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the Abyss have an authority given them to hurt, and it might have been written that their
hurt was like that of a scorpion. It does say this, but it says more. It reveals the fact that
the scorpion of the earth can actually hurt a man now because authority is given it. The
permission to hurt and destroy is not limited to scorpions, but over the face of the whole
creation creatures seem authorized to spoil, destroy, infect and corrupt the fair things of
earth. All this is because of sin and the lost dominion of man. It is intensified in the case
before us, and will only cease when the dominion is again vested in the Son of man when
it shall at last be true that
"the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. . . .
the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in
all My holy mountain" (Isa. 11: 6-9).
Both the names of the king of these locusts of the Abyss mean destroyer, and Joel,
who uses the locust to describe the terrible day of the Lord, speaks of it as, "a destruction
from the Almighty". A day comes, however, when God will "destroy them that destroy
the earth", when the last enemy shall be destroyed, when that abused term
"reconstruction" shall be gloriously realized, because based upon the "reconciliation"
accomplished by the Son of God.
#34. The Second Woe.--
The Four Angels of the Euphrates (9: 12-21).
pp. 97 - 101
"One woe is past; behold, there are coming yet two woes after these things."
In the first woe we see the Abyss opened and its immediate consequences. In this
there is revealed the yet further relation between rivers and deeps with spirit powers. But
first let us notice who it is that speaks and from whence the message comes:--
"And the sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I hear a voice from the four horns of
the golden altar which is before God."
The golden altar stood, whether in tabernacle or temple, immediately before the veil.
The command proceeds from the temple, and the judgment cannot therefore be called
"political" in a sense which would sever it from connection with the temple. We ask our
readers to be true Bereans over this point. The command is a singular one. "Loose the
four angels which are bound at the river Euphrates".
The river Euphrates meets us in Gen. 2: in association with the creation of man. It
formed the eastern boundary of the promised land (Deut. 11: 24). Babylon's doom was
typified by the casting of a book bound to a stone into this river (Jer. 51: 63). It is
specially marked out for judgment under the sixth vial (Rev. 16: 12). Babel and Babylon
are linked with this river, and there at this eastern boundary of the land of promise four
angels are bound:--