Wednesday, June 19, 2024

The Concept of Armageddon: A Study of the Ultimate Victory of God's Righteousness

The concept of Armageddon is related to military struggles, to the place of the great battle and wickedness, and is mentioned in the book of Revelation. This passage has its final fulfillment not in physical terms, but in the spiritual era when the true believers stand in their positions. This publication deals with the concept of Armageddon and is summarized in three headings, which indicate where, how, and when Armageddon takes place and what its consequences will be. The three aspects are deeply intertwined with each other. It is the site, the manner, and the period in which this event takes place that the author intends to provide material for analysis. The word "Armageddon" is derived from Hebrew, and the original Greek script has the term "Harmagedon." The word has given origin to the mystique with which countries of the world always use terms like the "Third World War" and portray their physical-political viewpoints about last world events. Palestine (Israel) is the place where the Valley of Armageddon is located. Brother Branham indicated that it is about a 14-hour walk and a day's journey from Jerusalem to this Valley. Its first mention is in the passage of Judges 5:19. This text is related to the victory of Barak and Deborah over King Jabin of Canaan and his general Sisera. The Hebrew term, Har Megiddô, denotes the towering hill about fifty miles north of Jerusalem upon which the fortress of Megiddo was built. There, toward the end of the second millennium, Thutmoses III won a major victory which climaxed his campaign against Palestinian Amorites. Fifteen centuries later, in 609 B.C., Pharaoh Necho II, returning to Egypt after assisting Syria in repelling aggressive Babylon, pursued some remnant of Judah's force under King Josiah which sought refuge behind these walls. According to the account in Second Chronicles, the king was slain, and his body was transported back to Jerusalem for burial. It is first of all important to understand just what Armageddon is. The term "Armageddon" comes to us from the Book of Revelation, itself at the end of the New Testament. It is presented in descriptive purport as a prelude to that supreme finale in which God's righteous rule is asserted upon the earth as it is in Heaven and an eternity is ushered in of happiness and peace for the remaining ones of mankind. However, anybody who reflects on our world as an enduring totality of time and space is now increasingly faced with the thought that the destiny of that world is evil. More prosaically, we are all agreed, including the secular humanists, that we have to do something about it, but the fact that the problem is now perceived in a secularized manner does not make it any more tractable. The earlier belief that the notion of a beneficent God, who will ultimately bring about the final victory of His will, could give a total and an acceptable answer and provoke a total and unambiguous belief, has disappeared. It is a question of very fundamental importance to note that this traditional belief, in the clarification of which an understanding of the notion of Armageddon is crucial, will continue to lose ground. In terms of cultural and historical significance, the notion of Armageddon is of a very different order from the more or less forgotten notions of devil and hell. Today we are seldom, if ever, agitated by the thought that at our death - and as far as life's duration goes, we are already amidst the children of eternity - one of us might go to hell. In fact, the concept of the omnipowerful, omniscient, all-knowing, and therefore necessarily benevolent God who might sentence some of his creatures to unremitting punishment for eternity seems now utterly alien to us. The name "Armageddon" is not difficult to explain. The concluding verses of the 16th chapter give us a description of the Kingdom of the Beast and of the circumstances that lead it to provoke the intervention of Christ Jesus. Three unclean spirits, it would seem to be, two Beasts and a False Prophet, work miracles, induce the kings of the earth to assemble at a place with a Hebrew name, Har-Megiddon, after which they go forth to gather the kings of the whole world for the final battle. The name this refers to, as most Biblical commentators insist, is the plain of Esdraelon, which has formed throughout the course of the Iron Age the easiest communications route from north to south, and is thus of direct concern to the inheritors of the ancient Empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, of each of which Megiddo was at times the key fortress. It was a suitable location, in other words, for all the varied and Leviathanic opponents of the Israel of God, as it will be for all the varied and Leviathanic enemies of the Church. Other explanations are merely ingenious and unrelated to the events that serve as the background of the final apocalyptic catastrophe. The first mention of...