In the 1950–60s the not-so-Cold War between the Communist East and Capitalist West was giving the globe as hard a time as the war between Muslim Militarism and Malignant Materialism is today. Back then, Russia and America were set to spark the smallest political feud into the Armageddon apocalypse of a nuclear holocaust that would flash the world white-hot at any moment.

The threat of nuclear war was all too close in the small English country town of Oundle where I was at boarding school. The town and School would be devoured as the first nuclear-tipped Russian rockets striking Polebroook military airfield just two miles away. In World War II the US Air Force had posted a certain Clark Gable in 1943 to Polebrook airfield. Since then, Polebrook had gone up in the world and was about to go up with it, in these hottest years of the Cold War. Polebrook now hosted not only planes but also ballistic Thor missiles. Each Thor was tipped with a two-megaton nuclear warhead packing the explosive power of 150 Hiroshima-bombs. On a Sunday afternoon, my friends and I peeking through a gap in the perimeter hedge might see a Thor standing out of its bunker, proud on its launch-pad, as a huge white thorn pricking up from the green countryside. Its 1,750–mile range would let it evaporate Moscow, Kiev, or Odessa, though not Leningrad, we reckoned. The UK hosted sixty Thors, which the USA parked in clutches of three eggs in each of twenty UK airfield-baskets like Polebrook.

 Oundle was at the edge of East Anglia, the UK’s closest and militarily most strategic coast to the USSR. The flat terrain of East Anglia was the flight-deck of US-Battleship-UK. Its scores of military airfields took their names from their adjacent picturesque villages like Polebrook, sporting thatched cottages, quaint family pubs, manicured village greens and the smell of new mown grass, bucolic Saturday afternoon cricket matches, and lonesome ladies. The USAF and RAF ran these airfields jointly as they had done in World War II. Back then, US-Battleship-UK had been moored off the continent of Europe as the main launch-pad for Allied bombers to destroy an enemy called Nazi Germany mere flight hours away. Now in the Cold War, this same battleship formed the prime launch-pad for the West’s nuclear rockets to obliterate an enemy called Communist Russia mere rocket minutes away. East Anglia was a main face of the cutely-called “nuclear shield” of the West that was really the sheath of its sharp nuclear sword.

The famously productive gravel-pits of Oundle had fed the acres of concrete of the runways of Polebrook and other nearby airfields. Twelve miles south-east, Alconbury hosted the planet’s biggest-ever arsenal of nuclear bombs, with plans, planes, and pilots to deliver them. Years later, one of those pilots told me that after nuking his target in the USSR he would be too short of fuel for the full journey back. Sixteen miles north, Wittering had smaller rockets bristling on launch pads in a field next to the main A1 London-Edinburgh highway and in full-view. From one international crisis to another the eastward tilt of these rockets would visibly change, probably to warn and disinform Moscow via its spies in the UK. Six miles south-east, Molesworth was a dark impenetrable mystery, later revealed as a notorious cruise-missile base. Missiles trucked there could not even cruise the main street of Oundle, leading to the town gaining a bypass road and losing its railway-line.

At a nod, all these East Anglia USAF/RAF airfields were set to nuke the USSR, each in its special way. The USSR was, of course. just as ready to nuke the UK too. In those MAD days of Mutually Assured Destruction who struck first was irrelevant. We living next to ground zero would be simply flash to ash, evaporated and at least spared the bang. Rehearsing “duck and cover” under tables like the American kids we saw on TV was pointless. Soon enough they would freeze to death far more miserably from nuclear winter anyway.

So during our supposedly halcyon schooldays, my friends and I breathed, drank, ate, and slept the numbing bill of fare of the Battle of Armageddon as a looming nuclear holocaust. Most of the time we ignored the grave scene, blocking it out. But at other times we stopped denying, and tried debating the impossible situation through instead. For what it was worth—and it proved to be worth a lot—many of us joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and marched to “ban the bomb”.

Otherwise, life was good. Within this nuclear sea, Oundle School was an island of academic peace. Here images from the Book of Revelation less threatening than Armageddon etched themselves into our hearts and minds. Our divinity classes told us what its Book of Life, New Jerusalem, Tree of Life, and its Temple pungent with the perfume of incense-smoke and the stench of sacrifices all meant. Our singing Handel’s Messiah and Verdi’s Requiem praised its Lamb (really Ram) and heard its Hallelujahs. Our end-of-term assemblies heard us boom and did those feet in ancient time of Blake’s Jerusalem. Our daily chit-chat used it odd catch-word like Millennium and 666. Our Sunday services put us under the gaze of its four Living-Beings now on benign non-nuclear wooden shields hanging high on the chapel wall. Back then this lion, bullock, human, and eagle portrayed the top four Jewish Prophets Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel, and Ezekiel; also the four Christian Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now they portray the four Primary-Figures of a new Faith too.

In all these ways themes from the Book of Revelation hugged our young psyches and imbued our learning just as they generally grip the collective consciousness of the West through books like Armageddon, Appointment with Destiny, the End of the Age, and Coming Judgment of the Nations; through movies like Seventh Seal, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Pale Rider; and through motifs for stained-glass windows in churches and cathedrals like Chartres.

From here, I call the Book of Revelation both “Revelation” (favored by Protestants) and also “the Apocalypse” (favored by Catholics). (Revelations and Book of Revelations are inaccurate, though they do embrace just how many short visions formed John’s main vision. The Book of Revelation’s first Greek word, apocalypse forms its title, just as Old Testament Books take their own first Hebrew word as their title. Literally apocalypse means an unveiling or more broadly a revelation.

