Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1915 — Battle of Armageddon [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Battle of Armageddon

By REV. JAMES M. CRAY. D. D.

Dm at Moody BU hrtMa'

TEXT—And they gathered them together in the place which is called in Hebrew, Har-Magedon. Revelation 16:18.

Many people are asking whether the present European war is the battle - of Armageddon,

and whether it means that we aje nearing the end of the world, and what relation it bears to the second coming of Christ. In answer to the first part of the question it may be said that it is not the battle of Armageddon for three reasons. First, it is not in the right location, second, it has not

the right objective, and third, it does not represent the right alignment of the nations.

The battle of Armageddon will not be fought in Europe, but in Asia. “Har-Magedon,” as the revised version translates it, is a mountain rising up out of the plain of Esdraelon In northern Palestine. Great and decisive battles have been fought there by the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Saracens, and the crusaders, and here the kings of the prophetic earth are to be gathered, under the influence of demons working miracles, for that battle of the great day of the Lord God Almighty. The object of this battle will be the capture of Jerusalem, when it shall again be restored to the Jews prior to the second advent of the Messiah on their behalf; and the nations of the prophetic earth engaged in it will be those of the Roman empire federated again under a secular despot whom many associate with the antichrist Those nations do not include. Russia, nor do they Include Germany or Austria-Hungary, except in part, so that a new alignment of the nations seems necessary before that battle. How far the present European war may contribute to that new alignment one cannot say, but so far as it does so, it may be called a preparation for the battle of Armageddon.

The End of the World. 2. That this war cannot mean that we are near the end of the world is indicated in another way. For example, all Bible scholars are agreed that a long period of peace and righteousness is to prevail over thp earth before the end comps. From a passage in Revelation 20, it is gathered that it will last a thousand years, from which it takes the name millennium. This period not having begun as yet, it is clear the end of the world is at least 1,000 years away.

But we may be near the end of the age, which is a different matter. There have been several ages in the history of the race in which God has dealt with his people in different ways; each of these ages ended in a catastrophe. That of Eden ended in the expulsion from the garden. That following it ended in the flood. The Mosaic age ended in the crucifixion of our Lord and the dispersion of the Jews among the Gentile nations, where they are today; and it seems to be the teaching of the Scriptures that the same will be true of the age in which we live. The catastrophe impending is not one which affects the true church which is the body of Christ, but the professing church, and the nations which, having a form of godliness are denying the power thereof. The church will escape the catastrophe by being caught up to meet the Lord in the air, as it is written in I Thessalonians 4, but that which befalls the false church and the nations is the battle of Armageddon and what is connected withjt, of which this European war is so frightful a forerunner.

Second Coming of Christ. 3. The second coming of Christ means, of course, his personal in the sense of visible reappearing, and as stated before, so far as the church is concerned the event may be very far. It is after the church i« caught up to meet him in the air that the events transpire on earth which focus in the battle of Armageddon. His coming to the earth means the destruction of the nations thus headed up in the antichrist, not in the sense that all their inhabitants are slain, but that as nations they cease to exist The certainty and the imminence of our Lord’s return is a mighty motive for repentance and faith in his name, and in the case of those of us who are saved through faith it speaks with, equal potency df the necessity for a-, holy life. To quote The language of another, suppose this titanic conflict among the nations were the Very last event to occur prior to the Lord’s coming for his people to take them cut of such a scene, does it not give intense significance to the words of Paul in the thirteenth chapter of his epistle to the Romans where he says: "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”