It is Armageddon week on the History channel. This series and quite a bit of our culture tends to think that Armageddon is a byword for natural disasters... random acts of God. This is not at all what is written in scripture. God is not going about this with reckless abandon, there's much more method than madness involved. Remember how Moses pleaded with pharaoh? He made demands first, the plagues were not willy nilly, they were methodical, they were ordered up one at a time, and they were part of an overall bargaining process to free the Israelites. Look at the final seven years in the apocalypse... same thing happening there, this time in Jerusalem, the two witnesses for Jesus are haggling with the two witnesses for world empire, and again, the two witnesses have power to shut up heaven (it doesn't rain for the whole 42 months, repeats the testimony of Elijah) and they have complete power over all the plagues.

This may not be a face to face confrontation like Moses and the pharaoh was, but it will be face to face in the media in Jerusalem. And what is the bargaining over? Same thing Moses wanted, free the people of God from the oppression of empire.

Human rule enslaves the masses. It seperates society into castes and oppresses the impoverished, fights wars over materials, takes from the laborer and gives to the ruler. The revealing of Jesus wipes away human rule, it has a purpose and a desire, the goal is to set up heavenly rule on earth and put a stop to human rule. This is accomplished by simply removing the Beast from power and taking over his seat of authority. Since human rule is executed from top down (unless you really think that your vote does anything more than rotate the marbles between positions of power) God changes the whole system by taking over the top position. Change the money and you stop the oppression, teach the nations peace and stop the inclination toward war with an iron fist. Obliterate the old system, set up the new. It is a total repeat of the time of Moses and Joshua. It is a political battle between Jesus and Lucifer played out on earth. The real war is in heaven prior to the end, and the real solution is in locking up the fallen angel and silencing his voice from reaching human ears. Only Lucifer is locked up, his principalities and powers fall in line under Jesus ... life continues on earth and human government continues, the nations continue, but the rulership over the whole system turns to the saints chosen to engage in the kingdom government. The two witnesses and their disciples are not dead four years and they are right back in Jerusalem, living in the palaces of the Beast, taking the reins of human government.

Armageddon is a political battle. Not a series of natural calamities.