From the Differentiator
Armageddon is the region of Palestine where the forces of the Nations are encamped supporting the advanced investing detachment that goes up against Jerusalem, in the Day of the Lord. The battle of that great day of God Almighty or more correctly, the war of that great day is the purpose for which these forces have been assembled. There is no recorded 'close contest' at Armageddon in the Scriptures. There is no battle to be fought between the armies of Antichrist and the nations supporting the cause of Israel that would uphold the idea that the last great battle was to be the popular idea of the battle of Armageddon. It is a traditional myth.
What then? One might well say, of the words of Zechariah 14:1-7 that Schofield, in his Bible margin, boldly puts "Armageddon (battle of)" and his references include Matt. 24. and Rev. 19:11-21. This last described a great slaughter of "the kings of the earth and their armies by the Word of God." These passages In no way deny the statement above, but indicate their truth.
How then, one may well enquire, will this come about? The words used are largely figurative:"Out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He He should smite the nations."
Elsewhere (Eph. 6:17), we read, "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." A sword in the context is not a blade of steel, but a command that produces an effect that causes the required destruction. It is sometimes fire, it may be hail, or disease, or famine, or drought, or flood, all of which are well exemplified in the Scripture. There is no need to quote them chapter and verse. For our answer it is not necessary to go beyond Zechariah."Behold, the Day of the Lord cometh. . . And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley ( GAY = gorge); and half of the mountain shall remove toward the North, and half of it toward the South."
This will be no mean seismic disturbance and, from the words that follow it is shown that it is by no means local, for verse 10 goes on to say:"All the land shall be turned as a plain (SABAB brought round about (Young's A.C.—as on a pivot) from Geba (a city of Benjamin) c.f. 2 Sam. 5:25 and 2 Kings 23:8) to Rimmon south of Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up (RAAM—used in this sense only here, but otherwise translated, be troubled, roar, make to fret and thunder, which all give the impression of an earthquake and considerable upheaval), and inhabited (set down) in her place."
But this does not stand alone in the line of upheavals, for it would seem that it extends much further south than above stated,"And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian Sea," (Isaiah 11:15).and also further north,"and with His mighty wind shall He shake His hand over the river (Euphrates), and shall smite it in the seven streams."
Furthermore, Ezekiel 29:2-12 throws additional light on the subject:"Son of Man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt. . . . Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, 'My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself'. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields. . . ., and the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste. . . . and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations."Another description of the scene in Egypt is given by Isaiah 19:1-10:"The burden of Egypt. .. And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up: And they shall turn the rivers far away, and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither. The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover they that work in fine flax, and they that weave networks, shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish."There is one more passage that will throw light on our search, Ezekiel 47:10,"And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon It from En-Gedi even unto En-Eglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets: their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceedmg many."En-Gedi is high above the western shore of the Dead Sea in which there is no life, but after the Day of the Lord it will be a fishing vi11age, with Mediterranean species of fish swimming in quantities, Justifying the catthing in nets.
But HOW are all these thmgs to take place? One thing that geology of the last century has revealed is the Great Rift in the earth's surface that extends from the mouth of the Zambezi river, running North through the great African lakes, and curving off to Aden, it runs up through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Akaba, the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley and the Leontes Valley to the Taurus Range of Mountains in Turkey. This Rift is volcanic in origin and character and is in a state of geological instability. The lands that are our concern are all round about its Northern end, and at only 18 miles from the lowest place on the surface of the earth, the mouth of the Jordan, one of the greatest seismic disturbances is going to take place, the cleaving of the mount of Olives. Obviously this convulsion is going to have a chain reaction that will be far reaching in it's effects and it will cause all those things that we have read of in the earlier pages of this study.
The writer has before him an Admiralty chart of the northern end of the Red Sea, which includes the whole of the Gulf of Suez and the full length of the Gulf of Akaba. Admiralty charts give the depths of water in fathoms (6 feet). The deepest part of the Gulf of Akaba is 1,000 fathoms (6,000 feet). The deepest place in the Gulf of Suez is 45 fathoms (270 feet), but for the arm of the Egyptian sea to dry up a rise of the bottom of 35 fathoms (210 feet) would only leave a nine mile channel for the 45 miles from its entrance.
A passage which was left out from the quotation from Ezek. 29 is verse 10, which is here brought in to make a point."Behold, I am against thee and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene (Margin, or 'from Migdol to Syene') even unto the border of Ethiopia."Migdol means tower; but it is also credited with being the name of a fortified city on the Mediterranean coast at the mouth of one of the streams of the Nile Delta. There were other places so called, as close to the western shore of the Red Sea Syene was a fortified location on the River Nile in upper Egypt. It's modern name is Aswan, where the great dam is being built to-day, impounding the waters ofthe Nile. It is very interesting to note that if one takes a line down the centre of the Gulf of Akaba and produces it, it passes almost exactly through Aswan in any case straight into the Northern end of the impounded Nile.
Now, the writer is going to suggest two things as possibly to occur in connection with this great disturbance and movement of the crust of the earth; the first is that this rift extension from the Red Sea to Aswan, across the intervening mountains, becomes a reality, when the bed of the Egyptian Arm of the Red Sea rises at the same time that Judaea and the Negev heave up, and that the land of Egypt does likewise. The Nile will then cease to flow through Egypt and will discharge itself freely into the Red Sea just to the South of the entrance to the Gulf of Suez. The second is that the upheaval of Judaea and the Negev will release the plug between the Negev and Edom, the Araba which will drop it's 600 ft. high watershed to below the Red Sea level and that the Red Sea will then decant through the Gulf of Akaba into the Dead Sea, a fall of 1,380 feet to its surface and double that to its bottom. An enormous tidal wave or bore will rush up the Jordan valley, right up to the sources of Jordan and possibly it will smash through the Jordan-Leontes watershed, the debris of which would block the lower reaches of the latter. At the same time this wave would swing westward overwhelming the valley of Jezreel and, at its head, wash out the watershed between Mt. Carmel and Nazareth by the modem city of Afula (about 200 feet). When this cataclysm subsided there would be left a passage for shipping from the bay of Haifa right through to the Red Sea, the Suez canal would be no more, and by this cataclysm the armies of the Nations under Antichrist will be utterly destroyed—without a battle.
Scripture has been quoted, however we may interpret it, the fulfilment, as God intends, is a certainty. Collated, these Scriptures indicate certain tendencies, which, being considered, indicate possibilities. What has been outlined above is just a few of these for consideration towards the solution of the problems connected with the "Latter Days" and particularly with the "sunteleia tou aiOnos," "the end of the age" and with "the Day of the Lord."
J.G.H. Steedman
