Armageddon: - what and where?

John Ramsden's discussion of Armageddon (BibleMagazine)
is a good start for Christians and Jews to look at, when trying to nail down the meaning of this unique word (found in Rev. 16:14,16):

'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. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon.' (Revelation 16:14, 16).

"Some say that it was originally spelt "Har-Megiddo" and therefore means a Hill at the end of the Megiddo valley.

The problem with that is that we never read in the Bible of a battle on any such hill. On the contrary the Biblical battles fought at Megiddo were on a plain -- such as when Josiah was killed by Pharoah Necho (see 2 Chron 35:22).
Meanwhile, another expert assures us that even though in the 1881 Revised Version of the Bible the word Har-Mageddon appears (and it is the only major version of the Bible to carry this description), the earliest known interpretation extant is in Arabic and means "a level trodden place".

Nevertheless, the general consensus among popular writers and preachers is that Armageddon refers to a place in Northern Israel where a future battle is to be fought out. " (ibid.)

Interestingly, a violent battle recently WAS fought on the plateau east of
this supposed valley, on the Golan Heights, which modern Israel nearly lost,
if not for perhaps some tactical and strategic bungling by Egypt and Syria, and hesitating support from the USA.

.

 


The result of that conflict was a new border,
which now acts as a buffer to protect Israel from invasion:

The Seven Trumpets: Literal Interpretations gaining Plausibility

Given the rapid changes in the world stage and recent events,
it has become clear that more literal interpretations of Revelation
have become much more plausible and credible than in the more recent past.

Many Christian groups, both Protestant and Catholic are struggling to
find authentic and appropriate interpretations and applications of the many
scenarios found in the Book of Revelation.

The Seven Trumpets are one group of such prophetic scenes,
which now more than any other time in history offer themselves
as literal and immediate future events.

Lets have a look at some of the Trumpet Prophecies:

For convenience we here take a few screenshots of a recent Youtube on this:


TRUMPET 1:  Lightning and Red Hail:

Well the first trumpet offers a simple and straightforward literal interpretation.
Lightning is a phenomenon most people are familiar with.   The "red hail" is a little more obscure, but could be a combination of small meteorite showers or
some secondary phenomenon caused by the first.

It should be remembered that ordinary lightning is a local phenomenon, but reasonably understood as electrical discharging or exchange of high volumes of electric current across the sky and between the atmosphere and ground.

Global Electrical Storms

To occur on a global scale, we would expect some scientific cause such as
an over-charging of the magnetosphere and/or atmosphere as a result of
a radical change in either the Solar Wind or our own magnetic poles,
which are responsible for the support of the Magnetosphere.

The Magnetosphere normally protects the earth from both the Sun's radiation
(Solar Wind) and also the bulk of cosmic radiation.   If our magnetic poles,
and also our Magnetosphere were to collapse or be drastically altered,
a scenario where vast amounts of electical energy are released from the sky
onto the earth is quite plausible.

The Northern Lights are an already well known cause of smaller imbalances
in our Magnetosphere and the resultant coronal discharges of ions and energy.

If vast amounts of electro-magnetic energy are released, any number of
other secondary atmospheric effects could be possible, accounting for
things like 'red hail' etc.

TRUMPET 2:  Lightning and Red Hail:


Trumpet 2 is more interesting, and we now have much more geophysical
background knowledge to explain events like this.

Small volcanoes are plentiful around the globe, especially along
tectonic plate fault-lines and areas of 'plate subduction',
but are also found as 'punch-throughs' in the middle of large unbroken
plate pieces, and they can happen anywhere.

Likewise, there are ancient legends already,
such as Atlantis , in which whole cities (mountains) and/or even islands
have vanished under the sea, probably accompanied by volcanic action.

Yet, as far as 'recent' earth history is concerned, (i.e., the last 5,000 years),
no chunk of land large enough to kill 1/3 of the oceans has ever slid into the sea.

That is not to say however, that we haven't had local mini-versions of
this phenomenon, such as Krakatoa (1883) and more recently Mt. St. Helens (1983).


