Euphrates Dried Up

We are now prepared to examine Revelation 16:12 and let the Bible interpret the "drying up of the great river Euphrates" to prepare the way for the "kings of the east." Whatever these events were, they occurred as Armageddon approached a very violent climax. In order to understand this prophecy, we muse refer to the parallel experience of ancient Babylon. Six hundred years before Christ was born, the pagan kingdom of Babylon was the great enemy of God's people. For 70 years they held the Hebrew people in subjection and bondage. Finally Babylon was overthrown by Cyrus the Mede, and the Israelites were delivered. Cyrus came from the east and captured Babylon by diverting the Euphrates River, thus getting access under the water gates of the channel. God said to Babylon, "I will dry up thy rivers. ... This saith the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus ... to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut." [ ISA 44:27; 45:1 ] God "raised up the righteous man (Cyrus) from the east." [ ISA 41:2 ] Cyrus is referred to be God as the "anointed" and "the righteous man." According to the principle of interpretation, the literal account in the Old Testament must be applied in a spiritual sense at the end-time. Thus, we read in the book of revelation about spiritual Israel (the church) being oppressed by "Babylon the Great." [ REV 17:5,6 ] This Babylon is not a physical kingdom but a counterfeit religious system manipulated by Satan. God's people are finally delivered from the power of spiritual Babylon by the drying up of the waters of the river Euphrates. "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." [ REV 16:12 ] The startling similarity to the Old testament story is obvious, but we must remember that the secondary application cannot be literal. The immediate fulfillment is always literal and local, but the last-day fulfillment reached Jerusalem their known world and had a spiritual application only. So, they should not have expected a literal Cyrus to dry up a literal river to deliver a literal Israel. We have already discovered that all God's true people are spiritual Israelites. Now what does the water represent? "The waters which thou sawest ... are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." [ REV 17:15 ] In this chapter Babylon the Great is pictured as sitting "upon many waters." [ REV 17:1 ] The waters are identified as people and nations who gave support to the great Babylon harlot (false religion) who persecuted the true saints. [ REV 17:6 ] So the drying up of the waters represented the withdrawing of support by those people who had been followers of the Babylon system. This is one of the final events that happened just before the coming of Christ. The people recognized that they had been duped, and in a rage, they turn on each other. Zechariah described what would take place under this seventh plague as Armageddon reached its climax. "And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem (God's people); ... And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay hold everyone on the hand of his neighbor, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbor." [ ZEC 14:12,13 ] John described the scene thus, "These shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." [ REV 17:16 ] Just as literal Euphrates in ancient Babylon was turned from an asset to a means of destroying her, so the supporting waters (people) of the spiritual Babylon turned into the means of her destruction. This drying up of support prepared the way for "kings of the east" to come and deliver the people of God from the hand of Babylon.