Revelation 16:12-16

In this study, I find an emphasis on the parallel between the figurative and spiritual meanings of Scripture and the literal physical meanings of things in Scripture. There may be those who feel otherwise, but I will be ignoring them whenever possible.

I am finding, and you may register this as an observation, not a complaint, that the older the commentaries are, the less useful they become in understanding current-day nations, simply referring to them as “the Turks,” which is a term associated with the old Ottoman Empire. Today, what was formerly Babylon is located in the present-day Iraq, near the city of Hillah, about 85 km from Baghdad. That would be, just for reference, about the same distance from Ottawa in relation to Arnprior to the west. What that means is that it is not always easy to understand what it is we are reading, and we may get some of the details wrong. However, the Word of God is not ever wrong, and as long as we stick to the Word, we are fine.

As I prepared for this study, particularly, a number of my commentaries began to diverge in opinion, and these in turn diverged from what I see in Scripture. In this study, I will do my best to give what I have seen and understood, and where I can, the reasons why I hold the understandings I do. This is the reason we study Scripture. We want to know what God meant when He inspired the writer to choose the words and phrases he did to reflect the burden of what God put on His heart.

With that said, I broke the text into the following thought units:

KV15: Like a Cub Scout, Be Prepared

15: (“Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.”)

12: The Drying Up of Euphrates

13-14: The Hidden Realities

15: The Lord’s Wake-up Warning

16: The Great Gathering for War

Remember, we are at the sixth bowl judgment of the final wrath of God. All of these judgments are intended to punish and destroy sin and all who will not let go of it and turn to King Jesus. If this looks like the setup for the “great battle” of all time, that’s because it is. You mean a battle fought is the wrath of God? It is if He is causing unbelievers to kill each other, right? We saw this before with the butchery that came from the red rider in Revelation six. This is the moment where the unbelieving people of Earth are saying, “No!” to God, probably for the last time, as the last verse is the last time where we ever read that one of these judgments had any kind of reference to turning away from sin to God. And everyone at that point in history will know what is happening and who is doing it, not to mention why. Let’s get into the text.

KV15: Like a Cub Scout, Be Prepared

15: (“Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.”)

I was in the Cub Scouts. I earned a few badges, but at a certain point, my parents told me that they couldn’t afford to send me to the Boy Scouts. I understood, it was $100 just for the new uniform. I had other interests anyway, so I was okay with it, but I never forgot the motto: “Be Prepared.” For what was one to be prepared? Ostensibly, it was an armed invasion (I know a few things about Lord Baden Powell, their founder), but really it meant you were to be ready for anything. Little did I know there was such a huge event to be ready for at that time. However, there is, and this study and text are all about that in some way.

General readiness is always a good idea, with your food stores, your bug-out bags, your survival gear, always having at least a half-tank of gasoline in your car, emergency cash, but there is a point where the magnitude of the event will defeat your best preparations. God is the one in control here, and I doubt that anyone but Him can truly prepare on this scale. Let’s jump in here.

12: The Drying Up of Euphrates

The first thing I need to say here is that this is a specific thing. A major river in the world will dry up. The Euphrates is one of the four rivers named that came from the one river that flowed out of Eden in Genesis 2:14. It has been there as a kind of boundary, a sort of protection obstacle, since the beginning of Creation. This is the river that God will dry up as a direct result of an angel emptying a bowl of judgment on it at the command of God. The text in v.12 here is very specific that the river dries up as a direct result of that action, so the removal of the Euphrates River is a divine action. Let’s look at the verse.

12: The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried up, so that the way would be prepared for the kings from the east.

