Speaker 1: What's really interesting here is that the armies of the kings of the earth amassed together for the showdown with God. And just at the moment that it's all about to happen, it doesn't. Alright. In the second cycle of Revelation, we talked about politics, how we view the world and how God overcomes our desire for vengeance and violence to replace it with something better, the idea of nonviolent transformation. In the third cycle of Revelation, God is going to show us how even the cosmos, our concepts of evil and brokenness and violence, are going to be transformed.
And to look at that, let's look at one of the images in this final cycle of Revelation. Let's look at the battle of Armageddon. Now Armageddon is such a famous word. I mean, we love this word. Right?
There was a movie about it. Not a very good one, but a movie nonetheless. I mean, Armageddon has come to mean the end of the world or at least some kind of large scale global battle in which there will be all kinds of death and suffering. However, Armageddon in Greek is not a very compelling word at all. It is literally just a compound word made up of two Hebrew words that have been transliterated into Greek.
That just means they're not translated. They're just spelled in Greek characters so they can be sounded out. And the words there are har and megido. Har magido. Har is the word for mountain.
Megido is a specific place, the Plains Of Megiddo, which is a very important place in the Hebrew story. And so what we are talking about when we talk about the battle of Armageddon is simply a battle at the Mount Of Megiddo. Now what's really interesting is there is no such thing as the Mount Of Megiddo, and there's not even a Hill Of Megiddo, actually. In fact, another name for Megiddo is the Plains Of Jezreel. Literally, this is a big flat plane wherein a whole bunch of battles took place throughout history.
So as soon as we read Har Megiddo, Mount Of Megiddo, Armageddon, that should immediately signal to us that we are talking again in mythical apocalyptic categories. We're not looking for a place on a map where a battle will take place. We are being reminded right from the start that we need to shift our thinking. And the way that this is happening is because the pairing of Mountain and Megiddo is gonna conjure up a lot of different images in the the Jewish imagination. Megiddo is where the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose the third fought a huge battle against an alliance of Canaanite troops.
It was where the Egyptian king Necho the second and the Assyrians went to war against the Babylonians. It was where king Josiah was, betrayed by pharaoh Necho. It was also where Deborah and Barak had their battle against the Canaanites as well, and it was finally where king Saul was defeated by the Philistines at the Plains Of Megiddo. There's a lot of history going on here and a lot of different battles that are gonna be conjured up by using that word. But by pairing it with har, by pairing it with mountain, we automatically shift it not from the place, but from the idea or the experience of battle.
And one of the better examples I can think of to talk about this would be to talk about ground zero, to talk about the idea of evil meeting its ground zero. When I use that language, I'm Canadian, but even when I use that language immediately, my mind goes to the Twin Towers in New York. But when I say it that way, the place where evil meets its ground zero, I don't imagine that happening at an intersection in New York City. I imagine the scope and the scale, the meaning of that history now attached to something cosmic. That's something very similar to what's going on with this language of Armageddon.
All of the history, all of the battles, all of the suffering throughout Jewish history now made mythical, now made cosmic. And that's what the writer is trying to get at here. Evil is about to have a showdown with God, and it's going to happen at the most mythical place you can imagine. But what's really interesting here is that the armies of the kings of the earth amassed together for the showdown with God, and just at the moment that it's all about to happen, it doesn't. There really is no battle here.
What happens here is that a rider on a white horse appears. It says this, he judges with justice and wages war. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and his name is the word of God. He wields a sword that comes from his mouth and this is it. This is our rainbow Jesus who shows up like John Wick to slaughter the armies of the world.
But there's a couple things that are going on here that are really important and that makes sense once we understand that this is not a battle that takes place at a location in the earth, but instead a mythical narrative that pulls us into the orbit of God's story. And we're gonna notice a few things here right off the bat when we see this rider. And this is clearly Jesus. He shows up on a white horse. He's named the word of God, the logos from the Gospel of John, and he judges with justice.
