All right, Revelation 16, one word, Armageddon. You say Armageddon, everybody's
ears perk up, don't they? What is Armageddon? I preached
a message called Armageddon, put it out on the internet, and
we probably got a lot of response on Armageddon. You tell somebody, you know,
we're going to study the book of Revelation. Film at 11. You know, that kind of thing.
And everybody flocks in because of the curiosity. There's so much written on this,
isn't there? So many popular books. You know,
the left behind books. I heard somebody say this and
I agree with it. You know the only thing that
was left behind in those books? The Bible was left behind. That's
the only thing that was left behind. Because it's not scriptural. Those are science fiction books,
is really what they are. But we're going to study this,
and I've kind of divided up. We're just going to look at a
few verses today and next week on the subject of preparation
for Armageddon. Now, we've looked at the first
four and five bowls of judgment, vials of wrath. as John calls
them here. These vials of wrath being poured
out upon this wicked world as the judgment of God against all
who are found without Christ. And understand as we read these
things, now you may take a view that's different than what I
do, but you know I've always told you all you have the liberty
to be wrong. And that's okay. But all kidding
aside, we know this, whatever view we take of these things,
we know this, that our only hope of victory, our only hope of
salvation, our only hope of protection and final glory is to be found,
as Paul described it in Philippians 3, that I may know Him, Christ,
and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which
is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Jesus
Christ, the righteousness of God, which is my faith. And so
that's going to be our only victory, whatever you think of Armageddon.
But these next two lessons are preparation for Armageddon. And
what they do here in the sixth vial judgment, and we'll see
in the seventh vial judgment, they take us up to the end of
time. The final end of all things. So look at verse 12 of chapter
16. It says, the sixth angel, the
messenger of God. Some people believe that this
refers to ministers of the gospel, and that could. Some people believe
that it refers to angelic beings who are sent to pronounce these
files of judgment, to make the pronouncement. The issue here
is not exactly who the angel is. Now, my own personal belief
that it's a messenger of God. The issue is the message. And
that's where we need to focus, all right? What message is being
poured out in this vial? What message of wrath? And it
says, the sixth angel poured out his vial, his bowl, upon
the great river Euphrates. Now, the Euphrates River, most
people have heard of that. You've studied world history.
It was one of the rivers in the beginning, in Genesis. And this
river Euphrates is really a symbolic emblem of something. We'll see
in a minute. And what it is, he poured this
vial of wrath upon this river. And it says, and the waters thereof
was dried up, the river Euphrates was dried up, that the way of
the kings of the east might be prepared. So now here what we
see is the world and its inhabitants being led to what we call the
final battle. which is Armageddon, and we'll
get more into that next week, the word Armageddon is used,
and we'll see what that is. And this is the point, this is
leading to the point where the Lord Jesus Christ, in the power
of his majesty, is going to finally crush and remove all his enemies. Now that's the stage of this,
that's the purpose of this. Christ is the victor. And in
essence, even though we're living on this earth still, and even
though there's trouble, trouble, trouble. Remember the Lord told
his disciples, where is that in John 16 I think? He said,
in the world you'll have tribulation, and that's trouble. And let me
tell you something, that tribulation is more than just a seven year
time period. That tribulation is our entire life here on this
earth, as believers. Because that means trouble. But
he said, be of good cheer. And that's hard to do, but that's
what he tells us to do. And we know it's only by the
Spirit of God that we can do that. I mean, we look around
at the world, it's hard to be cheerful, isn't it? We look at
the political situation, the economic situation, and we do
fear for our children. That's why I pray for our children
and our children's children. I fear that our children, and
especially our grandchildren, will not, if the Lord allows
this world to continue on, they will not grow up with the privileges
and the blessings and the freedoms that we knew growing up. And
I hate that. But I have to understand that
whatever that is, it's God's will. Isn't it? And that my greatest desire for
my children and my grandchildren is that they come to know Christ.
Isn't that right? I don't care if they live in
the lap of luxury all their lives. You know their only hope is to
know Christ. To be found in Him. So whether
they have it easy or whether they have it tough, that's our
greatest desire, is that they come to know Him, whom to know
is life eternal, and they are submitted to His righteousness
as the only way of salvation. This final battle, as you know,
is commonly known as the Great Battle of Armageddon, which is
the place identified. Look over at verse 16. That's
where Armageddon is identified. It says, He gathered them together
into a place in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon. Now as I said, I'm
going to go into that word Armageddon in a little bit more detail next
week. But let's deal with this first.
