Episode 22 — The Death and Resurrection of Our World : Who Is Going to Kill One-Third of Mankind?

In this powerful and confronting episode, we welcome Pastor Mark Johnston of Game Changer Intensive to help unpack one of the most chilling and prophetically urgent passages in the entire Bible — Revelation 9:13–19.

Together, we explore the events of the Sixth Trumpet, where four angels bound at the Euphrates are released to kill a third of mankind. This is no allegory. The details are precise: a massive army, the colors of war, and destruction by fire, smoke, and brimstone. Could John have been seeing a vision of nuclear warfare? Are these verses being fulfilled in our lifetime?

We also turn to Revelation 16:12, where the drying up of the Euphrates prepares the way for the kings of the East — something that is now physically happening for the first time in recorded history.

Key Scriptures include:

• Revelation 9:13–19 — The Sixth Trumpet judgment
• Revelation 16:12 — The Euphrates dries up
• Isaiah 24:19–20 — The earth staggers like a drunkard
• Luke 18:8 — Will the Son of Man find faith when He returns?
• James 4:14 — Life is a vapor

This is not about panic — it's about preparation. Whether your view of the end times is pre-tribulation, post-trib, or still undecided, one truth remains: we must be spiritually ready. Christ is coming. His Word is clear. And the signs are becoming impossible to ignore.

Now is the time to strengthen your faith, engage deeply with Scripture, and draw near to Christ in prayer, community, and bold belief.

"Follow us for more discussions on faith, scripture, and prophecy.
https://tectonicministries.com/

