The sixth ‘bowl’ corresponds to the sixth ‘trumpet’ in the parallel between the ‘trumpet’ and the ‘bowl’ judgments.1 The water of the Euphrates dries up – is it evaporated by the heat of the blazing sun? Though the world has become like one great ‘heap of rubble’ as a result of the disasters brought on as God’s judgments took place, mankind is unable to stop waging war. The apparent ‘Peace’ that the false ‘Prince of Peace’ brought, lasted only for a short while. His rule had developed into a ‘reign of terror’ that lasted ‘three and a half years’. Although features of such an anti-Christian government have been seen in many of the dictatorships that have been in power during the last two thousand years, what John is referring to is the last and final one in the end times, the climax of all godlessness. The drying up of the Euphrates should therefore also be considered to be a literal event. As the Red Sea once dried up to allow the children of Israel to pass during their Exodus from Egypt, so the Euphrates now dries up to allow the armies from the Far East, on their way to the Middle East, to pass. You then come through the region of Iraq, where historically the city of Babylon lay. Jeremiah says: “A drought on her waters! They will dry up. For it is a land of idols, idols that will go mad with terror.”2 And: “Therefore this is what the Lord says: See, I will defend your cause and avenge you; I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry. Babylon will be a heap of ruins.”3 Why? Because of the abuse and the defacement and the shed blood of Zion, of Jerusalem.4 Just as crossing the Red Sea became fatal for Pharaoh and the armies of Egypt, so the crossing of the Euphrates becomes fatal for supposedly invincible Babylon. The forces from the East will finally be destroyed on the ground in Israel.5 ‘All the deeps of the river shall dry up’, according to Zechariah.6
In the Roman Empire the Parthians came from the East. They were a violent people of horsemen that ruled from the Euphrates to the Ganges in India, and from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, a nomadic people that constituted a great threat to Rome. Yet there were a few Jews and proselytes (Gentiles that had become Jewish by accepting Judaism as their religion) from that kingdom who were present at the Feast of Pentecost.7 Cyrus conquered Babylon by damming and diverting the water of the Euphrates. Cyrus, with the Persians, also came from the East,8 and he put an end to the Jews’ Babylonian Exile. However, in the ‘end times’, all the nations will march against Jerusalem, for the great struggle of the ‘Battle of Armageddon’—including the kings from the lands of the rising sun: China, India, Japan, Mongolia and the central Asian republics such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan? This is the time of the last and final judgments and of the liberation of the people of God!
• The Euphrates has always been a formidable barrier between the nations of the East and the West. In the North it was the border of Israel under Solomon in his time of glory, and it is referred to repeatedly as the north-eastern border of the territory of the State of Israel.9
• From the East (when the Bible uses east, west, north, south the Bible always looks at the map of the world from Jerusalem) Israel’s enemies often came. Such as the kings of Mesopotamia under the leadership of Kedorlaomer.10
• Also from the north-east the kings of Assyria came, who carried away the leadership of the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel. About 10%-15% of the people of the kingdom of the ten tribes. Later the king of Babylon marched the upper layer of about 10%-15% of the people of the 2 tribes of the kingdom of Judah away into the Babylonian Captivity.
• Assyrians and Babylonians left the rest of the people of the conquered nations behind to till the land in order to squeeze taxes from them. This was in general their ‘foreign policy’ for all the nations they defeated and absorbed in their Empire – not just their policy for the 10 tribes of Israel and the 2 tribes of Judah.11
Bible References:
1.Revelation 9:13–21 2.Jeremiah 50:38 3.Jeremiah 51:36–37a 4.Jeremiah 51:35 5.Revelation 16:16; Joel 3:1–3, 11–17 6.Zechariah 10:11 (King James Version) 7.Acts 2:9 8.Isaiah 46:11 9.Genesis 15:18; Deuteronomy 11:24; 10.Joshua 1:4 11.Genesis 14:1–17
