Let us look now at Revelation 9:14. It says there:
…Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.
In relationship to this language of loosing and binding, turn to Matthew 18:18:
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven…
Actually, the tense would be “having been bound in heaven.”
Then it continues to say:
…and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
And, again, this would be “having been loosed in heaven.”
In the above Scripture, we find Christ setting up the sending of the Gospel into the world throughout the New Testament Era. It is through the Gospel that God’s people could bind men; and it is through the Gospel that men could be loosed. This is because it is the Word of God that looses those who are in spiritual prison, those who are in spiritual captivity.
Furthermore, we read in John 11:44 concerning the resurrection of Lazarus:
And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
Lazarus was dead and he was bound with graveclothes; but here, Christ says, “Lazarus, come forth,” and he is loosed. We can see that salvation is definitely in view. Having once been bound and then loosed is another way in which God points to salvation in the Bible.
We read in Luke 13:11-16:
And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
Once again, we see this binding and loosing. Like this poor woman, people are bound to Satan and to sin, and Christ looses them.
So we see in Revelation 9 that these four angels (messengers) were bound in the great river Euphrates. The command is given to “loose” them. We will see how the four messengers are representative of the 200 million whom God will save out of this world. The four messengers typify the sum total of God’s elect people: all those whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Since the four messengers are synonymous with the 200 million horsemen, we could also say that 200 million were bound in the great river Euphrates. These are the 200 million who were delivered and who came out of spiritual bondage and captivity on that great day, the glorious day of May 21.