Direct result of heavenly action. I do think this will be very quick, like the rest of the bowl judgments. Will it just visibly drain before watching eyes? Perhaps. Will it vanish in a split second? Again, perhaps. We really don’t know anything other than that the river that will be blood will simply vanish, our Lord having no more need of it.
The Kings of the East. Traditionally, there are two ways of viewing these “kings of the east.” Some have made a connection that this is in preparation for the return of Jesus and all of His following armies. However, it is Babylon that sits on the banks of the Euphrates. Jesus will come from the east of Jerusalem, and that is closer to the river Jordan, about which prophecy says nothing other than it turns to blood, that I have ever found since the Levitical priests crossed it on dry land. I think this view is a speculation at best. Although the Euphrates is indeed to the east of Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus will also be in the air until his feet touch down on the Mount of Olives, and so will His heavenly armies. That renders any need to dry up the Euphrates pointless. Also, the Lord Jesus will arrive at Basrah in southern Jordan to deal with something there first, so the whole point is moot. His arrival in Jerusalem will be after the battle, and will be a ceremonial entrance. Such an entrance was made by Aragorn to Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, if you want a literary example. He entered the city prior to his own entry to be involved in the healing of several others.
The better position on this comes from the Greek of the text, “The kings who are from the rising sun” (JBF). China has long been called “The Land of the Rising Sun.” They are the only power at this point in human history that has boasted of the ability of putting a 200-million-man army into the field, also, and that number comes from Revelation 9 and the sixth trumpet judgement, one of the things to which this may be compared.
Some view these “kings who come from the east” as the Jews. De Burgh and others suggest this is because they were “designed to be a kingdom of priests to God on earth.” I think that cannot be correct yet, although it is somewhere around this time that some of the believing Jews will actually say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” in fulfilment of Jesus’ own prophecy, but I am doubtful that has anything to do with this judgment directly.
It is here that Poole, Henry, Durham, and others take their historic interpretation of this meaning as a general decline in Turkish power, but I think that came before now. It seems to me that historical prediction is tougher to make than it looks, especially today, and there is a difference between that and prophecy. If it had anything to do with this, it may have been their 19^th-century decline to prepare the way for the return of the unbelieving Jews to return to Palestine in 1948. However, that was then; this is not.
Most commentators agree that Babylon is a reference to the apostate church, or perhaps the world religion at that time, not Islam directly, though it may be a part of that world religion then. Many try to marry this idea to the apostate religion being the one draining off the resources of the true church, but all of this would require that the “true church” be the Kings coming from the East, which I have already said I don’t adhere to, so I don’t think this is valid. Some have even suggested that this is an army of demons, but I do not think they would require the river to be dried up either, given what we here at Berean Nation think about demonology. I think rather that this is a removal of an obstacle to human military movement across traditional international boundaries, all headed toward a very specific destination. We will get there later in our study. We will move on.

13-14: The Hidden Realities

One of the issues that humanity has in interpreting Scripture is that there is an unseen reality behind it. Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that unless one was “born again/from above,” that one could not even see the kingdom of God, never mind enter it. Chapter 1 of Job tells us about how Satan (job description, not name) has access to the court of Heaven, and he walks about on the earth seeking to attack those whom He identifies as his enemies. Apparently, Job was one of those. I would venture to say that unless the Scriptures had told us about any of this, we would simply wander around from event to event, believing that bad things could happen at random to good people. Hee is another spot where we are given a glimpse of the unseen world and the energy and reasons behind what happens on Earth. Let’s look.

13: And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs;

Frogs were sent first to Egypt as a plague that covered the land of Egypt. It was one of the plagues that Jannes and Jambres (Pharaoh’s wizards) could duplicate, so they had a lot of frogs. Interestingly, frogs are considered an unclean animal by the Jews (Lev. 11:10-11, 41), and these are therefore unclean spirits coming out of the mouths of the unholy triumvirate (they aren’t a perfect trinity like the Godhead). Because these “frogs” are spiritual beings by nature, we can call them demons, and they are connected with idolatrous words coming out of their mouths, like false prophecies, false words, or such. Jaimeson, Fausset and Brown say this: “…the incarnation of all that is self-deifying and God-opposed in the world powers of all ages; having rejected Him that came in the Father’s name, they shall worship one that comes in his own, though really the devil’s representative…“. JFB gives some very good symbology of these three frogs and what they represent: “The unclean spirit out of the mouth of the dragon symbolizes the proud infidelity which opposes God and Christ. That out of the beast’s mouth is the spirit of the world, which in the politics of men, whether lawless democracy or despotism, sets man above God. That out of the mouth of the false prophet is lying spiritualism and religious delusion, which shall take the place of the harlot when she shall have been destroyed.”
These spirits are well known to us all. We know them from their speech. These speak of liberty, but that is not gospel freedom but rather license for lusts and their own desires. These three demon frogs have this kind of job. Next verse.

