Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #29 of Revelation, chapter 9, and we are going to be reading Revelation 9:15-16:

Saying 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. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

In our last study, we were discussing the “four messengers,” which were “bound in the great river Euphrates” and then they were “loosed.”  We saw how that typifies God’s elect that were bound to sin and to Satan in this world, typified by Babylon.  God saved them, thereby loosing them. 

It says they were “prepared,” but the tense in the Greek would be better translated as “having been prepared” “for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year,” because they were God’s elect predestinated for salvation from before the foundation of the world.  Therefore, they had already been prepared, as the works of Christ were finished before the foundation of the world and all necessary preparation had been made for their salvation; and it was only a matter of the application of that redemption through the hearing of the Word of God.  God accomplished this when He sent forth His Word in a mighty way, during the little season of the Great Tribulation, especially that last (about) seventeen years of the “latter rain.”  All over the earth, God’s people were prepared for the hearing of that message and God used it to save them. 

As a result of their salvation, which completed God’s overall salvation program (He saved everyone He had intended to save), this brought them forth to “slay the third part of men.”  Immediately, on the date of May 21, 2011, all those within the churches, which at that time numbered about two billion people, and this “third part of men” were slain because there was no more salvation.  So God’s saints (the “holy angels,” as they are also referred to) were instrumental in bringing about the judgment and the slaying of the “third part,” or those who professed to be Christians in the churches and congregations.

We are going to move on now to Revelation 9:16:

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

First of all, let us ask the question: where did the “two hundred thousand thousand” horsemen come from?  God had just been speaking of “four messengers,” and, suddenly, these two hundred million horsemen came into view, “out of the blue,” or out of nothing.  No, they did not just appear out of nowhere because God was just talking about them: they are the “four messengers.”  They are those that were bound in the great river Euphrates.  They are the great multitude that came out of Great Tribulation and, here, God is speaking of them as an “army of horsemen.” 

That is not a surprise because in Revelation 19 (where God is also describing Judgment Day), the Lord Jesus is seated upon a white horse and going forth in judgment, and it says in Revelation 19:14:

And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

Well, there they are, the armies in heaven that are clothed in fine linen are the saints.  A little earlier in this same chapter, God says the “fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”  It is all of God’s elect and they are called “armies in heaven” and they are also riding “upon white horses,” and that is exactly the image we have in our verse in Revelation 9:16:

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand…

And, again, that smooth transition from “four messengers” to “two hundred thousand thousand” horsemen is “seamless” because they are synonymous; they are both describing the same thing.

This is an enormous army of God, especially when we consider armies today or armies at any time throughout history.  If you have a one million-man army, you have a great army.  If you had ten million in your army, as possibly the Chinese could do, you would have an incredibly enormous army.  Yet, here, God is speaking of “two hundred thousand thousand,” or “200 million,” that are in the army of God. 

Well, what about that number of “200 million?”  Can we trust it?  First of all, is that an accurate number?  Is “two hundred thousand thousand” an accurate translation?  We find in the Greek (and I will read it, literally) that this is what it says: duo-muriades-muriadon.”   In the English rendering it is “muriades” of “muriadon,” or to pronounce it in a way we would understand it: “two myriads of myriads.” 

What exactly is a myriad?  How can we define that?  We would define it by turning to the Bible, like we would define anything else.  The Bible is its own dictionary and God defines His own terms.  So, we find this word “myriad” and it is Strong’s #3461, and let us look at a few places in which this word is used.  It says in Acts 19:19:

Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

Here, we do not see it in the English, but in the Greek this would be “pente – muriades” and “pente” is the Greek word for “five,” and “pente” plus “ten thousands,” and the Kings James translators translated that as “fifty thousand,” or five times ten thousand and you would get fifty thousand pieces of silver, so that is consistent with the translation in Revelation 9.  Here, “myriad” is translated as “ten thousand.”

Now in Jude, verse 14, it is also found.  It says in Jude, verse 14:

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,

Again, this is a translation of that same Greek word and it is also translated as “ten thousands,” so it is consistent, so far.  It is not always translated that way.  In a couple of instances, it is translated as “innumerable company,” and in one instance, it is translated as “thousandeths,” but the majority of time it is translated as “ten thousands.”  In Revelation 5:11 we have identical Greek wording as we have in Revelation 9:16.  The Greek words, “muriades of muriadon,” are identical here.  It says in Revelation 5:11:

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;

Now the “thousands of thousands” is another word, but what is identical is the “ten thousand times ten thousand,” and that is where we get the number “200 million.”  It says “duo” in Revelation 9:16: “duo – myriad of myriads” or “two – ten thousand x ten thousand,” and ten thousand x ten thousand is “100 million,” but two x ten thousand x ten thousand would be “200 million,” so Revelation 5:11 agrees with our verse in Revelation 9:16; and it is a correct translation.

Now we have a little bit more evidence because Strong’s #3461 is derived from Strong’s #3463, so this is a very closely related word to “myriad” and it is found three times in the New Testament; in each instance it is translated as “ten thousand.”  It says in Matthew 18:24:

And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.

