The Sixth Vial of Revelation
The sixth vial is conceivably the most well-known of all the prophecies in the book of Revelation, possibly the entire Bible. It is primarily known for the Battle of Armageddon prophecy, but several interconnected prophecies occur when the sixth angel’s vial is emptied. Although this vial has not yet been fully realized, its fulfillment began over a century ago.
Revelation 16:12-16
12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
15 Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.
16 And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.
At the opening of the passage, the sixth angel pours out his vial upon the Euphrates. The Euphrates is a significant river in the Bible. It was one of the four rivers that flowed from the Garden of Eden in Genesis,[1] and marked one of the borders of the territory God promised to give to Abraham and his descendants.[2] The King James Bible mentions it by name twenty-one times, demonstrating the river’s importance.
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As John watches, the sixth angel’s vial causes the Euphrates to run dry. According to verse twelve, the drying up of the river allows “the way of the kings of the East” to “be prepared.” Next, three “unclean spirits like frogs” leave the mouths of the dragon, Antichrist, and False Prophet. These three evil spirits influence political leaders around the world and incite global wars on an unprecedented scale. The third and final component of the sixth vial—the element that makes this one of the most well-known prophecies in the Bible—is the infamous Battle of Armageddon.
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Three Unclean Spirits Like Frogs
The fulfillment of the sixth vial begins with the start of World War I in 1914. Despite the common misconception, World War I was not limited in scope to participants from Europe and North America. The era of European imperialism had consolidated most of the world under the control of only a few countries. The territories and colonies of the British, French, German, Italian, and Russian empires were pulled into the war alongside their parent nations. This dramatically expanded the conflict until it involved most of the globe. The first of the three frog-like spirits was fulfilled when World War I began because that meant “the kings of the earth and of the whole world” had been gathered in battle.
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The alliances of World War I. European colonization brought most of the world into the war.
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The popes and Jesuits played a significant role in instigating the crises that led to World Wars I and II. Their influence explains why these three evil spirits come from the mouths of the dragon, Antichrist, and False Prophet. World War I did not immediately begin after the shocking assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, on June 28, 1914. Pope Pius X and Cardinal Secretary of State Rafael Merry del Val helped to push the European continent into a war. On July 26, 1914, Baron Freiherr von Ritter, Bavaria’s diplomatic representative to the Vatican, wrote to his government. “The Pope approves of Austria’s harsh treatment of Serbia,” Ritter reported. “He has no great opinion of the armies of Russia and France in the event of a war against Germany. The Cardinal Secretary of State does not see when Austria could make war if she does not decide to do so now.”[i]
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A similar story unfolded at the dawn of World War II. Weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland, a secret meeting was held between Pope Pius XII and Hitler’s envoy, Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse. According to the Vatican’s own transcript of the meeting, Pius was especially encouraging of Germany’s objectives. “No one here is anti-German,” the pope said. “We love Germany. We are pleased if Germany is great and powerful. And we do not oppose any particular form of government, if only the Catholics can live in accordance with their religion.”
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In his meeting with Philipp, the pope agreed to refrain from involvement in the political affairs of the Nazis. This concession would have included both the environment of German antisemitism and the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust. Pope Pius was so thoroughly supportive of the Third Reich that the only thing he received in return for his silence was an end to German restrictions on Catholic schools and attacks on clergymen.
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Even after the Nazi defeat of Poland and Hitler’s shuttering of churches and convents in the country, the pope reiterated his message to the German foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. As the war continued, Pius said nothing. The Nazi invasions of Catholic Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and France did not garner a response from the so-called “Vicar of Christ.” He condemned the Allies’ bombing of Rome, but said nothing when the Nazi Gestapo rounded up the Jews of the city for extermination. He even refrained from excommunicating Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Heinrich Himmler, all of whom remained Catholic to their deaths.[ii]
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Pius knew of the Nazi extermination program by 1942, but he remained silent. German priest Lothar Koenig sent a letter to Robert Leiber, the pope’s personal secretary, notifying him that up to six thousand Jews and Poles were being sent to the gas chambers in Poland every day. Yet, publicly, the Vatican maintained reports of the extermination camps were unsubstantiated.[iii]
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At the close of the war, Pius’ clergymen also established and facilitated escape routes, called Vatican ratlines, which helped many Nazi war criminals evade the Allies. While serving as the rector of the German-speaking Collegio Teutonico seminary in Rome, Austrian bishop and Nazi sympathizer Alois Hudal organized a ratline that abetted the escape of exceptionally heinous Nazis. Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, and Alois Brunner—the commanding officers of concentration camps—all fled Europe with his help, as did Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.[iv] In his autobiography, Römische Tagebücher, Bishop Hudal wrote, “I thank God that He [allowed me] to visit and comfort many victims in their prisons and concentration camps and to help them escape with false identity papers.”[v] The “victims” Hudal helped were not the innocent Jews held in Nazi concentration camps, they were the Nazi war criminals held by the Allies. Later, even more sophisticated ratlines would be established through the San Girolamo degli Illirici Seminary College in Rome by the Bosnian Croat Catholic priest Krunoslav Draganović.[vi]
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The alliances of World War II impacted even more territory than World War I.
