Friday, April 7, 2023
The Euphrates River has been with humanity from the beginning when God said “The fourth river is the Euphrates” (Gen. 2:14); and became a boundary marker when “the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates’” (Gen. 15:18). From the time of its creation the Euphrates River has been a source of life-sustaining agricultural vitality for the peoples and nations living along its 1,740 mile trek throughout southwest Asia. But did you know the Euphrates River has a vital prophetic role as a sign of the end-times of this present age?
I love the benefit and inside track advantage that God in His love, mercy and grace gave “His own special people” (1 Peter 2:9) in being able to discern “the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:30) and prepare accordingly. The ability, today, to discern the signs of the times is something that’s greatly missing among church goers and their leaders. For this reason Jesus rebuked the religious leaders of His day for being unable to discern the signs of the times, Matt. 16:2–3. Signs of the times are both spiritual and physical, many also occur in the world of nature. And to the praise of God in Christ, those who know His Word and keep “watch” Mark 13:37, by the Spirit the same are given the ability to discern the end-time signs. Today we see a clear end-time sign in nature.
The Euphrates River sign is being fulfilled right now. And that sign is that this once-powerful and mighty river is drying up, and is becoming dry so that eventually “the way of the kings from the east might be prepared” (Rev. 16:12). In the coming days of the “great tribulation” (Matt. 24:21), the last 3 1/2 years of Antichrist’s reign, “kings from the east”, nations that lay east of the Euphrates River will cross it to gather against Israel, for God said “I will also gather all nations, and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; they have also divided up My land” (Joel 3:2). This Word is being fulfilled in our time.
Before the nations are gathered against Israel, yet another sign occurs out of the Euphrates River. A voice from heaven said “to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them’” (Rev. 9:14–16). But before a third of people are killed, power was given to the rider of the pale horse named Death and Hades “over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth” (Rev. 6:8). A fourth killed by the fourth Seal Judgment, and another third that remained, killed by the sixth Trumpet Judgment, equals 50% of earth’s population!
And because we in the West are geopolitically so far removed from the epicenter of Antichrist’s seat and rule from Jerusalem, and discernment nearly non-existent, little to nothing is being said in organized churches to prepare the people for the end-times, no thanks to Dispensationalism’s scourge against the truth. That the Euphrates River is drying up right now is an understatement, yet it’s one of the biblical signs of the end-times. Many articles have been written in the secular media about this oft unrealized biblical end-time sign, see a few of them here, and here and here.
Marlin J. Yoder
