I read an excellent post the other day about Armageddon, and I have to admit that it caught me off guard.
Even though I spent years digging very deeply into the eschatology and end-times theology found in various prophetic portions of the Bible, I’d never seen what Benjamin Cremer observes: that there is no “battle of Armageddon” in the book of Revelation.
Now, I’ll admit right up front that his claim is bound to be seen as inflammatory. And it’s a fairly bold statement, when most of us who grew up evangelical could instantly quote several Bible verses from Revelation 19 that would seem to refute his claim.
But his post triggered me to go reread Revelation 19 for myself, and see what it actually says.
What if everything most Christians have assumed about Armageddon is wrong, and if our holy calling is to love our enemies and lay down our lives in peace, not to march out in war against them?
So let’s get talk about the book of Revelation.
Just for convenience, here’s the second half of the 19th chapter of Revelation, from the NRSVUE translation; this chapter is where Christians have historically gotten their ideas about the Battle of Armageddon.
11 Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a scepter of iron; he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, “King of kings and Lord of lords.”
17 Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly in midheaven, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, 18 to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders—flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great.” 19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to wage war against the rider on the horse and against his army. 20 And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the brand of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. 21 And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.
Now, you may have noticed that there is no mention of “Armageddon” here. In fact, the only one place that word occurs in the entire Bible is three chapters earlier, in Revelation 16 which describes the seven bowls of the wrath of God, and more specifically in Rev 16:14-16, which after describing the sixth bowl says “14 These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. 15 (“See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about naked and exposed to shame.”) 16 And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.”
Between that verse and the second half of Revelation 19 is an interlude of sorts, having nothing to do with this gathering of kings.
So let’s look at this. The demonic spirits assembled the kings for battle at a place called Harmagedon. (By the way, the word is actually the Hebrew “Har Megiddo,” meaning “Mount of Megiddo.” It’s not an event, it’s a place.)
Then the rider which we usually interpret as Jesus Himself shows up, followed by the armies of heaven.
This sure looks like a battle, doesn’t it?
In fact, this rider appears with robes dipped in blood. It must be a bloody battle. Somewhere in Revelation is a verse about blood flowing as deep as the horse’s bridle, right?
Well, hold on a minute. That’s back in Rev 14:20. That has nothing to do with a battle! That’s an angel reaping the earth in a metaphor about grapes that gave off blood when put into the winepress. There’s no human battle going on.
And when we see this Jesus figure in Revelation 19, his robe is DIPPED in blood – the word there, “bapto” in Greek, is the root from which we derive “baptism!” So it’s indicating a ceremonial process, not an accidental spattering from a bloody battle. And it’s already dipped in blood when Jesus appears, before any fighting takes place. So the blood can’t be that of His enemies. In fact, as Benjamin Cremer’s article points out, it’s likely referring to Jesus’ own blood!
Well, what about all those saints gathered with Jesus?
Again, hold on. Look closely at who, and also very importantly, WHAT, is doing the fighting here. In fact, is it even fighting?
It’s the sword coming out of this Jesus figure’s mouth that defeats His enemies. It’s God’s word, proceeding out of the Living Word Himself. Remember Hebrews 4:12, which likens the Word of God to a sword: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
All the saints gathered behind Jesus? They’re watching, not fighting. Not a single word of the New Testament describes the saints actually slaying any earthly enemies. Not one.
So to summarize – there’s no extensive battle, it’s the living Word of God that proceeds from Jesus’ mouth that effortlessly defeats His opponents, and not a single word describes His followers doing any fighting.
I have to say, this hit me hard.
For the last few years, I’ve been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the evangelical fixation on violence, on slaying their enemies, on going into battle for God.
One reason, I should observe, is that a lot of such talk is founded in fear. It’s the kind of language one might expect from someone deeply afraid of the power of their enemies, and doing a lot of self-talk about how powerful they themselves are, how they’re going to slaughter their opponents, how their God can overcome any power that might stand in their way.
And another foundation, I think, of that fixation on battle is the focus on hell, and the idea that we can send our enemies into eternal torment, giving them much-deserved pain. It seems to me that this idea of hell becomes a dangerous attraction towards hurting other people.
