t has been stirring up the West in preparation for
the contest has been working in the East also. Year after year observers
have pointed out the great changes taking place in Asia. September,
1909, the London _Contemporary Review_ said:

"The whole of Asia is in the throes of rebirth. At last we may
see these three--the yellow race, the Indian race, and the
Arab-Persian Mohammedan race. And all that is making for the
Armageddon."

A writer in the May, 1913, issue of the London _Nineteenth Century and
After_, reviewing the situation at the close of the Balkan War, said:

"A new spirit is abroad in the East. It arose on the shores of
the Pacific when Japan proved that the great powers of Europe
are not invulnerable. North and south and west it has spread,
rousing China out of centuries of slumber, stirring India into
ominous questioning, reviving memories of past glory in Persia,
breeding discontent in Egypt, and luring Turkey onto the
rocks."

With all the nations stirred up by the spirit agencies of the god of
this world, the prophet next saw the armies of earth gathering to the
last great battle. The prophecy continues:

"And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue
Armageddon." Rev. 16:16.

Armageddon means the hill, or mount, of Megiddo, which overlooks the
plain of Esdraelon, the historic battle ground of northern Palestine.
Carmack says of it:

"Megiddo was the military key of Syria; it commanded at once
the highway northward to Phoenicia and Coele-Syria and the
road across Galilee to Damascus and the valley of the
Euphrates. It was moreover the chief town in a district of
great fertility, the contested possession of many races. The
vale of Kishon and the region of Megiddo were inevitable battle
fields. Through all history they retained that qualification;
there many of the great contests of southwestern Asia have been
decided. In the history of Israel it was the scene of frequent
battles. From such association the district achieved a dark
nobility; it was regarded as a pre-destined place of blood and
strife; the poet of the Apocalypse has clothed it with awe as
the ground of the final conflict between the powers of light
and darkness."--_"Pre-Biblical Syria and Palestine," p. 82._

Thus Armageddon, as the "military key of Syria," marks Palestine and the
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