Posted by Elana Janson on May 29, 2003 at 13:40:27:
The recent war in Iraq has brought to the attention of the world one of the major links of current happenings to the words of the book of Revelation. This link is the “drying up” of the Euphrates River. In the prophecy of Revelation it is stated (Rev 16:12) “And the sixth angel poured out his vial on the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.”
The Euphrates flows from its origins in Turkey through Syria and into Iraq. While the Euphrates River flows through the three countries, most of the water, about 88 percent, originates in Turkey. The remainder of the volume of water is from two rivers that enter the Euphrates in Syria. There is virtually no water added to the river in Iraq. Turkey's current Southeast Anatolia Project, known by the Turkish acronym GAP, that includes more than 20 dams and 17 electric power plants, will eventually supply over half of Turkey's electricity requirements. However, filling the reservoirs behind these dams have at times reduced the flow of the water of the Euphrates downstream to Syria and Iraq.
There is an area in the flow of the waters of the Euphrates that has dried up altogether, namely, the marshlands in Southern Iraq. The marshlands region lies between the lower reaches of the of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. After the Gulf War ended in 1991, the Iraqi regime, began an ambitious civil engineering project aimed at draining the marshes. Through a series of dams and irrigation works the flow of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have been diverted. The waters of the Euphrates were almost totally diverted to the so-called Third River Canal, bypassing most of the marshes. The Tigris was channelled into tributary rivers, their artificially high banks prohibiting water seeping to the marshlands.
The drying up of these marshlands is historically important because we know that the inhabitants of this area have for the last 5000 years subsisted through farming, fishing and hunting, from the water supply of the natural flow of the Euphrates river. Ironically this now dry area is the region of the ancient Sumerians. They were one of the earliest recorded peoples to divert water through a system of irrigation canals to their lands in order to provide food for their cities.
With our knowledge of the time measurements of Revelation we must take particular note of the time measurement of “half an hour” in relation to this time span of 1991 to 2003 that the marshlands of the river Euphrates have dried up.
Those readers that have studied my books and read what has been said on this website will know that the last 144 years from approximately 1860 to 2004 is divided into six “hours” of twenty-four years. “Half an hour” is therefore twelve years. The last period (approx. 1992 to 2004) is the time of “half an hour” and is mentioned in Rev. 8:1. And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of “half an hour”.
After the war in Iraq, the world’s attention has been drawn to the plight of the inhabitants of the marshlands of Southern Iraq. Has the period of the “drying up” of the Euphrates come to an end? Is this how Revelation shows us how Almighty God is directing the times of the end? I believe it is.