Armageddon Series

“The Battle of Armageddon”

By Ernesto Illingworth

The Context and background

Assumptions in regards to biblical matters are very frequent. Armageddon is not the exception. Armageddon has been regarded as a battle that soon will take place at middle East, others think about this as a nuclear attack or meteorite that will destroy the whole earth. Hollywood has definitely done a “very good job” confusing the minds of the people in regards to this matter.

But, is that what the bible teaches? Is that, what Armageddon really means? Let’s begin by analyzing the verses and context where we find the word Armageddon. The place we need to go is the book of Revelation, the clear context is the seven last plagues, specifically, the 6th plague and the close of probation.

Revelation 16:12 “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.

Revelation 16:14 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.

Revelation 16:15 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 16:16And they gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

As a special note. We know that the book of revelation is a symbolic book (Revelation 1:1), and because of this we must approached the book in a symbolical way unless it is clearly described in a literal way. Symbols in the book of Revelation are drawn from the Old Testament stories with the purpose of guiding us in our understanding of the book. When we think about plagues and frogs, we can clearly perceive there is a strong and direct connection with the Exodus story when Moses by the mighty power of God delivered the people of God from the Egyptian bondage. The bible says that the magicians of Pharaoh were frantically trying to counterfeit every miracle and sign that Moses was doing in the sight of the people.

Moses brought frogs into the land, and the bible says that the magicians did the same, the interesting thing is that after this deception their power was not a match for the power of God and they were not able to counterfeit anymore the power and signs of God. In simple words we can say that this deception, was the last counterfeit deception of the enemy upon Egypt. So, we can conclude that this spirits like frogs in the book of revelation are making their last effort to counterfeit the word of God in the last day events in earth’s history. it is the last counterfeit Satan will perform, so it is necessary to identify what kind of deception is the enemy preparing.

The Word Armageddon

The word Armageddon comes from two different Hebrew words. Har which means Mountain and Megiddo, which means gathering. In the land of Israel there was and there is still a place called Megiddo. Following certain “logic” Many assume Revelation is using this symbol to point us to that place as the center of the prophetical fulfillment, but there is a problem here. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Megiddo or even see a picture of it you will notice Megiddo is not mountain. Megiddo is actually a valley or a big flat plane area. So, again, this is definitely an issue that we need to consider and resolve. Is this place where the book of Revelation is pointing us to, or could it be that the general interpretation is probably based on wrong assumptions?

Evangelical scholars now days still want to push the interpretation that a military conflict will take place in the valley of Megiddo where interestingly there is not Mountain.

The Framework to understand Revelation and Megiddo.

Remember Revelation is a symbolical book and many have lost sight of that fact.

One thing we have to understand about bible interpretation is that in order to interpret the word of God correctly it is imperative to build our interpretation upon the proper framework, otherwise our whole system will collapse sooner or later. For instance, many evangelicals have the idea that somehow a physical temple in Israel will be rebuilt at some point in the future, by a so-called messiah, so every interpretation for them has to be linked with this idea. This is their framework of interpretation.

Now. I want to suggest that this is not a solid framework and I’ll tell you why in a minute. The theme that needs to be our framework and foundation to understand the end time conflict is perceived in the bible as the “Great Controversy theme”. The reason why we need to choose this theme over the other one is because this is the only theme which explains us how evil began. Unless we understand how evil began and what are the implications of this conflict, we are building upon the air. We won’t have a clear picture of why things need to happen and the time of the end, and we would be force to interpret revelation based upon our own presuppositions rather than a theme clearly defined from the beginning. The Great controversy theme also provides a picture of the conflict of the time of the end. This is the real framework because this is the real conflict.