Joel 2:1-11
Blow the trumpet in Zion,
And sound an alarm in my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble;
For the day of the Lord is coming,
For it is at hand:
A day of darkness and gloominess,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains.
A people come great and strong,
The like of whom has never been;
Nor will there ever be any such after
them,
Even for many successive generations.
A fire devours before
them,
And behind them a flame
burns;
The land is like the Garden of Eden before
them,
And behind them a desolate wilderness;
Surely nothing shall escape them.
There appearance is like the appearance of
horses;
And like swift steeds, so they run.
With a noise like chariots
Over mountaintops they leap,
Like the noise of flaming fire that destroys the
stubble,
Like a strong people set in battle array.
Before them people writhe in pain;
All faces are drained of color.
They run like mighty men,
They climb the wall like men of war;
Everyone marches in formation,
And they do not break ranks.
They do not push one another;
Everyone marches in his own column.
Though they lunge between the weapons,
They are not cut down.
They run to and fro in the city,
They run on the wall;
They climb into the houses,
They enter at the windows like a thief.
The earth quakes before them,
The heavens tremble;
The sun and the moon grow dark,
And the stars diminish their brightness.
The Lord gives voice before
His army.
For his camp is very great;
For strong is the one who executes His
word.
For the day of the Lord is great and very
terrible;
Who can endure it?
God through Joel gives us great insight as to the discipline and ferocity
of this army. Keep in mind that these are spirit beings filled with the spirit
of the creator of the universe. No prior army has ever had the attributes of
this one.
This army needs no fuel, no rest, no transportation, no re-supply, no
anything. Unimaginable horror on an unimaginable scale. Picture a huge fire
breathing lawn mower that's a hundred miles wide that is cleansing the earth
with fire.
So, God has an exceedingly great end time army. How big is it and what does
He do with it? What is the task of this army? Lets let the scriptures answer
those questions and to do this we need to follow "the four
winds".
In Ezekiel 37 this great resurrected army has everything restored to them
(bone, sinews, flesh) but not their consciousness. As per Ezek.37:9-10
it's "the four winds" that blow the spirit of God into them to bring them
to consciousness.
In God's chain of command He has four angels that oversee these four winds
as we learn in Rev.7:1.....After these things I saw four angels standing at the
four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth...... God
does not want these angels to release these four winds to blow life back into
these millions of people (this exceedingly great army) because He first needs to
take His first fruits the 144,000 as per the same section Rev.7.
So what do we have? We have four angels holding back the four winds from
blowing consciousness back into this army. God has hit the pause button until
the time is right. Does He tell us when the angels are free to release the four
winds and activate this exceedingly great army? Yes
In Rev.9 we learn in verse 14 that these four "good" angels (not bad angels
as people would have you believe) are released to accomplish their mission. God
has prepared them for a specific hour, day, month and year. It's my belief that
their mission was to release the four winds to blow life into this exceedingly
great army. We now find out from Rev.9:16 that this resurrected army that God
considers an exceedingly great army consists of 200,000,000 personnel.
Where was this army activated? At the Euphrates River...verse 14 . This is
the northern border of the original land grant given to them by God. God says in
Ezek.37:14 that He would place them in their own land and He did.
Does this army in Rev.9 agree in description with God's end time army in
Joel 2? Yes, they both ride fire breathing horses and kill with fire and
brimstone.
Bible scholars will lead you to believe that this 200 million man army
comes from the east or Asia. The only country that could field that many troops
would be China and their present standing army is nowhere near that number. If
China could muster an army of that size it would be "mission impossible" from a
logistics and supply perspective to have them all located at the Euphrates
River. And they would never as the saying goes "put all their eggs (troops) in
one basket" and leave their homeland unguarded. Logic and common sense warrants
that the only entity that could field an army of that size at that location
would be God Himself.
So it's God's army and He's activated them at the Euphrates River to kill
one third of mankind. That's over 2 billion people. Who are these 2 billion
people God is going to kill?
God resurrects and restores His army in Ezekiel 37 and He purposes them one
chapter later in Ezekiel 38. In chapter 38 we view through this scripture that
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (our God) is way way beyond extremely upset
with Gog and all of Gog's followers. As I stated earlier I believe that the
Satanic demonic prince that rules eastern Europe and western Asia known as Gog
is or was responsible for starting the false demonic religion of Islam. Gog has
garnered over two billion people to join his demonic religion that terrorizes
the world. A religion of death since the 7th century and they have terrorized
God's chosen people Israel relentlessly. Now as per Ezekiel 38, through God's
coaxing (hook in the jaw), Gog and millions of the demonic filled Muslims from
all over the world are lured to the Middle East in an attempt to eradicate
Israel. God says in Ezek.38...... that they will come like a storm and cover the
land like a cloud..... Doesn't that sound(on a smaller scale) like what
happened last week in Iraq with ISIS? This scenario is in it's initial stages
and growing rapidly. It won't be stopped because God is prompting it.