Transcript

G'day and welcome back to the latest installment with tectonic ministries.
We're going to be jumping into something pretty heavy today, it's sort of the next
in our series when we're talking about revelation and the return of Christ and all
the events leading up to it. But before we get too heavy into that, I'm gonna
introduce a special guest that we're gonna have with us over the next half for
dozen episodes or so. We've got Mark Johnston here from, we've got Game Changer
Intensive. Now, I'll ask you Mark to just give a brief little bio if you wouldn't
mind. And then we can get started from there just so everyone knows who you are,
where you're from? Yeah, so I'm from the Sunshine Coast, senior pastor at the
Ecclesia. I've also got Game Changer Intensive, which is scriptural intelligence and
spiritual intelligence, where I get people to go back to the roots of scripture to
deal with emotional and mental issues. That's pretty much what I do.
Counseling. Yes, Fantastic. Okay. Well, with that in mind, we're going to jump on
into this one and like I said, it's a pretty heavy one. The topic for today is
who is going to kill one -third of mankind and when. I think,
Dan, you said you wanted to start off with the scripture so we can kind of set
the foundation for this one and then we'll go from there. So I'll read the
scripture and then do you want me to just, We'll handball it over to you because
you've got this one wrapped up. I get to bring the good news.
All right, so we'll start off here in Revelation 9 and verse 13 and we're going to
read on down to 19 to start off with and then we'll break it down as we go
through it. It says here, Revelation 9 verse 13, "Then the sixth angel sounded, and
I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are
bound at the great reverie Euphrates." So the four angels who had been prepared for
the hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. Now
the number of the army of the horsemen was 200 million. I heard the number of
them, and thus I saw the horses in the vision. Those who sat on them had breast
plates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow. And the heads of the horses
were like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and
brimstone. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and
the smoke in the brimstone which came out of their mouths, for their power is in
their and they're in their tails. For their tails are like serpents having heads and
with them they do harm.
- What we've just read here is gives us the two specific terms of killing a third
of mankind. So you can't just discard that. We've looked at before in the cast that
the Bible, 24 % of the Bible verses have prophecy in them.
80 % plus of those prophecies have come to pass to the letter over the last
whatever thousands of years. So they believe the Bible is three and a half to 4
,000 years old. So so many of those prophecies are there and correct.
So you can't discard this. You can't just throw this away and say,
look, this has never happened before in the history of mankind, and therefore it'll
never happen. We read in, we just talked about before, so the book of Revelation
starts with these things that are going to come, these things that are gonna happen,
these things that are going to come to pass. So when John is seeing the revelation,
everything in revelation is in the future. We then need to look at what hasn't
happened, so we've never seen what we just saw here. We've never seen a third of
mankind annihilated. We haven't witnessed that. We saw in the Second World War,
there's approximately 60, 65 million people were killed. That's nothing like A third
of mankind. And that's the greatest warfare of whether most people were ever killed
in the history of our world. We just read there there's an army of 200 million.
The biggest army in the Second World War was, the Germans had between 40 and 45
million and the Russians had about the same amount of people. So we've never seen
an army of 200 million. You read further into Revelation and we have never seen
hailstones weighing over a hundred kilos dropping on the earth. We've never seen a
third of the oceans of the world turn to blood. We've never seen a third of the
rivers of the world and the fresh water turn to blood. So these events clearly have
never happened. They must happen. They're going to happen because it's written in the
Bible. We read here in this prophecy is almost one of the clearest Bible prophecies
in all of our Bible. Clear, easy to understand. So what I would like is to go
through and look at the evidence to tell us who is going to do this and when it
is going to happen. So we'll get on to the who is going to do it. If you look
at the seals, the trumpets and the bowls, we're looking at here the sixth trumpet.
So the sixth trumpet blown in heaven, making an announcement in the royal court,
in the heavenly court, in the holy court, there are these angels, there's what we've
talked about before, the heavenly court and the throne room of God is nothing like
we have ever seen on earth. We have these very, very dim views and you can look
at the greatest monarchs and greatest empires that have ever been and they had great
throne rooms and great court rooms and then nothing compared to what you see,
what John saw and many of the other writers of the Bible saw when they were taken
and given a vision in heaven.
So we've talked before about how the seals, the trumpets and the bowls fit together
and they give us a timeline. So what we're looking at here, this is the sixth
trumpet. So the sixth trumpet, the seventh seal trumpet and bowl all spell out this
massive earthquake that is basically almost going to split the world in two. Islands
will be dislodged out of their roots, out of their bases. The world will reel to
and fro like a drunkardized eye 24 tells us. So this is immediately before that
happens. We're going to witness a third of mankind being killed. So as we look at
that and we drill down into it and as I said before, we're looking at the sixth
seal, the sixth seal trumpet and we'll look at the sixth bowl as well because it
again fits another piece of this clue. So we might just go quickly there and just
have a look at Revelation 16 verse 12. It's interesting too because people have said
in the past that revelations fall, the sound of a trumpet.
It said, "Come up here," and they've interpreted that as the rapture. But it said,
"Like a trumpet," it didn't say, "A trumpet," which is really interesting. Yeah,
it's good to watch the flow of the seals, trumpets and bowls. We've spoken about
that before, Mark, that you put seal one with trumpet, one with bowl one, and and
they just go like a hand little guy of two, two, two, three, three, three, and
this is a very confirming one of those. So we're looking at this sixth trumpet and
it's speaking here about the Great River Euphrates. You go to the sixth bowl of
Roth being poured out upon the earth and we're, again, this river Euphrates is here,
just lining them all up. Well, it's an interesting take that you have because I've
never seen it that way before until you've mentioned it. Yeah, we did actually have
that discussion.
but Jay and Dan had a few differences of opinion on that. And basically what we
ended up coming down to was that it doesn't really matter at the end of the day
