Syria, Arabia and Africa, has the Turk done other than destroy wherever he conquered; never has he shown himself able to develop in peace what he has won by war. Nor in this direction do his talents lie.
(BFP series I, IV, 646)

Again quoting from Davison’s book, it becomes obvious that it was this chastisement for unbelief that was the main driving force of the Turkish forces:

A learned Turk living in Bagdad, Mahmud al-Kashghari, repeated in an encyclopedic dictionary he wrote in 1074 an apocryphal saying (obviously a later invention) of the prophet Muhammad: “God said, I have a host which I have called Turk and settled in the East. If any people shall arouse my wrath, I shall give them power of this host.” And, commented Mahmud, this demonstrated for the Turks “a superiority over all other people, because God took upon himself the naming of them” .
(TUR pg. 18—citing Robert Deveraux; “Al-Kashaghari Early Turkish Islam”; Muslim World; XLIX, No. 2; Apr., 1959; pg. 134-135)

Whether the Lord did, indeed, identify to Mohammed the role his people were to play on the world’s stage as chastisers is still open to conjecture; but the finding of a more suitable group of people in history is very doubtful.

Anderson goes on to show how the one-hundred and fifty year prophecy was finally fulfilled when the Ottoman Empire finally overcame the Greek Empire in 1449, exactly 150 years after the July 27, 1299 date E. Gibbon wrote of in his book The History of the Decline of the Roman Empire.

4.9.1 The Sixth Trumpet

Then John noted that the first “woe was past, having been the rise of a religious body which would act as a chastiser of Earthlings, the Mohammadans; and that there were yet two more “woes” to follow. Quickly the sixth angel blew his trumpet and a voice came out from the midst of the four kingdoms saying that the angel which had just sounded the trumpet should, “Release the four angels which are bound (REV 7:2-3) at the great river Euphrates. And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill mankind” (REV 9:14-15-).

Although from the fall of Constantinople and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and from the full establishment of the Ottoman Empire to 1844, the year that the Millerites, and others, were convinced that Jesus would return, was exactly 391 years; that fact only served for confusion and disappointment when, indeed, the Lord did not appear in that era. The error in judgment did not come in the figures deduced from the “hour”, “day”, “ month” and “year”: which was determined to be 391 years prophetically; for, indeed, that is exactly what it figures to be plus an additional fifteen days.

However, it seems strange that anyone claiming to have been following Jesus would have proclaimed such a thing as to having known when the Lord would return with any degree of accuracy as were the Millerites in the early and mid-1800’s. Jesus, himself, had told them never to heed anyone who told of a precise time when he would return for he, himself, did not know (MAT 24:36).

Yet today the Seventh Day Adventists still claim that an important event did occur in 1844 stating that many signs and wonders did occur during that year; but, instead of the Lord returning to Earth that year, they claim it was the time when Jesus finally entered the inner court of the heavenly temple to present mankind for judgement.

It seems so evident. They even have another prophecy which speaks of a period of 2030 days (years) spoken of by Daniel (DAN 8:14) which surely began at the time that the Jerusalem temple began being rebuilt in 457 B.C. (EZR 7:12). In February, 1968, Rev. Donald Edwards conducted a prophecy seminar sponsored by the St. Joseph, Missouri Seventh Day Adventist Church where he explained that in order to come up with the 1844 date foretold by the Millerites one needs first to subtract the 490 years mentioned in Daniel’s prophecies as the seventy weeks of years (DAN 9:24) from the 2300 years he had earlier prophesied as being the time the sanctuary would reach a deconsecrated state. To do this then brings us up to the year 1810. To this he added the supposed age of Jesus when he was crucified of 34 years which brings one to the sought after date of 1844.

But, behold, the Lord did not return. The place where the sanctuary was to be placed in Jerusalem was covered by an Islamic mosque. Are the prophecies in error after all? Has all this research, all this reading, all this note taking been in vain after all? No. As Ellen G White points out in her book, The Triumph of God’s Love, it was not the second coming when Jesus would physically return to Earth that was prophesied by the 2300 day prophecy of Daniel and implied by Anderson’s interpretation of the hour, day, month and year prophecy of The Revelation.

