| Home | Our Hope | |
| Bible Study |
|
March 12, 2023 |
| Euphrates - Breaking Out | ||
This study is the first of 2 separate studies where the Euphrates River is mentioned in Revelation. This mention of the river is primarily symbolic, but there is a good reason to believe there is a physical reality associated with it.
Both events happen during the period of the Sixth Trumpet. That's the last 3.5 years before Jesus returns. This event happens at the start of that period or very near the start.
The last 3 of the 7 trumpets are also called "woes," so the 6th Trumpet is also the 2nd woe. They are called woes because bad things happen to the people of Earth - bad from their perspective. And whoa, is this a bad thing! (I couldn't pass up the joke.)
The Euphrates River is 1740 miles long. It originates in eastern Turkey, near Keban. The river flows through Syria and Iraq, and joins the Tigris River to form the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf.
With that length, any event that was said to happen, "on the Euphrates," would be hard to locate without additional information. Therefore the Euphrates cannot be the cause of the event. It could, however, be the location of the cause of the event. There is also a possibility that the location is not on the Euphrates River. It could be at a building named the Euphrates.
It's going to be important to know the meaning of the name Euphrates. Strong's Concordance says "Euphrates" is "From an unused root meaning to break forth; rushing." This is a perfect match for the event we will see described.
This "outbreak" is the main event of the Sixth Trumpet, but the study will not go into all of the details. The study called The Sixth Trumpet has all the details. In this study we are going to look more at the Euphrates aspect of it and the outbreak.
We'll start with an overview of what we'll see. That will make it easier to hold all the pieces together as we go through them.
After these things, the sixth angel sounded, and I heard one voice from the four horns of the altar of gold, which is before God, 14 which said to the sixth angel that had a trumpet: "Loose the four Angels imprisoned at the great river Euphrates." 15 And those four Angels were released who were prepared for an hour and for a day and for a month and for a year, to kill a third of the children of men. (Revelation 9:13-15)
This description is the summary of the last major event before Jesus returns. There are many other events that happen during the Sixth Trumpet period. Jesus spoke of the end times being like a pregnant woman approaching the end of her term. Not much happens at first, but then things start happening. People are rushing around, and there is a lot of noise. Suddenly, there's the baby.
After this summary in the text, there is a detailed description of the people and the weapons that are used. We will only summarize those because the Sixth Trumpet study goes into those details.
The problem with all prophecy, and Revelation especially, is the question: Which nouns are literal and which are symbolic? Many people have answered that wrong for this passage.
For this passage, many people through time have said that it isn't possible to kill ⅓ of Earth's population in a period of a year, therefore this description can't be symbolic. In our time, we have the weapons to do it, as long as they are applied to a densely populated geographic area.
We also get support from the following verses for the idea that ⅓ of the children of men is literal. 1st Century Christians couldn't have understood what they describe, but it is easy to understand the cause in our time.
After saying that ⅓ of the population will die, the Bible describes the instrument of their death.
And the number of the army of the horsemen was two-ten thousand ten thousands (200 million), and I heard their number. (Revelation 9:16)
Horsemen - men who ride horses in a fast, charging attack. In the 1st Century, horses were the fighter jets of our time. They were often used with chariots, where the chariot carried an archer. The chariots would quickly pass in front of the front lines, and the archers would fire arrows at them, a "straffing run" in our terminology.
Army - the use of this word makes it clear that this is a military attack.
200 million – our first thought would be that this is the number of people, but we'll confirm later that the verses aren't talking about men on horses. Therefore the number given would be a measure of the strength of the army of horsemen, not the count of horsemen. But what is the 200 million measuring?
Because this will be a nuclear exchange, the strength would probably be measured the way we measure it - in megatons. If it were a measure of the number of delivery vehicles (rockets), that would have no value because the amount of destruction is not related to that. The number of people killed would be a valid measurement, but we are already given that number directly. Any other measurement would tell us nothing because we don't measure nuclear force strength that way. That would be God saying he measured it in a way that we could never understand, but told it to us anyway. If he did that, prophecy verification, which is important to God, would also be impossible after the event.
