Armageddon

This is only one of the Old Testament pictures used in the Revelation to encode a prophecy of the coming change in the world order

The word has a chilling sound. In the popular mind it conjures up visions of war and tumult, destruction and slaughter, a holocaust of fire and death, the end of all things. It is one of the few Biblical words which survive in everyday language. Any great political crisis or threat of world wide war is almost invariably referred to as "Armageddon" .

A certain amount of uninformed Bible exposition has contributed to this habit. The colourful symbols of the Book of Revelation are often interpreted in far more literal a manner than is justified, and the "scare tactics" employed by a few Christian groups more obsessed with retributive vengeance upon sinners than the Divine desire and plan to save them from their sin has tended to over emphasise the destructive element in this very real event in human history and minimise the constructive factor. Both are included; unless that fact is understood the full significance of the Scriptural presentation of Armageddon will not be appreciated.

The word occurs only once in Scripture - Rev.16. 16 - and it is veiled in a certain obscurity, which is very understandable when one considers the circumstances under which the relevant passage was written. It dealt with the ultimate, but certain, overthrow of the powers of evil of this world and their supersession by the Kingdom of God. Inflammatory material indeed at a time when the then ruling world power, the Roman Empire, had decided the Christian society was a danger to the State and must be eliminated. Therefore this Book of Revelation was written in terms of Old Testament history and prophecy in such fashion that whereas to the uninitiated it would seem to be merely a farrago of nonsense, to Christians conversant with the Old Testament the allusions would be understood and the meaning decipherable.

The general theme of the Book of Revelation is the conflict between good and evil which began, so far as the book is concerned, with the birth of Christ at Bethlehem and is concluded at the end of the Millennial Age when all evil is eliminated and mankind, fully reconciled to God in Christ, has achieved its destiny. In this picture the disciples of Christ of this Age, the Church, are shown as waging a good warfare against the hosts of evil and enduring martyrdom for their faith, emerging triumphant on the "other side". The powers of evil, and all in the world who support those powers, move inevitably into a harvest of their own sowing in which all they have built through the centuries comes crashing down in total disruption because it bas been built on evil principles and evil is inherently unstable and cannot endure. They have sown dragon's teeth and reap accordingly. And this is the time that the Lord Christ, with his resurrected martyr‑disciples, returns to take his great power and reign over the earth - an event which marks the transition from the present Gospel Age to the future Millennial Age. This event, combining both the downfall of the "kingdoms of this world" and the establishment of the Kingdom of God, is Armageddon.

Both these factors are included in this passage in Revelation but it will be helpful to take a look at the background first. For several chapters back the Revelator has been tracing the conflict between good and evil, from the birth of Jesus through the Age, until in chapter 14 he sees a representation of the great event which closes this Age and challenges the institutional powers of evil to mortal combat. That event is the Second Advent of Christ, and the Revelator casts it in the guise of Daniel's vision where Daniel sees the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, to witness the overthrow and destruction of great wild beasts representing earth's empires, and to set up his own kingdom which shall never pass away (Dan. 7). Now John in his 14th chapter also sees this Son of Man coming on a cloud, but he adds some additional detail. There are two harvests to be reaped, one the "harvest of the earth", of wheat, for He wields a golden sickle for the purpose, and the other the vintage, of the "vine of the earth", which is to be cast into the "winepress of the wrath of God". The interpretation is not difficult. The wheat harvest is the Lord's gathering of his Church at his coming, as also pictured in the parable of the wheat field in Matt.13. Following this translation of these faithful and watchful believers to heavenly conditions comes the overthrow of evil pictured by the vintage, in which the "vine of the earth" is reaped and cast into the winepress. This goes back to Isaiah 63 where the conquering Lord is pictured as treading the winepress in his irresistible progress toward the establishment of his Kingdom.

This general outline of chapter 14 is amplified in chaps.15‑19 by the insertion of detailed news of certain aspects of the process. In chapter 15 the "sanctuary of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven" is opened, and seven angels bearing "the seven last plagues" come forth. The "tabernacle of the testimony" is, of course, the Mosaic tabernacle in the wilderness at the time of the Exodus, the ritual centre of the Levitical ceremonial law. The sanctuary or "Most Holy" of that structure was normally closed to mortal sight, only the High Priest being permitted to enter, but there were occasions when the supernatural Shekinah light which illuminated its interior, the "glory of the Lord", blazed out in the sight of all Israel in demonstration of Divine judgment against some blatant wickedness. One such occasion was at the rebellion of Korah and his followers (Num.16) when the plague decimated Israel in consequence. This is the allusion here. The end of the Age has come, the Lord comes both to take his Church to himself and to destroy evil and set up his kingdom, and all this at the time in human history when the apostasy and unbelief and rebellion of man has involved them in inevitable world disaster and ruin, aptly described here in Revelation as the "seven last plagues". These "plagues" are not heaven‑sent; they are the logical and certain consequence of man's own course and actions, but they are pictured as emanating from the Divine sanctuary because they are Heaven's laws that have been transgressed and Heaven pronounces the judgment. The same principle is exemplified at an earlier time in history when Israel went into captivity to Babylon on account of the joint sin of princes, priests and people, and the Lord said "their own way I recompensed upon their heads" (Ezek.22.31).

