Armageddon

We're back in the USA!  It is very good to be home.  A short little 13 hour plane ride and we're back in Douglasville, GA.    My anti-jet lag strategy is to stay awake today, even though we'd just gotten nicely adjusted to Jerusalem time.  Right now it's about 6:45 there -- just finishing up dinner, but here it's not quite lunch time.  Our plane landed this morning at 6 am Atlanta time.  

So...everything is a little confused, but wow -- what a trip.  

OK -- time to catch up some pics that my connection wouldn't quite let me do while I was there...

These pics are of "Tel Megiddo," one of the oldest known civilizations in the world. Archaeologists know that there have been cities on this site, beginning about 8,000 years ago.  

Megiddo sits at a "crossroads of crossroads" in the ancient world, and it's the place that we know as "Armageddon" from Revelation 16: 

 ¹⁶Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

 ¹⁷The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, "It is done!" 

¹⁸Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. 

¹⁹The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. ²⁰Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. 

²¹From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.

The Hebrew, "Har Megiddo," (Mountain of Megiddo) becomes "Armageddon" as the name winds its way through New Testament Greek and into English.  

One of the many tensions of this Biblical land is the intense beauty of this place held against the story of final destruction connected to it in Revelation.  I always had images of Armageddon being fiery and ugly.  This place is green and beautiful.  It is peaceful.  It's a wonderful place to pray for peace.