If Jesus Returns Kill Him Again Fact Check

		Tabor is a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. (more about Tabor)

When people read the Volume of Revelation they meet this vast array of symbols. Some have go quite well known to the public, particularly in the late twentieth century. ... The mark of the beast, which the volume talks about every bit some sign or mark that people receive on their hand and their forehead. Even the number of this creature--the brute being some military ruler that controls the world at the stop of time--equally being 666. ...

Information technology'due south a sealed book. It'southward a coil with seven wax seals. As you begin to open it, you get this unfolding scenario of events, showtime with war and famine and disease and earthquakes and heavenly signs. It's fairly standard. And then you begin to go these characters introduced, and there are 5 or half dozen main characters. I would be the false prophet. He'south like a dragon, merely he speaks like a lamb. He has horns. A beast that is non-descript, some sort of horrible creature that appears to stand for the Roman government to the early Christians, but today could be whatever ability ... some sort of evil empire of some blazon. And then you lot accept the saints or the Christians,

the faithful followers of God, that are existence martyred. You lot accept 2 people that are very interesting, that many modern interpreters are interested in ... chosen the two witnesses in Affiliate eleven. These are, I guess you could say the two final prophets that the book expects to announced on the earth, like Moses and Elijah of ancient times in the bible. You have a dragon, who's actually identified as the devil backside the scenes, and of form you have Jesus Christ, the lamb. So it's every bit if in that location'southward a whole stage ready with these characters, and then things begin to unfold i past 1, in terms of what's supposed to happen. ...

If y'all open the Volume of Revelation and simply begin reading information technology equally an unfolding scenario, information technology goes something similar this. There will be wars and famines and disease epidemics and heavenly signs that volition warning the world to some sort of crisis. Then volition come an Antichrist as he's called, or a political ruler, that will constitute control over the whole earth. He'll be backed up with a religious ruler, who'southward chosen the false prophet. They together establish a unified social, economic and religious system that dominates the earth. The only thing opposing them are the people of God and these 2 prophets, they're chosen the 2 witnesses, who appear in Jerusalem, and begin to speak confronting this power. The rest of the book, really the last half of the book is almost the overthrow of this system. The animate being, the false prophet, who has the number 666, the Antichrist, is overthrown with judgments and plagues. Most of them are very cosmic. Asteroids striking the earth. The water turning to blood and that sort of affair, until finally, Jesus Christ returns equally a warrior on a white equus caballus and sets up the kingdom of God. ...

Give me a sense of what the tone is.

If a mod secular reader ... sat downward and read information technology through for the beginning time, my guess would be they would find it to be extremely violent. Someone once tallied up the death count and projected it on a modern world such equally ours, with five billion people, and it'due south absolutely a horrible kind of a statistic. You come up with maybe 4 billion dying of famine, war, earthquake, plagues.

Essentially it's a book about the wrath of God beingness poured out upon the earth. People not repenting except for the pocket-sized group of faithful followers of God, and this awful wicked beast power ruling the whole world, and defying God, shaking his fist at God. And finally Jesus coming, not every bit a Prince of Peace at all, not as a lamb, simply at the end of the book, as a rider on a equus caballus, a warrior with a sword, to smite the nations. In i of the quotes that comes to my listen it says, "He volition dominion the nations with a rod of iron, as a potter strikes a pot with fe and information technology only completely shatters." So I think that would be the dominant impression someone would go, maybe a volume yous'd desire to close and put away and non even recollect about. The book that might give you nightmares at nighttime, in terms of all of these bizarre creatures. ...

Can you convey the atmosphere of Book of Revelation?

		Fredriksen is a William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University. (more virtually Fredriksen)

One of the emotional satisfactions of having good triumph over evil is knowing how evil evil is. And one of the devices used past the author of the Volume of Revelations is besides something that happens in history. When evil is flourishing it'southward very bad indeed. And what y'all go far Apocalypse is a vision of the suffering that people get through before the happy resolution. You take the suffering of the righteous, y'all take catholic cataclysm, you have social calamity. Disease, earthquake, everything you tin imagine. When [things become] every bit bad as you can possibly imagine, that'south your clue for knowing what time information technology is on God's clock, and things are about to turn around. And Apocalypse in a sense presents to the western imagination a blueprint for reading the signs of the times. ...

