had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails:
and their power was to injure men five months. They had a king
over them, the messenger of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is
Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue he hath the name Apollyon. One
woe is past away; and behold, there come yet two woes
hereafter."--Rev. 9:1-12.

The previous trumpets reveal the agencies which effected the dismemberment
and overthrow of Western Rome. The fifth and sixth unfold those which
terminated that empire in the east, embracing the territory between the
Adriatic and Euphrates, the Lybian desert and the Danube.

A star (1:20) symbolizes a messenger, or head of a religious body, p. 31.
Mohammed is generally regarded as represented by this symbol. He was, by
birth, of the princely house of the Koreish, Governors of Mecca, a family
of eminence.

The star had fallen to the earth before opening the pit of the abyss,
which illustrates the flight of Mohammed from Mecca, and the seeming
termination of all his hopes. To save his life, he took refuge, with one
companion, in a cave near Medina, in A. D. 622, which forms the epoch of
the Hegira, _i.e._, of his flight.

The bottomless pit, is where Satan is subsequently cast (20:3); and the
key of it being given to this agent, symbolizes his power to open and to
cause the smoke to issue from it; the Satanic origin of which is thus
indicated:

Smoke is an appropriate representative of error, and symbolizes the
Mohammedan doctrines; which, like the smoke of a great furnace, were
disseminated far and wide, subverting the religion, and, in time,
effecting the overthrow of the remaining portion of the Roman empire--the
sun, one-third of which was smitten under the fourth trumpet.

The locusts were generated in the smoke from whence they issued. In a
corresponding manner, the spread of Mohammedanism resulted in the
organization of hordes of Saracens, who propagated the religion of the
false prophet by the sword, and founded the famous Arabian empire, which
extended from the Atlantic ocean to the river Euphrates.

The shapes of the locusts were like horses prepared for battle; and the
Saracenic hordes, thus symbolized, were mounted horsemen, famous for the
swiftness of their flight or pursuit, and ever ready for the contest.

Their crowns, faces, hair, teeth, breast-plates, &c., seem to be
indicative of their personal appearance: on their heads they wore yellow
tur