Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #14 of Revelation, chapter 16, and we are going to be reading Revelation 16:12:

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

I will stop reading there. When we look to the Bible and we find a name like the great river “Euphrates,” we have to search the Bible to find out if this river identifies with anyone. For instance, the Nile River identifies with Egypt and the Jordan River identifies with Israel. But which nations identifies with the Euphrates? We find our answer in the Book of Jeremiah. It says in Jeremiah 51:61-64:

And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, and shalt see, and shalt read all these words; Then shalt thou say, O JEHOVAH, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever. And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates: And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

In this passage Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When thou comest to Babylon,” you shall read the words of this Book. This would be the Book of Jeremiah, which is part of the Bible. It is God’s Word concerning the captivity and the judgment upon Judah, as the Lord had raised up the Babylonians to bring this judgment to pass. Then when Seraiah was done reading the book, he was to “bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates.” Seraiah read the book when he came to Babylon and when he was done reading the book, he was still in Babylon, so at the point he bound a stone to it and cast it into the Euphrates, where was he? He was in Babylon. This is why it went on to say in verse 64: “Thus shall Babylon sink.” It is a representation of Babylon’s judgment when the Book of Jeremiah is cast into the Euphrates River, because the Euphrates is the river of Babylon. It is the river that identifies with Babylon and that means it represents Babylon itself.

Perhaps you remember when we were going through Revelation, chapter 9, we discussed the Euphrates River. Let us go to Revelation 9:12:

One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

The context of Revelation 9 is very clearly describing Judgment day and, therefore, it is describing May 21, 2011 and the days after the Tribulation. Then it says in Revelation 9:13-16:

And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

In this passage God commands, “Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates,” that are prepared to slay the “third part of men” and then the topic quickly transitions to the 200 million horsemen and it is the 200 million horsemen that actually slay the “third part of men,” as it says in verse 18: “By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.” But did it not say that the “four angels” or four messengers were loosed to “slay the third part of men”? What happened to them? Why did God so quickly go from discussing the four messengers to discussing the 200 million horsemen? We saw that the answer was because they are one and the same. The four messengers were bound in the great river Euphrates; that is, they were held captive in Babylon. God’s command to the Jews in Judah was to go into captivity in Babylon. We understood that command to represent coming out of the New Testament churches and going into the world. But then it was Judgment Day and God had saved the great multitude from the nations of the world, or from among Babylon. Therefore, He had loosed the “four messengers” and the number “four” points to “universality,” the four points of the compass – North, South, East and West. We read in Matthew 24:31:

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

The “four winds” represent the entire world. Also, the four messengers represent all of God’s elect in all the world (Babylon). They had been bound, but now through salvation, they have all been loosed. If you look up in the Bible the terms “binding” and “loosing,” you will see that “binding” is a picture of being in captivity to sin and Satan and “loosing” has to do with deliverance and salvation.

So the messengers, all of God’s elect, are loosed from Babylon and they come out of the world through the deliverance of Christ in salvation and that is why the language quickly transitions from the four messengers to the 200 million. The 200 million also represent all that God has saved. Now it could be an actual number or it could be a figurative number to represent all those whose names are recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life. It is the fact that all the elect have been “loosed” that is the active principal in God’s judgment that permits Him to pour out His wrath upon all the unsaved of the earth, including the “third part” within the churches and congregations which were destroyed right away at the beginning of Judgment Day. We went over that many times.

Again, notice that the Euphrates River pictures Babylon and it fits perfectly with what we have learned concerning Babylon, when we studied Jeremiah, chapter 50.

Let us go back and reread Revelation 16:12:

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates…

God’s wrath is now upon Babylon, as the Bible said in Revelation 14: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen.” God brings judgment upon Babylon in the time of Judgment Day, so we are not surprised that the vial of wrath is poured upon the great river Euphrates.

Then it goes on to say in Jeremiah 16:12:

… and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

We are very interesting in this kind of language and the reason is our familiarity with what God has done, historically, in drying up bodies of water. We know He dried up the Red Sea in order for the nation of Israel to pass over and we know He dried a pathway across the river Jordan so they could pass over in the time of harvest when the banks of the Jordan overflowed and they passed over on dry ground. So this language in our verse matches what God has done, historically, in the past. But in this verse, He is not talking about the literal Euphrates River drying up, but it is a figure of Babylon and Babylon is a picture of Satan’s kingdom of this world. Therefore, God is indicating that all the “water” in all the world will dry up. Since it is not literal water, it is spiritual water which points to the Gospel of salvation. When God speaks of opening up “rivers of water” in the wilderness in the Book of Isaiah, it is language that typifies the sending forth of the living water of the Gospel into the wilderness of this world where there can be no salvation apart from God’s gracious and merciful plan of salvation.

