Armageddon, 200 Million Chinese Horse Soldiers,
and the Slaughter of Billions
by Gary
DeMar
9/17/2007
QUESTION:
After reading your book Last Days Madness, which is
understandable for even a layman such as me, I have a couple of
questions. First, the time indicators you reveal and clarify in your
book point to an A.D. 70 fulfillment of the “great tribulation.”
However, I do not see how the preterist1
view of Armageddon, where a third of the world’s population is
destroyed, is dealt with on this issue. Second, in Revelation it refers
to 200 million mounted troops. What is your position on these issues?
These are good questions. While it’s difficult to
deal with the middle portions of Revelation without establishing its
historical context (the judgment upon Jerusalem), the time element (Rev.
1:1, 3; 22:7, 10, 12, 20), and interpretive methodology (Scripture with
Scripture), what follows are some things to consider when looking at the
above questions.
First, Revelation 16, the only place in the Bible where the word
“Armageddon” is found, doesn’t say anything about the destruction of a
third of the world’s population. You have to go back to chapters 8
(7–12) and 9 (15 and 18) for the context of this topic. There are a
couple of things to notice. First, the Greek word for earth is gās
and can be translated either “land,” “dirt,” “soil,” or “earth.” If you
read these verses and insert “land” (i.e., “land of Israel”) where many
translations use “earth,” a more local context is in view. The focus of
Revelation is on Jerusalem’s coming judgment: “And their dead bodies
will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called
Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified” (11:8). Jesus was
crucified in Jerusalem which had become similar to Sodom and Egypt in
that their occupants persecuted the people of God.
Second,
there are specific allusions to OT symbols and events. Revelation 8:10
says “a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell
on a third of the rivers.” If one star hits the earth, the earth will be
vaporized in an instant. In fact, if a star gets even close to the
earth, the earth is going to burn up before it hits. Notice 8:12: “Then
the fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun and a third of the moon
and a third of the stars were smitten, so that a third of them might be
darkened and the day might not shine for a third of it, and the night in
the same way.” How can a “third of the sun” be smitten without
catastrophic results on the whole earth and not just a third of it? All
of this language is drawn from the OT and only has meaning as it is
interpreted in light of its OT context—the judgment and destruction of
nations (Isa. 14:12; Jer. 9:12–16).
Third, if the claim is made that the “stars” are actually meteorites,
then there is a problem with Revelation 12:4 where a “great red dragon”
uses his “tail” to sweep a “third of the stars of heaven” to throw “them
to the earth.” Such a barrage would destroy the earth, making it
uninhabitable for man and beast for millennia. And yet, we are to
believe that the armies of the entire world are going to pick a fight
with Israel (Rev. 16:13–16) after a third of the earth’s population has
been wiped out. Robert L. Thomas, who consistently criticizes those who
interpret much of Revelation as symbolic, interprets the stars as
“angels who fell with Satan in history past.”2
He might be correct, but this seems to violate his interpretive premise
and that of dispensationalists in general that “a symbolic
interpretation assumes the absence of strict realism in a vision.”3
So why not a real red dragon and literal stars in this context?
It’s in Revelation 9:15 that the four angels “kill a third of mankind.”
If this judgment takes place in the land of Israel, then the use of
“mankind” (lit., men) is a reference to those living in Israel
during the time of the siege. Josephus records that more than a million
Jews were killed during the war. This number is probably more than a
third of the population, but we know that there were judgments to come
(Rev. 16) before the final Roman onslaught against the temple and city.
Eventually the total number killed will come to two-thirds of the
population (Zech. 13:8), the million mentioned by Josephus.
Notice
something important about the so-called “Battle of Armageddon” (16:16).
John writes that the “kings of the whole world” will gather “together
for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty” (16:14). Many see
this as a world-wide conflagration because of the use of “whole world.”
But it’s not. The Greek word for “world” is oikoumene (not
kosmos), the same word used in Matthew 24:14 and Luke 2:1 that has
reference to the Roman Empire. The battle is waged by the world empire
of the day—Rome—made up of many nations. The phrase is used in a similar
way in the OT.4
What of the 200 million troops on horseback (Rev.
9:16)? Hal Lindsey made this interpretation popular in his 1970 best
seller The Late Great Planet Earth:
We believe that China is the beginning of the
formation of this great power called “the kings of the east” by the
apostle John. . . . In fact, a recent television documentary on Red
China … quoted the boast of the Chinese themselves that they could field
a “people’s army” of 200 million militiamen. In their own boast they
named the same number as the Biblical prediction. Coincidence?5
There
aren’t 200 million horses in the entire world today. At most there are
about 60 million worldwide. China’s horse population is less than 7.5
million.6
Why would China mount such a vast army after a third of the earth’s
population has just been wiped out by plagues and falling stars to the
Earth? It doesn’t make any sense. The world would be in such chaos that
the last thing on anyone’s mind would be to round up 200 million horses,
soldiers, weapons, saddles, and enough food, water, and hygiene
facilities so they could make a nearly impossible trek from China
(16:12) to Israel. Do we not remember how the world went on hold after
9–11?
It seems obvious from Revelation 9:17 and the rest of
Revelation that this is a symbolic army, a demon-inspired army bent on
destruction (9:1–11). The comments by Ralph E. Bass, Jr., are helpful in
unraveling the meaning of this passage:
[This] is a number designed to terrorize. And indeed,
that is its achieved result. As Carrington says, “. . . it is the empire
of hell.” There never has been such an army and apparently never will be
one. . . . But the number appears to have another meaning than the
number of Roman soldiers from that area; it appears to suggest the
number of demons that were released on Israel and Jerusalem. Remember
the story of the demon possessed man from Garasenes (Luke 8:30)? He was
possessed by a legion of demons. A legion was from 5,000 to 6,000 men,
and all this in but one man! At 6,000 demons per person, it would only
require a little over 33,000 inhabitants of Judah to justify these
numbers.7
The above interpretation at least has Scripture to
back it up. We know these things from what the Bible actually says. If
this army is symbolic of something else, then the futurists have some
explaining to do. If it’s literal, then they still have some explaining
to do.
1“Preterist” refers to what is past. Unlike a futurist who
believes the events of Revelation are yet to be fulfilled, a
preterists believes that the prophecy relates to events leading up
to an including the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The time
texts “soon” (1:1), “near” (1:3; 22:10), and “quickly” (22:7, 12,
20) tell the reader that the prophetic events of Revelation were on
the horizon.
2Robert L. Thomas, Revelation 8–22: An Exegetical Commentary
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1995), 124.
3Thomas, Revelation 8–22, 16. John Walvoord, a
thorough-going dispensationalist, sees the stars as symbols of
political powers. See his The Revelation of Jesus Christ: A
Commentary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1966), 189.
4See Gary DeMar, Zechariah 12 and the “Esther Connection”
(Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2004).
5Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970), 86.
6“World horse population estimated at 58 million”:
www.horsetalk.co.nz/news/2007/09/105.shtml
7Ralph E. Bass, Back to the Future: A Study in the Book of
Revelation (Greenville, SC: Living Hope Press, 2004), 241.