		Gallagher is the Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut Higher. (more about Gallagher)

I think that the key to the Book of Revelation is that it has an incredibly ornate and lush imagery. You run into these fantastic figures who play some role in the drama of the end, whether it be in capacity 4 and 5, this wonderful vision of God sitting on a throne in the heavens with vii seals, or in the ensuing chapters, what happens when each of those seals is open. And then, towards the end, you take Gog and Magog, y'all accept the mark of the beast, you accept the whore of Babylon, you take all of these wonderfully symbolic figures, who through their vagueness and their beingness charged with meaning, are very, very adaptable. Nosotros tin play "Pivot the Tail on the Antichrist," and find any number of people throughout history, who have been so designated. We can say, "Who has the mark of the animal?" and get another long list of people. So the lush imagery and the complicated imagery of Revelation, has been one of the things that has kept people reading it. Because it can always be renewed. It can always exist practical to a new situation. ...

Every bit soon as the Volume of Revelation is written it makes a synthetic whole of apocalyptic ideas bachelor to readers. It accumulates bits and pieces and puts them into an accessible sequence of events. And then the question becomes simply to friction match up its admittedly vague utterances with historical events. When information technology doesn't seem to accurately predict the stop at its fourth dimension of writing, it gets taken up once again in the second century by people like the Montanists. It gets taken upward in the Middle Ages past all kinds of people, and it gets taken upwards very prominently in the contemporary period by Protestant Evangelicals like Hal Lindsey, whose book The Late Smashing Planet World, is one of the best selling religious books ever, if not the best selling religious book. And so it essentially offers an arsenal of apocalyptic images and predictions that tin be used to target whatsoever specific time as the apocalyptic moment.

What is the Book of Revelation?

		White is Professor of Classics and Christian Origins at the Academy of Texas at Austin, and acted as historical consultant for "Apocalypse!"

The Book of Revelation in the New Testament has the literal title in Greek, the "Apocalypse of John." The discussion apocalypse ways revelation. That which is uncovered. Information technology comes from the Greek discussion which literally means to pull the hat off something. So that which is revealed is key to the way that apocalyptic literature works. ... The word "apocalypse" refers to a genre of literature like the Book of Revelation itself. They are pieces of literature that beginning by revealing something or seeing visions or having individuals be taken upwardly into heaven where they can run across what's going on from that vantage bespeak.

Scholars also talk nigh "apocalyptic" or "apocalyptic environment," or "apocalyptic outlook." In this sense the word "apocalyptic" has a slightly broader meaning, and it refers to the spirit of the age that particularly became prominent roughly between the years 300 B.C. and 200 C.E., the very years in which Judaism itself went through some cataclysmic changes, when the Temple was destroyed once once again and importantly when the Christian motion itself was born and Jesus was executed.

Is John'southward Apocalypse unique?

The Revelation of John, the Apocalypse, also must be looked at from the perspective that it's not the just such piece of apocalyptic literature that we have. In fact in that location are lots of apocalypses. Some xxx or forty of them from the ancient world that we know past proper noun and we tin actually read yet to this day. ... So when the author of the Volume of Revelation sat downwards to write, there was a very strong paradigm of what revelation literature should await similar and sound similar. The stock of characters, the list of images, the symbols i uses are pretty commonplace, if you're in that environment.

When was the Book of Revelation written?

	shrine on the island of patmos, where tradition holds the apostle john wrote his apocalypse

The Book of Revelation was written probably in around the year 96, correct at the end of the showtime century. The traditional story of the Book of Revelation is that it was experienced by John the Apostle while he was in exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Equally the story goes he was in a cavern, his prison house, and in a dream he began to meet a vision wherein it was told him what to do. What then we begin to get is this revelation of the future of the world. ... In John's own account, he is in the spirit on the Lord's day and begins to hear a voice, and he begins to see a vision of a lamp stand and lights, and this is what opens upward the beginning of the revelatory experience in the volume. ... When John begins to meet his vision, the first thing he'southward told is to write messages to the seven churches of Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These are some of the most important cities in the province of Asia, and in the writing of these letters, John is addressing what Christians are supposed to be doing in these cities. ... What makes these 7 cities important is that they are ... some of the most of import cities in the provincial assistants under Roman regime and likewise for [the] royal cult, that is, the centers for where the Emperor is worshipped as a divine entity. ...

Does John accept, in Apocalypse, an mental attitude towards the imperial cult?