14: for they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them together for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty.

The imagery of the demons coming out of the mouths of the three evil rulers signifies the verbal enticements and propaganda that will draw many people to their evil cause. In other words, the job of these three demon frogs that come out of the mouths of these monsters is to entice world leaders to commit their military forces to an invasion of Israel (I suspect from the geographical context of the earthly locations we spoke of in previous studies). They will literally lie, cheat, or otherwise appropriate anything they must to make this happen. They will offer any bribe. Supply any incentive. Say and do anything within their power, and that power is significant, considering the mouths from which they proceeded. It is interesting that with the Egyptian wizards, this is where their power ceased. After this plague in Egypt, they were no longer able to duplicate Moses’ miracles. Because of this, these demon frogs are seen by several commentators as the last attempt of the unholy triumvirate to do anything. It is after this that they are captured and dealt with by the King of Kings. We’ll see in future studies.
Spirits of demons. Demons, in my view, and not just mine, are disembodied Nephilim from before the flood. Fallen angels are in a different class of being that I would name devils. I believe the usage of the words “demon” and “devil” in scripture bears this out, but I have not thoroughly studied the topic.
Great day of God. This phrase is used in two different ways in Scripture. The first of these is a general reference to the “end times,” which began with Christ’s birth and continues until the present, while the second of these is probably how it is used in this context. It can mean the day of God’s final judgment on this topic. I do not believe that this judgment is the end of time; there is a whole millennium yet to come after these events. Remember, I am a classic premillennialist, so I do believe these events will usher in Christ’s thousand-year reign on Earth before the final judgment and the eternal state. I believe also that it is very much the second usage that fits the context here. God is about to judge all those attacking Israel, who will about now be saying, “blessed be He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Time is always a bit muddled here, but it isn’t over until He says it’s over. The “Day of the Lord” is about to be completed. What started about seven years previous to this point may only have days or hours at this point. A rider with false hope and a bow with no ammunition embarked upon his deceitful ride of conquest via statecraft and began all of the stuff we have followed to this point. It is a truly incredible tale. Next paragraph.

15: The Lord’s Wake-up Warning

All of these dark things are happening in our future chronology of the history of Earth. With all of these dark and arcane things happening, a ray of pure, white, holy reality pierces it all like a laser shot. The Lord has something to say to the readers and advises John accordingly. Let’s see.

15: (“Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.”)

This is a parenthetical remark made by our Lord Jesus Himself. The translators assisted by placing the words into actual parentheses, but in Greek, it just says the words. “I am coming like a thief.” Some have said that this is the actual point of the “catching away” of the saints, but I don’t think that’s what is being referenced here. I think this is Revelation 19:11-16, the conquering King of kings riding on His brilliant white warhorse, after having traded in the humble donkey colt. What does it mean that he will come like a thief? It means He will come unannounced at a time of His own choosing, and He will plunder His target. (Turn to Christ now! Don’t be part of His target, you will be plundered!)
This is the third “beatitude” of seven in the book of Revelation. “Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame.” The “clothing” here is speaking of the purification obtained by the cleansing sacrifice of Christ’s blood on the cross. If you don’t think so, I refer you to the warnings to the Christian churches in Revelation 3 of Sardis (3:2-4) and Laodicea (3:18). It is a direct warning not to be swayed by the so-called miracles and sign-wonders performed by the demons of the unholy triumvirate. Instead, we “keep our clothes” by persevering in sufferings for Christ, remaining faithful to Christ’s teachings, and remaining ready for His return. That way, we will not have to wander about “naked and ashamed,” that is, to have our unreadiness and sinfulness exposed for all to see. I came across a devotional reading that I found very helpful to this point. It says, “We can prepare ourselves by resisting temptation and by being committed to God’s moral standards. It requires discernment to the deception of idolatry, which can be disguised as wealth, pleasure, or security. We must avoid spiritual apathy and laziness.” Further to the point, I believe that our Lord wants us to be ready for Him. I think it is to this end that He inserts this alarm-clock-style statement. Be ready, it is better than the alternative. It is difficult, and it will require discipline, but that is why we are His disciples now, that is “learners with the intent to become more like the master.”