Instead White quotes Daniel 7:13-14 which says “’And, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven and to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom that all people, nations and languages should serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away’…. The coming here described,” says Mrs. White, “is not His second coming to the earth. He comes to the Ancient of Days in heaven to receive dominion and glory and a kingdom, which will be given Him at the close of His work as a mediator.

It was this coming, and not His second advent to the earth, that was foretold in prophecy to take place at the termination of the 2300 days in 1844. Attended by heavenly angels, our great High Priest enters the holy of holies and there appears in the presence of God to engage in the last acts of his ministration in behalf of man—to perform the work of investigative judgement and to make an atonement for all who are shown to be entitled to its benefits” (TGL pg 418 [280-281]).

This all may well be true; but the presumption that the hour, day, month, and year prophecy needs to somehow be fit into history as does most other prophecies concerning time is erroneous. Although the term used in the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible in this verse is “prepared for an hour”, the word “an” does not mean a specific period of time which was needed to be covered as was usual when speaking of time in prophecy; but since the word “an” is an indefinite article it could be easily assumed that was what was meant. Thus the reason for so many people (and even the computer which interpolated the Scriptures in this book} to attempt to find a correlation of history with this date.

However, in Dr. Berry’s Interlinear Greek-English New Testament there is a more accurate translation of the Greek term (insert Greek here) into the English definite article “the” which shows that the time mentioned was a specific point in time and not a period of it. While most Greek-English lexicons do not attempt to give a definition to the Greek term “γην,” the way the interpreters of the “New International Version” translated it leave little to doubt when one reads in it: “the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour, and day, and month, and year….“ In short, ever since the time that the martyrs had been gathered and removed from the Earth these angels had been awaiting this very moment.

John heard someone announce how many soldiers were awaiting battle: 200,000,000. The armies were made up of ministers which had it in their power to cause destruction. The heads of their armies looked to be similar to the kings of Babylon as they ordered forth ministers; with their enemies holding the power of destruction.

Through these three means were the third part of unregenerate mankind destroyed. Through the ministers of the multitude of faiths; through the enemies of the Truth; and through the destruction dispatched by the warriors of their leaders.

What? Do angels lead armies and promote the causes of enemies and destruction? Who were these angels, anyway? These angels were the ones who held specific messages for mankind as can be seen in Chapter Seven which would be given to mankind through prophets as warnings to the inhabitants of Earth. But when these prophecies were given it was foreknown that their knowledge would bring sudden disruption upon the planet and disputes amongst its people.

Evidently the first of these angels gave its message to Martin Luther who then gave the warning to the Catholic Church of its soon to come fall, and who promoted the fundamental doctrine of the free-will of the believer. History proves that multitudes of ministers who then proclaimed the Word of God took up arms and, between them and their enemies within the Catholic Church, destruction was rampant.

At nearly the same time, in another part of the European continent, John Wycliff was making a similar harsh stand against the Catholic Church , proclaiming the right the commoner had to the Word of God. Later in England John Wesley began stressing the doctrine of “free grace” where all believers could have personal experience with God; thus leaving the ritualistic priesthood of Judaism and Catholicism behind and teaching instead a national self-disciplined religious experience.

Then, finally, Charles G. Finney who proclaimed that he had met “The Lord Jesus Christ face to face” (CGF pg. 61). These men, with their lack of fear to go against the religious norms of their societies, lead an army of newly vocalized believers who became ministers of a new spirituality; yet destructive to the world’s past systems. In their mouths were words (swords) of power based upon the Word of God and in their tails (prophecies) they were given the power to correct the fallacies which had so long been taught.

John says that the rest of mankind who was not destroyed by these things, still did not repent of their evil works; nor did they stop worshipping demons or idols which were inanimate. Neither did they stop any of the evil murders, witchcrafts, immorality, or thefts to which they had grown so accustomed.

FOOTNOTE

*The “Authorized (King James) Version” says that he (Jesus) “SAW A STAR FALL,” the present perfect tense; however, this does not agree with most translations including The New International Version and Berry’s The Interlinear Literal Translation of The Greek New Testament where it reads “a star of to heaven fallen,” the past tense. Since to have another religious power would be to divide Jerusalem into four parts and thus dispute scripture, the NIV translation is here accepted.

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