Armageddon

The name had been used loosely for centuries.

Armageddon. People said it whenever they wanted to signal something catastrophic. Something final.

They didn't know it was a real place.

Megiddo. The plain of Megiddo. A valley in Israel where more battles had been fought than perhaps any other piece of ground on earth.

Napoleon had called it the most natural battlefield in the world.

The sixth bowl was poured out on the great river Euphrates.

The water dried up.

To prepare the way of the kings of the east.

And from the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet came three unclean spirits like frogs.

Spirits of demons, working miracles.

They went to the kings of the earth and of the whole world.

To gather them.

For the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

Every deception, every false allegiance, every nation that had bowed to the beast was being summoned to a single location.

All of them. In one place.

The greatest military gathering in human history.

Assembled by demonic instruction.

And God let them come.

Because the gathering was not of their choosing, ultimately.

It was His.

And the one who comes as a thief — the warning inserted into the very chapter that describes the gathering — was not asking permission.

He was announcing timing.

Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments.

Even in the chapter that names Armageddon, there was a word for the ones who were still paying attention.

Watch. Stay dressed. Stay ready.

The battle was coming.

But the outcome had never been in question.

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