With all of that joyful moment of fellowship, we now return you to your deliberately scheduled events filled with darkness.

16: The Great Gathering for War

After that moment of delight at the Saviour coming to meet us in the valley of the shadow of death, we are called back to the scene of the criminality. It is the scene of the criminality because the crimes themselves are still in progress, and the criminals are still present at the scene. Let’s see.

16: And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon.

This seems to be a physical location on Earth. If it is, as the Hebrew suggests, in fact “the mount of assembly” in the territory of Manasseh, it may be a place of historical significance. There is a gent I like by the name of Amir Tsarfati who is the head of the ministry called Behold Israel who actually owns a house near that location. He can look out over the Jezreel Valley and see the “mountain,” little more than a rolling hilltop, and as a Christian, he is aware of the prophetic and historical significance of that location. We have Anglicized the word to “Armageddon” and have used it as a term to describe an apocalyptic final battle between good and evil. The Canadian band Prism wrote a song titled “Armageddon” on their studio album of the same title in 1979. I only throw that in because I used to be a fan. However, it is a real, geographical location in Israel, near the western portion of the Sea of Galilee (really just a lake). It is a semi-strategic location, with a highway that runs from Egypt through Israel, and then turns east to — get this — Babylon. Historically, it was the scene of the overthrow of the Canaanite kings by Deborah and Barak, I think, referred to as the “great plain of Esdraelon.” King Josiah was slain there by Egypt as he allied himself with Babylon, and it is the site of this future immense conflagration. Joel refers to it as “the valley of Jehoshaphat,” and is referencing this same battle in the Old Testament. (Joel 3:2, 12, 14 if you want to look it up.) Some feel that this is an analogy, and the place will be like that in description, but why not use the real thing?

The “mount of assembly” reference is interesting to me, because Megiddo is a plain, with little more than a rolling hill as a height of land. Nevertheless, Har in Hebrew means “mountain,” even though there is no mountain there. It may have been used in the past to describe God’s presence, but that’s speculation, and not mine. The word Megiddo in Hebrew comes from the root gaddad, meaning “cut off,” and is used in the sense of “slaughter.” I find it relevant that John uses the Hebrew name and points it out. Some think that this may be an alert to the non-Hebrew reader that what follows is symbolic in nature, but there is no proof of that, and seems very Augustinian, and I’m not of the same mind as Augustine of Hippo and a lot of things, particularly his Amillennial theology that turns everything into analogies and poetry.

What will occur here is what I earlier termed “World War Last.” In fact, this will be the very last battle fought, although the order this stuff is recorded in Revelation is a bit…different, and you will see what I mean when we hit chapters 17 and 18. This will be a unique world war, however, because the entire world will line up against Israel and God. The World will be on the same side, united at last. This final battle is described in Scripture: In 14:14-20, it is described as a harvest by an angel with a sickle and will result in great bloodshed, which we looked at. In this verse, we learn the named location in Israel of the battle. When we get to Revelation 19, we will see the victor, and that’s all I will say on that for now. This battle portrays the very final battle of the rebellion against God Most High at the end of the age. As a result, we pay less attention to the battle itself because the important part is the return of our Lord and King, Jesus Christ. At this point, it is all over but the crying. And that is only the sixth bowl of judgment.

That’s what I saw in the text.

Please remember that we have changed the Book study to Friday evenings again (huzzah), and we start at 7:00 p.m., just like this evening.