Armageddon

Scene of a final conflict between good and evil.
Armageddon occurs in the vista of the future portrayed by John (perhaps the apostle, perhaps someone else) in his Revelation or Apocalypse, the last book of the New Testament. The powers of evil, headed by Satan, send out demonic spirits to summon the kings of the world for battle “on the great day of God the Almighty.” “And they assembled them at the place which is called in Hebrew Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16). The battle does not begin at this point in the narrative. John takes up the thread again in chapter 19, where Christ returns in majesty with “the armies of heaven” and wins the victory.
The place intended is Megiddo in north-central Palestine: “Armageddon” is har-Megiddo, or Mount Megiddo. Strategically located, Megiddo has several associations with warfare. Here the Canaanite king Jabin was defeated by the Israelites under the leadership of Deborah and Barak. Here also King Josiah fell in 609 b.c. opposing an Egyptian army, an event recalled in Jewish tradition as a bitter tragedy. However, the chief scriptural precedent for John’s battle is Ezekiel 38–39, foretelling an attack on the Holy Land by the northern ruler “Gog of the land of Magog,” with a huge composite host drawn from a medley of nations. Ezekiel prophesies that the Lord will destroy Gog’s multitude “upon the mountains of Israel.” John’s addition of “mount” to “Megiddo” probably echoes this passage.
Some interpreters of Revelation, aware that the Gog prophecy has never been fulfilled, have taken it as referring to the same future battle that John refers to. They have also seen Armageddon as an immediate prelude to the end of the world. Revelation does not support either opinion. Christ’s victory in chapter 19 brings the present age to a close, but the story goes on after that. An angel “binds” Satan and shuts him in a subterranean prison for 1,000 years. During the same period, Christ is to dwell on Earth, reigning over a kingdom of resurrected martyrs and other saints, seemingly in the Holy Land. A time of renewed trouble ensues (Revelation 20:7–9), and here, not earlier, we find Ezekiel’s sinister names. “Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, that is, Gog and Magog, to gather them to battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city; but fire came down from heaven and consumed them.”
This does not cancel the military finality of Armageddon because no actual battle is fought. Satan’s army is annihilated, he is cast into hell, and that is truly the end. There is a general resurrection of the dead, followed by the Last Judgment. The present world ceases to exist, and the blessed enter into a glorious New Jerusalem.
John’s concept of Armageddon is not fully anticipated in previous writings, but the Dead Sea Scrolls foreshadow a “War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness” that will have a decisive outcome. Though waged with God’s blessing, it is envisaged on a more human level than Armageddon, and the Jewish Messiah plays no part in it. Hence, it is more like a real war, and the text gives a surprising amount of military detail, some of it Roman-inspired.
Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia speaks of a coming “War of Shambhala,” which is also to be a clash of good and evil, with good triumphant. Shambhala is a legendary holy place, conjecturally concealed in the Altai Mountains, and a messianic figure is to emerge from it. During the 1920s, this hope was taken up by Mongolian nationalists. The emerging leader was identified with Gesar, an epic hero, and the prophecy became involved with hopes of Asian resurgence against imperialist powers. After this phase blew over, the War of Shambhala lost its quasi-political character and receded into an indefinite future.

See also
Revelation; Shambhala