Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 109:433 (Jan 1952)
Article: Part 6: The Return of Christ in Relation to the Church
Author: C. I. Scofield

BSac 109:433 (Jan 52) p. 77

Part 6: The Return of Christ in Relation to the Church

C. I. Scofield

[Editor’s note: By special request Bibliotheca Sacra is putting back into print the lectures delivered by Dr. Scofield at the second annual Philadelphia Bible Conference. These prophetic messages were given first in 1914 after World War I had begun, and appeared originally in a Bible study magazine then being published, Serving and Waiting. The series was entitled “The World War in the Light of Prophecy.” Here the sixth and final lecture is reproduced.]

Before proceeding with the theme of the afternoon, which is the return of Christ in relation to the church, I desire to speak briefly of Armageddon. In the first place you know that we get the word, or the name, from a statement in the 16th chapter of the Revelation : “And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.” Now, this Armageddon is Armegiddo—the hill and valley of Megiddo, in the plain of Jezreel, on the west side of the Jordan and opposite Jerusalem, but a good deal north of it. That is the locality, and the battle has its great significance in prophecy as being the time of the Lord’s judgment upon the Gentile nations, the execution of justice.

The combatants in that battle, the antagonists, are—first of all—the kings of the earth, meaning by that the potentates who are in authority over the kingdoms which, at that time, are embraced in the sphere of prophecy, namely, the ancient Roman, Empire at its greatest extent. The kings of these kingdoms, with their armies, are engaged in this final battle. Daniel in his prophecy tells us that that sphere, that area of country, is to be divided into ten kingdoms at that time. Very likely that may be the arrangement in which there will come some pause in the World War now going on. Certainly,

BSac 109:433 (Jan 52) p. 78

at no distant period those who are at war now will come to a condition of exhaustion.

There is a human factor. Guns, perhaps, may not get tired, but those who carry guns do. The carnage is so perfectly fearful over there, so awful and unprecedented, that it is impossible to conceive that the peoples who, after all, must pay the awful toll in blood will endure—to fight for the mere ambition and the hatred of one man. However, if there comes a cessation, and a readjustment in some sort of that ancient battle-land, the Roman Empire, this is the form in which it will settle down for the moment. And then there will arise Daniel’s “little horn,” a man of base birth but of mighty genius, a greater Napoleon. He overcomes three of these ten kingdoms and becomes the federal head of all of them, a world emperor for a moment.

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