by Dante Peoples

Created on: April 16, 2009   Last Updated: July 30, 2009

Many religious people say that Armageddon is a battle. But early in the 19th century, Bible scholar Adam Clarke wrote: "How ridiculous have been the conjectures of men relative to this point! Within the last twenty years this battle has been fought at various places, according to our purblind seers and self-inspired prophets! At one time it was Austerlitz, at another Moscow, at another Leipsic, and now Waterloo! And thus they have gone on, and will go on, confounding and being confounded." Searching for the meaning of Armageddon clearly raises some vital questions. What is Armageddon? If it is a battle, who will be the participants? Why will it be fought? Where will it take place? And when will Armageddon occur?

The term "Armageddon" is derived from a word found in the Bible book of Revelation, known for symbolic language. Therein the apostle John wrote: "I saw three unclean inspired expressions that looked like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the wild beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are, in fact, expressions inspired by demons and perform signs, and they go forth to the kings of the entire inhabited earth, to gather them together to the war of the great day of God the Almighty. . . . And they gathered them together to the place that is called in Hebrew HarMagedon."Revelation 16:13-16. Armageddon, or HarMagedon, is a transliteration of the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew expression Har Meghiddohn meaning "Mountain of Megiddo," or "Mountain of Assembly of Troops." It is linked with "the war of the great day of God the Almighty." So Armageddon is not a political skirmish, an economic disaster, a nuclear holocaust, or a human conflict. Rather, Armageddon is God's war.

Armageddon will be fought because God is righteous and will no longer tolerate evil. (Psalm 11:7) Satan the Devil's organization, comprising both demons and rebellious humans, responsible for millenniums of wickedness and woe, must therefore be destroyed. (Compare Genesis 3:15.) Jehovah's universal sovereignty will be upheld at Armageddon, and that war will clear his name of the reproach heaped upon it for centuries. As God declared through his prophet Ezekiel: "I shall no more let my holy name be profaned; and the nations will have to know that I am Jehovah."Ezekiel 39:7. Since Megiddo was in the land of God's ancient people, what happens at Armageddon relates to Jehovah's Witnesses in this "time of the end." (Daniel 12:4) HarMagedon applies

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