I read your post and your interest in Ezek.37 and God's
Great End time Army.
I wrote an article to Doves in April of 2012 concerning
this army and my views as per scripture. I will share it
with you (and others with interest) below in
hopes that it may be of some
enlightenment concerning this end time phenomenon. It's
one of the more exciting or horrific events yet to happen and
no one in the "prophecy world" seems to want to write about
it.
The bible goes into great detail about God's end times
army.....why is it that no one at Doves or other sites
discuss or speak about it??
Let me take you on a biblical tour of this army, its
amazing aspects...... and its deadly mission.
This army is spoken of and referenced in several
areas of the bible. Let's start in Ezekiel 37,
which is a fascinating chapter of God's holy word.
Here we find God having a little fun with Ezekiel. God
gave Ezekiel previews of end times events and brought
Ezekiel (in the Spirit) to a valley full of dried bones and
asked Ezekiel if these dried bones could live? Ezekiel
immediately deflected the question back to God and
said...."O Lord God, You know".
God then told Ezekiel to prophesy to these bones and to
tell these bones to hearken to the Lord's words. The Lord's
words were as follows....(emphasis mine)
"Surely I will cause breath to
enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on
you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put
breath in you; and you
shall live. Then you shall know that I
am the Lord."
So Ezekiel prophesied to these bones as God had commanded
and before his eyes the sinews, flesh and skin were restored
to these bones but the breath of life had not yet been blown
into them to make them alive.
Where does this breath come from that will make these
restored beings alive? The next verses tells us that God
instructed Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath and that
the breath will come from the four winds. And the
breath will come to these slain, that they may live. Ezekiel
prophesied as instructed and breath came into them from the
four winds and they lived, and stood upon their
feet, an exceedingly great army. More on
the four winds later.....
Now I draw you attention to the above wording God used,
He didn't say that it was a large group of regular people
that was restored...He said it was an army.
And not a large army or a great army but an
exceedingly great army. In God's terms what
number of troops would you think would comprise and
exceedingly great army? We'll get to that later as well...
By the way, who are these people who were restored to
life to form this exceedingly great army? In verse 11 God
tells us that this great quantity of people are the "whole
house of Israel"....meaning all the ancestors of Jacob who
have died over the centuries. God says... "I will open their
graves and cause them to come up from their graves, and
bring them into the land of Israel."
Has this event happened yet in biblical history? No.....
Will this event happen in the end times? Yes....
When this army is activated or brought back to life what
will they be like?
It appears they will be spirit beings just like Jesus was
after His resurrection. They will be able to walk through
walls like Jesus did and they will be impervious to death in
the battling with humans. They will require no food and be
tireless in their mission.
Let's see if we can find in scripture, in the end times,
where this army is activated. That is, when the four winds
blow life back into them. In Rev. 7 we see four angels sent
by God to hold back these four winds from
blowing. Why are these four angels holding back the four
winds from blowing life back into this army? Because
something has to happen first and that something is.... as
per Rev.7........that God wants to seal the 144,000 on their
foreheads first before He lets the
four winds blow life into His exceedingly great
army. So basically God has hit the pause button and
instructed these four angels to wait for His command before
they are allowed to let these four winds blow.
Now in chapter 9 of Revelation we find these same four
angels who have held back the four winds from blowing. The
word says that God has prepared these angels for the exact
hour, day, month, and year. These angels of God have been in
the pause mode and only need the go ahead from Him and they
will release the four winds that blow life
into this exceedingly great army. God releases them in Rev.
9:15 and allows the four winds to blow breath and life into
God's army of resurrected beings from the house of Israel
(Jacob).
Now to answer that prior question from Ezek.37...what
does God consider an exceedingly great army? We find out in
the next verse of Rev. 9...."Now the number of the army of
the horsemen was two hundred million"....Wow! God doesn't
mess around when He raises an army. Indeed that is an
exceedingly great army.
The task of this army as per verse 15 is to kill one
third of mankind. That's over 2 billion people...what a
horrific scenario and number...it gives one great pause.
What do we know about this army? They are mounted on
horses. The riders wear breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth
blue, and sulfur yellow. The horses heads are like the heads
of lions and out of their mouths comes fire, smoke and
brimstone. It is by these three (fire, smoke, brimstone)
that a third of mankind is killed. Also the tails of these
horses have heads like serpents and with them they do harm.
Which third of mankind are they sent to kill? I don't
believe this is revealed in scripture, but I believe they
will be the enemies of His chosen people and Satan's demonic
strongholds, religions and followers.
Are there other scripture verses that tell about this
army that God resurrected and their exploits? Yes...Joel
chapter 2 describes the horror of their ride and the
destruction they cause and makes it crystal clear that it's
....God's army and not some Asian or other
world army.
