Jesus Christ – glorious in battle, triumphant over every enemy, riding a mighty white stallion – will split the eastern sky to come back to earth as the King of Kings. This is truly the colossal event and even more spectacular than Gog and Magog. The breath (Spirit) of His mouth is a two-edged sword. He has sat – at times stood – at His Father’s Right Hand for two thousand years. Now, he returns to reign over the world for a millennium.
As He returns to this earth, He will face an army from every kingdom ruled by the Antichrist. Demons will have been dispatched to gather this army and they will be chosen to be part of the most vicious army ever assembled. Each soldier will be chosen by the highest possible standard of both military and New Age religions. “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty”(Revelation 16:13-14). Every chosen warrior will have taken the Mark of the Beast will be possessed by unclean spirits and will be ready to die for this masquerade of their “christ.”
The Son of God will not return from His Father’s presence alone. The triumphant Church of the blood-washed and glorified saints will be riding with Him on their white horses. Every one of these Saints will be overcomers from their generation and each of them will be a match for Satan himself. They will have already proven that Satan could not stop their faith or compromise their purity. They will surely gleam brightly in their garments of righteousness, “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean” (Revelation 19:14).
Even before this great drama is portrayed in Revelation Chapter nineteen, the Spirit declared that a host of angels would join the ranks for this grand moment, “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats” (Matthew 25:31-32). To even attempt to number this multitude will be impossible. Every angel will be an experienced warrior that have fought and won numerous conflicts with their evil counterparts that rebelled with their champion, Lucifer or Satan.
This great multitude will stretch from one end of the heavens to the opposite end. The day of invisible angels will be finished and this awesome company will startle the earthly inhabitants that are still alive. The saints on their spectacular white horses will number “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” but the angels will be innumerable. At the head of this great and awesome multitude and brighter than the noon day sun, will be the triumphant King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The Son of God is called the Lamb or the Lamb of God from Revelation 4:1 to this victorious moment. His total purpose during that period is the redemption of this universe. At this point the earth will be redeemed, sin will be judged, injustice will be set straight, and the righteous King of Kings can now mount the Throne of David in Jerusalem. Satan has been the god of this earth for better than six thousand years, but he knows if he loses the “Battle of Armageddon”, he is finished.
To picture the ground and air forces gathered in Megiddo will be to witness in one location the military hardware of every great army on earth. As the Antichrist armies gather, the forward direction will be Jerusalem. It is clear in Scripture that the Antichrist’s capitol city of Babylon will already be in ruins, the Vatican city of Rome will have been burned, and, now, Jerusalem’s must be conquered. The destruction of Babylon was an act of God but Rome’s destruction was the fury of the Antichrist. When the great minds of these world leaders are fully prepared and the march to Jerusalem is announced, the heavens will suddenly explode with action.
Jesus Christ in all of His excellent glory will return to personally direct this battle. We serve a patient God; but when His wrath is kindled, there is no defense. Zechariah spoke by the Spirit, “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle”… Then shall the LORD go forth…And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth” (Zechariah 14:2a,3a &12). The slaughter of this angry mob will be unprecedented.
The Son of God will actually fight with His army of the redeemed and His angels. The Antichrist will flee in fear and defeat to the ruined entrance of His once proud capitol. Micah reported his end at Babylon, “And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders” (Micah 5:6).
Our victorious King will arrive in Jerusalem with grace in His heart for the convicted nation of His own kin. “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends” (Zechariah 13:6). “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn”(Zechariah 12:10).
The very word “Armageddon” has always been a word that suggests the end of human conflicts or the end of time. It has been used as freely by the unbelieving and the wild spiritualists as it has by the Bible believers. That suggests that it is God’s designed word – all fixed in the human thought processes – raising both great fear but also final victory. Only we that know the infallibility of Scripture can speak this word “Armageddon” with great joy in our hearts.
It’s closer than you can possibly imagine!
Joseph R. Chambers