What are the trumpets - the sixth trumpet

Note: I'm going on vacation. I'll be back in three weeks. But first,

You have wearied the LORD with your words. "How have we wearied him?" you ask. By saying, "All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them" or "Where is the God of justice?" -- Malachi 2:17

We've already seen the sixth challenge. It was the mindset at the heart of Babel (see: What does Babylon mean). It's the way of thinking that says:

The sixth challenge -- "The world is enough. We don't any of that God nonsense. We have everything we need right here."

But we don't. We have a finite amount of resources which, in the next few years, are going to be taxed to their limits -- and well beyond. Here in America, no one under the age of seventy remembers rationing. We've grown up believing that food grows inside of plastic containers and sprouts daily on store shelves. Even if we can't afford to pay for it, no worries; Uncle Sam will give us some green stamp thingies and he'll pay for them on our behalf... forever.

Hidden beneath this mindset is a reality that most Americans refuse to even contemplate: we are running out. Running out of oil, minerals, topsoil... oh, and running out of water.


The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number. -- Revelation 9:13-16

We've already seen World Wars I and II. This trumpet is the last in the trilogy. The world is going to war again, and this time, we are given a trigger event. In Matthew 24, Jesus refers to these signs as "vultures" gathering over a dead body. This is the last warning sign. The last vulture. And right at this moment it's about eighty percent complete. Look at the passage. This is what happens before the sixth trumpet.

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty. -- Revelation 16:12-14

If you watched any of the news footage of Vice President Biden's trip to Iraq, you likely saw pictures of a hotel barely visible through a sandstorm. That storm cancelled much of his itinerary, and storms like that are becoming the norm in that part of the world. You see, they used to irrigate their fields with water from the Euphrates River, but the river is currently running about one fifth of its normal level. Too low for irrigation. So the fields have dried out and the wind is carrying away the topsoil as dust particles.

There are a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, changing weather patterns have reduced rainfall in the region. But an even larger factor is the politics between Iraq, which has the lower Euphrates, and the countries along the upper Euphrates, Turkey and Syria. Turkey and Syria have been damming up the river (four for Turkey, two for Syria) to satisfy their increasing demands for water, and by the time the mighty Euphrates gets to Iraq it's now little more than a mud-puddle. Iraq has held meetings with it's northern neighbors on this issue and both sides agree that the talks have been constructive (which is fancy way of saying that Turkey and Syria won't budge and Iraq is getting truly pissed off). When the Iraqi portion of the River goes completely dry -- and that may be very soon since the river's flow rate has dropped fifty percent in the last year alone -- the last of the vultures will be up in the air, that light at the end of the tunnel will start making an audible "choo choo" sound, and you and I will have days, weeks, who knows, maybe years, until our lives as we once knew them are gone forever. And make no mistake, forever -- on this world at least -- will be a very short time.

Now, a few comments about the army of two hundred million.

The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury. -- Revelation 9:17-19

There is not now, nor will there ever be, an army of two hundred million, trained, competent soldiers. Not on this earth. Not ever. Whatever nonsense you've been told about China's ability to field an army that size is just that -- nonsense. The Chinese army, the PLA, has about three million members. For them to scale that number up seventy fold would take a miracle on the order of God's feeding of the Hebrews with manna. There would be no way to feed them, no where to put them, and no where near enough equipment to make them look anything like what we think of as an army.

But that statement brings me to my final point. What we think of as an army is very different than the way armies looked for most of recorded history. Up until recently wars were largely fought by militias, or irregulars -- basically men with weapons who had little to nothing in the way of organization and formal training. They were rabbles. And that's what this is going to be. This is going to be a two hundred million person mob. This won't be a military operation. This will be a migration; because the only reason that two hundred million people go anywhere is that they are running from something.

The answer to the sixth challenge -- reality does not bend itself to your wishes. There is only so much stuff in the material world and if you have the attitude that all of it belongs to you, and everyone else has the same attitude, cataclysmic warfare will be the natural result.

Next, after I get back from vacation, we will look at the final challenge and the final trumpet -- Gabriel's horn.