The Carmelite order began with 12th century religious hermits, who, imitating the prophet Elijah who sometimes took refuge in a cave, organized themselves in caves on the Carmel Mountain in Haifa during the Crusader occupation.
Armageddon
Like other key words in religious and cultural contexts, “Armageddon” is used often in the generic to refer to some cataclysmic event with disastrous outcomes. This makes sense due to the origins in the Christian faith. There are organizations and on-line sites making announcements relating to financial and natural disasters under the title of Armageddon. A movie of the same name came out in 1998 with a star-studded cast including Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck about an asteroid, but the origins of the disaster-scenario are distinctly earth-bound. There is a geographical location, Mt. Megiddo, in the center of Israel that is known as the location at which the eventual disaster will erupt in some way. As the Hebrew word for mountain is “Har,” the connection in even stronger.
Early Christian interpretations of the concept of Armageddon predict it as an act. It is the time when the Messiah will return to earth to defeat the Devil in the “Battle of Armageddon.” According to this interpretation, Satan will be thrown into a bottomless pit for a thousand years. The next step in this scenario is Satan being released from the abyss, gathering around the “holy city,” generally thought to be Jerusalem and calling the followers of Gog and Magog, who will then be devoured by God after the Millennium. At the end of this cleansing, the Devil, death and all those not found written in the “Book of Life,” so vital to the Jewish cycle of life and critical to the Yom Kippur service, will be thrown into Gehenna, or the “lake of fire” that burns with brimstone.
There are debates about the advent of Armageddon regarding whether it is a symbolic warning or a literal event awaiting humanity. It is commonly perceived as a battle, a specific and isolated event, real in every way, that will occur right before the “second advent of Christ.” There are millions of Americans who believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are near the end, especially since the events of 9/11. They are associated with the dispensationalism theory, which is a way of understanding prophecy in the Bible, particularly Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation (16:14) in the New Testament, a belief that holds to the notion that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the steps to the end-of-time events. Naturally, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 places a strong focus on anything noteworthy that happens in the region. J. Dwight Pentacost interpreted the writings to mean there would be a campaign rather than an isolated battle. In any interpretation, however, the location remains fixed: Mount Megiddo in Israel.
