The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

Mohammed. How fully and faithfully (although unconsciously), has the historian
described the vision of the "star having fallen from the heaven to the earth," to whom was
given the key of the abyss, out of which proceeded smoke, darkening the air and sunlight.
"And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth."--Rev. 9:3.
It seems almost needless to say that the locust army represents the followers of
Mohammed during the period of the conquests of the Saracens (Arabians) and the
establishment of what is known as the great Saracenic Empire that existed intact for a
period of nearly two centuries. A prophetic expositor, Thomas Newton, has truthfully
said, with regard to the gathering of the symbolic locust army:
"The Arabians are properly compared to 'locusts,' not only because numerous armies are
frequently so, but also because swarms of locusts often arise in Arabia; and also because in
the plagues of Egypt, to which constant allusion is made in these trumpets, 'the locusts'
(Exod. 10:13) are brought by an east wind, that is, from Arabia which lay eastward of
Egypt; and also because in the book of Judges (7:12) the people of Arabia are compared to
'locusts' or grasshoppers for multitude, for in the original the word for both is the same."
Swinton, the historian, also informs us that "it was in the furnace blast of religious
enthusiasm that the scattered tribes of Arabia were fused into one nation."
Mohammedanism, or the great apostasy of the East, rose in the beginning of the seventh
century. It was in AD 622 that the flight of Mohammed took place. This event forms the
beginning of the Mohammedan calendar of today. He was received in Medina as a
prophet and prince; the Historian Myers goes on to say:
"His cause being warmly espoused by the inhabitants of Medina, Mahomet threw aside
the character of an exhorter and assumed that of a warrior. He declared it to be the will of
God that the new faith should be spread by the sword. Accordingly the year following the
Hegira (622 AD) he began to attack and plunder caravans. The flames of sacred war were
soon kindled. The reckless confusion of his wild converts was intensified by the assurance
of Mahomet that death met in fighting insured the martyr immediate entrance into
Paradise. Within ten years from the assumption of the sword by Mahomet, Mecca had
been conquered and the new creed established among all the tribes of Arabia."
Concerning the rapid progress of Mohammedanism in its attempted conquest of the
world, Mr. Guinness writes:
"Mohammedanism is one of those great movements which has impressed a new and
lasting character on a vast number of the nations of the world. No power known in history
ever wielded the sceptre over a wider sphere than this has done. In less than a century
(from its rise) Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Armenia, Asia Minor, Persia, part of India, Egypt,
Numidia, Tripoli, Tanis, the Barbary States, Morocco, the African coasts as far as Niger,
Spain, Sicily, Candia, Cyprus and even parts of Italy itself, had fallen under Saracenic
sway and that sway extended not only to civil government but to religious faith as well."