Part 4 - Armageddon

March 19 - Today we drove around the east side of the Sea of Galilee, down the Jordan Valley to Bet Shean, then west across the Jezreel valley to Megiddo.  Har means "hill" in Hebrew, so Harmegeddon is the Hill at Megiddo.  Yes, we spent a couple of hours at Armageddon!  This city commanded the fertile and strategic valley which bisects Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, right at the juncture where it connects with the main highway to the south.

When they excavated this mound, they found evidence of Solomon's stables, mentioned in the following two passages in 1 Kings.  

1 Kings 10: 26   "And Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen; he had one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king at Jerusalem."

1 Kings 17:15   And this is the reason for the labor force which King Solomon raised: to build the house of the Lord, his own house, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer........ And Solomon built Gezer, Lower Beth Horon, Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness, in the land of Judah, all the storage cities that Solomon had, cities for his chariots and cities for his cavalry, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.

Revelation 16:12  "Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared.  And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.  For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. “Behold, I am coming as a thief.  Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”  And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon."

A public grain storage silo.  Notice the steps circling down to the bottom; there is an identical set on the other side

The well-preserved city gates of Megiddo.

Solomon had 500 horses at Megiddo to pull chariots, the choice of weapon in the 10th century BC 

A ghost horse came back to Megiddo for one last drink.

There is a tunnel which leads down inside the city, then underground to a spring located outside the walls.