The Revelation 16:12 | Episode # 1127

February 10, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 16:12

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

Think of when. When they're thinking about the book of the Revelation, they. You know, in fact, it's one of the headlines that people use. They use the Battle of Armageddon,

okay? How many of y' all ever heard the Battle of Armageddon? All right, well, the problem with that is that's not in the Bible, okay? That is actually not in scripture.

Now,

Armageddon means Battle of Megiddo, okay? So in all actuality, it means battle of the war or battle of the Battle of Megiddo.

And so Armageddon is a mythical battle that. That we've made up in our own heads because there's no fighting God, Okay? Now, are they gonna come as if to do war against God?

Sure,

but that is just not even reasonable,

and it's crazy. And we're gonna see that God prepares the earth for that in the sense that they're going to be misled and brought to this battle site. Now,

I talked about that because we understand that as far as what we're doing and what we talked about last week is we're not on the defensive. We're on the offensive.

God has given us authority to take that which he places under our feet, the places that he's given us to act and to work upon. He's given us authority over those things, okay?

And so if you've got authority over something, then it's your duty to be obedient and to take authority over it. Now we see that, and I'm throwing several ideas into your head as we get to this so that you'll kind of put them all together.

Because Adam and Eve were given authority.

Adam was given authority over the garden.

He was given power over the garden, and he was given authority to name the animals.

So there was authority given to Adam. And when Adam sinned, he relinquished his authority. He gave his authority over to Satan, okay? And so Understanding that, understanding that he, he diminished himself.

He, he, he,

he, he rid himself of his imagery, him being the image of God or the image bearer of God, and he gave away his authority.

And so knowing that is really, really important.

When you get to the book of the Revelation, especially right here as we're culminating this, chapter 17 is all gonna be about worldwide paganism and the ideas of worldwide paganism and how God deals with what is in essence false religion or what's in essence this false religion that culminates with,

you know, the Antichrist and the false prophet and Satan himself.

So when I'm reading this, we start with verse 12.

It says,

Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates.

Now anytime you read that,

it says,

and its water was dried up so that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

All right,

now what does that got to do with anything? Well,

God gives us these, these pictures and these ideas and these words because it seems like that is not.

That don't seem like a judgment, does it,

that the water of the great river Euphrates is going to dry up. It doesn't seem like a judgment, but when you contextualize it with the idea that, that God is going to bring together the armies of the earth or the authorities of the earth or the kings of the Earth,

and he's going to bring them to a place where he is going to.

Well, he's gonna kill em,

he's gonna destroy them on the plain of Megiddo. When you understand that,

you begin to say, okay, well then why dry up the great river Euphrates?

Well, if you know anything about the area of what we call the Persian, you know, the, the Middle east or the Persian Gulf area, you understand that the river Euphrates pours into the Persian Gulf.

Do y' all know that?

And it runs.

A lot of people say it runs south,

but if you actually look on a map, it runs more east than it does south. Okay? So it runs in a southeasterly direction,

but it runs,

runs more east than it does south.

And so it starts in the mountains up above what is modern day Turkey or Mesopotamia, okay?

And it's the area,

if you and I know you've seen the maps,

if you, if you, if you're looking at the map of Ukraine over the Black Sea,

and you see that the Black Sea has an outlet which is what we call today.

It's Constantinople.

It's the place where there is a outlet to the Mediterranean Sea that's down south from Crimea Crimea is the little peninsula that sticks out of Ukraine. Have you all seen those on the map?

If you literally go southeast of Ukraine across the Black Sea,

you get to Turkey,

okay?

Or what we call, you know, what's known as Mesopotamia. There's a mountain range there,

and there's two rivers that begin in those mountains, and they come together not far down from those mountains, and they become the Euphrates River.

All right? And that Euphrates river runs from. From Turkey all the way across what used to be Iraq or northern Iraq,

into the Red Sea.

I want you to hear me.

When God gave Abraham the land he promised,

that was the northern boundary of his promise.