Therefore the 200 million must mean 200 megatons. For scale, the Nagasaki nuclear weapon was 0.015 megatons; Hiroshima was 0.025 megatons. More recently, Russia has built a weapon that is capable of 50 megatons. No other country has developed weapons with that level of power because a much smaller weapon can take out the largest city.
And in this way I saw the horses in a vision, and those sitting upon them had breastplates of fire and Chalcedony brimstone, and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions, and fire and brimstone and smoke proceeded from their mouths. (Revelation 9:17)
There is no dispute about the nature of this description. It is not a description of something physical; it is a symbolic description of the characteristics of something physical.
"Horses" – represent speed, the ability to travel great distances in a short time.
"Brimstone" – The Biblical name for Sulfur, but metaphorically it is a burning rock that destroys. As a young boy, I would sometimes get small pieces of Sulfur, as yellow rocks. It didn't start to burn easily, but once it started to burn, there wasn't much that would put it out. If you made the mistake of touching it while burning, some would stick to you and continue burning until it was gone, leaving burned skin behind.
If you are limited to 1st Century words, Sulfur isn't a bad description of a nuclear detonation. It will burn until it is done burning. Uranium and Plutonium don't technically burn, but there is heat, as if a fire were burning.
There are many other references to Sulfur in the Bible. Sodom and Gomorrah were inundated by burning rocks. Some believe they have found actual Sulfur at sites that are believed to be those cities. The Lake of Fire is said to burn with Brimstone. In that case the Bible is using Sulfur metaphorically to describe unending burning.
"Fire, brimstone, and smoke" - these are said to come from the mouth. Fire would be the bright light of "burning" uranium / plutonium. Brimstone was covered above. The smoke would be the radioactivity.
"Breastplate" – the groups controlling the horses have a symbol. We need to recall that this is a nuclear exchange. One side fires first, and the other responds. Because two nations must be involved, it seems strange that there would be one Breastplate, that is, one symbol for both. This is one of those things that will make more sense when we get closer to that time.
And by these three scourges, a third of the children of men were killed: by the fire, by the brimstone and by the smoke that proceeded from their mouths, 19 because the power of the horses was in their mouths, and also in their tails. (Revelation 9:18-19)
Here again we see the phrase, "A third of the children of men." We've already discussed that, in this context, there is no way to understand that as a symbolic description of something physical. Physical death is the intended meaning. With the current population of the earth, ⅓ would be about 2.7 billion people.
The power of the horses is in their:
The previous passage is still in scope here as God begins to say why this is happening.
"Scourge" is another name for a whip. But the question here is: Who is doing the whipping? At first we might think that it must be one or both of the nations firing the nuclear weapons. It isn't. God is causing / allowing this to happen for a purpose.
This is one of those situations that is difficult for us to understand. It is similar to the Pharaoh of the Exodus. God set up the choices Pharaoh would make, knowing that he would choose the evil choice. This was done so that Egypt would be punished and God would be glorified. Did God force Pharaoh to choose the bad choice? No, Pharaoh was free to choose the good choice. Did God know what he would choose and what the consequences would be? Yes.
The "Fire, brimstone, and smoke" is a whip that God is using on the people of Earth. These deaths are to be a scourge to the living. God is trying to whip some sense into those people. He wants the world to see the evil of their ways and the consequences that come from them.
And the rest of the children of men who were not killed by the scourges did not turn from the work of their hands to not worship devils and idols of gold, of silver and of brass, and of wood and of stone, which do not see, neither hear, nor are able to walk. 21 And they did not turn from their murders or from their witchcraft or from their fornication. (Revelation 9:20-21)
The people of the world do not change, or at least the majority don't. The Bible doesn't say it, but they probably won't even see this slaughter as a message from God about them. That's more amazing when you understand that some events have happened in their recent past that have made it clear that there is a God.
Could they see this as a consequence of rejecting God? It's like the Twin Towers attack in New York. Church attendance went up a little after that … for about 3 weeks. Then they got over it. Only a very few people would be able to make that connection. All the rest will see that something happened at the Euphrates that escalated into a nuclear weapon exchange - no God in that, no lesson to learn from it.