The Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation is written by a man named John, a Christian prophet, who lived at the end of the first century. The consensus estimate for the time of writing is 95 C.E. The name John has led some to connect the work with the Fourth Gospel, but it is highly unlikely that the authors are the same. The Revelation of John is a book about the end of history, about an apocalypse that was imminent, about a utopian kingdom that would follow on the earth for the elect and would last for 1,000 years. The ideas relating to the kingdom of God are very different in the gospel of John.

The prophet John encounters Jesus in heaven, one like a Son of Man (1:14), where he receives his initial revelation from God. This revelation pertains to seven churches in Asia Minor. Christ dictates letters to each church. These letters discuss the problems facing each church, and the courses of action each church should take to resolve the problems (see chapters 2 and 3). Christ praises church members who have been good, suggesting that their reward will be great. In contrast, he castigates those who continue to sin and warns them that their fate will be dire. The thinking behind this section sounds quite different from Paul’s doctrine of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.

The revelations become more intense in chapter 4. The prophet is taken up through a window in the sky to heaven and the throne of God. Around the throne, he sees many fascinating things, the most important of which is a scroll with seven seals. Jesus breaks the seal of each scroll which unleashes a specific catastrophe upon the earth—war, famine, pestilence, etc. With the sixth seal, a violent earthquake takes place, the sun goes black, and the stars fall on the earth. That should finish things, but the seventh seal unleashes a whole host of new disasters.

The end finally comes when evil becomes centralized in “the beast” (13:1). In the final battle, Christ comes with his heavenly armies to defeat the beast and destroy Babylon (chapters 15-19). The enemies of God are crushed, Satan is imprisoned, and Christ and his saints establish a utopia on earth which lasts for 1,000 years (20: 1-6). Following the 1,000 year kingdom, the final judgment comes when all people are raised from the dead and rewarded according to their deeds. People who have the misfortune of siding with Satan are thrown into a burning lake (20: 7-15).

In this final revelation, the prophet has a vision of a new heaven and a new earth (chapters 21 and 22). In this vision, Christ comes down from heaven to establish a new Jerusalem where he will reign eternally in a kingdom for the saints, those who have performed good deeds, a group numbering 144,000. At the end of the book, the prophet asserts that his vision is true and will be fulfilled very soon (22: 10 and 22: 16-21).

The prophet’s revelations contain many strange figures and bizarre images. At times his visions tumble out into each other and lead to nonsense. As I pointed out above, when the sixth seal is broken, the sun and moon are destroyed and the stars fall into the earth. This obviously would be the end of the earth, including the 144,000 saints, but that does not end the wrath of God. Even worse disasters ensue with the opening of the seventh seal. The prophet uses numbers to give his predictions an authentic ring. The number seven symbolizes perfection. The number six symbolizes the fall from perfection. The beast is numbered 666.

Many contemporary Christians think that the Book of Revelation is written for today. They take the symbols and numerology and interpret them to explain conditions in the twenty-first century. This is both amazing and stupid. It shows that when reading the Bible they pay little attention to what the Bible actually says and focus instead on reinterpreting scripture to say what they want it to say.

What does the Book of Revelation say? To begin with, the prophet makes clear both in the beginning of the book (1:1) and at the end (22: 10 and 22: 16-21) that these events will take place very soon. The vast majority of scholars who have studied the book argue that the symbols and numerology point to the first century. If you spell out Nero in Hebrew and add up the letters, you arrive at the number of 666. Nero, of course, was the Roman emperor in the first century who was persecuting Christians. The symbol of Babylon clearly refers to Rome. When Christians come to my door to save me, I tell them not to waste their time because there is no room in heaven for me. Salvation is reserved for an elect of 144,000, and I am sure that all the space has been taken up. I express the hope that they are included within that number. My guests either don’t know what I am talking about or reinterpret the number.

The place of heaven and the idea that they are saved are firmly held beliefs for many Christians with deep psychological roots. These conditions create an ideological screen for reading the Bible which makes it very difficult for them to focus on what the Bible actually says. While I am not at all sure about what happens to humans after we die, I am quite confident that events will not unfold as they are pictured in the Book of Revelation.

The Book of Revelation raises two issues that interest me: does God in fact speak directly to human beings and does She control history? Those are the topics of the next two blogs.