Krakatoa:  Mountain falls into sea, 1883

Lets look at Krakatoa.  It is doubly significant, because it is not only
a very close case to a mountain collapsing into the sea, but its date is also
unusual, as well as the sheer size of this catastrophe:

'The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) began on August 26, 1883 (with origins as early as May of that year) and culminated with several destructive eruptions of the remaining caldera. On August 27, two thirds of Krakatoa collapsed in a chain of titanic explosions, destroying most of the island and its surrounding archipelago. Additional alleged seismic activity continued to be reported until February 1884, though reports of those after October 1883 were later dismissed by Rogier Verbeek's investigation. It was one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history, with at least 36,417 deaths being attributed to the eruption itself and the tsunamis it created. Significant additional effects were also felt around the world.'

 (The date is also significant, as it was just after the release-date of the mutilated "Revised Version" of the New Testament, which attempted to delete some 200 whole and half-verses from the Bible, and thankfully was rejected by Christians throughout the British Commonwealth, in favour of the traditional King James Version.)

 We are also 'lucky' in the sense that the recent invention of photography allowed for the capture of some of this incredible historical eruption on film.

What Krakatoa shows, is that indeed, mountains and islands CAN collapse
and fall into the sea.

Our next question of course, is where might this horrific prophecy take place,
in order to destroy 1/3 of life in the seas?

Two very obvious and plausible places are Japan, and California/Yellowstone.

Japan is placed right on the "Rim of Fire" and is historically suffered from
many earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis over a long period.

California is on a known massive fault-line, and right next to the
infamous Yellowstone Cauldera, which is believed to be due for an eruption.
The size of the eruption of Yellowstone is estimated to be 1000 times as large
as that of Mount St. Helens.

If this region were to blow, we might expect large portions of California coast
to slide into the Sea.

The major collapse of these regions on either side of the Pacific,
or even both of them together, could conceivably kill 1/3 of life in the ocean.

TWO BEASTS in Revelation 13 - A Solution to Controversy

Protestants in the West have historically been Eurocentric in interpreting the Book of Revelation.

The Roman Catholics have favored a 'preterist interpretation' which is essentially either historic (fulfilled in the past) or allegorical (spiritual meanings).

The Protestants have tended to stick to literal interpretations, but have focussed on the Vatican or Roman Catholicism as the Anti-Christ.   For the last hundred years or so, the Middle East itself was either forgotten, downplayed or separated out as historical prophecy for the pre-Christian era.

Relatively recently however, Western Protestant Christians have had to recognize the literal fulfillment of some astounding prophecies, such as the re-establishment of a modern State of Israel, and the revival of radical Islam.

The solution to the new dilemma may be found in the previously unnoticed mention of TWO beasts in Revelation chapter 13.

Here we can present two recent but complimentary attempts at interpretation of the Revelation, one which focusses on the Vatican System, and the other which focusses on Islam and the Middle East:

First the Protestant take on the Vatican:

Now a Middle-Eastern view of the End Times:

Revelation for Dummies (6) - The Great Period of Martyrdom

In Revelation 7:9-34 we are given a special vision,
of a vast number of Christian martyrs.
Those who try to apply this vision to the very early times (c. 60-130 A.D.)
or even the last 'great persecution' (c. 280-300 A.D.)
must interpret the vision as an exaggeration of sorts,
a poetical hyperbole.

But if we actually look at the history of Christianity for the last 2000 years,
we will be startled when we find just such a period in history,
and it was quite recent: The first and second World Wars.
The following chart diagrams both the expansion of Christianity,
and the significant periods and places of Christian Martyrdom:

The Second World War in particular is remembered for the Holocaust,
the slaughter of some 6 million people of the Jewish faith,
but the actual numbers for this war show that a a vastly larger number
of Christians, mostly civilians, women and children, were also slaughtered,
in a systemic pattern of genocidal acts, mostly simply butchering,
such as in the Croatian Holocaust, and other East-European events from
the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the Cold War.



