Its a bit involved, but think about how Satan deceives, he knows what the Church "thinks" and then he gets Turkey to dam up the river and create a sort of dry river bed. But, then we miss the real meaning.
Think about it in relative terms, can modern day armies easily cross a river today? Yes, of course, so does God have to dry up the river in order to get these people to rush towards Jerusalem and or Armageddon? Or can they all just cross the river and come towards Israel without the river drying up? Well, I think they can come whenever they please, but they do not want to come, after all God has been pelting them with His wrath for 42 months, in Woe # 2, we see 200 million Angels killing 1/3 of those with the Mark of the Beast, so billions are killed (Satan can not kill Satan, Jesus told us this, so it is Angels bringing God's Plagues). Then in the 3rd Woe, which is the 7th Trump, which is all 7 Vials (all three the same thing) we see a progressive pattern of plagues God is bringing, but at the very end of Woe #2 we saw the Two-witnesses die. So, they are no longer on earth, they arose to Heaven. In Seal #6 we are told by Jesus that these evil men & kings will all be hiding in the caves right? So, how does God get these Kings from all over the world and their followers to come out of their hiding places and caves in order to get them all to travel to Armageddon? Well, the Dragon, Anti-Christ/Beast and False Prophet have to lie unto the kings and the peoples right?
In Rev. 16, the 6th Via says that Three Unclean Lying spirits came out of their mouths, so they lie. But, if God's plagues were continually POUNDING, POUNDING, POUNDING upon their heads would they believe these lies? No, so God STOPS the Plagues thus He dries up the Euphrates river, which is thus a metaphor for enticing them out of their hiding places by stopping the plagues for a while. They really think that the Two-witnesses being dead has made the plagues stop, because they do indeed pray down all of the plagues, but they prayed down the 3rd Woe before they died, the 7th Trump will bring the 3rd Woe which is all 7 Vials. So, at the end vial #5 God stops the plagues via Vial #6 which came from where? Well, from the four Angels bound to a time, day and hour in the Euphrates River (not actually bound in the River). So, God drying up the Euphrates (Plagues) entices those people and kings out of their hiding places, they get lied to by the Dragon, A.C. & F.P. they are told that the Two-witnesses dying stopped the plagues of God, now all they need to do is go to Jerusalem and kill all the rest of the Jews and this will never, never, ever happen again, so off they go, and then Jesus shows up, and kills the wicked, the kings, the Beast and all of his minions in one fell swoop.
Now think, if the plagues never stopped, would we even get an Armageddon? Of course not, they would continue hiding like cowards in their caves. So, how does the Dragon, A.C. & F.P. lie to them? They tell them the Two-witnesses dying is what ended all of the plagues. This clears up a HURDLE that the Beast has in trying to kill off all of the Jews, God stops the plagues, which allows the lie, which draws the cowards out of their hiding places, so Jesus can destroy them all at Armageddon. (Its like a riddle within a riddle)
Now, which makes more sense? That Modern Armies need a river to dry up in order to cross it, or that God dries up the Plagues (that start in the Euphrates River via 4 Angels) which entices the kings of the whole world to try to one last time kill off all the Jews?
Well what I posted about the credit scores was a joke. Didn't expect to get into any serious conversation about this.
As far as the Euphrates drying up? I've never really studied that. I know the river is referenced in Revelation in 2 places and there's a bunch of references in the OT, which at least some of them are probably relevant; but I've not looked those up. There's only one reference to it drying up; which is in Revelation.
Now I have quite the different take on the book of Revelation. I've come to the conclusion that it's a "metaphoric" representation of redemptive history that's conveying information to us about the realm of the spirit world that we don't see. The spirit world; the world of the dead / angels, demons etc and from the vanish point of what's directed from heaven (another realm we can't see).
Now there's two battles named. One is "Armageddon" and then there's a "battle of Gog and Magog". "Armageddon" is the "beginning of the event" And "Gog and Magog" is the "end of the event". The timespan in-between is the "millennial reign".