Let's go there to Joel and see what the world will be
facing from God's army. (coloring used to focus in on the
applicable verses)
Joel 2:1-11
Blow the trumpet in Zion,
And sound an alarm in my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble;
For the day of the Lord is coming,
For it is at hand:
A day of darkness and gloominess,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains.
A people come great and strong,
The like of whom has never been;
Nor will there ever be any such
after them,
Even for many successive
generations.
A fire devours
before them,
And behind them a flame burns;
The land is like the Garden of Eden
before them,
And behind them a desolate
wilderness;
Surely nothing shall escape them.
There appearance is like the
appearance of horses;
And like swift steeds, so they run.
With a noise like chariots
Over mountaintops they leap,
Like the noise of flaming fire that
destroys the stubble,
Like a strong people set in battle
array.
Before them people writhe in pain;
All faces are drained of color.
They run like mighty men,
They climb the wall like men of
war;
Everyone marches in formation,
And they do not break ranks.
They do not push one another;
Everyone marches in his own column.
Though they lunge between the
weapons,
They are not cut down.
They run to and fro in the city,
They run on the wall;
They climb into the houses,
They enter at the windows like a
thief.
The earth quakes before them,
The heavens tremble;
The sun and the moon grow dark,
And the stars diminish their
brightness.
The Lord
gives voice before His
army.
For his camp is very great;
For strong is the one who executes
His word.
For the day of the Lord is great
and very terrible;
Who can endure it?
Do you have a picture of this in your minds eye? Two
hundred million resurrected people from the lineage of Jacob
who are now spirit beings impervious to death. They ride
terrible ferocious fire breathing horses able to leap over
mountains if necessary. They don't break ranks and devour
with fire everything before them. And they are tasked to
kill over 2 billion people. Hollywood would be dumbfounded
trying to fulfill a production of this magnitude.
Can you imagine knowing this enormous army is going from
country to country eradicating and killing everything in its
path and your country is next?
This army needs no fuel, no rest, no transportation, no
re-supply, no anything. Unimaginable horror on an
unimaginable scale. Picture a huge fire breathing lawn mower
that's a hundred miles wide that is cleansing the earth with
fire.
God said after opening the sixth seal that His wrath had
come....who is able to stand? The short answer....No one.
Most people believe that this two hundred million man
army comes from the Asian countries and through nuclear
exchanges 2 billion people are killed. I believe that we can
ascertain from these applicable scriptures that........ this
will not be the case.
And I do not believe God will allow His planet to be
polluted by biological, chemical and nuclear warheads, after
all He and many others will have to live here for the
thousand year millennium. It does appear though that the
majority of the earth will be burned by the fire. God's army
will burn a massive amount in the process of killing a third
of the planet and another third of the earth will be burned
by the first trumpet judgment. This means that the majority
of the earth will have had a cleansing fire which will
fulfill other prophetic verses of scripture.
I hope this article sheds some light on God's end times
army and makes clear some of the end times gray areas.
Blessings......John B
P.S. Some other things you will need to know to make this
story complete and tie up some loose mental ends you may
have.
There will be one very large "combined
resurrection" that happens after Jesus opens the
sixth seal accompanied by a worldwide earthquake. And many
things will happen...all at the same time.
I'll focus below on the resurrection aspects only...
----The bodies of "the dead in Christ"
from earth and we "the alive in Christ" on earth will be
taken up to meet Jesus in the clouds. Jesus will have
brought with Him from heaven the souls of the dead in Christ
----At this same huge combined
resurrection God will also resurrect "the whole house of
Israel" that we just discussed in detail. From these
hundreds of millions He reserves His two hundred million man
army. This army is now resurrected with skin and bone but
life has not been breathed into it yet as we have discussed
above. This army is in the pause mode because a group of
these resurrected, the 144,000, have to be sealed with the
Father's name on their forehead before anything
else can transpire with house of Israel. Rev.
7:1-4
----From this hugh resurrection of the
"house of Israel" God also at the same time selects the
144,000. Twelve thousand from all the tribes of the children
of Israel. They will be the redeemed from the earth, the
first fruits (and are dealt with first) to God and to the
Lamb. They will follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They, not
like His army will at this point be fully alive and
functioning.
----As we discussed above in the article
God has resurrected His two hundred million man army from
the house of Israel but has not permitted the four angels to
allow the four winds to blow life back into them until the
correct hour, day, month and year. So this army is in the
pause mode until God's timeframe is correct as we discussed
above. This timeframe becomes correct later in Rev.9.
All the glorious, bizarre and terrible happenings of
sixth seal (Rev. 6:12-17) will also be happening at
the same time. Can you imagine trying to
orchestrate all of these events simultaneously.........you'd
have to be God!!! :)