But if you truly believe that God wants, and is determined to see, every single human soul redeemed by God’s infinite love and patience, suddenly the idea of slaughtering one’s opponents becomes repellent, abhorrent. Maybe Jesus was serious when He taught us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to forgive them not just seven but seventy times, to serve them even beyond their demands of us. How can we reconcile that Jesus, with believing that He will someday ride out to literally slay them to send them to infinite torment?
These days, I find it easier to think about Revelation like a sort of religious fanfic, of John, a very pious follower of the Way of Jesus, wrestling with watching his fellow believers surrendering to the ways of the Roman empire, and dreaming about the victory that the Kingdom of God will eventually have over darkness and empire. Like most dreams, it’s full of symbolism and drama and extremes. When you wake up you can often see how that dream reflects on the reality around you, but rarely do we think of such dreams as exact truth.
Younger, more evangelical, more prophecy-focused me would have read that paragraph above as absolutely heretical. “How dare you question whether John’s vision was truly prophetic?” I would cry. “We absolutely must find out how John’s vision will become literal truth, and watch carefully for that day, and pray it would come soon! If you deny the literal prophecy, it’s a sign you’re already one of those enemies of Jesus!”
But I’d never spent much time thinking about why I approached Revelation that way (along with Daniel, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and the other prophetic texts in the Bible). When I read the Bible, I assumed that if it were in the Bible then it must be intended to literally come to pass, and I had to search the historical record to see how those prophetic statements might have already happened, and might yet in the future come to pass exactly as described.
But why? What led me down that interpretive pathway?
The answer is unfortunately quite simple: it’s part of the culture I grew up in, and it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that quite a few Christians don’t have that same interpretive approach.
Here’s the thing: There’s not a single word in the Bible that tells me that is how I’m supposed to read it. I now realize how that mode of interpretation is entirely a choice.
Instead, maybe I should consider an alternative: Even if I do take the Bible very seriously, and consider that God oversaw its composition and the selection of writings, and guided the minds and hands of its writers and editors, there’s still no requirement to interpret it as literal prophecy of actual future events. What, exactly, prevents me from understanding Revelation as God giving John dreams and visions, and inspiring John to record them for posterity, so that we could see how a follower of Jesus wrestled with empire and the church’s unfaithfulness, even as he imagined things that were incorrect or non-literal?
Even in the Bible, we see examples where God literally lied to humans. In Exodus 3:18, God tells Moses as God’s very mouthpiece to lie to Pharaoh. In 1 Kings 22:19-23, God deceives Ahab. In Jeremiah 20:7, the prophet complains that God deceived him successfully. In Ezekiel 14:9, God deceives the prophets. In 2 Thess 2:11, God sends a delusion.
Why, then, must I assume that Revelation is literally true?
Again, I think it’s our human failing coming into view. At some visceral, lizard-brain level, we crave violent retribution against our opponents, against other humans that we call our enemies.
And Jesus directly confronted that, by commanding us to resist the desire for violence that exists in ourselves, and calling us to be one with others, not to make them our enemies.
So I have to conclude that it’s entirely valid, even within the Bible’s own conceptual framework, to learn from Revelation’s words while simultaneously rejecting the assertion that it prophesies actual future events. It can be both Truth, with a capital T, while still not seeing every prophetic element as literally true, with a lower-case t.
Let me make a comparison. Perhaps you’re familiar with the 1970s book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” It was wildly popular for a while, and told the bittersweet, fantastic, allegorical tale of a seagull who wants to be more than his peers, who is willing to be shunned and different so that he may pursue his dreams, and yet longs for his peers to also discover what he has learned.
That book, most readers would probably agree, contains quite a bit of Truth. But not a single person would assert that an intelligent talking seagull is real, that the events are literally true.
And so I find maybe a better way to understand these stories in Revelation: Truth without being true. And I don’t find that this interpretive choice makes me any less convicted of the value of this apocalyptic book to the Bible, or any less certain of the reality of God’s desire to protect human thriving and salvation by opposing empire and defeating evil and death and the grave.
