"Armageddon" (mount of destruction) symbolical

The Valley of Jezreel in its widest extent stretches from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, west and east, and on the north from the mountains of Galilee to Mt. Carmel and the mountains of Ephraim on the south.

This valley was the scene of great battles, all of which Scripturally type symbolic battles occurring in the end of the Gospel Age; hence it symbolizes warfare. In fact this valley was a thoroughfare for Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, when marching to war against one another.

Let us look at some of the battles fought in this valley, whose westerly exit to the south was at Megiddo, whose mountain sides gave it the name of Armageddon (mount of destruction.), symbolical of the great conflict with which this Age ends (Rev. 16: 14 16). The battles fought here represent the conflicts between truth and error, right and wrong, liberty and tyranny, in the end of this Age. In this valley the army of Barak met and defeated the immensely larger and better equipped host of Jabin under Sisera's command; symbolical of the Lord's Harvest warriors under that Servant as antitypical Barak meeting and defeating in a battle between truth and error the armies of Romanist and Protestant sectarianism (Judg. 4: 5). In this valley Gideon with his 300 confounded the host of 135,000 Midianites, etc. (Judg. 8: 10), representing how God's faithful Truth warriors in the end of this Age in debate defeated the advocates of the claims as to the Divine right of king's and the Divine right of democracies (Judg. 6-8). In this valley the Philistines met and defeated Saul and his Israelitish army, typical of the controversy between the Modernists and the Fundamentalists, in which the latter
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have suffered a disastrous defeat in the field of religious controversy from the former (1 Sam. 31; 1 Chro. 10). In this valley occurred the conflict between Jehu, on the one hand, and Jehoram of Israel and Ahaziah, on the other, resulting in the death of Jehoram and Ahaziah, the latter's death occurring at Megiddo (Armageddon, 2 Kings 9: 1-28; 2 Chro. 22: 1-9), typical of the Battle of Armageddon, in which Conservative Labor will overthrow European Reactionism and American Autocracy in a worldwide revolution, which will overthrow Satan's empire in state, church and capital. Here, too, occurred the battle between Josiah and Pharaoh-nechoh, wherein the latter overthrew the former (2 Kings 23: 28-30; 2 Chro. 35:20-27), pictorial of the conflict between the orthodox evangelistic movement and Satan working through the combinationists, who utterly routed the former movement. Thus the Valley of Jezreel and its battles, symbolizing the fore said things, corroborate the thought that the Bible is a Divine Revelation.

By Paul SL Johnson
THE HERALD OF THE EPIPHANY
January 15, 1943