God’s salvation plan has been brought to a close and the light of the “sun” is out and the “door” to heaven is shut because God has saved everyone to be saved, after He poured out the Latter Rain all over the earth (Babylon) outside of the churches and congregations. So now it is Judgment Day and He can dry up those rivers, the water of the Gospel, and there is no more salvation.

Let us go back to the Book of Joshua and we will see a couple of references to this subject. This passage has to do with Rahab the harlot speaking to the spies that came to search out Jericho, when she had hid them upon her roof. It says in Joshua 2:8-11:

And before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof; And she said unto the men, I know that JEHOVAH hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how JEHOVAH dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed. And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for JEHOVAH your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath.

They heard how JEHOVAH had dried up the water of the Red Sea when the Israelites came out of Egypt. Also, in Joshua, it says in Joshua 4:19-24:

And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For JEHOVAH your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as JEHOVAH your God did to the Red sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over: That all the people of the earth might know the hand of JEHOVAH, that it is mighty: that ye might fear JEHOVAH your God for ever.

The parting of the Red Sea for Israel to cross over on dry land and the dividing of the river Jordan so it stood on a heap for Israel to cross over on dry land into the Promised Land typified the entering into the kingdom of God. It was a beautiful illustration of that final crossing into the new heaven and new earth and leaving this world to experience the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to His people. Ultimately, God will deliver them completely. The crossing of the Red Sea pictures salvation in Christ, but that salvation is not complete until God’s people receive their new resurrected bodies and enter into the new heaven and new earth.

God uses this kind of figure in our verse in Revelation, chapter 16, where the great river Euphrates “was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.” We will look at the phrase “kings of the east” in just a minute, but the preparation for their crossing over was that the kings of the east must cross the great river Euphrates “as on dry land” and then they can pass over. We can understand that it refers to leaving this world and entering into heaven and into eternity future and what God has in store for His people for evermore. Therefore, God has done a great and marvelous thing in drying up that great river Euphrates; drying up its water is a necessary thing and it is a wonderful thing.

Can you imagine if you had been an Israelite and you had your back to the Red Sea and the Egyptian army is pursuing you, Pharaoh with all his chariots, coming to kill you and the Israelites? Your only hope is that somehow that Red Sea might part. And God parts that sea and prepares a way of escape, to get away from the approaching Egyptians and to cross safely to the other side. Is that not a wonderful and tremendous thing? Many of the Jews would later murmur and complain and, yet, none complained about the opening of the pathway that God prepared for them. It was a miraculous occurrence and God reminds His people of this miracle often in the Bible – He reminds them that He is the God that opened the Red Sea.

Likewise, Israel was on the banks of the river Jordan and it was at flood stage and they needed to cross over and, yet, they were a great nation of a million or more people, so how could they cross over at the point? God did another mighty miracle and He made a way across the river Jordan at the time it was overflowing its banks and all Israel crossed over and entered the land of Canaan. It was that Promised Land they had hoped to reach as they wandered in the wilderness for forty years. God had promised them a land flowing with “milk and honey.” God made a way and He brought them into the Promised Land over a dry riverbed, as He caused the waters to stand up as a heap so they could cross over.

So, too, God “dried up the river” of the Gospel water that had been overflowing the world, as represented by great river Euphrates. It is now dry. This is a necessary action performed by God and it is a step God had to take in order to bring His people across. We could say, in one sense, that ever since May 21, 2011 when the Gospel was dried up, the people of God (represented by the kings of the east) have been “crossing over” the dry great river Euphrates as we approach the glorious kingdom of heaven and the entry into eternity future. In other words, it was always part of God’s final judgment that He would end salvation for this world and, spiritually, dry up the water of the world of Babylon in order to spiritually follow the historical pattern of Israel crossing the Red Sea or crossing the river Jordan. Now His people will spiritually cross the dry land of Babylon and make their final entry into the kingdom of heaven.

We will look at the language of the “kings of the east” in our next Bible study and we will see how that does represent the true children of God.