As stated in the lesson on chapter 9 and verse 14, mention of the
great river Euphrates. That was mentioned back in chapter
9. And it's caused a lot of commentators to point out a future war with
the nations like Syria and Iraq, the Arab nations, and even China
that go into it. And on your notes, I've got this
written down. In the Old Testament, listen
to this, the river Euphrates, the Euphrates River is a symbol
of a river that feeds and nourishes ungodly nations. ungodly empires. And the main one in the history
of Israel was Babylon. Now Babylon in Revelation, in
the book of Revelation, is a symbol of Antichrist and false religion
and false governments that stand against Christ. And so this river
Euphrates represents, symbolizes, the life and that which feeds
Antichrist, an anti-Christian religion, an anti-Christian government,
opposition to Christ, like Babylon. Babylon was the great conqueror
of Judah. Back at the end, that was prophesied
in the book of Isaiah. It came to fruition at the end
of Jeremiah's prophecy. And then you had the prophecies
of Daniel and Ezekiel while they were in captivity. And then God,
by his power, sent the Medo-Persians to conquer Babylon. And you know
how they did it? They did it, and they didn't
have to break down a wall. They didn't have to tear down
a building. They dried up the river Euphrates, which ran smack
down the middle of the city of Babylon, which at that time was
probably one of the, you know, they call the seven wonders of
the world. That was probably one of them. The Hanging Gardens
of Babylon, you've heard of that? So this river Euphrates is a
symbol of the wicked world, that which feeds the wicked world.
The life of it. It's kind of like, compare it
to the Nile River in Egypt. The Nile River was the life of
the nation of Egypt. And you remember before God delivered
the Hebrew children out of Egypt, one of the plagues was what?
He turned that river into blood. And we talked about that back
here in the fourth, in the third angel, the third vial, where
it says the fountains of waters, they became blood. In other words,
they became death, not life. Here's a river. And how many
times in scripture is our Lord and the salvation that He freely
provides His people, described as a river of life, fountains
of living water. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst after righteousness, they'll be filled. Your hunger,
listen, if you hunger after righteousness, your hunger will be filled as
you look to Christ as the Lord your righteousness. If you thirst
after righteousness, your thirst will be quenched only as you
look to Christ as the Lord your righteousness. So this is the
opposite of the river of life that we find in Christ. This
is a river of death because it feeds ungodly nations, ungodly
religion. And back in the Old Testament,
Euphrates was the boundary beyond which lay exile and danger for
the people of God. Here's the people of God in Judah
and in Jerusalem and in the temple, that's their safety. And the
Euphrates River and beyond that represented that which was dangerous
for the people of God. That which was death for them.
So, most importantly here, I underline this, it was beyond the Euphrates
that Israel had been taken during the years of her exile and captivity
in Babylon. Remember the psalmist, by the
rivers of Babylon, what did we do? We sat down and wept. And that was during a time, I
believe in Ezekiel's time, you know Ezekiel, you know Daniel,
when he was in captivity, God providentially, And sometimes
we don't realize how much of an amazing power of God's grace
this is. When Daniel was in captivity,
he was part of the court of the king. He was an advisor to the
king. Now here's a believer who was
an advisor to a heathen king, and he still maintained his integrity
by the grace of God in faith to God. And some of the greatest
prophecies of the Lord Jesus Christ and his glorious work
of redemption is found in the book of Daniel. Some of the greatest
types, symbols, the three Hebrew children, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, you know those are Babylonian names. That's
okay. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
You know what happened to them and how they went into the fiery
furnace and there was the fourth man in there and who was that?
That was the Lord himself. That was a pre-incarnate appearance
of our Savior shielding those three Hebrew children from the
wrath of a heathen king because that's and that symbolizes how
under the blood of Christ, under the cross, under his righteousness,
we have nothing to fear. from any person's wrath. And
then the prophecy of Daniel, for example, in Daniel chapter
nine where it talks about Messiah would come and he would make
an end of sin, he would finish the transgression, he would bring
in everlasting righteousness, he would seal up the vision,
the prophecy. And here's this man, he's in
the court of a heathen king. And God providentially held that
king's wrath back from Daniel. That was the power of God. Any
other person who defied the king in any way would be killed. And
then in Ezekiel, now Ezekiel, he was sort of like the prophet
to the common people and he was down by the river with a few
thousand of the refugees and that's who he prophesied to.
