Armageddon Clears the Way for a New Start!

WHEREAS a nuclear holocaust would clearly be a cause for fear, the war of Armageddon does not have to be. Respond to the Bible’s message about it in the right way and it can mean for you an entirely new start in life.

Just as people respond to the threat of a nuclear holocaust in various ways, so it is with Armageddon. Some try to prevent it, others to ignore it, and a minority, believing it to be inevitable, seek means for personal survival. How will you respond?

Armageddon Cannot Be Prevented

Since Armageddon means “the war of the great day of God the Almighty,” no one can prevent it. (Revelation 16:14) But some foolishly try. How? In the sense that they deny that it will ever come and they oppose those who sound a warning. They thereby place themselves in the company of persecutors of Christians in the first century who scoffed at the warning of Jerusalem’s pending destruction. But when the city was destroyed in 70 C.E., some of those scoffers may have remembered the warning that wise Gamaliel had given them earlier: “Let them [the Christians] alone; . . . otherwise, you may perhaps be found fighters actually against God.”​—Acts 5:34-39.

Included among “fighters actually against God” today are religious clergymen who deny the real Armageddon message of the Bible. They lead people to believe that Armageddon is a man-made nuclear holocaust that political negotiations and peace movements can prevent.

Jonathan Schell points this out in his book The Fate of the Earth, writing: “A closely related, and more serious, perversion of religion is the suggestion, made by some Christian fundamentalists, that the nuclear holocaust we threaten to unleash is the Armageddon threatened by God in the Bible.” Then he correctly argues that “extinction by nuclear arms would not be the Day of Judgment, in which God destroys the world . . . [but] would be the utterly meaningless and completely unjust destruction of mankind by men.”

The clergy that thus confuse the two are overlooking the far greater danger of Armageddon. By becoming involved in movements to prevent a “thermonuclear Armageddon,” as they mistakenly call it, they are actually fighting to preserve a wicked system of things that God has purposed, with good reason, to destroy. Their attempt to prevent Armageddon is ill-advised and futile.

The Archbishop of York recently as much as said so. Speaking about the proper stand the Church of England should take on nuclear weapons, he said: “This debate is about the end of the world and about how we may best delay it.” But why should Christians want to delay the “end of the world” about which the Bible speaks? Why should they want to pray for the world to be spared an Armageddon that God considers necessary?

Do Not Ignore Armageddon

Equally dangerous is any attempt to ignore the Bible’s message about Armageddon. This is how many people in Noah’s day reacted to the message of the Flood. During his earthly ministry Jesus referred to this, saying: “Just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. For as they were in those days before the flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and they took no note until the flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be.”​—Matthew 24:37-39.

Those pre-Flood earthlings who took no note ignored Noah’s message about the Flood. But once the Flood came, they could not ignore its catastrophic consequences. It will be the same with those today who ignore the Bible’s warning about Armageddon. When “sudden destruction” is “instantly upon them . . . they will by no means escape.”​—1 Thessalonians 5:3; compare 2 Peter 3:3-10.

Those few, comparatively speaking, who seek to follow God’s instructions for surviving Armageddon do not view that war as a cause for fear. Confident of divine protection they view it as the opportunity for a new start. Would you like to do this also? Please read on.

[Pictures on page 9]

First-century scoffers could not prevent their own destruction

Scoffers in Noah’s day could not escape the Flood