II: The Flood and the Fathers

River Euphrates

the boundary whose restrained powers are loosed

Root
Gen 15:18 · perath (H6578)
Old Testament chain
  1. Gen 15:18
  2. Deut 1:7
  3. Josh 1:4
  4. Isa 8:7-8
  5. Isa 44:27-28
  6. Jer 50:38
  7. Jer 51:36
  8. Rev 16:12
New Testament
Rev 9:13-21; Rev 9:14; Rev 16:12

The Euphrates first appears as the covenant boundary: "unto thy seed have I given this land... unto the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen 15:18; Josh 1:4). Isaiah has Assyria pour over it like a flood (Isa 8:7-8), and Yahuah says to the deep, "Be dry," naming Cyrus (Isa 44:27-28); "I will dry up her sea" (Jer 51:36). At the sixth trumpet the restrained powers beyond the boundary are loosed. At the sixth bowl the river is dried as for Cyrus, "that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared" (Rev 16:12): Yahuah withdrawing a restraint, not a weather event. The futurist picture of a literal dry riverbed opening for an eastern army ignores the Cyrus pattern.

From The Courtroom of Heaven, pp. 29, 129, 133–134, 259–260