Long Before The End Of Time

Long before John wrote Revelation 19:11-21 and Paul penned 1 Thessalonians 3:13. Before Zechariah prophesied in 14:5 and Daniel 7:10 was ever foretold. Even before the flood happened. Enoch prophesied about the battle of Armageddon. So how long ago did Enoch live? In Jude and in Genesis 5 we see that Enoch was seven generations from Adam and three generations before Noah.  We see that Enoch was a godly man and he walked with God. One day while walking with God, God took him back to Heaven with Him. So we know Enoch spent time talking to God and that the days that Noah lived in the people were very ungodly. They were so ungodly that God was sorry He had made man. In his walks with God, Enoch must have talked to God as to what was going on and God told him what was to come. Enoch must have told his family what God had told him and that is how we have the prophecy in Jude 14 and 15.

“Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Wait a minute, the prophecy says only ten thousands how can it be correct?  Remember we are talking about only seven generations from Adam. There were not millions or billions of people on the earth at that time. He used what he could imagine it would be this vast amount of people. Besides, let’s look at the other prophecies and see how many they say, starting with Daniel 7:10;

a thousand thousands served him,
    and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;

So Daniel used thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand to count all that were there.

Zechariah said in 14:5, that;

all the holy ones with him.

He didn’t even attempt to count the people that were there.e people that were there.

Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3:13 said,

at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Like Zechariah, Paul didn’t try to count all the people.

Finally in Revelation 19:14, John didn’t attempt to count either. We have an idea that it is a huge amount in that it is all of the LORD’s armies.

 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

Since John was a prisoner of Rome when he wrote Revelation let us look at the Roman army. Josephus says that the Roman Army consisted of 28 legions that were spread across the Roman Empire. There were about 5,500 men in each legion. After doing the math that means there were close to 154,000 Roman soldiers in the army.

Time travel several centuries to WW II. When I was writing a piece about my grand

dad’s time in the war, I turned to my Jr. High History teacher to understand what group he was deployed to. I’m going to use what he gave me so that we can get a better idea of what armies would be in modern time.

Squad – 9 to 10 soldiers.

Platoon – 16 to 44 soldiers. 2-4 squads

Company – 62 to 190 soldiers. 3-5 platoons

Battalion – 300 to 1,000 soldiers.  4-6 companies

Brigade/Regiment – 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers.  2-5 battalions

Division – 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.  3 brigades

Corps – 20,000 to 45,000 soldiers. 2-5 divisions

Army – 50,000 + soldiers. 2+ corps

So if we use modern day numbers for John’s armies it is easily over a million people that were saved and follow Jesus as their Lord. Are you counted in the Lord’s armies?