Armageddon and unstoppable good

Google the word Armageddon and the top news searches cover serious world threats. One might presume that it’s only a matter of time before something takes us out. But Monitor Founder and Christian Science discoverer Mary Baker Eddy introduced a startlingly different view of what constitutes a true “apocalypse”. While “annihilation” may be a contemporary definition, the word comes from the Greek apokaluptein, meaning “uncovering, revealing”. Mrs. Eddy observed that the Bible gives us a roadmap for the ultimate destruction of evil through the power of Love, the unstoppable good that is God.

The Hebrew word Armageddon is only used once in Scripture and while its original meaning is unclear, scholars’ best efforts indicate that it refers to Mount Megiddo. In the Bible, mountains are often scenes of revelation, inspiration and transformation. We see this in the story of Elijah in the mountain cave (see I Kings 19), in Christ Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5-7), as well as in his later experience on the Mount of Transfiguration (see Matthew 7, Mark 9 and Luke 9). Megiddo is a Bible location where many decisive battles were fought. We might look at Mount Megiddo as a figurative reference to a mount - or inspired view - of God’s allness that Scripture reveals, and the inevitability of divine Love to definitively dispose of any, and ultimately all, evil.

Mrs. Eddy explains, “This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.”  (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 96:4)

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​Perhaps there is a lesson to be found in the changing concept of the term apocalypse from its original meaning of “revealing”, to its current use as “destruction”. It shows what happens when a fascination with signs and symptoms of evil distract from the spiritual facts of the superiority of God, good, under every circumstance. God is divine and universal Love, the infinite All - the source and maintainer of all life, and the fount of unstoppable good. Life and good are permanent and indestructible in God and His creation because nothing is more powerful or more real than the love of God. With this understanding, the book of Revelation can be seen as a love story rather than a horror, unfolding the fact that good must, does, ultimately triumph over evil.

Armageddon isn’t really a battle between so-called equal forces called good and evil; it indicates the conflict between good – the only reality - and that which is unreal. Evil having no basis in God, has no basis in reality. I proved this when a breast tumor threatened my life. Through prayer and dedicated Bible study, I understood more of the indestructibility of God’s love for us all, and of good as the substance of my life. I saw that God doesn’t destroy evil as if it is something, but that evil has no place or reality in God, and thus no presence or control over me or anyone else. I knew that divine good is the permanent substance of my being. Though compelling, I turned from disease symptoms, and clung instead to God’s revelation of supreme good that I found in my study of Christian Science. I was at peace. Then the unreal condition – the symptoms of disease that are unknown to God, hence not to be found in me - disappeared decisively and permanently.

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This healing taught me that Armageddon battles aren’t “out there.” They involve inner struggles with fear and a false, limited sense of God and of real life. We each have work to do, work we can do, to overcome the belief in the reality of evil with good in our own present experience, thought by thought and with every act. Each proof we give of evil’s powerlessness, however small, is a powerful light waking the world to the present unstoppable power of good.

In a brief Christmas message, Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “Metaphysics, not physics, enables us to stand erect on sublime heights, surveying the immeasurable universe of Mind, peering into the cause which governs all effects, while we are strong in the unity of God and man.” (Miscellaneous Writings 369:7-10)

From this mount of the revelation, we see God and His creation as perfect and intact. This is the mount of true Armageddon, where the unstoppable good of Mind decisively destroys the claims of evil and conclusively protects us all.

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