So this 16^th chapter, which contains the reference to Armageddon, is devoted to a description of the coming of these plagues upon the world at the end of the Age. The first, the infliction of foul disease upon the supporters of the evil powers, an allusion probably to the leprosy which struck Miriam, Gehazi, and Uzziah, in each case following sacrilege or rebellion, might fitly picture the unbelief, irreligion and general rejection of God which has characterised this "end‑of‑the‑Age" period and to which so many of earth's present ills are directly due. Very few will dispute that we now live in a sick society. The next three are the time honoured symbols of pestilence, war, and famine. Our Lord said that these three plagues would afflict the world in redoubled measure at the "Time‑of‑the‑End" and here the Revelator sees the sea become blood so that all life dies, a fit symbol of pestilence; the rivers and streams run blood, a symbol of universal warfare; the sun's heat increased to scorch the earth and men upon it, a picture of famine. All these plagues are with us today - famine, pollution and war are in the forefront of the great problems which face the world's leaders.

All this leads logically to the fifth plague, the undermining of the controlling centre of the powers of evil. This means, in effect, the approach to imminent collapse of the present world order. Jesus foresaw the same thing when He uttered the historic words "upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity. men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth" (Luke 21.25‑26). It is to be especially noted that these plagues are pictured as coming upon evil institutions and evil men, not upon the good‑living and the upright. It is the evil in the world, and not the world itself, that is to be destroyed. So it is "his kingdom", the kingdom of the beast, that is full of darkness and his followers who blaspheme God because of the plagues. And this paves the way for the sixth plague, one feature of which is Armageddon.

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" (Rev.16.12). This allusion goes back to the sixth century B.C. when the great city Babylon was taken by Darius and Cyrus the Median and Persian monarchs from the east, by the expedient of turning aside the waters of the Euphrates which flowed through the city, and marching in through the dried‑up river bed. The story is recounted by Herodotus but Jeremiah foretold it half a century before it happened. (Jer.51.36). And Cyrus the Persian was foreseen by Isaiah as a symbol of the conquering Christ who would come with his forces at the time of the end to destroy the greater Babylon and establish a kingdom of righteousness (Isa.45.1). Ezekiel saw the glory of God advancing from the east in the same fashion (Ezek.43.2). Here then is shown in symbol the coming of Christ and his Church, the "kings of the sunrising", to assume the overlordship of earth. "They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years" (Rev.20.4). This is the advance of the host of Heaven and the challenge is quickly taken up by the forces of earth; at this crucial moment John sees demonic spirits acting as the voice of the combined evil powers - the Devil and his agents on earth — gathering all who will join them "to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. ..and they gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon," (Rev. 16.14‑16). The A. V. renders "he gathered them" but "they" is correct in the Greek text. The demonic spirits do the gathering and the net result is that described in the 19th chapter: "I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army". This is the final confrontation between the King of Kings and his heavenly followers on the one hand and every earthly power and institution that supports or perpetrates evil on the other and the outcome is that these evil powers are destroyed.

Armageddon is the Greek form of the Hebrew "Har‑megiddo - the mountain or peak of Megiddo. A Canaanite town of this name existed when Israel invaded the land and throughout Israel's occupancy of the land. The valley of Esdraelon, in which Megiddo was situated, was the scene of many battles between Egyptians, Hittites and Assyrians although Israel was rarely involved except in the case of King Josiah, who met his death there. The most likely basis of the allusion probably resides in the O.T. story of Barak's defeat of the Canaanites at this spot soon after Israel's entry into the land. Sisera the commander of the Canaanite hosts had held Israel in bondage for twenty years when Barak mustered a force of ten thousand men and charged down from Mount Tabor into the valley and put the Canaanites to undisciplined flight. The pursuit was continued until the last remnants of the hated enemy, overtaken not far from Megiddo, were put to the sword: ". ..all the host of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword; and there was not a man left" (Jud. 4.16). The magnitude of the victory was such that a hymn of praise to God was composed and the credit given to the powers of heaven. "Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel - they fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera ...So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord" (Jud. 5.2‑31). John the Revelator, looking for a fit simile to this last great conflict in which once again the powers of heaven engage in conflict with earth and gain the victory, could very reasonably have found it in this story of Barak's victory over Sisera so that when he pictured the opposing armies of the end time gathered into a place called Megiddo every one of his readers familiar with Old Testament history knew exactly what he meant, that once more the "stars in their courses" were fighting from heaven to put to flight the hosts of darkness.

The result of this conflict is the subject of the seventh and last plague; thunder, lightning, hail, earthquake, greater than men had ever previously experienced, and the utter ruin of "the great city". Symbols like these were used by many of the Hebrew prophets when speaking of the last days. A vivid description is afforded by Isaiah's vision in chapter 34 of that book. The sword of the Lord is unleashed against all idolatry and all ungodliness and the land is likened in its resultant desolation to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah - it has become a waste howling wilderness inhabited only by predatory wild beasts and unclean birds. But not forever; the following chapter, Isa. 35, tells of the succeeding renovation: "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad. ..and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. ..they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God" (Isa. 35.1‑2). As with all the prophetic pictures of the End Time, judgment and blessing are associated and the one is always followed by the other. So it is with Armageddon. The overthrow of evil is followed by the "new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" of Peter's epistle (2 Pet.3.13) and in the Revelation visions this forms the theme of chapters 20‑22, following directly upon the detailed description of the closing events of this Age which occupies 17‑19.

Armageddon is not all darkness. There is light at its end. It is not all judgment; there is blessing also. Judgment on evil, yes, judgment that is inevitable because evil carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Blessing to follow, because that is the Divine plan; blessing even upon those who have been the servants of evil if so be that they turn from their evil ways, and join with those who will, in that blessed day, shout in joyous acclamation as did Isaiah of old, Lo, this is our God. we have waited for him, and he will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation".

AOH