who is 100 % correct.
No, because none of us are ever gonna fully get it until Christ returns and we
have it revealed unto us. But at the end of the day, where would you rather be?
Would you rather be wrong and have the preparation and the mindset that I'm just
going to go through all of this, but God will sustain me, or you're going to be
wrong and get hit with tribulation and go, well, hang on a sec,
what? Oh, I'm not prepared for this. Yeah. So essentially at the end of the day,
we're just, I'll be wrong and be prepared. And then, well, praise the Lord,
I didn't go through it all, but if it happens then yep, I'm prepared, thank you
Jesus.
Yeah, so at the end of the day, regardless of your interpretation, you're better off
being prepared and being wrong than, yeah. But yeah, so kind of coming back to what
you were saying there before. So here we've got Revelation 16 and in verse 12.
So we're just reading just verse 12 for now. Yep. Then the sixth angel poured out
his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way
of the kings from the east might be prepared.
So we're given here the first clue as to who this could be.
Who can this be that the scripture is telling us That who are the kings of the
east first clue who throughout history of we's known as the kings of the east only
one people group Whereas the uber river Euphrates the river Euphrates comes down
through Turkey Iraq right it through into the Middle East and For the first time
and you can Google it people can Google it first time in the history of our world
the river Frades is now being dried up. So this prophecy is now in the place where
it can be fulfilled. So you say, there's two clues.
Who are the kings of the east?
Who is east of the river of Frades? So it's immediately-- we understand them.
You can look on your maps. It's in the Middle Eastern section there, and down
through a rock and all of that, and they've damned it so much now they've dried it
up. So they are two clues of what we just read here in these initial verses.
So where we read Revelation 9, 13 to 19, and we're looking at these key elements,
these key things, these key clues to tell us Who is going to do it? We now know
and understand the timing. It's going to come very late in the Great Tribulation.
It's the last event before Jesus comes back.
And we'll address more on that in some of our other podcasts. And we'll address
more of the events. But this is right before Jesus comes back. This beast,
these people that get get it set in their minds to wipe out a third of mankind.
You know, that's when you take it in the context of what happens before in the
other seals, trumpets and bowls. There will be six -- there are 8 billion people
left here on the planet now.
There's going to be a quarter killed before this third is killed. So we're going to
see 2 billion people killed and we'll address that in another podcast. What we're
looking at now is who's going to kill a third of the remaining six billion people.
So that's when you take it all, as I said before, and you look at all of the
scriptures in the Bible and the many writers of the books in the Bible, we get
this picture, very clear picture, but ask yourselves questions. When you're reading
your Bible, Talk to God, build your relationship, ask him, "What does this mean?
What's this little verse mean? What are these key words mean? What are these key
phrases, these key sentences mean?" He will talk to you. He will reveal it to you.
You may not get it right there and then, and you'll be surprised. As we've talked
about before, you'll be off driving your car or doing whatever you're doing. The
revelation will come, but it's that constant communication with Jesus,
that constant relationship.
So we've said here, it's the Sixth Trumpet, so it's very late in the three and a
half year Great Tribulation. We've read here about the River Euphrates,
so we can look at where these people are going to come from. So we're getting very
good clues. We're seeing the River Euphrates draw up, so we know that this is
ending. This is right about to happen. We've never seen it happen in the history of
the world before. So it will be,
as we said, very late in the Great Tribulation.
And as Isaac said before, we need to prepare. We've got the first two clues now.
We've got this clue of
Who are the kings of the east? We've got this clue of the river you're afraid is
being dried up. We've got this clue of, what was the other one?
>> The colours, the colours on the sides of the army. >> Well, we'll go, yeah,
we'll look at them, I'd say, because we've got so many other clues. So we look
what we read before and we can keep coming back to it. The third clue is,
now the number of the army of the horsemen was 200 million, I heard the number of
them.
So John, someone's making a statement and John clearly hears this statement, 200
million.
It's precise isn't it? There's no blurred lines. Yeah, it wasn't like a statement,
like a great multitude. Exactly.
It's like a generalization. This is a very specific number.
And numbers of great significance too in the Bible. So whenever numbers are
mentioned, specifics as well. Sevens all the way through the book of Revelation. So
he's mentioning specifically 200 million for a reason. As he says here,
he heard it. I heard the number. So there's someone quoting and who in recent times
has made this quote we can raise an army of 200 million someone has said that in
recent times very recent times so they're parts of the clue we can start to see
who this is the next part of the clue is we read here which is the fourth
evidence so we've got one two three four this is the fourth and thus I saw the
horses in the vision Those who sat on them had brisk plates of fiery red high
synth blue and sulfur yellow so We look at Who's an army or whose armed forces
have these colors and?
Then you consider well Russia has red and sulfur China's red and sulfur You know so
many other who has red blue and sulfur And this tossed me for a long time because
I had settled my mind on who it was and all and that. But then the blue just
didn't fit until I realised whose army and navy and now their military forces,
their second most
strongest color is blue. And I went, wow, that fixed the jigsaw.
So first color is red, second color is blue, third color is sulfur yellow.
Look, go and look and look for yourself and see whose army and whose armed forces,
not only their military but their air force and their navy have these specific
colors.
So, as I said, when you're looking at, you want evidence, I am a person,
and I'm sure we all are, you want the truth. We hear many people crying for truth,
and when you give the truth, that's not the truth I wanted to hear. This is
probably not the truth a lot of people want to hear, I mean. That's
Who who wants to see a third of the world's population wiped out?
I mean we've all witnessed and watched they're horrific They make you shudder,
you know, you when you watch second world wars and you watch modern warfare and
Even what's happening in in Ukraine and Russia in the Middle East now is It's
really hard to take. It's really you don't want to sit there and watch all of
these innocent people, but it's what's going to happen.
So
we said who has these colours, who can raise an army of two million,