In particular, even from this new hermeneutic I have of how to read Bible prophecy, I’m discovering that even while I reject most of my former evangelical literalist interpretations, I still find Revelation deeply relevant to today’s life. Not because it tells me exactly what will happen, but because it perfectly captures a lot of how humans think and act and treat one another. It is very good at identifying the ways that governments and empires and human systems rise and fall, and how they oppress individual humans and groups. It’s a valuable book, even if it doesn’t say a single useful thing about how or when the world will actually end.
So with all that in mind, what do we do about Armageddon?
This week, as a fresh war in the Middle East kicked off, many people’s thoughts turned once again to the End Times. They started musing on how these new events portend the Rapture and the return of Jesus and the beginning of the end. The usual crowd started using these thoughts to their own advantage, promoting violence, creating fear, calling for holy war against their enemies, stirring up more hatred.
The thing about Armageddon is that it requires an enemy.
It requires someone to hate and to fear and to villainize.
And that’s why I’m so bothered by what I see as the fanfic of Revelation: John was dreaming about all God’s enemies being slaughtered.
But as I posted recently, I think we Christians have been far too quick to see others as our enemies, and more than that, as God’s enemies. And we’ve been taught to ignore all of the Bible’s statements about God’s love for all, and God’s determination to save all, and God’s patience, and instead focus on the wrathful vengeful descriptions of God. But who are God’s enemies, that Rev 19:15 describes?
Here’s something that I have missed for over 40 years, that I see today for the first time: God’s wrath is against NATIONS, not people. You may argue “no, God is killing all the people in the nations that oppose God.” Or, “no, nations is used in the Bible to refer to people groups, not political entities.” Yes, the word there is “ethne“, often translated Gentiles, the non-Jewish people groups, not political entities.
But if you read the rest of Revelation, you’ll hear John describing God’s determination to have all nations, all ethne, gathered around the throne, not slaughtered! And Revelation 17 and 18 just got done describing God’s wrath against kings and systems, against the “kosmos,” the worldly systems which oppose God. The entirety of the New Testament after the gospels is consistent with God extending salvation to the whole world, not just the Jews.
So maybe a better way to see what’s happening in this final battle is this Jesus-like figure, his robe dipped in his own blood of having suffered and died unjustly, which takes away the sins of all the world, finally executing his judgement on those ungodly SYSTEMS and RULERS, not the people suffering under their rule.
“Wait,” you may say, “what about the battle after the thousand-year reign of Christ?”
We get that idea of the final battle from Rev 20:7-10. Let’s read it: 7 When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea. 9 They marched up over the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from heaven and consumed them. 10 And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
There’s no battle there either.
The kings and nations come out for battle. But there’s no battle. They’re simply devoured. It’s over before it even starts. Not a single sword is raised against them – not even Jesus’ mouth sword!
“But wait,” you say. “All those people get judged and thrown into the lake of fire! And they’re tormented forever!”
I used to believe that. But how do we square that with Rev 21:22-27, which says “22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”
Wait, what nations, what “ethne?” I thought John said they’d all been slain in chapter 20!
You see, this is why I increasingly am convinced that Revelation is John’s violent fanfic about seeing judgement against his enemies – but even he cannot escape the final conclusion that in the eternal Kingdom of God, those nations were not slaughtered. The Kingdom’s gates will never be shut to those who finally repent and whose names are being newly written in the Book of Life, even in eternity. I cannot find any way to read the last few chapters of the Bible in any way other than that in eternity – AFTER the Great Judgement – there will still be those who have not yet repented, and yet God will eternally welcome every single soul that repents, no matter how long it takes.
And so, in standing upon judgement of this idea of a great battle called “Armageddon,” I also stand in judgement of those who use those prophetic ideas to execute wrathful judgement on their fellow humans.
If God is unwilling to slaughter most of the humans who ever will live, but eternally offer an open door to repentance and entry into the kingdom, I reject that same slaughter myself. I want nothing to do with such hatred and violence. And I will oppose those who follow after it.
And so, I turn my back on Armageddon.
Thanks for spending some time with me today. May you be blessed and at rest, in this season of upheaval and war, and may you find ways to lead others into the Kingdom of Heaven today, and in some small way, to fulfill Jesus’ prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is” – as it already is – “in heaven.”
Friends, don’t give up.
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