Question: What is the Tamerlane prophecy about?
Rev. 9:16 And the number of the (a)armies of the horsemen were (b)two hundred thousand thousand: I heard the number of them.
(a) "Armies"; these armies (plural), must be from more than one Nation. The Euphrates River has Nations on both of its sides that historically and currently are hostile to Israel. The Caucuses Nations, Persia (Iran), Turkey (Asia Minor, half of which (west) was Ancient Greece), Syria, etc. probably are all involved. However, there is speculation that Nations such as India, China and others may be involved, they certainly have the populations; although historically are not foes of Israel, and apparently are not listed in Scripture, as are the others.
The religions of these Countries are all descended from Babylon, (modern Iraq) which whilst revering "the people of the Book" (the Bible), deny Christ's deity. However, the Caucuses, and others from the East of the Euphrates, together with Assyria, and Persia (Iran) maybe the Eastern limit/boundary.
(b) "Two hundred thousand thousand"; the literal wording from the Greek is "two myriads of myriads". The Oxford English Dictionary defines myriad as 1) "an indefinitely great number". 2) "ten thousand". If we use the latter, i.e. (10,000 x 10,000) we have 100,000,000 x 2 = 200,000,000. Such a size of a multiple army is hard to imagine. The population requirement alone, to say nothing of the economics and logistics drains the imagination. At present (2020) there are only two countries in the world capable of producing such numbers, China and India, however, see note on (a). However, the Bible states these future facts, therefore they are accurate.
Many Muslims relate the “Mahdi” to the historic figure of ‘Tamerlane’ (of Uzbekistan) reincarnated for the purpose of leading Islam to world dominance.
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