Could have been the river, probably the river Euphrates. But here's
what it symbolizes. It symbolizes the boundary between
peace and war, safety and destruction, the boundary between the city
of destruction, the city of idolatry, Babylon, and the land of Canaan,
the land of God. Back in Revelation 9 and verse
14, there was a trumpet warning connected with this river. But
it wasn't heeded, they didn't listen. Left to himself, man will not
repent. He will not hear. We see that
here. It says here the waters were dried up. The great river
Euphrates was dried up. And of course that shows us that
this manifestation of the wrath of God is the cutting off of
all life for the ungodly. There's nothing but death. Remember,
there's a way, there's a broad road that leads to destruction.
It's a way of death. There is a way that seems right
to man, but the ways thereof... See, there's no life there. It's
religion. It's glorious in man's view. What does the Bible tell us?
That which is highly esteemed among men It's an abomination
to God. So what the Lord's doing in this
bowl of wrath is he's cutting off the life and the blood of
all false religion, all false ways. And always keep in mind
now that Babylon represents all religions of man that teach and
promote salvation by the works and the will of man, salvation
conditioned on the sinner. And that cannot mix with the
grace of God. Now he says here, in verse 12,
he says, the water thereof was dried up that the way of the
kings of the east might be prepared. Now there's a lot of commentators
who believe the kings of the east here are enemies of Christ,
enemies of the church, coming from the east to wage war against
the church, against the people of God. And that's where you
get these ideas about Syria and Iraq and the Arab nations. Now,
let me say this now. I don't believe that's what this
means, and I'll show you why. But there's going to be enemies
coming as far as the nations of the world. The enemies of
Christ in the church are going to come from north, south, east,
and west. Now, you can mark it down. anyone
who does not believe the gospel, any nation who stands in opposition
to it. But let me give you some things
to consider here, and I've got these listed in your lesson.
Number one, in the Bible, that which comes from the East always
symbolizes, as the sunrise, a great and grand and glorious day. and
it symbolizes the light and glory of God. I've got some references
there. You remember the three wise men
who followed the star to see Christ, see the Messiah? Where'd
they come from? They came from the east. Three
wise men from the east. Judah's deliverance from Babylon,
you know where it came from? Isaiah 4611, a ravenous bird
from the east that represented the deliverance of God's people.
You know who that was? That was King Cyrus of the Medes
and Persians. He's the one who had the dam
built that dried up the Euphrates River that caused the people
of Babylon to surrender. That's how that happened. Cyrus,
a heathen king, now think about this, was a type Not personally,
but in his office and in the providential work that God had
him do, he was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here Cyrus
comes and you know what God calls him, read it, I think you can
read it at the end of 2 Chronicles. God calls Cyrus his anointed. Now what is the Old Testament
word for Messiah mean? Anointed. The anointed one. So Cyrus, even though he himself
was an idolater and a heathen king, he in his office and in
the great work that God providentially had him do, he was a type of
Christ coming from the East to deliver Israel. Well, our Savior
is the Son of Righteousness who comes from the East to deliver
His people. We talk about the Eastern Gate.
That was the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem, and it represents
deliverance. All right, here's the second
thing. I mentioned this before. When Israel was in captivity
in Babylon, which is east of Israel, for 70 years the Lord
sent an army to liberate them, and we know that they did so
by damming up the Euphrates River, And this made a way for the people
of Judah to go back to Jerusalem. I think when Cyrus conquered
Babylon, he, and this again was by the providence of God. I mean,
you know, it was very uncommon back then when kings conquered
other nations. A lot of times they would disperse,
and that's what Nebuchadnezzar did. You remember he took the
people of Judah out of Judah in three different waves, three
different exportations. And what he was trying to do
was to assimilate them into his culture and into his way. And
that way he could keep control. So it was very uncommon. But
King Cyrus of Persia, a heathen king, He agreed to allow the
people of Judah to return back to Jerusalem, and you know what?
To rebuild the city, the walls of the city, and to rebuild the
temple. Now, it was a sad case for Judah
because there was only about 50,000 that returned. The rest
of them wanted to stay in Babylon. They'd become comfortable. They
didn't want to go back home. But if you want to read about
their return in rebuilding the walls of the city and rebuilding
the temple, read the Minor Prophets. Most of the Minor Prophets talk
about that, Zechariah especially, because they were very lax in
doing that. They were more intent of fulfilling their own personal
lust in building their own homes than they were about building
the walls of the city and building back the temple for worship. But Cyrus allowed him to do that.