It is remarkable that although this great slaughter of Christians temporarily slowed the expansion
of Christianity, it also gave it the greatest boost since the fall of Constantinople.

If we want to interpret Revelation historically, we are again faced with a prophecy
which has a clear and plain literal fulfillment without exaggeration, and with a specific time marked out.

Again, the overall effect is to place us in the Last Times, with few prophecies left to fulfill,
before the Return of the King.

Revelation for Dummies (5) - Western Collapse, Eastern Expansion

We said last post (Revelation for Dummies 4) that a few maps would illustrate the point, the point being the fall into the Dark Ages for the Latin West, and the simultaneous flowering of the Eastern Greek Empire: here are some illustrative maps (Click on maps to enlarge):

The Empire was officially split into East and West with separate rulers back in 395 A.D., with the death of the last full Emperor, Theodosius.

From there things quickly got worse for the West, as individual nations rebelled and set up their own independent kingdoms, outside of Western or Eastern control.  These political border changes were not peaceful, but were accompanied by wars, sacking and looting, rape, murder, and slaughter of various Western populations.

By about 530 A.D., the Western half of the Roman Empire was essentially nonexistant:

Parts of the West were recovered by Emperor Justinian the 1st, Italy and the Western part of North-Africa (Carthage, Morocco) and even the Southern tip of Spain, as well as the Alars in the North-East.   Most of this happened between 533 and 536 A.D., but material gains were eroded again after Justinian's death.
The Eastern Byzantine Empire reached its peak extension in Justinian's reign, and he capped it off by building the Hagia Sophia, probably the greatest cathedral built until that time. 

The first Major Bubonic Plague struck in 541-544 A.D., however, various smaller plagues had been running amok in the West for many years already as a result of war and famine.

Next the powerful Lombards invaded Italy from the north in 568 A.D., and took over most of the peninsula and all of Northern Italy.  Their former territory was filled by the Avars.  The Frankish Empire had expanded to absorb the Bretons on the West coast of France, and also the Thuringians and Burgundians.   Later, in 560 A.D. the Slavic Bulgars invaded to attack the Greek city of Athens.   Finally, even before the advent of Islam, the Ghasahid kingdom began to encroach upon most of Palestine, weakening the Byzantine hold on the Holy Land and Egypt.

The strength of the Eastern Empire was in its central position in over the Eastern Mediteranean, its Roman built roads, and sea power.  But it never had the disciplined standing army of the old Roman Empire. 

The maps illustrate clearly the relative poverty and collapse of the West, while the East continued to flourish, at least in the center of the Byzantine Empire.  Although many smaller kingdoms rose out of the West, they were all local peoples simply getting independence by force.


In the next century saw rapid expansion of the Islamic Caliphates, with the losses by the Eastern Byzantines to the Arabs of Armenia, Syria, and Egypt.  This effectively lost control of North Africa, and the defense of Spain also became impossible.

The West remained in a state of economic confusion and hardship, while the remaining Byzantine Empire carried on.

A Hard Look at the Book of Acts

Before going further with our notes on Revelation, we want to make a short excursion to cover the Book of Acts and Paul's letters. 
The following chart will be helpful for placing the key NT writings on a chronological time-chart, and give keys to the backgrounds of various letters by Paul:

Timeline for Acts/Paul:  Click to Enlarge full size

 

The diagram is for the most part self-explanatory.

Nazaroo

Revelation for Dummies (4) - The Latin Dark Ages

As shown in the diagram above, the moving of the Capital of the Empire to the Greek East had a devastating impact on the Latin West, effectively abandoning the whole West to repeated invasions, pillaging, looting, and a complete economic disruption.  This left the West in a shambles, with death by warfare, anarchy, vandalism, starvation, and plague running rampant everywhere.

