17.  And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone:  and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

    18.  By these three was the third part of men killed, by the
    fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out
    of their mouths.

    19.  For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails:  for
    their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with
    them they do hurt.

20.  And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood:  which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: 

    21.  Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their
    sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

At the sounding of the sixth trumpet, or the second woe trumpet, a voice is heard from the four horns (all the horns) of the golden altar.  This probably denotes that the very same altar where incense was offered up to God with the prayers of all saints was now crying out to him for vengeance upon an apostate church.  That church had reached the summit of apostasy and iniquity, the virgin Mary, the saints, and thousands of idols in the form of miserable relics being worshiped more than God.  Because of these abominable idolatries, a voice is heard crying from the golden altar for the avenging judgments of Heaven, which were the loosing of the four angels bound in the river Euphrates.  The symbols of this vision are also of peculiar character and drawn from different departments.  We have four angels bound in the Euphrates, an immense army of horsemen, then a large number of horses with heads as of lions, and fire, smoke, and brimstone issuing from their mouths.  The horses thus particularly described are evidently intended to have a definite symbolical signification, and being objects of nature, they would indicate a political or military power.  The horsemen, being objects from human life, would point us to some religious body; while the angels signify the leaders that have control of these agencies.  Their being commissioned “to slay the third part of men” show that they will overthrow some of the established institutions of society.  We are to look, therefore, for some politico-religious power that should invade and overthrow the empire.  We are, of course, directed to the Eastern empire; for the Western division was subverted under the symbols of the first four trumpets.  With these specifications before us, we shall have no difficulty in identifying the power intended—­the Turkish, or Ottoman, empire.  Its agreement with the symbolic representations of the vision will be manifest from a statement of the facts of history.