Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/242

 to Antichrist a still longer duration, viz., twelve hundred and ninety prophetic days, it is evident that he must refer to something else belonging to Antichrist, other than his temporal dominion, the duration of which we have already seen was limited to twelve hundred and sixty days: now what can this be? I confess it seems clear to me that this must be Antichrist's religion, or what St. Paul calls "the revelation" of the Man of Sin. It is evident, that if the Mahometan empire were destroyed to-morrow, great as the shock would be to the religious system of Mahomet, it would not be utterly extinguished by it. When the Empress Catherine conquered the Crimea, she abolished a Mahometan government, but she did not entirely root out Mahometanism, and to this hour the Tartar population of the Crimea remains Mahometan in its faith, and so no doubt will it be for some time after the empire of the Sultan shall have been absorbed within the dominions of the King of the North. The power of the little horn, the temporal kingdom of Antichrist, will have been broken, but his religion will still remain, still professed by its more obstinate adherents: it is then the religious system of Antichrist that we believe the Prophet refers to, when, in this text of his twelfth chapter, he assigns to that deso-