To quote the historian C.P.S. Clarke,
"Alaric and his Goths sacked Rome in 410.  In the 5th century Visigoths settled in southern Gaul and Spain; Franks in northern Gaul and the Rhine; Burgundians and OstroGoths east of the Rhine and on the Danube; OstroGoths and then Lombards in North Italy, and Jutes and Saxons in Briain. Attila with a host of Huns invated Italy in 451.  The [Western] Empire did not fall in a moment.  Its policy was to recognise the conquerors and, as far as possible, absorb their rulers into itself as subordinate kings. ...There was in fact a good eal of 'gradualness' about the breakup of the empire.  But in 476 the last Western Emperor, Augustulus, was forced to abdicate and the West was left without any emperor, except for the distant potentate in Constantinople, and kingdoms, independent in name as well as fact, were set up.
The Effect of the Invasions: - The effect has been variously estimated.  AN earlier generation of scholars was inclined to lay stress on the masculine vigour of the barbarian as a fair compensation for the loss of civilization and culture.  - The latest writer to deal with the subject, Boissonarde, can see nothing but evil in the invasions, and thus sums up their results:

"The idleness, stupidity, coarseness, ignorance, credulity and cruelty of the barbarians took the place of the well-regulated activity, polish, culture, relative humanity of the Romans.  Far from regenerating the world, they nearly wiped out civilization altogether.  Far from assisting its economic development, they ruined all activity by committing everywhere pillage, disorder, destruction.   They created nothing, but they destroyed much and they put a stop to all progress for several centuries.  The barbarian settlements produced one of the greatest retrogressions which the world has ever seen."

This view is borne out by Gregory, Bishop of Tours (c. 573-594) whose History of the Franks is the principal source of our knowledge of the barbarians.
The breakdown of order and constant invasions of predatory bands produced an almost chronic state of famine.  After a raid over Bourges we read: "There remained not a house, not a vineyard, not a tree; all was cut down and ruined.   They even carried off the sacred vessels from the churches and burned the churches themselves with fire".   Again, "Many a region did he lay waste again and again."  In 536 A.D. ,50,000 peasants are said to have died of famine in a single province of Italy.  Gregory alludes to famines as of common occurence.  OF the year 580 he wrote: "IN this year almost all Gaul was oppressed  by famine.  Multitudes were reduced to making a kind of bread by drying and pounding grapeseeds or hazelblossom, and adding a little flour, while others did the same with fern-roots."  Famine and the destruction of baths and sanitation were naturally followed by disease and plague. Boissonarde reports that in Britain in the 7th century, half the population perished during one visitation.  Gregory writes as if dysentery and bubonic plague were endemic.   In Auvergne, in 571, one sunday 300 people died in a single church.   In Rome, Gregory saw 80 people dying in the street during a single Rogation procession. "

(Clarke, Short History of the Christian Church 1948),p. 104-106

The West was quickly lost to barbarian hordes and gangs, and the Roman Empire was obliterated in just about every province.   A few maps illustrate the extent of the devastation.

Nazaroo

Revelation for Dummies (3)

Last month we posted the following diagram, expanding a section of the last 2,000 years (ongoing):

Click to enlarge

Today I want to expand a little on a critical section here, before moving onto the next historical period, namely the Latin Golden Age:

Latin Literary Golden Age: Click to Enlarge

Here we can see the underground Christian movement expanding rapidly across the Roman Empire, first in the common Greek language, then early in the 2nd century being translated into Latin.  The early Latin writers were articulate, strong and daring, and as a result, many of the Romans, particularly, the lower and middle classes, servants, slaves, soldiers and artisans were converted to the new faith.   Christians became so numerous that Emperor Constantine wisely legalized Christianity and effectively ended persecutions against Christians.

During this early time there were many prolific and intelligent Christian apologists.  By about 320 A.D. it is estimated that there were about 1,200 Christian bishops spread across the Empire.  We may assume there were at least as many copies of the New Testament writings in various forms and languages by the mid 4th century.

All Latin copies of the NT in use between 200 and 400 A.D. would however be variations of the Old Latin version, early independent translations made by Christians for use by the Romans and other Latin-speaking peoples within the Empire.   The Latin Vulgate NT of Jerome (c. 392 A.D.) had not been made yet nor adopted by the West.  This only happened at the very end of the Western Literary Golden Age (200-420 A.D.).

