What Are We to Understand by the Battle of Armageddon, Referred to in Revelation?

Armageddon is the name given to the last great battle to be fought in the world's history, in which the whole human race is arrayed on one side or the other. It is to be the final struggle of Antichrist. When it will be fought no one can tell; but that there will be a great struggle we are assured. Before that day comes "many false prophets shall arise and lead many astray . . . iniquity shall be multiplied and the love of many shall wax cold." There are to be false Christs, false teachers doing signs and wonders, and leading astray "even the elect if such were possible." It is to be preceded by a period of apostasy, in which the authority of the wicked one will be fully demonstrated, with the assumption of divinity and the demand for universal worship as God. In the present stage of the conflict between good and evil, when mighty forces are arrayed on both sides, we can see the foreshadowing of the fierce struggle that is to come; but we may rest assured that righteousness will triumph in the end. (See the parallel passage in Joel 3:2-12.) Armageddon is "the mountain of Megiddo," west of the Jordan, a scene of early historic battles and the place that would naturally suggest itself to the mind of a Galilean writer to whom the place and its associations were familiar.

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