Now, so many of us, when we think of the Promised Land and the Jewish people and Israel,

we think of this little slither along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

But if you read what God gave Abraham,

and then you also read what God gave Joshua,

okay? He gave all the way to the great river Euphrates and everything east of the Mediterranean Sea or the Great Sea,

okay? And that area runs all the way down into what is modern day Saudi Arabia. And it comes across the bottom of Saudi Arabia and comes up that. What we call the Red Sea.

And so the area of the Promised Land is an area that is hundreds of times bigger than what we call modern day Israel.

All right?

Now, what's also interesting about the great river Euphrates is there's a headwater that we can't find that is the headwater of four great rivers.

The Tigris, the Euphrates.

And I'm not gonna be able to name these rivers.

I've done it in a prior Bible study. And you just have to go look for it or you just have to listen to the Bible studies.

But that headwater is of a river that comes out of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. And by the way, the river doesn't exist anymore. But we know it used to exist because there's satellite imagery.

There is a riverbed, a huge riverbed that comes out of the Arabian Peninsula, okay? And then there's another river that pours out of what is modern day Iran.

And if you draw a line of all those rivers,

and as they go,

the Bible says that Eden was at the headwaters of those rivers,

okay? And so when people ask,

where is the Garden of Eden? The answer to that question is, the Garden of Eden is underneath the Persian Gulf,

okay? The Garden of Eden, the place of the Garden of Eden is, quite clearly,

if you look at satellite maps,

is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf,

okay?

And so knowing that when it says the great river Euphrates that hearkens to Eden itself, it takes us all the way back to the first time Euphrates is spoken of.

It takes us back to Eden. It takes us back to the Promised Land. And in fact,

if you are going to be the armies of Asia or Europe,

you're going to either have to come through Turkey,

which means that you're going to have to cross the inlet that is Istanbul, or Constantinople, which, by the way, is not very easy to do with an army,

or what you can do is you can go through the Asian and European step. I don't know if y' all know this or not. I'm giving y' all a whole bunch of geography, okay?

All right,

all right.

If you start in what is modern day France,

okay, And you head east,

all right? If you go east,

you are going to be on flat plain all the way to the Ural Mountains,

which used to be the historical western border or eastern border of Russia,

okay? Or the Kievan Rus,

which is the Vikings who took over that part of Europe,

and their home was Kyiv, and they were the Rus Vikings.

And do any of y' all ever heard this before?

Any of y' all know any of this?

The Russian.

The Vikings are from. Or the Russians draw their heritage from.

From the Rus Vikings who came down from Scandinavia and took over that area.

Okay?

Well, the Visigoths are a different type of. They come from same.

They move through Europe,

okay? Now, don't you hear me?

The reason the Russians are so intent on taking areas that are in Europe is they're trying to cut off access into Russia by armies,

okay?

And they were exposed during World War II when Hitler took his armies and went from Germany through Poland all the way into Russia. And you go, well, how did they do that?

Easy. Well, it was real easy.

It's just a long plane.

It's like our great. Our Midwest,

except it stretches from France all the way to the Ural Mountains, which is halfway through Russia,

okay?

So if you're going to be an army and you're going to attack the Middle east in large numbers,

whether you're going to do it all the way from China or all the way from the Middle east, the easiest way to do it is to come across and come down on the other side of the Black Sea and attack from the north across the River Euphrates,

okay?

Now, I'm not talking about, like one army. I'm talking about a bunch of armies,

okay?

Because anything else, you're going to have to. You're going to have to move, move equipment by sea.

You're going to have to move people by sea. And if you're moving millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people by sea,

that's not gonna be easy,

okay? That's not gonna, it's gonna take a lot of time.

And so when they get ready to move, the easiest way is just to go by land and to come in from the north.

All right?

He says what he's gonna do is he's gonna set a path for the peoples of this earth,

for the kings of this earth.

He's going to dry up the River Euphrates and make it easy for them to enter into the Promised Land and come and attack.

As you go. Today I pray that the Lord will.

Bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.