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The Euphrates Runs Dry
The Vatican’s involvement in both World Wars lends credibility to its anti-Christian status and the fulfillment of the prophecy of the three frog-like spirits, but how could World War I mark the beginning of the fulfillment of the sixth vial prophecy if the Euphrates has never run dry? The answer is simple. Like most prophecies in Revelation, the “drying up” of the Euphrates is a metaphorical description of a literal event.
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The exact language used in the King James Version of Revelation 16:12 says the Euphrates dries up so that “the way of the kings of the East might be prepared.” When attempting to understand the symbolism of this verse, it is critical to recall the meaning of “kings” in Biblical prophecy. These kings are not individuals—they are leadership positions.
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Once again, the fulfillment of the sixth vial reverberates with semblances to its corresponding trumpet. The parallels are the Euphrates, the fall of an empire headquartered in Constantinople, and the involvement of the Turks. The Seljuk Turks overthrow of the Buyid Dynasty in 1062 and the Ottoman Turks defeat of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople in 1453 marked the beginning and ending of the sixth trumpet’s 391-year prophecy. The same Ottoman Empire whose rise occurred during the sixth trumpet would play a significant role in fulfilling the sixth vial through its own collapse.
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The Middle East before World War I (left) and today.
The Ottoman Empire’s collapse prepared “the way of the kings of the East”—
the modern nations that contain former Ottoman territory.
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Before World War I, the Ottoman Empire controlled the entire length of the Euphrates. The Turks had held this area since 1555 AD, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. When World War I began, the empire allied with the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria.
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After the Central Powers lost the war, the Ottoman Empire faded from history, and its territory was reduced to what is now Turkey. This loss of territory was represented by the metaphorical “drying up” of the Euphrates. The land the Ottomans ceded after the war would eventually form part or all of Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq—the new “kings of the East.”[vii]
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Battle of Armageddon
One part of the sixth vial prophecy remains to be clarified: what about the infamous Battle of Armageddon? As World War I neared its conclusion in September 1918, the Ottoman army was on the run from the British. The commander of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General Edmund Allenby, led his army northward from Sinai and into Palestine. Beginning on September 19, several battles were fought between the British and Ottomans in the region north of Jerusalem. The earliest engagements were fought near Tabsor, Nablus, Tulkarm, and Arara in the Judean Hills. As the British army continued to force the battle lines northward, additional fighting occurred at Nazareth, Afulah, Beisan, Jenin, and Samakh. By the end of these encounters, the British had driven the Ottomans into Syria.
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History is written by the victors, so General Allenby selected the name of the overarching battle. He chose the “Battle of Megiddo” specifically for its religious significance, as clashes occurred in the area surrounding the site of Megiddo where the Biblical Battle of Armageddon takes place.[viii]
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Futurists and Preterists claim this was a forced fulfillment of prophecy by Allenby. While he indeed chose the battle’s name because of its religious undertones, that in no way invalidates the battle from fulfilling the Battle of Armageddon. The Battle of Megiddo, World Wars I and II, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire each align perfectly with the sixth vial.
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Locations of the military engagements and battle lines of the Battle of Megiddo, September 1918.
Tragically, one part of the sixth vial remains to be fulfilled. If the unclean frog spirits each represent individual World Wars, as they appear to do, one war remains before the vial is complete. The beginning of World War III will close the sixth vial, as the third frog-like spirit will be fulfilled when the whole world is gathered for battle one last time. We have now reached the point in Revelation’s timeline that coincides with our present historical moment.
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[1] Genesis 2:10-14 10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
[2] Genesis 15:18 In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:
[i] Paris, Edmond. 1961. The Vatican Against Europe, translated by A. Robson, 14. London and Geneva: P. R. Macmillan Limited.
[ii] Loughery, John. 2022. The pope who thought he could negotiate with Hitler. July 29. Accessed January 30, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/29/pope-who-thought-he-could-negotiate-with-hitler/.
[iii] Winfield, Nicole. 2023. Letter suggests Pope Pius XII knew of mass gassings of Jews and Poles in 1942. September 16. Accessed January 30, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pius-holocaust-jews-pius-pope-poland-8c511a4b99345d98f54af69dda6d2a66.
[iv] Phayer, Michael. 2000. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965, 11. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
[v] Aarons, Mark, and John Loftus. 1998. Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers, 37. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
[vi] Aarons, Mark, and John Loftus. 1998. “Ratlines.” In Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and the Swiss Bankers, 88-119. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
[vii] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2023. Ottoman Empire. July 3. Accessed August 20, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/place/Ottoman-Empire.
[viii] Palmer, Alan Warwick. 1998. Victory 1918. New York: Grove Press.
