Russian President Vladimir Putin has been repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons in his “special military operation” in Ukraine. It caused U.S. President Joe Biden to say this week at a fundraiser dinner speech in New York City, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
This Biden remark has caused much media attention. Thus, John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, explained thereafter, “These comments were not based on new or fresh intelligence or new indications that Mr. Putin has made a decision to use nuclear weapons and, quite frankly, we don’t have any indication that he has made that kind of decision.”
What exactly did Biden mean? He meant that Putin using a tactical weapon in Ukraine would result in an expansion of the war that likely would erupt beyond the Ukraine borders to possibly involve a response by NATO and the U.S. that would be more than just them arming the Ukrainians as they have been doing. Did Biden even mean a WWIII with nuclear weapons? Due to this speculation, Kirby seems to have attempted to tone down what Biden said.
But what does the word “Armageddon” actually mean? Its source is the Bible, in its last book, the book of Revelation. The meaning that has been attached to it in modern times makes it a misnomer. I explain this in my book Warrior from Heaven (p. 15):
“Evangelicals have popularized the word Armageddon. They believe it to be the location of the world’s last battle, or at least where it will begin. They got this idea from Rev 16.14-16, the only place in the Bible where this word appears. But they have misinterpreted it, so that their expression, ‘the Battle of Armageddon,’ is a misnomer. Instead, the Anglicized word Armageddon refers to the hill of Megiddo, and Rev 16.14-16 merely predicts that the kings will gather there. Some USA military strategists and others have argued that the Valley of Jezreel is not large enough for all of the world’s military forces to wage armed conflict there using modern weapons. But the nations’ armies will not fight ‘the war of the great day of God, the Almighty,’ (Rev 16.14 NASB) at Armageddon, nor will it begin there, and they will only have primitive weapons.”
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