Now a couple things. What's interesting here is that word justice is actually the word in Greek, and that's the word righteousness. There's sort of this quirk of the English language where we talk about doing what is right in the world as justice and doing what is right religiously as righteousness. That is not a distinction or a bifurcation that the biblical languages, either Hebrew or Greek, make. In fact, it's not a distinction that most other languages make.
Spanish and French keep it all together the way Greek and Hebrew do. It's only in English that we're predisposed by our language to imagine that doing what is right in the world is different from doing what is right in the eyes of God or religiously. And so here when we read that Jesus judges with what we should not be hearing is justice in some kind of harsh capital punishment kind of category. What we should be hearing is doing what is right with righteousness, with justice, with compassion, with grace, because all of that is part of righteousness. And then we look at how he judges.
He does that with a sword that comes from his mouth. Now, first of all, you have to almost willfully reject the biblical story here if you want to imagine Jesus with a sword in his hand riding around lopping off heads. Because very clearly, the idea of a sword from one's mouth is meant to reflect the testimony of that person. You see Paul use that imagery in Ephesians. You see the Psalms and the book of Isaiah use that imagery when it talks about our witness and our testimony in the world.
In fact, you even see Revelation use that language earlier in the seven letters where it talks about Jesus judging from the sword that comes from his mouth. And so the sword that comes from his mouth is his witness in the world, who he is, his character lived out. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like his sacrifice because this rider on the white horse shows up at the battle covered in blood. There's no blood of his enemies here splattered on his garments.
In fact, he shows up after the cross having given his life, having allowed his garments to be soaked in his sacrifice, and that is literally the sword that comes from his mouth. That's his witness. That's his testimony. I come in nonviolence. I come in the sacrifice of the cross, and in that, I will overcome the world.
And that's exactly what happens. We're told that the kings of the earth are defeated. The birds gorge themselves on their flesh, which, to be granted, is a very gruesome image and one we shouldn't take lightly. John absolutely wants us to understand the impact and the significance of our choices. If we oppose God, if we oppose the nonviolence of the world, will lead to our ruin.
Jesus says, if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword. There are consequences for living violently in the world, but it's not because God comes and chops off your head. It's because, ultimately the story of nonviolence will overcome everything. You will succumb to the destruction you have brought on yourself by choosing the path of violence. But what's really interesting here more than all of this, think is the way that John is subverting, is changing, transforming our imagination of justice here.
Because this imagery of one who rides in on a white horse wielding a sword to battle the forces that oppose God is taken directly from Isaiah. We read you a passage from Isaiah 63. It says, who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah with his garments stained crimson? Who is this robed in splendor striding forward in the greatness of his strength? It is I proclaiming victory mighty to save.
That's exactly the image that we're seeing here in Revelation. Jesus comes stained crimson, splattered in his own death, mighty to save. But then we read this in Isaiah. Why are your garments red like those of one treading the winepress? I have trodden the wide press alone from the nations.
No one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath. Their blood splattered on my garments and stained all my clothing. So again, we have this violent imagery of those who on behalf of God strode forward in the violence to conquer enemies in what they thought was an expression of divine strength. Jesus shows us something different.
Just like the throne room scene where we expect the lion of the tribe of Judah, the one who will conquer in military force. And then we turn and we see a lamb looking as if it had been slain, who has the authority to take the scroll and unfold destiny. Here, John does it again. You want a warrior? You want one coming splattered in his enemy's blood.
Well, I will show you something completely different. One who comes in sacrifice, one who comes in nonviolence, one who comes only with the testimony of their witness, their sacrifice, their self giving. And in that, they will be mighty to save because they will not only conquer the enemies of God, they will transform the way that we view the world. And in that, we will, all of us, be welcomed into the goodness of God that is the final expression of the new Jerusalem that comes to meet us. Heaven is not this place we are taken away too.
Heaven is the expression of God that comes to meet us, to greet us, to transform us, and redeem us. And that's exactly what John is showing us here, that the cosmos is changed, that the story is won by the victory of Jesus that is displayed to us on the cross. And when we align ourselves with that story in the grace and the goodness and the non violence of Jesus, we can overcome the world as well. Even though there is a cost to that at times, we will participate in the transformation of the cosmos.