"Armageddon" I believe happened at the conclusion of the atonement. This is where those who were atoned for and died before Jesus did; were delivered from Sheol and ascended to heaven at the point Jesus completed the atonement.
Now, from what I gather; "Gog and Magog" happens at the end of time and.... is that a battle that happens only in the spirit realm, or does it involve material nations on earth too? I tend to think it involves material nations. That would make sense to me because on the other end of the "battle of Gog and Magog" is the destruction and recreation of the material cosmos. Will that constitute a material global world war or will the end come before "World War III" actually starts; or rather "explodes" into a global nuclear conflict? I think it's already started. At least we're getting regional "fires" happening.
Now my thought is that it may not become a "hot war" in quite the same way WWII was, because if we look at what's going on around us. This is an economic, technological, propaganda, false gospels, war on "western" civilization. (Or more war on societies built on Biblical principles of justice and civil governance.) We're headed, "post industrial", "1984" style technocracy / totalitarian state. Which is only possible because of technology. Classical dictatorships didn't have quite the type of reach the totalitarian state has, because they were set up a bit differently. What we see in the totalitarian state is the growth of the "beast system".
And here's where I think it's going to "get interesting". The back lash from Covid taught the masses something. We have power in numbers. I think Covid was a failed attempt at mass depopulation because the technocracy / cabal / beast system worshipers knew the masses are too large to control and also establish their "save the earth for themselves" agenda. (Look at what was on the Georgia Guidestones.) That was their plan. That plan failed. (And it did so for reasons related both to the sovereignty of God, how He's designed life and the fact that the attempt to create a "mass extinction" pandemic could not override God's control over biology. Yeah, coronaviruses are gonna be coronaviruses but God's reign over the breath of life controls how DNA works. And once the masses realized "the jig was up" and this pandemic was not going to be a mass extinction event; we all began to rebel against that agenda.
Thus where human beings created in the image of God carries some interesting consequences; particularly for Satan. Yes we have the ability to rebel against God; but we also have the ability to rebel against Satan and human tyranny. The kingdom of Satan is divided against itself and ultimately (if left to its own devices) the "beast system" will collapse on its own. Of course it will turn around and try and reinvent itself; (which I think is the "metaphor" of the "healed head wound"; (which I also think has a historical reference related back to the time of Christ) - but I don't think "the beast system" given the time to collapse; gets that chance to "respawn" because the end of time comes before that reinvention can be executed.
Entities in this cosmos have wills that are capable of acting independent of the wills and desires of other entities; although most of those wills in operation in this cosmos aren't "free"; because most of the created entities still deal with the consequences of sin (some their own) and the fall. Then there's the will and actions of God, angels who haven't fallen and the saints. Those groups operate in completion of the redemption plan; yet saints still deal with the residual effects of being sinners.
Demons and Satan though, operate in "suicide by cop" type of mentality. The only thing they are capable of is destruction because they have no morals. When they fell, their fall was complete and total. When humans fell though; we still maintained the ability to make moral choices. So, to borrow a theological term; though humans suffer from "total depravity" (meaning we have not the ability to redeem ourselves); we are not "depraved totally". Fallen angels are "depraved totally". They have no interest in acting on morals (thought they do "disguise themselves as angels of light" because they are conscienceless entities. Humans who "worship the beast" become like conscienceless demons; although not all humanity does. If we did, we would have destroyed ourselves by now.
Even unregenerate humans can display moral courage and a residual sense of justice exercised in the spiritedness of human grit that doesn't want to be in subjection to anything but the ideas and ideals of the individual human. Which from the standpoint of individuals created in God's image; obviously isn't all "deprave totally". Human "good" has produced "alleviation" of much of the suffering that was an integral part of our past histories. Though obviously, despite the "creature comforts" of modern life; a lot of evil still happens.
