Those in the know among former and active military cast wary eyes toward developments in the Oriental world. Every serious interview that comes forward these days brings the direst of thoughts from these experts who genuinely foresee war with China.

The dragon has awakened, and it is thirsty. This dragon is prophesied to be energized by another serpent, also called “the great red dragon,” “Satan,” and “the devil.” This energizing of China in the prophetic future by the ancient foe of God is found primarily in two places in the book of Revelation.

The first of the relevant passages is found in the 9th chapter:

“And 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 which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them” (Revelation 9:13-16).

The apostle John, through words given him by God, expanded upon the prophecy in chapter 16:

“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. 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. 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” (Revelation 16:12-14).

The king of the kings of the east–unless something very dramatic happens to change the configuration of things east of the Euphrates, has to be China. It could, by itself, have manned a 200-million-soldier army even as far back as the 1970s. Today, with the other nations of Asia and their massive populations, the 200 million figure presents no problem at all so far as potential for fulfillment of the prophecy is concerned. And, certainly, China exerts hegemony over all of the other nations of its oriental sphere. Many within secular news media are beginning to recognize the same things those who watch Bible prophecy and current events have been recognizing for some time. China indeed looks like a major influence on factors that might bring nations into a conflict the size and scope of Armageddon.

Each day brings news of China intruding into waters near Taiwan and flying over Taiwan’s airspace. The ongoing close encounters of US and Chinese warships in the South China Sea bring disaster ever closer. The Chinese are declaring all of that water territory to be theirs, despite that maritime law and territorial statutes clearly demark waters that are open to all maritime ship movements. The Chinese government is obviously deliberately provoking many of these dangerous confrontations. Any one of the encounters can bring about an accidental incident that could initiate open warfare between the two nuclear giants.

The present American administration, like in so many other areas of its responsibility, seems clueless as to how to rein in the behemoth of Asia.

There is little doubt in my thinking that China will, at some point, recapture Taiwan (formerly Formosa). This is because all of the world’s powers of the Orient east of the Euphrates are called “the kings of the east.”

China, because of its ravenous ambitions to conquer, needs ever-increasing energy to fuel its voracious military and commercial lusts. They really don’t care about the general population of their dictatorship. But they are, experts observe, intent on making deals with nations with oil resources through fiscal alternatives to the American petroleum dollar. Like the globalists of the World Economic Forum and all other New World Order sorts, China’s chief concentration these dangerous days is on bringing down the power and authority the United States maintains over economic matters such as world oil resources.

When Antichrist comes to power, the Bible foretells:

“But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; and he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to sweep away many” (Daniel 11:44).

Increasingly, then, it looks like oil will bring all the nations into the valley of Jezreel for the showdown at Armageddon. It is as if sin itself, which invaded humankind because of disobedience in the Garden of Eden, has to come to its full recompense at this future date of human destiny. The Fall caused all of the earth, particularly the area where the Garden of Eden was located, to begin a deadly degeneration for all plant and animal life. The second law of thermodynamics—entropy—dictates that all things continue to deteriorate. All physical matter is to turn to dust—or, apparently, to oil.

I don’t intend to get into controversy about what creates oil, but scientists believe the great oil deposits of the earth are where massive amounts of vegetable and animal matter have been buried, then compressed through eons to produce the fossil fuels we now burn in record amounts every year.

Now, the “dragon” of the Orient–China—is thirsty for its share of the black, incendiary liquid. And its thirst is potentially beyond even that of the industrialized world of the West. There is a showdown coming, it looks like.

Sin has brought humankind to this point. It started in the region of Mesopotamia and the Euphrates River, where the Occidental world meets the Oriental. Prophecy says that demarcation line will be breached–supernaturally, I believe—with the drying-up of the Euphrates, so demon-possessed masses of military forces from the Orient can easily troop to the valley of Jehoshaphat for man’s final war before Christ’s triumphant return.