It says in 1 Corinthians 4:15:

For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

And the last place is 1 Corinthians 14:19:

Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.

Here, we have the related word that is always translated as “ten thousand,” and we have our particular word that is translated as “ten thousand” four times out of about six or seven instances; and that is more than ample evidence to conclude from searching how this word is used, that it is correctly translated by the King James translators as “two hundred thousand thousand” or “200 million.”  Let me put it this way, if this were the only place where “myriad of myriads” was translated as “200 million” and everywhere else it had been translated as “innumerable company” or something similar, then we might have made the case that it should have been translated that way in our verse.  But when God is using a word and repeats the same translation in several other places, we have no Biblical justification for coming to this place where it is used in a similar way and then saying, “It should not have been translated in that way.”  We cannot do that.  The King James translators were excellent and God moved them in several instances to translate this word as “ten thousand x time ten thousand” and that is how it should be.

Our verse says: “The number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand.” There are “200 million” horsemen in view in this verse.  What does that mean?  Why is God giving us that number?  It could be that God is giving us the actual number that He intended to save.  One good explanation for the “200 million” is because it is about one tenth of all those that were found in the churches at the time the Great Tribulation ended and God completed the salvation of all His elect.  There were about two billion in the churches and “200 million” is about a tenth of that; and even though God gave up the population of two billion in the churches, yet, He spared what could be considered as “one tenth.”  A verse that seems to agree with that kind of idea is Amos 5:1-2:

Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise: she is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

In other words, God is saying, “I have judged the house of Israel, the house of God, or the corporate body.  But then notice what it says in Amos 5:3:

For thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred, and that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.

This reference to the house of Israel is the spiritual Israel of God.  So God appears to be saying here: “I have judged the corporate church that numbered a thousand, but she shall leave a hundred, which is ten percent.”  Or, “I have judged the corporate which numbered a hundred, but she shall leave ten, which is ten percent.”  So it fits Revelation with 9:16 and its number; God has judged the corporate church, which numbers about two billion, by the time that Judgment Day rolled around on May 21, 2011, yet He has spared or left 200 million.  So that would be some of the evidence pointing to an actual number that God is indicating He did save when He saved a great multitude.

But is it not a great multitude which no man can number?  If God gives us the number of “200 million,” does that not go contrary to the idea that no man can number it?  No – there is no problem there at all, because it is not a man that is coming up with this number; this is a number coming from the Bible and God wrote the Bible – this is the Word of God.  God is doing the numbering, not man.  We are just finding what He has stated.  It is not like church rolls and figures of how many are in this denomination compared to that denomination, or how many members the churches have.  This is a number that comes from the Bible and, therefore, comes from God.  It is not a problem or difficulty if God is giving us the number; that would be consistent with the idea that “no man can number.”

Let us look at one other thing, as we look at Revelation 9:16:  

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

“And I heard the number of them.”  Here, the Apostle John, who is being given this divine revelation, is stressing and emphasizing the number.  It is a reinforcing of the number.  It is correct and it is the number that he heard, but it also reminds us of what was stated back in Revelation, chapter 7, where there were the “four messengers” and they were told to “hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, til we have sealed the servants of God in their foreheads.”  Then it said in Revelation 7:4:

And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

Here, we have a similar phrase: “And I heard the number of them.”  This is just as we find in our verse in Revelation 9:16.  The “200 million” number is given and then the statement was made: “And I heard the number of them.”  Likewise, here it says, “I heard the number of them” which were sealed and then a number is given of “144,000” of all the tribes of the children of Israel.  In this case, we do not think the “144,000” number is literal.  It is 12,000 from each tribe, totaling “144,000.”  It seems to be too low a number, as the “144,000” (the 12,000 of 12 tribes) is representing all those saved during the church age and the church age lasted almost 2,000 years, so it just seems like a very, very low number, if it were meant to be literal.  We know that there were not as many saved as we may have previously thought became saved during the church age, but, certainly, not this few, especially since three thousand were saved on the day of Pentecost.  That would not leave very much salvation at all for the 1,955 years of the church age.  So we think that this is parabolic or a figure God is using to typify those saved and they actually numbered more than “144,000.”

So that causes us to have a little bit of caution and I think it prevents us from saying, absolutely, that the “200 million” is a literal number.  It does not cause us to say that the “200 million” must also be symbolic or figurative, as we have some evidence that indicates the “200 million” is an actual number, and there does not seem to be any reason why it could not be an actual number.  However, we must have a bit of caution and say that there is the possibility that it may be a symbolic number, although we also know that God speaks of a great multitude that come out of Great Tribulation; that is language that encourages us to expect a very large number of individuals being saved and that also agrees with this idea of “200 million.”

That is as far as we will be able to take this verse in Revelation 9:16 for right now.  Thank you for joining us in our nightly Bible study in the Book of Revelation and please join us again next time, as we continue in our study of Revelation, chapter 9.