		Collins is a professor and serves every bit chair of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature for the Academy of Chicago Divinity School. (more than virtually Collins)

John was different from many other Jews and Christians who kind of overlooked the pagan worship of the emperor and adult their own version of imperial cult, which was basically obedience, trying to be a proficient denizen in the Roman empire and praying for the emperor. John, on the other hand, took the position that Roman ability was illegitimate and that the worship of the emperor was idolatry. The image of the Harlot of Babylon--in result what he is saying is that Roma is not a goddess, she's a whore. That, I think, encapsulates his attitude, his very belligerent and debasing perspective, on Rome and its institutions.

How exactly did Babylon become equated with Rome?

	whore of babylon

In the prophetic books and the historical books of the Old Testament, Babylon is described primarily every bit the one who destroyed Jerusalem. And for John, writing after 70, Babylon so becomes a lawmaking name for Rome, because it was the second city to destroy the Temple. ... "Babylon" is the most common phrase that John uses to refer to Rome, and at starting time he introduces that term very briefly and indirectly. And the identify where it's elaborated is Chapter 17, the vision of the Dandy Harlot. Babylon is a city with overtones of royal might and destructiveness, conqueror of other cities. And then you take the harlot with her golden cup, her regal, or cerise habiliment, her jewels sitting on vii hills. He hints that it's Rome in several means. One, that she sits on seven hills, and Rome was famous as the city of seven hills, and several times in chapters 13 and 17 it's talked about as ruling all the peoples of the earth. And at that place was only i possibility in John's time, that has to be Rome. ...

What is the structure of the Book of Revelation?

Ane of the difficulties for people now who effort to read the Book of Revelation is that it'due south not written equally a kind of linear story. This is especially difficult for people who try to utilise it equally a prediction of historical events in the future. It doesn't work then that things at the beginning of the story are necessarily in order ane later another leading to the end of the story. The way the Volume of Revelation is actually written is as a series of kind of unfolding revelations, each one of which gets to something deeper in the story. Basically there are three sections after the letters to the seven churches.

The kickoff section is in capacity v through 11, and in this we accept John being shown a series of visions symbolized by the seven seals and the seven trumpets. But if we kind of look at how these things are working, each 1 is a box within a box, it's sometimes really idea of that way, as a serial of Chinese boxes. You open the seals and when you get to the sixth seal things are looking really bad and when you get to the seventh seal we notice that the seventh seal is actually the vii trumpets and we start all over once more going deeper and deeper into the story. Then when we get to the 7th trumpet in chapter 11, the trumpet blows and heaven opens and you lot see the revelation of the dragon and the adult female. ... So capacity 12 through 14, the woman and the dragon and the animate being, really is centerpiece of the story. And it is the underlying catholic drama that John is showing, which reveals the principals, the combatants upon which the residue of the story is existence played out.

So as we go from chapters fifteen onward, we're told that those who are on the side of God and the angels, over against those who are on the side of the dragon and the beast, these combatants volition come to a final battle and another series of seven plagues and another serial of seven responses that will carry out the story to its natural end. And then in the final analysis then the sevens that are opened upward at the starting time of the story and the sevens that are opened upwardly at the terminate of the story are actually the same point, at present able to exist seen through a different understanding because of the key revelation of the dragon and the woman. ...

What'southward not in the Book of Revelation?

Sometimes people are surprised that when they actually read the Book of Revelation of what'south not at that place. Things that are typically associated with end time prophecies and typical language actually is non found in Revelation at all. ... Notably there's no reference any to the Antichrist. That terminology only shows up in two places in the unabridged New Attestation. One time in First John and ane time in the Second John, but not in the Book of Revelation itself. The other terminology that [is] sometimes thought to be in Revelation is the Rapture, that is, the snatching away of Christians just at the last moment before the Tribulation occurs. That, likewise, is not actually in the Volume of Revelation itself, that really comes from a passage in First Thessalonians. And so what nosotros have to realize is that in some interpretations of the Book of Revelation--in fact nigh of them--the interpretation is created past bringing things into the Book of Revelation, into its scheme, that are not actually there and reading them equally a kind of a jigsaw puzzle of eschatology and terminal judgment.

What did John look when he talked nigh new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem?

