Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-10-07
.HE word "Armageddon" is used

TINE word "Armageddon" is used
but once in the Bible, but since
this war began it has done mani
fold duty for orators, statesmen,
preachers, novelists, poets and writ
ers of things wise and otherwise
about the war and it's significance.
1t is a word of vast imaginative po-
tentialities, opening vistas to the
minds eye that are cosmic in their
range and sweep, foreshadowine is
sues of cataclysmic sublimity. 1t
was the apocalyptic eye of John the
Divine that first visioned this place
of the worlds last battle of the ma
tions, yet his mention of it is almost
casual. II occurs in the sixteenth
chapter, sixteenth verse of Reveia-
tions:
And he gathered them together
into a place called in the Hebrew
tongue Armageddon."
And those that were to be gath
ther there, as appears from the four
teenth verse, were 'the kings of the
earth and Of the whole world
to the battle of that great day of God
Almighty" Then the seventh angel
poured out his vial into the air and
there came q great voice out of the
temple of heaven, from the throne,
saying, it is done"
A few days ago came a detailed
report of the operations of the Brit
ish army in Palestine, driving the
Turks before them to their last stand
in the Holy Land. And incidental to
the drive the correspondent men
toned that ION the north our cav
airy, trayersing the field of Arma-
geddon, had occupied Nazareth,
Afule and Beisan, and were collect
ing the disorganized masses of en-
emy troops and transports as they
arrived from the south"
Thus the field of Armageddon"
emerges from the vague realms of
prophetic vision to find a "local hab-
itation and name" and battle has
been fought upon that field, or near
it, which may be fraught with final
ity to some of the deep-laid schemes
of 'the kings of the earth and of the
whole world"
The Plain of Megiddo
The mention of the name "Arma-
geddon" in military dispatch will
doubtless send many students of cur
rent events to their maps and their
histories, Biblical and profane, only
to be disappointed if they confine
their search to the literal word. They
will find no field of Armageddon"
upon the map, no mention of 1t in
history by that name, outside OF the
solitary reference to it in the Bible.
But the field of Armageddon" re-
ferred to in the dispatch is the Plain
of Megiddo, which is the great tri-
angular valley in the central part of
the historic Plains of Esdraelon,
stretching northward from Megiddo
to the hills of Nazareth, eastward
n CfyE1 11s6 -
Mount Carmel. The entire plain of
Esdraelon, which extends from the
Bay of Acre to Beisan above the Jor-
dan, is drained by the Kishon river,
which empties into the Bay of Acre,
near Haifa, one of the Mediterra=
mean ports recently captured by the
British forces.
Though there is by no means an.
unanimity among Biblical scholars
upon the subject the consensus of
learned opinion identifies the Plain
of Megiddo, or the Plains of Esdrae-
lon, for the names are often used
convertibly for the Valley of the
Kishon, with the scriptural field Of
Armagedd6n." The name "Megiddo"
signifies in Hebrew the "place of
troops" and it has been a place of
many battles since the dawn of his
tory.
The town Megiddo. which is situ-
ated on the east of the plain, oppo-
site Jesrahel. commands the central
of the three passes that join the
plain with the seaboard. This pass,
which offered the best and shortest
route from Egypt and the south to
Northern Syria, Phoenicia and Me-
sopotamia, was the one commonly
followed In ancient days by the AS
to- ToVnftQnG nj
Romans, whose battling hosts swept