Statesman63
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 | | Subject: Revelation Chapter 16 (Part 71) (Verses 13 - 16) (Armageddon Part 2) Fri May 18, 2018 10:18 pm | |
| Revelation Chapter 16 (Part 71) (Verses 13 - 16) (Armageddon Part 2)
Revelation 16:13 says, “Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet.” Here we have the false-Trinity. The dragon is Satan. The beast is the Anti-Christ. And the False Prophet is, well, for lack of better nomenclature, the False Prophet. Frogs are unclean animals. Leviticus 11:10 says, “But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales—whether among all the swarming things or among all other living creatures in the water—you are to detest.” You recall that unclean spirits begged Jesus to be cast into the herd of pigs after Jesus cast them out from a man. Why did they request to go into a herd of pigs? Because pigs are unclean animals and evil spirits want to possess living bodies (especially unclean ones). It is doubtful that these 3 evil spirits in Revelation 16:13 represent demons—otherwise a demon would be coming out of Satan and Satan is not possessed with any demons. Demons don’t possess their own. Spirits don’t possess spirits. They possess only living bodies. Spirit in the bible sometimes refers to character or personality. The most important thing to note about this verse is where these 3 evil spirits are exiting: they come out of the mouths of the false-Trinity. The false-Trinity will speak influential, evil propaganda. In our last study we saw God dry up the Euphrates River to set into motion the preconditions necessary for the Armageddon to take place. What is also necessary to set the proper chess pieces in motion is for the false-Trinity to influence the people to take part in the Armageddon. The false-Trinity is seeking to convince the people to do their bidding, which unwittingly they are falling into the trap of doing God’s bidding.
We are given more information about these 3 spirits coming out of the mouths of the false-Trinity. Verse 14 tells us, “They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for battle on the great day of God Almighty.” We see here that Armageddon will include kings from around the world, not just the kings of the East mentioned in verse 12. Satan, the Anti-Christ and the False Prophet will convince the world to go to war. They will sway them with demonic power, using miraculous signs. Referring to the False Prophet, Revelation 13:13 said, “And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to Earth in full view of men.” When Jesus was on Earth the first time, He performed many miracles and the people rejected Him. When the Antichrist and his sidekick, the False Prophet perform miracles, the people will accept them. Jesus predicted this. He says in John 5:43, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.” The Antichrist will speak in his own name as he will be directed along by Satan.
Jesus speaks in Revelation 16:15, and He says, “Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.” This is not describing Jesus’ Second Coming Judgment. It is referring to the Rapture. Chapter 19 describes Jesus’ Second Coming Judgment where He will touch down with His feet to planet Earth and wipe away all sinners on Earth at the time. Here in chapter 16, where this verse sits, there are currently no Christians on the Earth. But this verse is clearly speaking to Christians and not non-Christians. It says, “Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him.” Only Christians are awake and able to see, and only Christians have clean clothes to cover our shame. No one on Earth at this time is blessed. If there are no Christians on Earth, who then is Jesus warning here? Jesus is warning the Christian reader who is reading this prophecy, not experiencing it. He is about to show how He is going to judge the wicked, and He wants us Christians to pay attention so that we don’t live like them and fall into similar consequences. Only the Rapture is described in the Bible as Jesus coming like a “thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2, Matthew 24:43). The Second Coming of Jesus will be for all to see. This statement is likely not only for us Christians who are awaiting the Rapture today, but also for those who become saved during the Tribulation who will get raptured during the Harvest of the Sheep in chapter 14.
Jesus wants us to stay awake, unlike when the disciples fell asleep despite Him telling them to stay awake. Staying awake means that we Christians are always on the lookout for His return. Does that mean that we are supposed to stand by our window for hours every day looking into the sky? Of course not! It simply means that we are to be vigilant of Truth and Righteousness and not, as they say, “get our hands caught in the cookie jar” of sin. If Jesus returns at the moment that we are rebelling against Him, we won’t lose our salvation, but we would not have an opportunity to repent and will be disciplined for it by losing our rewards. If we are to die at any moment, that would be the same as Jesus returning at any moment—we would not have the opportunity to repent of our last sins. At the Armageddon and at Jesus’ Second Coming, God will catch everyone at their most egregious point of rebellion against Him and they will not be given an opportunity to repent. He does not want His own people to be caught in a similar predicament—otherwise we might be shamefully exposed of our nakedness. He will put our sin on public display when He judges us.
Verse 16 says, “Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” Armageddon is a peculiar word. This is the only mention of the word in the entire bible. What is peculiar about it is that it is not found in Hebrew literature although the verse says that it is a Hebrew word. This same word, whatever it really is, is Har-Magedon in the Greek. This word is most likely a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew har megiddo, which refers to the mountains of Megiddo, which is found elsewhere in the bible. In Deborah’s song in Judges 5:19, she says, “Kings came, they fought; the kings of Canaan fought at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo, but they carried off no silver, no plunder.” And the next verse says, “From the heavens the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera.” Judges is a really interesting book when one understands that God made it a prophetic book at the same time that it is an historical account. The events of Judges in the basic order of the book follow the events of Revelation, the end-times layout of human history. Judges 5:19 here is linked to the Armageddon and vice versa. King Sisera in the book of Judges therefore represents all of the nations who will rebel against God during Armageddon in Revelation. That is a separate study that I don’t think I’ll get to, but please be aware when studying Judges that nearly each event represents something in Revelation and they both follow the same basic order of events chronologically.
