What were these locusts said to have over them?
Answer
"And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew
tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon [margin, a destroyer]." Verse 11.
NOTES - For hundreds of years the Mohammedans and invading Tartar tribes, like the locusts
(Prov. 30: 27), had no general government or king over them, but were divided into bands, or factions,
under separate leaders. But in the twelfth century Temuljin, king of the Mongols, or Moguls, who is
described as "the most terrible scourge that ever afflicted the human race," built up an empire "at the cost,"
it is estimated, says Myers in his "General History," page 461, of "fifty thousand cities and towns and five
million lives." This was followed by the more permanent Tartar empire founded by Othman a century later,
commonly known as the Ottoman Empire, and ruled by the sultan.
From the first, the great characteristic of the Turkish government has been that of a "destroyer."
Speaking of a war by the Turks upon the Byzantine Empire in 1050, Gibbon (chapter 57) says: "The
myriads of Turkish horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles from Taurus to Erzeroum, and the
blood of one hundred and thirty thousand Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet."
In 1058 the Turks wrested the Holy Land from the Saracens, desecrated the holy places, and
treated the pilgrims to Jerusalem with cruelty. This brought on the nine unsuccessful crusades of the next
two centuries for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Why must justifying faith lay hold upon both the death and the resurrection of Christ?
How was the destruction of Jerusalem and the sanctuary by the Romans then foretold?
How is the true God distinguished from all false gods?
Why did the Lord abhor the Canaanites?
When the trees put forth their leaves, what do we know?
Is Christ ever called an angel?
What is Satan himself called?
Questions & Answers are from the book Bible Readings for the Home Circle