Yet the Latin Golden Age quickly came to an end, as Emperor Constantine moved his central capital and economic base to Constantinople in the East, effectively abandoning Rome and the West.   This led to a long period of continual anarchy and warfare in the West, with Rome itself being sacked by barbarians several times.   
The original Roman Empire and Rome was essentially looted and gutted, leaving only a crippled husk of the original Empire.   This was prophetic, poetic, and effective justice for Rome's long legacy of violence and persecution, especially of Christian martyrs.

(to be continued...)
Nazaroo

Revelation for Dummies (2)

 The Roman/Jewish Wars (68 - 135 A.D.) were a rapid and colossal disaster for the Jewish people, because the full might of the Roman Empire was brought to bear upon them.
In 69 A.D. the Galilean Rebellion was squashed;
In 70 A.D. Jerusalem was burned, and the Temple destroyed, and possibly millions of Jews were killed or enslaved.
In 73 A.D. the Zealots at Masada were sieged and destroyed.
The final rebellion of Bar Kochba (120-132 A.D.)  was also quashed.

But Christianity, although frequently persecuted, continued to spread throughout the Roman Empire, even heavily infecting the Roman Armies.

Here is the next diagram in the analysis:

Conversion of Empire: Click to Enlarge

The single most important event in the first 500 years of Christianity has to be the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, and the legalization of the Christian Religion.   Around 300 A.D., Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, which was formerly and underground and illegal religion, often persecuted by Roman authorities.

For our purposes, it matters little whether or not Constantine was truly or completely converted, or if instead he was simply a shrewd leader, realizing that by 300 A.D. a large number of Roman soldiers and citizens were Christian converts. 

The fact is, Constantine legalized Christianity, and to prove the point, began to tear down and loot pagan temples, and use the wealth to build Christian cathedrals all over the Empire.   Constantine also held Ecumenical councils, allowing Christian leaders (at least those willing to cooperate with the Empire) some participation and power in organizing and defining mainstream Christianity.

The second thing Constantine did was to abandon Rome entirely, and rebuild his new Capital and Headquarters in Greece, at Byzantium (Constantinople, now called Istanbul).   The Empire was now ruled from the East (Greece), and the Latin West was left abandoned, and quickly succumbed to local barbarian invasions, beginning around 420 A.D. 

The West sank into the Dark Ages, while the East flourished, enjoying one of the greatest eras of Christian literary and intellectual activity.

The Latins, perhaps in ironic poetic justice for their most recent and violent persecution of the Christians, fell to the barbarians again and again, their economy, security and lives destroyed by sacking and pillaging. 

If the book of Revelation had failed to at all mention what was the most important development in Christian history, while at the same time being a prophecy focussed on the Christian future, it would have to be called a prophetic failure.

 To get an idea of how drastic the changeover was, take a look at these BEFORE and AFTER maps:

BEFORE: ROMAN EMPIRE c. 200 A.D.

AFTER: Animated GIF! Click to Enlarge

 Nazaroo

Revelation for Dummies...

The following simple chart should be helpful in clarifying some points:

Click to Enlarge

This next diagram shows the more important events in the first 200 years of the Christian era.

Most people date the Book of Revelation as having been composed in the reign of Emperor Nero (because of its apparent ignorance of the destruction of the temple), or in the reign of Emperor Domitian (because the book seems to know too much of the subsequent Roman/Jewish Wars.

Only a handful of conspiracy theorists (such as "MountainMan" in Australia from Internet Infidels) think that the book was composed after that (e.g. in the reign of Constantine, c. 300-340 A.D.), because there are no complete copies of the book older than Codex Alexandrinus (c. late 4th cent./early 5th), and Codex Sinaiticus (dubiously dated at about 350 A.D., but probably 50 years newer, i.e., 390-420 A.D.).

Click to Enlarge

peace
Nazaroo