The cease of the Book of Revelation sees a new sky and a new world coming down and a new Jerusalem being established ... . What John seems to exist suggesting in the original meaning of this piece of work is that when the triumph of God comes over the dragon, over the forces of the devil, and the Roman Empire is toppled, a new sky and earth will exist created ... and that'south the kingdom coming on earth. ... [He] predictable a rebuilding of the real city of Jerusalem equally part of this eschatalogic expectation. Then John is looking for Jerusalem to be re-established shortly, a new Temple to be built soon, and for this to be the symbol that God'south kingdom is finally being established on earth, a pure kingdom of goodness in contrast to the kingdom of Satan that has been destroyed in the person of the Roman emperor.

Who was Montanus?

Montanus was a Christian living in the latter one-half of the second century of the Common Era, somewhere between 160 and 180, roughly. He'south from an surface area of mod day Turkey called Phrygia ... . Montanus at some signal comes to the realization that the world is about to cease, or that things are getting bad, just like the Book of Revelation seems to predict. ... What leads him to this? Well, we know in fact that there'southward a massive plague that breaks out in 160. In fact, it's the first time that smallpox enters into the western world just at this time. They don't know what to call it, just they know it's devastating and [it would be] the kind of plague that the Book of Revelation seems to describe.

He takes that and other kind of indicators to suggest that the finish times are about. Montanus believes quite literally that Jesus is returning soon and will inaugurate a thousand twelvemonth reign on globe. ... He seemed to expect that literally a new Jerusalem would descend physically out of heaven and land on a mountain top in central Turkey at his own town ... . Needless to say, it didn't quite happen that fashion but, nonetheless, a number of followers were attracted to it.

Montanism lasted for several hundred more than years as one of the forms of Christianity that a lot of people knew. It was considered, of course, heresy. It was stamped out at diverse times only information technology remained fairly popular in certain regions of the empire for quite a long time. For 1 matter, Montanism took very seriously this radical anti-worldly stance that the Book of Revelation makes central to its agreement: don't requite in to the world, resist the Roman empire, stand apart as the righteous remnant of God. ...

The key indicate is John'southward Revelation is non mainstream, and, right from the beginning, was rather seen equally subversive to authority, and a dangerous book, isn't that how it was seen?

Yes. John'south antagonism towards the Roman Empire is non a view that other Christians felt very clearly. ... His view was destructive of authority, whether information technology is political authority or ecclesiastical dominance. Montanus is a skilful instance of someone who takes information technology and continues to apply it equally a destructive outlook. The response, of course, is that that's a heresy confronting Christianity and not adequate within the church building. ... Montanus is probably the first example that we tin can run into clearly in Christian history--but nosotros'll encounter a lot more of them later on--of someone who comes and reads this book, takes it very literally, just says that, "The predictions of John are just now coming to fulfillment in my twenty-four hour period, and if that's the case and because I empathize this, I am conveying on the tradition. I accept the key to unlock the revelation and I am an agent of God'southward plan to bring the globe to an stop." We notice that down to very recent times with some one similar a David Koresh who sees himself as a new messiah figure carrying on the tradition just as in the Revelation of John. ...

The various misinterpretations of the Revelation of John did non stop with the feel of Montanus. Roughly a century later, in the heart of the third century, we accept another outbreak of literalistic interpretation. It all seems to take begun around the year 246 when the thousandth anniversary of the Roman Empire was going to be celebrated. This was going to be a massive celebration in many, many cities round the empire. The majestic cult was in full swing, and the cities were being rebuilt and it was [going to] be a adept party. But it was also a political party at the thousandth year, and that combined with another elements, seems to take prompted some Christians, especially in the Eastern part of the empire to say, "Peradventure this is the result that John was talking about in Revelation." ...

Within simply a couple of years afterward the thousandth ceremony of the founding of Rome, something else begins to happen that sparks Christians' attention. The Emperor Decius proclaims an empirewide sacrifice, and this actually is the effect that for the very first time will be the occasion of persecution of Christians throughout the empire. All Christians are expected to sacrifice or be liable to imprisonment or death. So the question will be--volition they sacrifice to the emperor or remain faithful to Christ? And then, in the low-cal of that kind of expectation of what they should exercise, reading it now in the context of the Revelation of John, on the heels of the starting time time a one thousand becomes a significant number in their experience, some people at least in the Eastern part of the empire brainstorm to say, "Wait a minute, this looks similar things that John predicts for the end of fourth dimension."

So the signs become even more clear from their perspective. Not only is there persecution, in that location'due south another plague that breaks out in this period. Then the Emperor Decius goes on a campaign in the eastern provinces and is actually killed by the Persians. Some people were glad and say the Persian army is kind of resembling the locusts described in the Revelation of John. ...

