Apocalypse - Armageddon

This article is the third in a series based on the author’s PowerPoint program “The Times We Are In: What In the World Is Happening?”

Note: This article is the third in a series based on the author’s PowerPoint program “The Times We Are In: What In the World Is Happening?” presented on Clearwater Bahá’ís on February 14, 2026. It may seem “dark,” but it sets the scene for Part 4 to follow, which will be more positive.)

Part 3 – In the Mire

In the previous article, “Read the Manual,” Part 2 of this series, we discussed the question “what would Jesus do?” that was popular a few years ago. His Beatitudes hold the answers and always have.

We also reviewed the directives Bahá’u’lláh gave the heads of state and religion in the late 1860s and early 1870s. He was explicit about the pursuit of a spiritual life, moral values, and how to conduct their affairs. His Manual. Which was not followed. No surprise there. The result of that disobedience, that blindness and deafness to eternal spiritual truths, led inexorably to the difficult, scary times we are now in.

Back to Jesus, one day as He was leaving the temple, His disciples called His attention to its buildings. Jesus told them that not one stone there would be left, that every one of them would be thrown down. Later that day, as Jesus was sitting in the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3)

Matthew 24, called the Olivet Discourse, gives Jesus’s replies and counsel to His disciples. His many warnings about the end times contain the following:

• “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” (Matthew 24:4-8)

• “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew: 24:10-14

• ^“For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” (Matthew 24:21-22)

• “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand . . . For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” (Matthew 24:15)

Jesus also explained to His disciples, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (John 16:12-14)

The gospel of the kingdom has been spread throughout the world as a testimony to all nations. The scriptures of Christianity and the Bahá’í Faith, both of which taught about the kingdom of God, have accomplished this.

Jesus mentioned the “elect” as a reason for shortening the days of distress. Who are the elect? Traditional understanding is that they are individuals whom God has predestined to salvation, whether through His foreknowledge of who will choose to place faith and trust in Jesus Christ for their salvation, or through God’s decision to grant certain individuals the faith to believe in Jesus. The Bahá’í writings see the elect differently. “The elect of humanity are those who live together in love and unity. They are preferable before God because the divine attributes are already manifest in them.” (Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 208)

What is “the abomination that causes desolation”? The Hebrew prophet Daniel mentioned this three times (Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) in timed prophecies. He spoke of it within the context of the temple, which is a symbol for religion. The Bahá’í approach to Daniel’s warnings is understanding that this abomination meant the corruption of religion.

According to Daniel, “It will take 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary will be reconsecrated.” (Daniel 8:14) In accordance with the biblical code for counting, which is one year for a day, the 2,300 days end in the year 1844 AD, the year that the Báb, the first of the two Prophets of the Bahá’í Faith, declared His identity. (See Notes below)

Over many hundreds of years, the understanding of the end of the age mentioned in the Olivet Discourse, or the end of time, would morph theologically into a belief in the “Apocalypse,” which was destined to end in a final, divinely driven battle between good and evil and the second coming of Jesus. This battle is called Armageddon and the same name is given to the place where this battle will supposedly take place, the valley of Megiddo in northern Israel.

The disciples and early Christians expected Jesus to return relatively soon, possibly within their lifetimes. That didn’t happen. Over the millennia, there were many times of war and peril when some Christians believed that the end times were upon them. However, the end of the age would not come until 1844. That “age” was the Prophetic Age, the thousands of years during which many Manifestations of God came to uplift and educate humanity from the Prophet Adam to the Prophet Muḥammad.

Bahá’u’lláh gave many warnings about the days of transition between the Prophetic Age and the Age of Fulfillment to come.

• “The hour is approaching,” He [Bahá’u’lláh] specifically affirms, “when the most great convulsion will have appeared.”

• “The promised day is come, the day when tormenting trials will have surged above your heads, and beneath your feet, saying: ‘Taste ye what your hands have wrought!’”

• “And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake.”

• “The day is approaching,” He moreover has prophesied, “when the wrathful anger of the Almighty will have taken hold of them. He shall cleanse the earth from the defilement of their corruption and shall give it for a heritage unto such of His servants as are nigh unto Him.”
  (The Promised Day Is Come, pgs. 3-4)

Jesus and Bahá’u’lláh were not talking about the end of time as is commonly understood in the theology of the Apocalypse and Armageddon, the latter of which actually started with World War I and has ratcheted up from there. Although sometimes seemingly progressing in “slow-mo,” the battle has been building for decades, and is now accelerating fast as moral standards collapse and corruption, greed, and irreligion have escalate throughout society, especially in politics and corporations. Just follow the news!

During His tour of the United States in 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (see Notes) said in an address given in California in October of that year:

We are on the eve of the Battle of Armageddon referred to in the sixteenth chapter of Revelation. The time is two years hence, when only a spark will set aflame the whole of Europe.

The social unrest in all countries, the growing religious scepticism antecedent to the millennium, and already here, will set aflame the whole of Europe as is prophesied in the Book of Daniel and in the Book (Revelation) of John. By 1917 kingdoms will fall and cataclysms will rock the earth.
(Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, pgs. 243-44)

This new age, the Age of Fulfillment, raised its head in 1844 like the first glimmer of dawn. When humanity is sufficiently exhausted and distraught, it will accept the Manual and embrace its spiritual capacity. This will bring the Lesser Peace, a much happier time that we’ll explore in Part 4 of this series.

Notes:

1. The five timed prophecies of Daniel are presented in the PowerPoint Presentation “I, Daniel,” click on the arrow:

2. I also devoted two chapters to Daniel in Vol. 3 of The Coming of the Glory and fully explained biblical counting and Daniel’s five timed prophecies, one of which relates to Christianity, another to Islam and the Bahá’í Faith, and the other three to the Bahá’í Faith.)

3. All of the Hebrew prophets foretold the coming of Bahá’u’lláh. The three volumes of The Coming of the Glory (see below) cover their prophecies extensively.

4. The article “The Life of the Báb” can be read at https://www.bahai.org/the-bab/life-the-bab.

5. The book The Promised Day Is Come can be accessed at https://bahai-library.com/shoghi-effendi_promised_day_come.

6. Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era by John E. Esslemont (1980).

Further Reading

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About Eileen

Eileen Maddocks is an independent researcher and writer who lives in Vermont. She alternates her cerebral lifestyle with ballet, tap, and jazz classes and performances. She is the author of 1844: Convergence in Prophecy for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá’í Faith, and the three-volume series The Coming of the Glory: How the Hebrew Scriptures Reveal the Plan of God. Some of Eileen’s older recorded PowerPoint presentations for Clearwater Bahá’ís are here. The newer ones will be added this year.