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Details of the 5th Trumpet

This trumpet covers a period of 817 years -- A.D. 632-1449 -- and shows the rise and
work of the Muhammadans in the destruction of Eastern Rome -- first the Arabian Muhammadans
and later the Turkish Muhammadans. Of this Albert Barnes remarks that "with surprising unanim-
ity, commentators have agreed in regarding this as referring to the empire of the Saracens, or to the
rise and progress of the religion and the empire set up by Mohammed." It is hard to understand
how anyone can read this prophecy, along with Edward Gibbon's history of Muhammad and his
successors, and not agree that this applies to Islam.

Verse 1: "The fifth angel sounded his shofar; and I saw a star that had fallen out of heaven
onto the earth, and he was given the key to the shaft leading down to the ABYSS."

Going now to the details of the vision of the fifth trumpet, let's take a look at the abyss or
bottomless pit. It should be noted that the "abyss" appears as the abode of demons in the New Tes-
tament -- the source of the evil spiritual agencies that exercise their influence upon men. This is
made evident, for example, in Luke 8:31 where the desire of the wicked spirits whom Yeshua cast
out of the man dwelling in the tombs is that he should not command them to depart into the abyss.
Notice --

They begged Yeshua not to order them to go off into the Bottomless Pit (abyss).

The term "bottomless pit" also denotes the place from whence Islam thrust itself upon the
world of the time. This term comes from the Greek word abussos, and signifies a waste, desolate
region. A brief sketch of Arabia makes plain the significance and aptness of the term as applied to
that country.

Arabia is about fifteen hundred miles in extreme length; is about half this distance in width
at the middle; but its extreme width on the Indian Ocean is a thousand miles. Writes Gibbon:

The entire surface of the peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or
France; but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets of the stony
and the sandy. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked, by the hand of nature, with lofty
trees and luxuriant herbage; and the lonely traveler derives a sort of comfort and society
from the presence of vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level
of sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the desert, without
shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense rays of the tropical sun. Instead of
refreshing breezes, the winds, particularly from the southwest, diffuse a noxious vapor;
the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter, are compared to the billows
of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and buried in the whirl-
wind. The common benefits of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the
scarcity of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element of fire.

Gibbon continues --

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