What is this mountain of Megiddo? It is a mountainous region that overlooks a huge valley called the Jezreel Valley and it is nearby and across from Mount Tabor. The Jezreel Valley would make for an ideal location to stage a war, as it resembles a classic, archetypal battlefield. To get a perspective of the location, the Jezreel Valley is located in the inland valley south of the Lower Galilee region in Israel. The south western portion of the valley used to be known as the “valley of Megiddo,” named after the ancient city of Megiddo, once located there. The proper name of this ancient city is Tel Megiddo. The place where it once stood was located in the north, 78 miles from Jerusalem in the south. It was an important Canaanite city-state in the Bronze Age, and a royal city in the Kingdom of Israel during the Iron Age. Today it is a protected site referred to as Megiddo National Park. King Josiah, the King of Israel, fell to Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt at Megiddo, and that is recorded for us in 2 Kings 23:29-39 and II Chronicles 35:20-25.
Back to Revelation 16:16; quoting again for reference, it says, “Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” Online Bible Hub Commentaries (a parallel bible commentary reference), one of the places I study from, notes that there is a translational controversy of who is doing the gathering. The original language could be indicating that the spirits coming out of the mouths of the false-Trinity are gathering the kings, or it could be interpreted as God is doing the gathering. Even if we were to go with the NIV translation that says that the evil spirits gather the people to Armageddon, other passages in the bible that we will soon look at clearly reveal that God is really the one doing the gathering even if he uses demons to accomplish His task. Demons are merely God’s chess pieces who unwittingly do God’s bidding even though they are following their own wills; they inadvertently are accomplishing what God wants them to do.
I’ll close with this: We are going to study Armageddon in detail. But before we get started, it is important to note that the battle of Armageddon can easily get confused with one other event. There is another coup d'état that is very similar to the Armageddon but not the same event. God’s enemies unite on two separate occasions to battle against Jesus. As we peruse the Old Testament in our Armageddon study, we should be aware of the differences between these two similar battles so that we won’t get them confused from one another. The Battle of Armageddon culminates in Revelation 19, where Jesus concludes the battle by opening His mouth and killing all of His enemies by the sword that comes out of His mouth. In Revelation 19, Jesus throws the Antichrist and the False Prophet into the Lake of Fire, and then in Revelation 19:21 it says, “The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.” So now there are no more wicked people on the Earth. However, the Earth will afterwards get repopulated from those who returned with Christ. Those who returned with Christ are all saved folks, but they are of two kinds. Most of those who returned with Christ have come out of the Day of Grace and they all have their resurrected spiritual bodies that resemble Jesus’ resurrected body. They are not capable of reproducing. Those who got saved during the Tribulation, and many of them got raptured in chapter 14 without even dying—they don’t yet have their resurrected spiritual bodies—they still have their earthly bodies—they are capable of reproducing, and will do so during the 1,000 year Millennial period.
Satan, who was thrown into the Abyss, just prior to the Millennium, will be released and will roam the Earth searching for the descendants of those who were saved and capable of reproducing. As these descendants are in their pre-resurrected Earthy bodies, they will have the capacity to become deceived and rebel against God. Satan is going to deceive many into coming together to attack Jesus and His people who appear to be vulnerable easy targets. That won’t last long because God is going to make fire come down from heaven and devour them all. After this event, the dead are judged and the New Earth is revealed. So to keep us from getting these two separate, but similar events confused when we study the Armageddon throughout the bible, we need to note some distinctions between these two events. First of all, at the conclusion of the Armageddon in chapter 19, there are no saved settled people on the Earth because they all got raptured in chapter 14. They are there because they return with Jesus and are by His side, but they are not there as settled people. They have no homes, as they have just returned from Heaven. The people during the Millennium will be established and have homes, as they will settle in the many empty homes that the wicked left behind. That is one important distinction: settled saved people versus saved people who are not yet settled. Perhaps the most important distinction is that those who Satan deceives after the 1,000 years are named: Gog and Magog. Revelation 20:7-8 says, “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth—Gog and Magog—to gather them for battle. We will look at exactly who this Gog and Magog are when we get to Revelation 20, but for now, this should serve as a great distinction of the fact that whenever an end times passage mentions Gog and Magog, it is not referring to the Armageddon, but rather to this final rebellion in Revelation 20.
To help us keep track, we should name these two battles. Let’s call Armageddon, well, “Armageddon,” and this final battle, “the Rebellion of Gog and Magog.” And finally, another notable distinction between Armageddon and Gog and Magog is the time period that they occur. Armageddon occurs before the Millennium, and Gog and Magog occurs after the Millennium. Both battles involve God’s people, except, as we mentioned, the saved are not settled at the conclusion of Armageddon, but they are settled during the Gog and Magog Rebellion. In Revelation 20:9, it says, “They [Gog and Magog] marched across the breadth of the Earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city He loves.” Here they are already settled and reestablished back on Earth. An important caveat about this to keep in mind is that the battle of Armageddon really started way back in Revelation 9 when the 200 million mounted troops assembled at the Euphrates River. When Armageddon first begins, there are settled Christians on Earth because they don’t get raptured away until chapter 14. So God’s people are settled at the beginning of Armageddon, but not at the conclusion of it. God’s people experience some of Armageddon, but not all of it—they miss the in-between stuff (from Revelation 14:17 to Revelation 19:10). Whereas, God’s people are totally settled throughout the entire Gog and Magog battle and will be innocent participants of the entire thing. We can also note some small nuanced differences along the way such as the Millennium is where God’s people will reign with Jesus. During the entire Armageddon, God’s people have not yet started reigning with Christ. So if we come across an Old Testament passage that mentions God’s people reigning with Christ, we will know that that cannot be the Armageddon. Even with these points in mind, I’ll forewarn that in some passages that we will cover in the Old Testament regarding the end-times battle(s), the distinction of which specific battle it is dealing with is not always clear.
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