God is so upset about this plan to eradicate His people that He personally
in addition to His 200 million man army intervenes on Israel's behalf. In verse
18 it states.....And it will come to pass at the same time, when Gog comes
against the land of Israel, says the Lord God, that My fury will show in
My face........ The only way that that statement can be correct
......that the fury will show in My face......is that He (God) is going to show
His face to Gog's troops. We have learned through scripture that God is like
pure light energy, kind of like looking at a nuclear bomb detonation. So I
believe this is the explanation to Zechariah 14:12 which states.........And this
shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought
against Jerusalem. There flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet,
Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, And their tongues shall dissolve in
their mouths..... In other words they looked at the face of God.
Notice it says the Lord will strike these people and melt their body
parts........ not nuclear weapons as many scholars have speculated.
Ezekiel 38 says that Gog's troops will be destroyed by flooding rain, great
hailstones, and fire and brimstone. What do we see the army in Joel 2 and Rev.9
use to do their killing.......fire and brimstone.
So bottom line, I believe that by reading the bible literally one can
conclude that God has tasked His 200 million man army to eradicate the Muslim
people worldwide just like what the Muslims had in store for the Jews and
Christians if their goals from the Koran and Allah were successful and God would
not have intervened. It's funny (and righteous) that throughout history in the
stories of the bible if an evil plot is or was orchestrated against God's chosen
people those plots are turned 180 degrees and the same evil ends up being
dispensed on the planners of said evil.
God is going to do this same role reversal again soon only on a much
grander scale when He eradicates one third of the human race which happen to be
followers of Gog who we know as Muslims. There will be no place throughout the
world for them to hide when God and His 200 million spirit filled invincible
army riding fire breathing horses go on the hunt for them. If you Doves have
Muslim friends a heads up and a conversion to our side would be their only
salvation.
By the way I am sure this eradication takes place after the rapture. I will
explain in another post using scripture why this is the case.
That being said..... if we are gone in the rapture and two billion Muslims
are gone who does that leave in the world? God says in Matthew 7 that few will
find the narrow path to salvation. So if a few hundred million of us find the
narrow path that leads to salvation then by subtraction that leaves
approximately 4 billion people left after we're gone and the Muslims are
eradicated. What do we know about these 4 billion people? Actually a lot because
God shares the description of these people in Rev.9:20 just after He has taken
out the Muslims. What does He say about these left behind people?
Verse 20.......But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these
plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they
should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone and wood,
which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not
repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality
or their thefts.
That paints a grim picture of those who are left behind finding salvation.
Those left behind.....Hindu's, Buddhists, Roman Catholics, Mormons, etc. will
after all this death and destruction of the Muslims then rally around the
antichrist who will have all the answers and be performing all manors of false
signs and wonders to deceive the masses into believing as per scripture that He
is the true God and I am sure he will have the false Mary at his side. As per
Revelation 17 this beast / antichrist will be a pope risen from the bottomless
pit and through a great ecumenical movement (already started) he will
orchestrate a one world religion and a one world government which will be easy
because the Jesuits control most of the planet now.
At some point he will declare himself to be the true God and to prove that
he is legitimate he will kill God's two witnesses that to this point no one
could harm. Rev.13 says God allows this to happen. I believe that at that point
the three and one half year ministry of the two witnesses was over and those who
were to choose Jesus had already done so. There rest would destined for
destruction and would swallow the antichrist's deception hook, line and sinker.
This killing of the witnesses will really deceive the masses. At some point he
will make it mandatory to worship the image of himself and take his mark. Those
who refuse will be killed.
The belief that untold multitudes from all over the world will be coming
out of this tribulation period and showing up in heaven as per Rev.7:9 is in my
opion completely false. God as much as tells us so in the passage we earlier
discussed in Rev.9:20-21. Those great multitudes of people that no one
could number from all the nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues standing in
front of the throne are the raptured church. But that is for another post as
well.
Enough for today........I'll touch more on these and other end time
scripture verses trying to point out the literal meanings.. Most of the time if
it says so literally, then interpret it literally. If it's not there literally
in plain text chances are it's not there at all. An example would be the rapture
happening in Rev.4......not. Don't get me wrong, I am not
discounting that many of the bible verses are figurative or have double
meanings.
Blessings to all..........John B