p. 87 | PROPHECY NOW FULFILLED by Evangelist

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 5, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 6

PROPHECY NOW FULFILLED.

By Evangelist

It would be hard to choose a phrase more suggestive of the manner in which the Turkish empire is approaching dissolution, than the symbolical language in which the Apocalypse describes its fall as “the drying up of the great river Euphrates.” To understand the appropriateness of the designation, it must be borne in mind that the Turks first appeared in the knowledge of the civilized world upon the eastern banks of the Euphrates. There they paused for fifty years and built up an empire to the east. Then the four angels bound in (by) the great river Euphrates (see Rev. 9:14) are loosed, and the Turks crossed the river to overthrow the Roman empire in Asia, and to establish four Turkish kingdoms, which were finally united in one. This power which first appears in history as the power of the Euphrates, it is declared, Rev. 16, 12, shall be dried up when the sixth vial is poured out.

This symbol would indicate that the overthrow of the empire will not be accomplished by some great catastrophe which will overwhelm it with sudden ruin, but that the process would be gradual, and due to the slow destruction of vigor and vitality. For more than a hundred years the Ottoman power has been waning. Roumania, Servia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt, and the Caucasus have passed from under her dominion, and the great fabric of empire still remaining is about to fall to pieces from its own rottenness. It is dried up. Its vitality is gone forever. It can have no rehabilitation. The attempts of England to bolster up the decaying empire and to secure reforms, have proved an utter failure. It is seldom that a country has ever presented so terrible a picture as Turkey does at this time. The country is impoverished; roving bands of marauders prey upon the helpless; the tax-gatherer has plundered until he can find nothing more, and the taxes are uncollected; there is no money in the treasury; there is no public credit at home or abroad; the army is unfed, unclothed and mutinous; every pacha in his government rules as he will or can, unrestrained by authority; the laws are laid aside, and anarchy, riot, and murder everywhere reign. It is apparent that the “Euphrates is dried up;” that the Turkish empire is a corpse, that the inquest is only delayed until the powers can agree concerning the disposition to be made of the estate. The jealousy of England, France, Austria, and Russia of the aggrandizement of each other, is the only lease of life that Turkey holds. There will, in all probability, soon be an agreement. When Poland was the “sick man,” Russia, Austria, and Prussia agreed concerning the partition. There is little doubt but that a similar agreement will soon be reached in the case of Turkey. —Evangelist.