Josiah became king of Judah at the age of eight, and reigned until his death at Megiddo at the age of 39.
Finally, after a long string of evil, and proud kings, we find Josiah on a holy rampage to rid Judah of all abominable idolatry.
King Josiah re-instituted the Passover, and literally went through all of his kingdom destroying pagan alters, high places, and was "like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him. (2 Kings 23:25)
Because of his piety, God promised King Josiah that he wouldn't live to see the shame that was about to come upon Judah, because of the offenses brought about by King Manasseh.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar is waiting in the wings to completely destroy Judah and take them into captivity.
It makes sense to me that God would have provided King Josiah to strengthen the promised remnant of Judah with their new found faith in Yahweh. Judah is about to undergo unprecedented misery, at the hand of God.
The photograph above was taken in 2008, at the current dig going on at Tel Megiddo.
This is the death place of King Josiah, and also most interestingly, the place of Armageddon, where the Book of Revelation predicts that a final battle between good, and evil will occur prior to the second coming of Messiah.
As I was looking through the Megiddo expedition website, we can see that they have found many objects of idolatry amongst the temple ruins.
It is widely held that this dig is one of the most important in all of archaeology. In fact, this site is so important to the history of the world, it was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2005.
I would encourage you to spend some time at the Megiddo website. Remarkably, we live in a time where technology can take you immediately to Megiddo. I don't know about you, but seeing these sites makes these Biblical narratives jump off the page into physical reality.
Further, it helps us to understand that no faith possesses the physical record of the Judeo-Christian faith.
There really is significant evidence that forces the thinking mind to produce a verdict on the claims of Scripture.
