“Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow– for their wickedness is great.” Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness. The Lord also will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; the heavens and earth will shake; But the Lord will be a shelter for His people, and the strength of the children of Israel. “So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion My holy mountain. Then Jerusalem shall be holy, and no aliens shall ever pass through her again.” (Joel 3:12-17)
Come near, you nations, to hear; and heed, you people! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world and all things that come forth from it. For the indignation of the Lord is against all nations, and His fury against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to the slaughter. Also their slain shall be thrown out; their stench shall rise from their corpses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine, and as fruit falling from a fig tree. “For My sword shall be bathed in heaven; indeed it shall come down on Edom, and on the people of My curse, for judgment. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made overflowing with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. The wild oxen shall come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust saturated with fatness.” For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, the year of recompense for the cause of Zion. (Isaiah 34:1-8)
Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this One who is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength?– “I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” Why is your apparel red, and Your garments like one who treads in the winepress? “I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with Me. For I have trodden them in My anger, and trampled them in My fury; their blood is sprinkled upon My garments, and I have stained all My robes. For the day of vengeance is in My heart, and the year of My redeemed has come. I looked, but there was no one to help, and I wondered that there was no one to uphold; therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me; and My own fury, it sustained Me. I have trodden down the peoples in My anger, made them drunk in My fury, and brought down their strength to the earth.” (Isaiah 63:1-6)
Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as He fights in the day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south. Then you shall flee through My mountain valley, for the mountain valley shall reach to Azal. Yes, you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Thus the Lord my God will come, and all the saints with You. It shall come to pass in that day that there will be no light; the lights will diminish. It shall be one day which is known to the Lord– neither day nor night. But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light. And in that day it shall be that living waters shall flow from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea; in both summer and winter it shall occur. And the Lord shall be King over all the earth. In that day it shall be– “The Lord is one,” and His name one. (Zechariah 14:3-9)
Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.” So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs. (Revelation 14:17-20) (1600 furlongs = 160 miles)
The staging ground for the Battle of Armageddon – when all the nations line up and attack Israel in the end – might be in the Valley of Jezreel, but the target and focus of this war is Jerusalem – the City of the Great King. If this battle is to take place mainly in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which begins in and around Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea Valley; and if this valley will turn into a river of blood whose length is 160 miles/257 km, then it will reach as far as Bozrah, which lies towards the southern end of the Dead Sea. This is remarkable, considering that Isaiah 63:1-6 describes the Lord – who in His wrath has tread these nations underfoot – as “the One coming from Bozrah; His garments stained with blood!”
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. (Revelation 16:12-16)
(“Armageddon,” but Masoretic Text reads “Megiddo.”)
In Luke 17:26-33 we read the following:
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.
It is quite remarkable that the two previous divine judgments of destruction – the one in Noah’s time and the other during Lot’s time – may have happened in this very area (the deepest part on earth) as Noah is believed to have built his ark in the Jordan Valley (before it later came to rest on Ararat in Turkey).
Sodom and Gomorrah were situated in this same valley which seems to be carved out – the lowest place on earth – indeed as a winepress.
This would mean that this valley would again become a place of God’s judgment – this time the End Time site of the outpouring of His wrath! Thus three times the very place where God judges the world.
I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:12-17)
Clearly there is a day coming when the same Lord who offered His life on the cross as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” will become the Judge of all these nations in what God’s Word calls, the day of “the wrath of the Lamb.” It will result in a river of blood flowing from Jerusalem’s valley of Jehoshaphat all the way down to Bozrah.
In the light of all this, it seems highly significant that the crux of the current US-led negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arab leadership centers around Israel’s security demands in relation to the Jordan Valley: That for at least 10 years after the signing of any agreement, the IDF will have the right to militarily control and patrol this strategic low ground. This could signify that the future military clash with Israel’s many enemies may take place exactly there – in the Jordan Valley, which progresses down to the Dead Sea.
Though some may still hold out that, in their view and understanding, there will also be an End Time battle in and around the Jezreel Valley – say by the united forces of Gog and Magog – the main point of the Scriptures quoted here is that it is the final battle by the Anti-God and Anti-His-people forces of the nations of the world who will gather against Jerusalem that will trigger the Lord’s fierce response in the defense of His people in Zion.
When this – Satan’s main strategy by way of the nations – is blurred by an overemphasis on the valley of Jezreel, it seriously weakens the believer’s readiness to stand with Jerusalem and God’s people against this onslaught. Thus we becoming spectators rather than intercessors in the battle for Jerusalem’s best.