Thus I see this as the "back ground" of what the "bitter end of time" is operating in. Being able to recognize this, I think is more important to understanding the times we live in; than the events that happen in the news. "News events" run on their own ever changing scripts depending on which groups' narratives can manage to grab hold in the moment. That is part of the dividing of the kingdom of Satan as these groups are battling for whose political agenda can take the global stage. That's an ever changing thing; and thus why I don't think we can accurately look at world events and say "That is this in the Book of Revelation" or "That is that in the book of Isaiah." Or what ever. The "easily recognizable" prophetic aspect of the redemption plan has already played out. That was the incarnation to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
Now this doesn't mean that the Bible doesn't give us information about the condition of the world the closer to the end we get. It does give us some information. But I think that information is more general than it is specific.
One of those general trends is that Christianity as a "cooperate organized religion" has become pretty much apostate. Now this doesn't mean that every congregation is apostate; but Christendom as a collection of organized denominations pretty much is. And this includes everyone. The Eastern church (and all its subdivisions) Roman Catholicism and Protestantism with all its denominations. Everyone is in various states of apostasy. Now of course this doesn't mean that there aren't still genuine believers in all these different factions. There are; but the "church" as a geo-political type organized entity; is just as shot through with corruption and sin as civil governance and other religions are. Just a sign of the times we live in.
Another "general sign of the end" is "the earth will wear out like a garment". And this I think is very evident now. We're coming to the "bottle neck" of an energy crunch. (We're past "peak oil" of what we have the current capacity to extract from the ground. Now I'm sure there's more oil in Canada and Siberia etc, but we also have to "spend" the energy on the front end to extract that. The whole "industrial game" is about resources. And just about every single war we've fought over the past 300 (going back into antiquity) has been about resources.
But today (about 300 years post the dawn of the industrial revolution); we have issues with garbage. We have issues with industrial, chemical and nuclear pollution. We're losing the bees, the fish, and the balance of CO2 to O2 because there's been a great shift in the amount of land mass with natural forest over the past about 300 years. Much of what was natural forest over the centuries now has been cut down and taken over with the endeavors to grow and produce enough food to feed nearly 8 billion people.
And we see the consequences of this. The human population is sick, We all got Alzheimer's, dementia, autism, schizophrenia, cancer, anxiety, etc etc. Our animal populations are sick. We're losing the insects. Don't know if you've noticed this; you're a little older than I am. But how many fireflies do you see any more? When I was a kid, bugs, snails, turtles, lizards, rabbits, rodents, skunks, fox, even "large game animals" etc were abundant. All that's changed in 40 years. All the populations are in decline and we're all sick and dying. We've "worn out like a garment" and the Bible said that would happen.
So those are some of the things I'm looking at as "signs of the end"; not necessarily what's going on in the Middle East. These wars and political conflicts within countries and between countries are just part of the over all larger picture. And yeah, life over the next decade or so is going to get tougher for everyone. Yeah, there will be shortages and there will likely be some civil unrest; but how bad it gets, depends on us the citizens of our own countries and how well we work together as individual communities. We have some control over this. Personally, I would not want to be living in a large city. (We're seeing the fall out of those consequences now.)
But I think "the end" "politically" is going to look far different than what most people are expecting based on what we've all been exposed to of the dispensational / zionistic narrative. Now we have China, India and Russia who are looking out for themselves and running their own agendas too. On top of the agendas of Islam for example, or African nations trying to develop their resources without being interfered with and colonized by other larger powers. This isn't a "one track train" we're dealing with here. History has lots of "moving parts" and how it unfolds will always be different than what we predict we think is "suppose to happen".
And that's in a certain sense; how it's been all along. Look at the prophecy about Jesus. No-one really understood how he fulfilled the OT until it came to pass. Same "game" as it was 2000 years ago; just different set of players. And politically, we wait and see what happens! Which leads me to one last realization I've come to over the past 10 or so years. No politician is going to save us.
But is it likely?
Thanks for the link.
