"Something's got to give," we say. "Things just can't go on this way."

The Word for today:
Revelation 16

mark this: Revelation 16:16
And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

'Armageddon' is a word that lives way at the back of your head.

We might not know how to spell it, or say it, or define it. But we all know what it means.

The psychologist Carl Jung called them 'archetypes.' They are symbols universally recognized, transcending time and language and culture.

Something embedded within us, somewhere deeper than our DNA, demands a decision, a judgment. The Old Testament already visited Armageddon, and called it the Valley of Decision:

Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD.
Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.
Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.
Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. (Joel 3:11-14)

Armageddon is where elemental forces assemble in inevitable opposition. Good & evil, light & darkness, truth and falsehood gather there, and they are incapable of peaceful coexistence. The one must vanquish the other or be vanquished itself.

These forces are moving inexorably toward the plains of Megiddo (from which the word 'Armegeddon' is derived.) If the place looks eerily familiar, it's because you've seen it in the back of your head:

Within an individual, just as within the body politic, are elemental forces--flesh and Spirit, self and sacrifice, courage and cowardice--that are incapable of peaceful coexistence. "Something's got to give," we say. "Things just can't go on this way."

And we're right. A day of reckoning, individually and collectively, awaits. We can feel it in our bones.

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