Now, who do you suppose put that in his mind and gave him that
inclination? God did. That's an amazing thing. And so, this verse symbolically
speaks of the preparation for final judgment, final liberation
of all the people of God, sinners saved by the grace of God. And
this kings of the east refers to the people of God who are
made kings and priests under God. Christ is truly the king
of kings. That's who I believe he's talking
about. I believe this is a preparation for all of God's people, all
of God's saints who are called the kings of the east. That's
what we are. The book of Revelation says we're
kings and priests under God. Some people translate it as a
kingdom of priests. Well, that's okay. But we are
ambassadors of Christ who is the king of what? Kings. Now, that doesn't just refer
to earthly kings. That refers to all who are made
kings and priests unto God. And that's who I believe he's
talking about. This, in other words, this river Euphrates was
dried up to bring death upon Babylon to prepare the way for
the church, the people of God. to come and finally have victory
in time over all that was against Christ and His people. Well,
look at verse 13. He says, I saw three unclean
spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon. Now,
who's the dragon? That's Satan. And out of the
mouth of the beast That's the beast that comes up out of the
sea and out of the mouth of the false prophet. That's the beast
that comes up out of the earth. Here's the unholy trinity. These
unclean spirits, they're the spirits of devils. Look at verse
14. For they are the spirits of devils.
So they're demonic spirits. They appear in John's vision
as poisonous frogs or reptiles. And of course you know that can
reach back, reptiles really, and that can reach back to the
garden as Satan appeared in the form of a snake. They come out
of the mouth of the dragon. They come out of the mouth of
the beast. They come out of the mouth of the false prophet. Why
do you say they come out of the mountain? That's what they're
speaking. It's what they're saying. It's their doctrine. It's their
false gospels, their false message. You ever seen one of these documentaries
about frogs and how they feed themselves? How they catch an
insect? Anybody know? With their tongue. They flip their tongue out and
they catch it. And that's what this is symbolizing. Satan's
false message of salvation conditioned on sinners. Conditioned on the
works, the wills of sinners. That which denies the righteousness
of Christ imputed. Or challenges it. Seeking to
damn men so. False doctrine. And also the
word frogs here can be translated fraud. or fake. It's kind of like a play on words,
you might say, and sometimes the New Testament will do that.
It describes Satan's false ministers who come as angels of light,
but they've got a deadly message. And it's a great deception. And if you want to see a description
of the kinds of things, look here at verse 14. It says, they
work miracles. Now look at this now. These false
preachers who are inspired by the dragon, the beast, and the
false prophet, working miracles which go forth unto the kings
of the earth. Now you see the difference there?
Not the kings of the east, but the kings of the earth and the
whole world. Now, take somebody to this verse
of scripture when they want to argue about does the word world
mean everybody without exception. Well, if it means everybody without
exception here, what's going to happen? They come out and
they work miracles and go forth unto the kings of the earth and
of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great
day of God Almighty. Now, why is Satan? Now, we know,
you know, the Bible speaks of a gathering. But why is Satan
and the beast and the false prophet gathering? They're gathering
their allies here. And this working of miracles,
if you want to read about that, I've got it referenced here,
2 Thessalonians chapter 2. It speaks of the working of Satan
with all power and signs and lying wonders, deceptive wonders,
meant to deceive men into a false security and assurance of salvation. That whole passage teaches that
These false prophets, false preachers, are going to impress the world.
They're going to impress men. But they won't impress the people
of God. And you want to know why? Well, he tells us in 2 Thessalonians
2. They won't receive the love of
the truth. You see, doctrine really doesn't
matter to them. Truth really doesn't matter to
them. They operate on emotion, feeling, what they see as miracles,
numbers, consensus, but not what the Word of God says. You understand
that? Working miracles. So here's the
thing, when people talk about miracle workers today, and I'll
tell you why, you know as well as I do, they're like faith healers.
They really can't prove that they healed anyone, but even
if they could, here's what we need to understand. What are
they preaching? What is their message? If it's the message
of salvation by the works and wills of men, they're false prophets. And that's the truth. Do they
preach Christ? Do they preach His righteousness
alone for salvation, for justification, for eternal life and glory? And
they're going forth unto the kings of the earth and the whole
world to do what? To deceive them by their false
doctrine, to gather them in battle against Christ and against His
church and against His truth. You see, that's what Satan's
goal is. His goal is to raise opposition. to Christ and us
and what we preach and what we believe. And so, all who do not
worship the true God through Christ, what do they do? They
worship the beast. All right, we'll pick up there
next time.