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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 9

Section 5 Subsection 1

Preparation of the First Angel


 
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The loosing must not be confounded with the preparation of the four angels. If they had been "prepared for the hour and day and month and year," we might have been led to look for their contemporaneous existence during all that period; which would have made any effort at exposition a hopeless failure. Each individual power was neither prepared nor loosed for a separate and independent continuance of 391 years and 30 days. This period was the time appointed of the Spirit for the work of killing the third of the men. He could have caused them to be resolved into political extinction in a much shorter period; but this would not have been a sufficient punishment for their daemonialism. The enormity of their offense in worshipping deified immortal souls, and images of the bodies of such fictions of fancy, demanded nearly four hundred years of severe national suffering. In these centuries they were baptized in blood and calamity, and no rest was granted them day or night.

The word rendered "prepared," hoi hetoimasmenoi, is the perfect participle passive, and signifies having been prepared. Thus, it may be read, "the four having-been-prepared angels were loosed for the hour and day and month and year." Their preparation and loosing were for the work of this period. The time and circumstances of their preparation are not indicated; nor how long each angel was to continue loose, or unrepressed. These particulars must be learned from history, which gives us the following information with respect to the preparation of the first of the four Euphratean angel-powers.

In tracing the preparation of the first angel-power, the reader must transport himself beyond the Caspian Sea, to the original seat of the Turkmans, against whom the first crusade was principally directed. One of the greatest of their princes, for whom the title of Sultan was first invented, was Mahmud the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia from A.D. 997 to A.D. 1028. His name is still venerable in the east, where he was very successful against the idolators of Hindostan. Ten millions sterling were offered him for the preservation of the idol of Sumnat by the Brahmins; but he refused it, saying, "Never in the eyes of prosperity shall Mahmud appear as a merchant of idols." The fame of his zeal reaching Bagdad, Mahmud was saluted by the Caliph with the title of Guardian of the Fortune and Faith of Mohammed.

The Eastern Turkmans whom he had introduced into the heart of his Persian kingdom were a cause of grief to him in the latter years of his reign. He discerned the impolicy of his course in the replies of Ismael, a chief of the race of the Seljuk, who dwelt in the territory of Bochara. The sultan had inquired what supply of men he could furnish for military service. "If you send," replied Ismael, "one of these arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of your servants will mount on horseback." "And if that number," continued Mahmud, "should not be sufficient?" "Send this second arrow to the horde of Balik, and you will find fifty thousand more." "But," said the Gaznevide, dissembling his anxiety, "if I should stand in need of the whole force of your kindred tribes?" "Despatch my bow," was the last reply of Ismael, "and as it is circulated around, the summons will be obeyed by two hundred thousand horse." The apprehension of such formidable friendship induced him to transport the most obnoxious tribes into the heart of Chorasan, where they would be separated from their brethren by the river Oxus, and enclosed on all sides by the walls of obedient cities. But on the death of Mahmud, these Turkman shepherds became robbers; the bands of robbers were collected into an army of conquerors; as far as Ispahan and the Tigris, Persia was afflicted by their predatory inroads; and the Turkmans were not ashamed or afraid to measure their courage and numbers with the proudest sovereigns of Asia.

Massoud, the son and successor of Mahmud, had neglected too long the advice of his ministers. "Your enemies," they repeatedly urged, "were in their origin a swarm of ants; they are now little snakes; and unless they be instantly crushed, they will acquire the venom and magnitude of serpents." This he essayed to do, but with ill success; for, though for a time alternating between victory and defeat, he at length lost his crown and life in battle; and in Persia, as the result of his overthrow, was founded the dynasty of the shepherd kings, A.D. 1038.

The victorious Turks immediately elected Togrul Beg, the grandson of Seljuk, for their king. His ambition was equal to his valor, and both were great. He extended his dominion eastward to the Indus. In the west, he annihilated the dynasty of the Bowides, the Persian protectors of the caliphs; and by the conquest of Media he approached the confines of the Roman earth, from whence he despatched a herald to demand the tribute and obedience of the emperor of Constantinople.

From the Oxus to the Euphrates the military colonies of the Turks were protected and propagated by their native princes, under the royalty of Togrul, who promoted the most deserving of the Persians and Arabians to the honors of the state; and the whole body of the Turkish nation embraced with fervor and sincerity the anti-idolatrous religion of Mohammed.

With the belief of the Koran, Togrul imbibed a lively reverence for the caliph, the now feeble successor of Mohammed. On the fall of the Gaznevide dynasty, the caliph named the Seljukian sultan his temporal vicegerent over the Moslem world. In the palace of Bagdad, the Commander of the Faithful still slumbered, a venerable phantom. The prince of the Bowides could no longer protect him from meaner tyrants; and the presence of a conqueror was therefore implored as a blessing. Togrul obeyed the holy summons at the head of an irresistible force. As conqueror of the east, he entered Bagdad, where, seated upon a throne by the side of the caliph’s, his commission was publicly read, which declared him the temporal lieutenant of the Vicar of the Prophet. Two crowns were placed on his head; and two scymitars were girded to his side, as the symbols of a double reign over the east and west. The alliance of the Caliph, the spiritual, and of Togrul, the temporal, chief of all faithful Moslems, was cemented by the marriage of Togrul’s sister with the caliph, and the caliph’s daughter with Togrul. The preparation of the first angel was now complete. An anti-idolatrous power had been developed upon the old Mohammedan basis, whose dominion extended to the Euphrates, by which it was "bounded," and divided from the daemonial idol-worshipping peoples, on the west. The royal nuptials of Togrul, A.D. 1062, were soon followed by his death, A.D. 1063.

Since the fall of the Caliphs, the Saracens had respected the Asiatic provinces of Rome; which, by the victories of the Greeks, had been extended to Antioch and the eastern boundaries of Armenia. Twenty-five years after the death of Basil, A.D. 1050, myriads of Togrul’s horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to Erzeroum, and the blood of a hundred and fifty thousand worshippers of daemonial relics, ghosts, and idols, was a grateful sacrifice by the children of the Arabian prophet. This, however, was not a loosing of the angel-power; for the arms of Togrul made no deep or lasting impression on the Greek empire. The torrent rolled away from the open country; and he retired without glory or success within his Euphratean boundary; beyond which he had found it impossible for him permanently to extend westward the territory of the Turks.

 

 


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