who has these colours, Then you need to look at who has actually has the capability
of killing a third of mankind and It's not just one or two countries anymore It's
like there are I think there's eight or ten nuclear countries, so there's England
Russia America China India Pakistan And probably several others have got nuclear
capability. And there are many of them, North Korea and Iran,
are wanting to run headlong France, has nuclear capability. And many of these nations
are wanting to get that new -- and you think, for what end? To what end is it
going to be? Is it to kill a third of mankind? So, that's what we read in
Revelation and we read how it will be accomplished and one of the wonderful things
that you read here is John's description of a missile, a ballistic missile or a
nuclear missile or whatever, is kills with its mouth and its tail. And then it's
like a serpent going through the air. And we've all seen them, haven't we? We've
all seen these missiles go through them. How could you describe it 2 ,000 years ago?
Like a serpent going through there, it kills with its mouth and its tail. This is
what John saw 2 ,000 years ago when they were fighting with bows and arrows and
maybe they got a slingshot or a catapult or that was the best they could raise.
The Romans had raised a lot of military stuff but how would he describe This, I
think to what's interesting in this verse, it says horses, horses represent power.
And they were built for battle in the ancient times. So it's not like the horse
was just placed there by accident. You know, some trust in chariots,
some in horses, but we will trust in the Lord. So in battle array horses were
always in the thick of it. They were a part of battle. Something that's interesting
in that verse because it could have said lions, it could have said any type of
species of animal, but it says horses in particular.
In that sort of warfare, the chariots and then the English and all that and the
Europeans they invented the armoured horses basically they put arm around all their
horses and started it so it was basically the war tank of those days and we don't
know did John see tanks he describes these making these noise like this whirring of
locusts and so he describes these things you couldn't see back then,
and how would you describe what we now know today as a tank rolling in or a drone
going through the air or helicopters, you know, like we would, this worry,
this, you know, and there's many things, and we talked to Dave not long ago about
when the abyss is open in Revelation 5. And these locusts are released from the
pit, and the whirring of these locusts. And we both thought, well, is that just
millions of drones? And the result of that happening is just horrific.
And we'll do another podcast on that. But we've got to deal with this stuff. It's
what we've really got to talk about. You can't just read it and then go away and
pretend it's not going to happen. I mean, how do we prepare for this? How do we
prepare our families? How do we prepare our churches? How do we get our people
ready? Well, that's the question. How do you get them ready, Dan? Well,
I believe personally as in community. But the greatest way in warfare,
let Jesus Christ do it.
God can remove anyone's breath like that. That's right. He can say, "Oh no, that's
mine now. Excuse me." And he does that and we'll read that in a couple of podcasts
in the future where God says, "No, your time's in. Thank you. No, it's all over."
So we human beings think there's so much dependent on us and we want to look at
that later as well. And we place so much emphasis and thought on the physical,
you know, how I'm going to dress, what I'm going to eat, where I'm going to go,
how I'm going to be entertained, how I'm going to survive, how I'm going to do
this. Where God primarily is interested in the person in the body,
that's what He wants. Because one day He'll give us a new body. And And as I've
written in my other book, we'll go through a stage of metamorphosis and we'll have
another body, you know, and clear in Scripture, very clear as to what we will
eternally be like. So God is nowhere, His percentage of interest in our bodies is
probably 1 % to our percentage of interest in our bodies, you know, if we want to
draw a comparison. So how do you battle anything?
You get the biggest ally you can get and you can't get bigger than God.
So God will either take us out of it through martyrdom and that's fine. You go and
you'll be with the Lord, that's fine, or He will take us through it as He tells
us in Scripture, but it's that connection. He writes in Luke 18 and we've spoken
about this before, will He find faith on the earth when he comes back.
And then he writes, "Don't stop praying. No matter what you go through, no matter
what you see, no matter what you hear is a hearing. Don't stop praying. Engage me
in the conflict and I will take you through it." Whatever that ends up being. And
don't focus on the here and now and this 70 year body. Focus on the eternal being
and what that will be like. And I think that's the real issue because we've got a
temporal perspective instead of heavenly. Eternal perspective.
Because if you compare yourself to eternity, like we won't be here long. We're but
a vapour, the Bible says. I missed.
That's not long.
Well, I'm 70, about to turn 72, and it goes fast,
you know.
So we're more in that one. I think that's a great place to finish on the
preparation, especially if we're going to wrap it up in one thing, is obviously to
the point of what we're doing here is to understand the adversity. And again,
what we've said previously, this is not going to be comprehensive in it,
that it's not going to answer everyone's questions because there will always be more
questions the more you study, often the more questions you have. But it does resolve
some of the confusion. We hope it will resolve some confusion.
And it also provides a filter to look at these things through. So if you're
essentially interested in this and you're looking, okay, well, how does this work?
Who are these people? And always trying to do is just kind of expand on scripture
and to go through and to help point at what scripture is saying. But,
and so that you can, as we mentioned, be prepared in the light of the fact that
the ultimate goal is communion and reunion with God and reunion with Christ when he
returns but that is only possible as you mentioned before if we keep the faith so
the whole purpose of this is to educate and to prepare in order to keep the faith
because it's not, obviously, if you're of the understanding that you're not going to
have to face anything and that Christianity is just going to be this walk in the
park and that there's going to be no trial, no trouble, then when it comes you
question your faith because it is not placed on a firm foundation of trust and
understanding of what God has for us. So if we,
We're going to wrap this one up here now from what Dan said is through all this
the best thing you can be doing is to have deep union with Christ to have a
community of like -minded believers around you so that when the time comes you have
others that will help you and you can help others to keep the faith
So let's leave out there for now and we'll be back with more on this topic. Thanks
again.