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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 8

Section 7 Subsection 2

ACT II -- SECOND WIND-TRUMPET


 
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The hurting of the Sea by a great mountain burning with fire being cast into it, by which the third of the Sea became blood; the third of its living creatures died; and the third of its ships was destroyed.

A.D. 429 and Onwards

Apoc. viii. 8,9

 

"And the second angel sounded, and, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third of the sea became blood. 9. And the third of the creatures in the sea, having souls, died; and the third of the ships was destroyed."
 
 

1. Symbols Explained

 

We are plainly informed in this text, that its terms are not to be understood "literally:" that the great mountain in a state of intense combustion was not a real mountain, but something analogous thereto. The information is conveyed by the use of the particle hos, as it were. What John saw represented was a destroying power of great force and magnitude, judicially affecting the population of the maritime arena of the Western Third of the Catholic empire.

"The very etymology of the word mountain," says Daubuz, "helps out the signification of the symbol. For !Hebrew!, a mountain, comes from !Hebrew! in Hiphil !Hebrew!. This, and the Chaldee !Hebrew!, and the Arabic !Hebrew!, signify to command, subdue, and govern. So, in our military terms, hills and mountains are said to command the places about them. Mountains burning with fire together with a strong wind, and seen by a king in his dream, signify, according to all the interpreters among the Persians and Egyptians, the destruction of his people by a warlike enemy."

In addressing the Babylonian power of Chaldea, the Spirit styles it a destroying mountain" -- "Behold, I am against thee, O Destroying Mountain, saith Yahweh, which destroyest all the earth" (Jer. li. 25). "A mountain burning with fire" is a destroying power; and the direct opposite to "mountains that bring peace to the people." A mountain burning with fire would throw the sea, if cast therein, into a bubbling and hissing agitation; it would be "a mountain of prey" but, if the mountain were burnt, instead of burning, it would represent a great power deprived of all ability to injure -- a power destroyed instead of destroying. Therefore, saith Yahweh to the power of Babylon which had destroyed all the earth subjugated by it, "I will stretch out Mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain;" a prediction that was fulfilled when He executed "the vengeance of his temple" by Cyrus and his uncle, "the kings of the Medes."

"The sea" of this trumpet is the politico-geographical arena of its judgments. The mountain burning, or destroying, with fire was providentially "cast into the sea." "Sea, clear and serene, denotes an orderly collection of men in a quiet and peaceable state. When troubled and tumultuous, a collection of men in motion and war. Either way, waters signifying peoples (Apoc. xvii. 15), and the sea being a collection of waters, the sea becomes the symbol of people, gathered into one body politic, kingdom, or jurisdiction, or united in one design."

The four great beasts of Dan. vii were seen by the prophet to come up out of "the sea" in consequence of the four winds striving upon the Great Sea. The many headed beasts of the apocalypse are but symbolical parts of the fourth of these in Daniel. As the whole came up out of the sea, so therefore must its parts; and that sea, says the prophet, was "the Great Sea," or Mediterranean. In this trumpet-prophecy "the sea" has a twofold signification, the symbolic and literal. The destroying power was to descend literally upon the maritime region washed by the waters of the Mediterranean; and symbolically upon the peoples inhabiting its coasts. The Romans used the term as inclusive of the islands and maritime coasts of what they regarded as their sea, because situate in the midst of their domain.

"The third of the sea." This, the sea-third, is the sea of the same "third of the earth," that was subject to the emperor of the catholic west. It included the coasts of Spain, Gaul, Italy, and the Roman Africa; with the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Majorca and Minorca. This sea-third "became blood." Its peoples were put to the sword because of the enormity of their blasphemy, hypocrisy, and crime; for it is on account of these things that the judgments of heaven are poured out with volcanic fury and destruction upon mankind.

"The creatures in the sea having souls"* were the fish of the symbolic sea; and therefore fish in a symbolic sense. "A sea being thus considered," says Daubuz, "as a kingdom or empire (in the text, the western empire), the living creatures in it must be typical fishes, or men. But if a sea be considered only of the waters, of which it is a collection, then the waters will signify the common people; and the fishes, or the creatures in the sea, living, as having a power to act, will denote their rulers. And in this sense are the fishes mentioned in Ezek. xxix. 4,5, explained of the princes of Pharaoh."

[* This rendering differs from the Common Version: exonta psuchas, is there incorrectly turned into "had life," as if psuchas were a singular noun. Supposing probably that "the sea" was wholly literal, they did not like the idea of giving souls to fish. Had they thought that "the creatures were men and women, souls would doubtless have been ostentatiously paraded in the text.]

"The ships." The introduction of ships into the prophecy indicates that the judgments of the second trumpet have especial regard to the naval and commercial interests of "the third." Job’s days "passed away as swift ships." Here ships are used as a metaphor signifying swiftness. In this, his days were analogous to ships. "They that go down to the sea in ships, do business in the great waters." To destroy these ships, then, would be to destroy the business, whether naval or commercial: and to destroy those who worked them. In predicting this destruction, therefore, of the naval and commercial power of the western third’s dominion, all that was necessary was to say, "the third of the ships was destroyed."
 
 

 

 


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