My fear of nuclear Armageddon led me to read Revelation as the book spawning the name Armageddon. Specifically, I wanted to discover when Armageddon would start—just in case I could escape Oundle in time. I found Armageddon at the end of Chapter 16, tucked between the war of this great Day of Almighty God—obviously nuclear war—and a list of catastrophes ending with heavy hail dropping from the sky—obviously nuclear-tipped Russian missiles! Alas however, there was no time-prophecy for when Armageddon would occur, as for some other Revelation events. So my next step was to read all previous Chapters 1–16 and trace their train of historical events leading up to Armageddon.

But these historical events needed interpreting. At this point it turned out that Revelation itself, the most literarily unified book in the Bible, lacked any usefully unified interpretation. The available interpretations, mostly Christian-based, were piecemeal and peppered with paradox. They showed lots of trees but no forest, lots of trunks but no oak or beech. They explained just a verse here, a dragon there, or a number somewhere else. They offered many treatments but no cure. Then Unveiling as a title seemed to be a divine joke, since unveiling anything was the last thing that the Apocalypse seemed to want to do. Specifically, it snubbed my efforts to find the timing of a nuclear Armageddon. The pages of the ages of Revelation’s vast prophetic spans of time mocked the pathetically short moment that my friends and I still had left to live in the shadow of those Thors. The key date for Armageddon remained lost as a needle in the haystack of the Apocalypse.

Irked and breathless, I gave up trying to calculate any date for Armageddon. I quietly cursed and swore that, one day, I would find out what the Apocalypse was all about. But just then a simple afterthought saved the day. After Armageddon, Revelation did still have seven more chapters—Chapters 17–22—predicting more events, especially its New Jerusalem’s grand Millennium. This was a wonderful insight that meant that Armageddon could not be a nuclear holocaust that would sear humanity off the planet.

So I stopped thinking about nuclear holocaust and did not even watch the Cuba crisis wax or wane. Instead I focused on my medical studies, graduated, specialized in intensive-care medicine, and went on to practice on three continents. In parallel, the Cold-War steadily thawed, the smog of East-West tensions subsided, and fresh political air blew over the planet. Many of East Anglia airfields were downgraded. Polebrook went back to farmland and an industrial estate. Alconbury became a base for high-altitude USAF U-2 SR-71 spy planes or a container storage site, depending on whom you ask. Molesworth became NATO’s Joint Analysis Center in Europe. Only Wittering continues to function as an RAF airfield.

In spite of my first futile foray with prophecy, I realized its power to reveal higher realities and to foretell new things before they sprout.[1]^-J This knowledge helped me make sense of the human lot and the sufferings of my patients. Apart from the Revelation prophecy of Armageddon, another biblical prophecy also rang especially loud. This was the Old Testament prophecy—really a group of prophecies—predicting the return of the Jews to Israel. Lo and behold, in my own lifetime, this had just happened. In 1948, Jews had just founded the State of Israel, having tenaciously survived as a nation without a country for nineteen centuries. Realizing how recent history had fulfilled prophecy so grandly held me in great awe. It led to me visiting Israel, learning Hebrew, marrying a native, raising a family, practicing medicine, and living there through five wars and two intifadas.

Writing Beyond Malignant Materialism in retirement meant switching from intensively managing medical minutes that save lives to intensively analyzing prophetic millennia that save souls. I discovered how prophetic books are more books of proof than prophecy, since prophetic hindsight validates prophetic foresight. My angry teenage oath to figure out the Apocalypse, I only recalled towards the end of writing this book, though it must have been driving my keystrokes subliminally from the start.

The Armageddon that got me into the Apocalypse and that got the Apocalypse into me means literally Mountain of Megiddo. The HAR in its source Hebrew name HAR–MEGID–O means mountain. But which mountain? Bible scholars, tour guides, and coach-loads of tourists reckon that the ancient archeological mound of Tel Megiddo is Armageddon. After all Tel Megiddo was a military settlement sited at a strategic location with two water sources and stabling war-horses and chariots. Yet how can this mere tel, a mere 225 feet high and a paltry 10 acres in area, pass as a har that is a mountain?

It cannot! Instead, Tel Megiddo has another purpose. It serves as a Trojan-Horse bearing the true mountain of Armageddon as its hidden cargo. It acts as a quasi Armageddon pointing to the real Armageddon at whose base it nestles, namely majestic Mount Carmel.

Identifying Armageddon as 1800–foot high Mount Carmel draws upon the full literal meaning of the name HAR–MEGID–O. In addition to HAR– meaning mountain, –MEGID– really means Preacher, and –O means His (for God). So Armageddon means Mountain of God’s Preacher. This bill Mount Carmel fits as the mountain of several prophets—including Elijah, Elisha, and the Return of Elijah—all preachers of God if ever there were any. Mount Carmel fits other biblical bills too. It is the sacred mountain of Isaiah. It is also the large and lofty mountain of Revelation.[2]^-JR As the true Armageddon, Mount Carmel calls up the worldwide 20th century warfare of yesterday, proclaims the Preachers of God of today, and announces the New Jerusalem of tomorrow.

Epigraph:

Baha’u’llah, Tablets 7.87 & 11.167

Preface:

[1] Isaiah 42.9

[2] Isaiah 11.9 & Rev. 21.10