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Verses 18 and 19: "It was these three plagues that killed a third part of mankind -- the fire,
smoke and sulfur issuing from the horses mouths. For the power of the horses was in their
mouths -- and also in their tails, for their tails were like snakes with heads, and with them
they could cause injury."

These verses express the deadly effect of the new mode of warfare introduced into Europe
at this time. It was by the means of these agents -- gunpowder, firearms and cannon -- that Constan-
tinople was finally overcome and given into the hands of the Turks.

In addition to the fire, smoke and brimstone which appeared to issue out of their mouths, it
is said that their power was also in their tails. The meaning of the expression appears to be that
horses' tails were the symbol, or emblem, of their authority. It is a remarkable fact that the horses'
tail is a well-known Turkish standard -- a symbol of office and authority. The image that the
apostle John saw would seem to have been that he saw the horses belching out fire and smoke and,
what was equally strange, he saw that their power of spreading desolation was connected with the
tails of the horses. Anyone observing a body of cavalry with such banners or ensigns, would natu-
rally be struck with this unusual or remarkable appearance, and would write of their banners as
concentrating and directing their power.

The supremacy of Islam over the Greeks was to continue -- as already mentioned -- 391
years and 15 days. Writes Josiah Litch:

Commencing when the one hundred and fifty years ended in 1449, the period would end
August 11, 1840. Judging from the manner of the commencement of the Ottoman su-
premacy, that it was by a voluntary acknowledgment on the part of the Greek emperor
that he only reigned by permission of the Turkish sultan, we should naturally conclude
that the fall or departure of the Ottoman independence would be brought about the same
way; that at the end of the specified period [that is, on the 11th of August, 1840] the sul-
tan would voluntarily surrender his independence into the hands of the Christian powers,
just as he had, three hundred ninety-one years and fifteen days before, received it from
the hands of the Christian emperor, Constantine XIII. (Prophetic Expositions, Vol. II, p.
189).

Let's look back in history and see if this did indeed occur. For several years prior to 1840,
the Turkish sultan had been embroiled in a war with Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt. Writes Litch:

In 1838 there was a threatening of war between the sultan and his Egyptian vassal had he
not been restrained by the influence of the foreign ambassadors....In 1839 hostilities were
again commenced, and were prosecuted until, in a general battle between the armies of
the sultan and Mehemet, the sultan's army was entirely cut up and destroyed, and his fleet
taken by Mehemet and carried into Egypt. So completely had the sultan's fleet been re-
duced, that, when hostilities commenced in August, he had only two first-rates and three
frigates as the sad remains of the once powerful Turkish fleet. This fleet Mehemet posi-
tively refused to give up and return to the sultan, and declared if the powers attempted to
take it from him, he would burn it. In this posture affairs stood, when, in 1840, England,
Russia, Austria, and Prussia interposed, and determined on a settlement of the difficulty;

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