Many politicians use the term “Armageddon” because of its impact on the audience, reminding them of a world war that will destroy everyone and emphasizing the seriousness of the crisis.
On Thursday, October 6, US President Joe Biden’s remarks on Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine shook the world public opinion. In his speech, Biden said that because of Russia, for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the middle of the Cold War, humanity faces the danger of Armageddon War. “Not since the Kennedy days and the Cuban missile crisis have we faced the prospect of Armageddon,” Biden said at a fundraiser in New York.
It was not the warnings or the president’s tough stance that caught my attention; this kind of language exchange between the United States and Russia is not new. What was striking, however, was the focus on the power and impact of the word “Armageddon” and the insistence of Arab media platforms to use the original word in their headlines and not the Arabic translation, which means “the end of the world”.
Armageddon or the end of the world
Personally, I first encountered the word as a middle school student in the movie “Armageddon”, which tells the story of a group sent into space by NASA to stop a giant asteroid before it hits.
Later, in my Philosophy and Religious Studies course at university, I learned that the word appears in the Book of Revelation, the last chapter of the New Testament.
The word is derived from the Greek, where it is pronounced “Harmagedōn” and is originally taken from two Hebrew words “Har-Megiddo”, meaning majestic or great mountain. The word refers to the place where armies gather for battle when the world ends and is now generally used to refer to any scenario that refers to the end of the world.
The common denominator of the three Abrahamic religions is the belief that life will end one day, albeit in different ways. In the Book of Revelation, this is stated as “So he gathered them to the place called Armageddon in Hebrew” (Revelation 16:16).
Christianity and Judaism teach that the final battle between truth and falsehood will take place when two hundred million warriors will decisively destroy the infidels. The battle is believed to take place in the region of Armageddon, which is actually a plain, not a mountain. Armageddon is located 90 kilometers north of Jerusalem and 30 kilometers southeast of Haifa. It is one of the richest agricultural areas and has been the scene of fierce battles in the past. It is also an important archaeological site, known as “Army Square”, where Egyptian soldiers, Babylonian warriors, Jews and Romans set foot.
Third world war
In times of catastrophe and crisis, people in general and religious people in particular tend to read signs in prophecies and legends, or stories in religious books that speak of the end of the world.
The events of 9/11, the Iraq war and the chaos in the Middle East, the Corona pandemic, the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and Putin’s allusions to the use of nuclear energy, all point to a “third world war” or the Armageddon war and the coming end for many.
It is important to emphasize that there is a consensus among scholars and interpreters of religious texts that this war will not mean the complete end of mankind’s material existence, but will eliminate evil and lead to the restoration of justice on earth once again. This war is similar to what happened during the flood of Noah, who came to save mankind from the great evils and mischief that prevailed on the earth at that time, but it will not completely eradicate life, as Sharq al-Awsat reported in Independent Arabia.
On the other hand, those who believe in the inevitability of this war believe that the level of evil, corruption, moral degradation and destruction that humans have wrought on the earth has reached a level that cannot be overcome. They believe that neither the threat of deadly viruses, nor hurricanes, nor hurricanes, nor severe economic crises can restore humanity to its former state.
Many politicians use the term “Armageddon” because of its impact on the audience, reminding them of a world war that would destroy everyone and emphasizing the seriousness of the crisis.
When UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng announced his mini-budget, commentators criticized it as “stupid, crazy and Armageddon-esque”. Some commentators said that Liz Terrace’s plans to freeze energy bills were to save citizens from the Armageddon energy experience.
News websites reported on NASA’s success in sending a spacecraft called “DART” into space ten days ago, deliberately crashing into the asteroid “Dimorphos” to change its course. NASA was able to test its ability to prevent such cosmic bodies from destroying life on Earth in the future, thus preventing Armageddon from occurring, the news said.
It is worth noting that the conservative West strongly believes in the inevitability of this war on a popular and even sovereign level. The last census conducted by Ipsos for global public relations a decade ago, involving more than 16,000 people, showed that 22 percent of Americans believe in the Battle of Armageddon. This compares to 41 percent who believe they will witness the end of the world in their lifetime, compared to eight percent of the British and six percent of the French, recorded in 2010. The two least fearful peoples were Russians and Poles. It is not known whether the people of these two countries have now changed their minds after the outbreak of the Ukrainian war!
In 1991, President Reagan told the Israeli newspaper “Maariv”, “There are strong indications that the Armageddon War will take place in our time. I personally do not rule out that it will happen before my death.”
According to The New York Times, this was not the first time the former US President had raised the possibility of this decisive war. The former president mentioned the word “Armageddon” at least 11 times in his speeches. The newspaper also quoted President Reagan as saying of Armageddon that “Russia will be one of the parties to it” in a 1981 conversation with Senator Howell Heflin.
With the conflict between the US and Russia intensifying in areas beyond their borders and the fire that started in February and has reached Europe with the unending Ukrainian-Russian war, are we really on the brink of the end of the world? Has it even reached the dangerous levels that led Joe Biden to warn us that Armageddon is imminent?
