The Wonder of The Four Angels of The Euphrates

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?

Enough. The question all this begs, but just to begin with, it's quite a study. Just going into Revelations 9 at 14 and 15, it says, Say to the sixth angel, which had the trumpet loose, the four angels, which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, for to slay the third part of men. Wow, that's pretty heavy duty, but you can't help but note, maybe you can help but know, I don't know, but I can certainly see that number one, there are four rivers, right? They come out of Eden that we've been talking about here for several episodes. And then there's four angels, which is clearly a reference to seasons and times, right?

Because they're set for a day and a time and a year. In other words, you can see that these angels all have to do with time. And of course, this idea of the Euphrates is very much got to do with time and very, very amazing. The word itself, Euphrates, is an idea.

It starts with the letter Pe. And that letter Pe is like, here's the presence of God, and then Arash, which is often the headwaters of something, which is cool when you think about that being the headwaters of a river, in this case, the Euphrates. And the last letter, which is the significantly huge letter in the word Euphrates, is the letter Tav, which is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It is the last letter in the word truth, Emet. And it is usually considered to be God's stamp on something. So we can see that God's stamp is clearly on seasons and clearly on times.

And the Euphrates has to do with what's coming at the end, which I've been thinking a lot about this. And again, the letter Tav is actually a combination of the two letters Dalet and the letter Nun, which spells Dan. And the word Dan, as we've talked about many times, is the tribe that would essentially go through, they'd be the last one to go pick up the strays. But in so many different ways, they rectify things. They make things right. That's what judgment does. In fact, when Dan got his name, what his mom, I believe it was Bill Haas, said, God has judged me and I have a son. And so that idea of judgment is this idea of Dan, but judgment is to make things right.

And again, when we find the lost strays, there's nothing to make things more right than that. But the interesting thing is that there comes with judgment a timing issue. So there's both a time and a place. And I've been looking at that philosophically for a while, like which came first, time or space? And so it's really, really cool when you think about the idea of time is clearly in the beginning, right? And space is God created the heavens and the earth.

In other words, time comes before space. And so this river Euphrates is very much connected to the time of judgment, okay? And these four angels that, again, are going to be reflective of different times. But the neat thing is we talked about at the very beginning of this and where we got to find some application to all this is this river is flowing out of our hearts.

In other words, there's four rivers, four seasons, and this particular season is giving us a sense of time is short. We are waiting on what? We're waiting on Jesus to come because he eventually is going to make things right. But our role, right, in the Euphrates flow, so to speak, that comes out of our heart is this sense of urgency, this sense of we don't have forever to get all this stuff done. Judgment is coming.

God is going to make things right. And so it's urgent that we be about our Father's business. I'll never forget, Pastor Quartz, our pastor at Calvary for years, told the story of how one time he went to a gas station and the Lord put it on his heart to witness to the guy who was helping him, the attendant there.

This was back when they used to help you with gas. Anyway, he said, well, he thought to himself, I'll get back to that next time I come because he was real busy, had some ministry thing he had to do. But unfortunately, that young man was killed in a motorcycle accident that very day. And of course, it gave Pastor Quartz this urgency. And you may have heard the famous story of, I believe it was Moody when the Chicago fire happened. He had preached a message on salvation, but he didn't have the urgency. And after the Chicago fire, he saw all these people that he preached to die. It stretched this idea of, to me, Euphrates, right? The judgment is coming and time is short.

And for some people, it may be really short. And God knows that, but it's interesting that that river flows out of us. And at our disposal are these four angels. I know all that seems a little bit, but it really is true, right? That we have an angel that's at our disposal that has to do with the day and the hour and the minute and all those things that look, we have this time and we have this angel and we have this authority.

And the idea of Dan, right, is this Dalit. In other words, it is this gift that is this door, this door of humility from which we bring light, right? And often when you're talking to somebody who doesn't know the Lord, it takes great humility to find a way to relate to them.

But also it takes this sense of urgency. And so, I don't know. I know that when you look at the Euphrates, it's mentioned in Jeremiah several times, obviously, as a picture of what happens in Babylon. And of course, you may know that Babylon was overthrown because they dried up the Euphrates. And you may know that it, of course, it's prophesied that the Euphrates is going to be dried up in the end. And this whole idea of the Euphrates, it's come back scripture time and time and time again. And you can't help but note the correlation to Euphrates and this idea of the last season. Okay?

It's the fourth season. It's winter, okay? And time is of the essence. So we need to be about our Father's business, right? And clearly for me, as I think about that, I think about the people in my life, Lord, bring the Euphrates, right?

Help me to see the time. Help me to use those four angels at our disposal in order to be humble and bring light and to make things right. Because there are so many things and so many friends and actually relatives that need the light, that need you, Lord, because we don't want anybody to miss out. And we don't want you to miss out on them worshiping you. And we don't want to miss out on the amazing thing that you made them to be. And again, I thank you for a chance to share all these things I ponder on the River Euphrates. Thanks for listening.