20,000 Nuclear Weapons is not Revelation 9.18
Revelation 9.18: "By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths."
What are these three? "...fire and smoke and burning.." (v.17)
My issue is that these three plagues come out of the machine-like army of 200 million (v.16). It does not come out of nuclear missiles it would seem. But, "I saw a star [which would be Satan cast down from 2nd heaven] that had fallen to earth from the sky, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. When he opened it, smoke poured out as though from a huge furnace, and the sunlight and air were darkened by the smoke" (vv.1-2).
Could the huge furnace be like a nuclear explosion or could it be like a massive volcanic eruption? How do the locusts come out of it? (v.3). It doesn't seem at this point it is nuclear holocaust because for 5 months there will not be deaths, only suffering for 5 months from the locusts initially.
Deu 29:22 So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;
Deu 29:23 [And that] the whole land thereof [is] brimstone, and salt, [and] burning, [that] it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:
Deu 29:24 Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what [meaneth] the heat of this great anger?
This sounds like a nuclear holocaust, but how do we resolve this holocaust from the 200 million machines that seem to be the source of the destruction mostly? Nuclear weapons come out of silos or nuclear subs, but not usually from traveling machines, and certainly not 200 million of them.
This almost seems Matrix-like with 200 million sentinels. It is hard to find something to compare to these conditions today. Could it be machines in a world war 3 fighting over oil? What is it?
The more I think about this, the more I realize these conditions are so peculiar, that they seem not only like complicated and very intelligent machines, but also as if they have their own artificial intelligence and not merely acting as drones. Watchman Nee describes the first group of machines, the locusts as a "special specie" (see "Come, Lord Jesus") created by the demons. Nee was jailed for life in 1953, so he knew of nuclear bombs. It doesn't sound like he wrote about them or alluded to them in any way, so he did not feel they related to the Bible's Great Tribulation.
If I am correct in this assessment about Nee's view, and since I can't find anything that is particularly strong pointing to nuclear weapons as the vital aspect of Great Tribulation, then I think we are moving into the realm of either artificial intelligence or genetic mutations in creating strange creatures as described in Revelation 9. Either way, it could be several centuries away still so we can be certain it is not in our lifetime and there is some flaw to the savings ratio which was pointing to the return of Christ this century.
If this hypothesis is correct then all the nuclear weapons we have pointed at each other are not going to be the weapon of mass destruction ironically. It seems to me we will overcome nuclear weapons and the real issue will be these 200 million machines like Matrix sentinels. Therefore, oil won't be the issue which we fight over either. What will be the ultimate cause of the war? It will be the machines we made and the mutations we created that we let out of the Pandora's box. This will include nano technology too.
There will be a day and age when there are no more nuclear weapons, but the real threat will be these genetic mutations or machines with artificial intelligence. It all sounds so terminator and a matrix-like, but many movies in the past which were unfathomable then, seem to turn out. For example, in Star Trek, nobody thought we would ever have hand-held devices we could communicate through or see video on.
On the other hand it is hard to believe that nuclear weapons are not the key aspect of the Great Tribulation. My logic says though, since nuclear and machines are two key elements, to combine the machines and the nuclear weapons, they must be traveling machines that have nuclear weapon capability. They have to be traveling because they have to be hidden in their locations.
That is my best estimate given the data. I can't fit these machines to present day technology; it still seems like these machines are way in the future. The question then becomes, how much longer will it take for this to transpire? How many more years will such vastly intelligence machines come about?
A reasonable guess I would suppose is not anytime soon, but certainly before the 7th millennium is up. And that is sorta interesting because the 8th millennium is a millennium in which 8 is like the number of resurrection since Jesus was raised on the first day of the week which is also the 8th day of the week. For other proofs of the number 8, read section 9.
I don't think it would take more than a 1000 years to create such amazingly advanced machines.
The more I think about it, the more I believe nuclear war is not what is being talked about it. So therefore what do we focus on? What is important is our bodies as temples, preserving our spirit, soul and body for the prize and abiding in God's works set for us. The prize is the reward of reigning in the millennium by returning with Christ.
From a high of 65,000 active weapons in 1985, there were about 20,000 active nuclear weapons in the world in 2002. Many of the "decommissioned" weapons were simply stored or partially dismantled, not destroyed.
Declared nuclear weapons states
Country Warheads-active/total Year of first test
United States 5,735/9,960 1945 ("Trinity")
Russia 5,830/16,000 1949 ("RDS-1")
United Kingdom <200 1952 ("Hurricane")
France 350 1960 ("Gerboise Bleue")
China 130 1964 ("596")
India 60 1974 ("Smiling Buddha")
Pakistan 24-48 1998 ("Chagai-I")
North Korea 1-10 2006
Undeclared nuclear weapons states
Israel 75-200 none or 1979
