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Eureka

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

 

 

Chapter 9

Section 1

I. SYMBOLS EXPLAINED


 
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On the sounding of the fifth angel, John saw "a star." I need not repeat here what has already been said about stars. The reader is referred to my explanation of the symbols of the third trumpet, the subject of which is the "great star Apsinthos." The star of the fifth trumpet may also be styled a falling star; or rather, when John saw it in vision, a fallen star. Its place was in the heaven, or it could not have proceeded "out of the heaven." It was not a fixed star of the heaven, transmitting through the air" in "the night" of the Greek catholic world, the reflected light of the Byzantine "sun." Had it been a fixed star of the eastern Roman firmament, its falling would not have been to receive power, but the deprivation of everything constituting the glory of a star. John may not have seen it in the act of falling into the earth. The falling had been completed when he first saw it. This is intimated by the perfect participle peptokota, which signifies "having fallen." The falling out of the heaven is no part of the vision’s scenery. It had fallen, or descended, into the earth, as the Apsinthian Star had fallen, or descended into the rivers and fountains of water. It did not forsake the heaven as its place, because it had fallen into the earth; but being a power, a power of the heaven peculiar to itself, it retained its position there, but fell with destructive effect upon the people represented by "the earth."

By "the earth" in this vision is meant "the dwellers upon the earth;" or the grass, green things, and trees, which symbolized the unsealed. The eagle-angel community, constituted of the servants of the Deity sealed in their foreheads, was not to be tormented by this woe. The sealed servants of the Deity -- the enlightened believers who have obeyed the truth -- are nowhere in the apocalypse styled "the earth". They are "a Holy Nation." But "the earth" apocalyptic is the very reverse. "The earth" is an unholy generation that "wonders after the beast;" and that "worships the Dragon, and worships the beast;" and represents the "all kindreds, and tongues, and nations" subject to the Dragon and Beast forms of government (Apoc. xiii. 3,4,7). "The earth," in the prophecy of the fifth and sixth trumpets, is symbolical of the secular and ecclesiastical orders and people of the Catholic Apostasy; which, by the fifth trumpet were to be "tormented" and "injured;" and by the sixth, to be "killed," or deprived of all power, authority and rule, over the Eastern Third of the fourth beast dominion (ix. 15,18). "The earth" would therefore represent the territory upon which these catholic idolators dwelt. The sealed servants of the Deity dwelt there likewise, only in "the Two Wings" of it, where they were "nourished;" and though the locusts swarmed over "the earth," they were especially forbidden to torment and injure them, in the command to injure only the unsealed (ver. 4). Hence, then, when John saw the Fallen Star "in the earth," he saw it where it did not naturally belong. It fell "out of the heaven into the earth;" and being a star of destruction, or a destroying power, it would make its way "into the earth" by an overwhelming invasive force. In other words, "the earth" was fallen upon, or invaded, by the star-power.    

 

 


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