DESTRUCTION OF THE MAHOMEDAN EMPIRE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 343, 14 November 1879, Page 16

DESTRUCTION OF THE MAHOMEDAN EMPIRE.

We take the following interesting passage from Rohrbacher's History of the Church, bk. 28 : -

In order to enable our readers to follow the calculation more easily, we prefix a table of the Mahomedan method of counting time : — The Mahometan month is counted from the first appearance at dusk, of the crescent of the moon, to its reappearance. As this takes place sometimes after twenty-nine and sometimes after thirty days, their months vary accordingly, and their year is ten or eleven days shorter than ours ; bo that, in every thirty-three years they gain nearly a year on us. (Le Noir. Diet. Theol. de Berg.) The Prophet Daniel had said to tbe King of Babylon that the great statue which had been shown him in a dream, and which was composed of four several metals, gold, silver, brass, iron, ended in ten toes half iron and half clay ; that is to say that this colossal empire which was to pass in succession to four dynasties or nations, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, was to end by ten kingdoms half Roman and half barbarian. The Prophet afterwards saw more distinctly the fourth sovereign nation, the Fourth beast, the beast with iron teeth and brazen claws, having on its head ten horns, and it was told him that these ten horns were ten kings or kingdoms which were to spring from the fourth or Roman empire.* Seven centuries after the Prophet Daniel, the Apostle St. John, the Prophet of tbe new alliance, saw the same beast with ten horns, and was also told that these horns were ten kings. He saw, moreover, seated on this beast a woman clad in purple, drunk with the blood of Saints and of Martyrs ; and he was told that this woman was the city seated on the seven hills, the great city which reigned over the kings of the earth, and that the ten horns or kings, after having fought for her would end by hating her, by reducing her to the utmost desolation, by despoiling her, by devouring her flesh and consuming her in tbe fire.f And we have seen ten barbarian kings and peoples, once in the pay of Rome and her empire turn to hate her, despoil her of her glory and riches, devour her flesh or her provinces, and give herself up to the flames. The Prophet Daniel had seen something more. " I considered the horns, and behold another little horn sprung out of the midst of them : and three of the first horns were plucked up at the presence thereof : and behold eyes like the eyes of a man were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things. . . . After this I would diligently learn concerning the fourth beast, which was very different from all, and exceeding terrible : his teeth and claws were of iron : he devoured and broke in pieces, and the rest he stamped upon with his feet. And concerning the ten horns that he i^ 9° bis nead : and concerning the other that came up, before which three horns fell : and of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth speaking great things, and was greater than the rest. I beheld, and Io I thai horn made war against the saints, and prevailed over them. Till the Ancient of days came, and gave judgment to the saints of the Most High, and the time came, and the saints obtained the kingdom. And thus he said : the fourth beast shall be tbe fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be greater than all tue kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break at in pieces. And the ten horns of the same kingdom shall be ten kings : and another shall rise up after them, and he shall be mightier than theformer, and he shall bring down threekings and he Rhall speak wordsagainst the Hitrh One, and shall crush the saints of the Most High : and he shall thirk himself able to change times and laws, and they shall be delivered into His hand until a time, and times, and half a time. And judgment shall sit, that his power (literally the Sultanship) may be taken away, and be broken in pieces, and perish eveu to the end."

Bt. Jerome says with regard to this prediction : " All the ecclesiastical writers have taught that at the consummation of the world when the Roman Empire is to be destroyed, there will be ten kings who will < iride among them the Roman Universe, and that an eleventh little king will riso who will conquer three of the ten." Now, weaie just about to see all this accomplished. We are about to see ribe in the centre of Arabia, among the descendants of Ismael, a new king, a new sultan, who, at first feeble, will humble in tbe space of a century three of the ten kings who have divided among themselves the lloman world. We shall see, in the space of a centary, the rising empire of Mahomet annihilate the kingdom of the Persians in the East, lay low that of the Visigoths in Spain and humble profoundly the empire of Constantinople, preparatory to destroying it altogether. This new liorn will have eyes ; this king, this new sultan, will play the seer, the prophet ; but his eyes will be only the eyes of a man ; his prophecy will be that of man, and not of God. He will speak for, about, and against, the Most High; for the original rxpresbion conveys these three senses, but especially the last. He will speak pompously for the Most High against, the idolaters ; about the Most High with the Jews ; and against the Most High in denying the Divinity of His Christ, and in attackingon this fundamental artie'e. the Faith of Christians. This horn, this power n-ill make n-ar on the Saints of the Most High, and will prevail over them. Mahometanism will not cease to make war on the Christians, called (Saints in the language of Scriptures, and will prevail over them, in all the Ea*,t, and in all Africa. This new horn, this new kin^ will imagine he will be able to change the times and the law. Mahometauism will introduce a new manner of calculating the years ; instead of celebrating either Saturdays with the Jews or Sundays with th? Christians, it will celebrate Friday, for the law of Moses and for the law of Jesus Christ it will substitute the Koran.

•Dm- xadv.

This horn, this empire, will thus have power fnr a time, tiro times and the half of a time, that is to say, in the language of prophesy, a year, tiro years, and the half of a year, or as the Apostle St. John says, forty two months or twelve hundred and sixty days. Now, in order to accommodate their lunar years with the solar yeara, the Mahometans have a method of counting by months of yean, or a cycle of thirty years. According to this, the forty-two months that this antiChristian empire is to last would be twelve hundred and sixty years. and as it commenced abont the year 622, it would finish about the year 1882.

As we have already remarked we may, even in these expressions of Daniel and St. John, a time, two times, and half a time, discover as it were three periods for the Mahometan power ; first, one of augmentation ; second, one of struggle ; third, one of decay. During a tinw, twelve months of years, or 360 years, from 622 to 982, towards the end of the tenth century, Mahometanism triumphed almost everywhere without many obstacles. During two times, two years of years, or seven hundred and twenty years, from the end of the tenth centnry, when the Christians of Spain began to repulse the Mahometans, and caused the crusades to spring up, to the end of the seventeenth century there was a tolerably even struggle between Mahometanism and Christianity. From the end of the seventeenth century, when Charles of Lorraine and Sobieski of Poland, finishing what Pius V. had commenced at the battle of Lepanto, broke completely the preponderance of the sultans, Mahometanism has been in a state of decay. In a word, it is not only possible but very probable that dating from this last epoch, the commencement of the eighteenth century, after the Jtalf of a time, six months of years, or one hundred and eighty years, about 1882 this anti-Christian empire will come to an end.