Revelation16chapter 16

The bowls repeat the exodus plagues almost in order: sores, water turned to blood, scorching heat, darkness, and finally the greatest earthquake in history. What fell on Egypt in pieces now falls on the whole system.

The fifth bowl is poured directly on the throne of the beast and his kingdom is full of darkness — the empire's own seat of power goes dark, and people gnaw their tongues in pain and still refuse to repent.

The sixth dries up the Euphrates "that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared." Everyone in the Roman world understood a dried Euphrates: the frontier river was the one thing between the empire and the Parthian cavalry. And Babylon itself had fallen once when an attacker lowered a river and walked in, a story Greek historians told and retold.

Then the armies gather at a place called Armageddon, which most read as the hill or region of Megiddo. Megiddo guarded the pass on the main highway through the country, and it had been a battlefield for over a thousand years — Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, and others fought there, and King Josiah died there. If you needed a name that meant "the place where battles happen," that was it.

In the middle of the sequence comes a single sentence of direct address to the reader: "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth."