Revelation 16:14,16: “For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty . . . And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.”

September 9th, 2022 by Pastor Ed in devotional

Words like Armageddon, apocalypse, and millennium evoke a response in many people in our world today because the media has bombarded us with books, movies, and magazine articles about the end of the world. Biblically, these words depict a terror that mankind will experience at the close of world history. Powerful earthly armies will clash against literally extraterrestrial forces (God and the angels) with such violence that the end will come explosively.

Armageddon is located in the fertile central valley of northwestern Israel, where someday, perhaps soon, the armies of the world will be drawn. An angel will pour out the seventh and final bowl of God’s judgment, bringing lightning, thunder, and an earthquake that will be seemingly off the Richter scale, obliterating islands and mountains all over the world. It will be the last opportunity, before the final chapter of God’s earthly judgment falls on a Jesus-Christ-rejecting humanity.

The parable of a farmer who saw a bird try and build a nest in a pile of branches he had pruned from his apple orchard may be helpful. The farmer watched the little bird as she built her nest in the pile of pruned branches. Once she had flown off, he went and pulled down the nest, much to the little bird’s horror. The next day the farmer watched as she went and built her nest again in the pile of branches, and again the farmer went and pulled down her nest. The next day the farmer watched as she moved to a little tree next to the house to build her nest, and so he left her nest alone. To the poor bird the farmer seemed like the cruelest of humans, but the farmer knew that he was going to burn the pruned branches; and if he had left her nest there, she and perhaps her eggs would have been destroyed. It was not meanness but kindness that led him to pull down her first two nests.

“Thank You, LORD, that You have clearly warned us of the folly of trying to build permanently on a planet doomed for destruction. Help us to fruitfully labor for Your eternal kingdom today.”