Fifty years after the persecution by Decius, another persecution breaks out ... the Slap-up Persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, and it runs roughly from 303 to 313 CE. Information technology'southward the 1 time really where at that place is not just a proscription of Christianity, large arrests of Christians and martyrdom of quite a number, but even destruction of church buildings. It's at the stop of this that Constantine the Bang-up will come up forrad and not only defeat some of the other imperial claimants but will too and so turn effectually and declare Christianity a legitimate organized religion of the Roman Empire. ...

Every bit long as the empire was pagan, Rome could be an historical stand up in for Babylon. After all, that's what the text of apocalypse says. The awkwardness for Christianity, with its own apocalyptic heritage, comes with Christianity's political success. When Constantine converts to one, think, but one form of Christianity ... in 312, from the perspective of John, the writer of Apocalypse, the beast has entered the church. But from the betoken of view of Eusebius, 1 of Constantine's Bishops, information technology'south God's working in history. It's the revelation of the messianic peace that Isaiah talked virtually. From Eusebius' perspective--I mean we're used to thinking of the empire being Christian, they weren't, it but happened in their lifetime--this is an unthinkable thought and notwithstanding it occurs.

Then Eusebius, looking at these traditional apocalyptic texts, knows that the traditional apocalyptic reading has to be wrong, considering now the empire is Christian. ...The empire isn't God's opponent, and therefore, interpretations that wait at these text as speaking about God defeating the evil empire of Rome are conspicuously incorrect interpretations, because now God's servant is himself the emperor.

So what Eusebius will do is, he'due south 1 of a number of Christians who begin to discredit an apocalyptic frame of mind, now that Christianity, in a sense, with the consolidation of ability nether Constantine, settles downwards into history. Apocalypticism, for people who are prepared to settle down into history, is something that is old fashioned, is clearly wrong and is therefore heresy.

Is at that place a motion to exclude Apocalypse from the New Attestation?

The Book of the Apocalypse has a checky career in the history of the New Testament canon. Canons themselves are local. In some places in the empire, Apocalypse is in the drove, in other places information technology isn't. ... Different cities accept different gospels, and there is no central power, so there is no single agreed upon canon. What y'all get when you have the Constantinian revolution is a principled opposition to the Book of Apocalypse. Once the weight of communities decide that the volume is going to exist kept in the collection, then your option is no longer to drop the text, your option is to reinterpret it, and that's what people exercise next.

When does John's view of the Roman Empire, the evil empire, go most in conflict, if you lot like, with the majority of Christianity? When does it get a real embarrassment?

The apostle Paul, in Romans xiii, advocated obedience to Rome. And advocated living quietly in peace with non-Christians in the Roman Empire. John advocated resistance. Other letters in the New Attestation advocated peaceful coexistence. So John's book was likely controversial all through the fourth dimension that Christians were not an officially recognized or legitimate group. One time Christianity became legitimate, and recognized by Constantine, then the Book of Revelation was a problem. Because one didn't desire to insult the city of Rome or the Roman emperor. And it's very interesting the reinterpretation that occurred at that time. Instead of being read as a dichotomy between God and Christ as ruling in sky, and somewhen on earth, and this evil Roman power on earth in the concurrently, there came to be a compilation of the two. That the Roman emperor came to be seen every bit a representative of Christ. And Christ came to be understood every bit, every bit ruling on earth through the current political system.

Who was Augustine?

		st. augustine

Probably more than any other figure of the early Christian period, Augustine of Hippo is one of the leading thinkers ... . His importance really cannot be underestimated for the reshaping of Christian tradition. Information technology is largely to the work of the Augustine that nosotros owe the fact that the Revelation of John is fifty-fifty in the New Attestation at all.

How did that come up most?

Augustine ... adopted the Book of Revelation partly considering information technology had been so troublesome and its identify needed to be stabilized. And partly because information technology helped him solve some other theological dilemmas that he was wrestling with in his own studies. So around 393, 394 it seems at that place were several councils that were being convened in his own region where debates ... with people who believed in greater degree of gratuitous will and other kinds of theological issues were all taking identify. And during this context of these councils the decision on which books to use in the New Testament as the authority, behind which all other Christian theology would exist worked out, came upwards. Augustine championed using the Book of Revelation within the New Attestation, bold, as others had, that it was actually written by the Apostle John, therefore conveying authority. ...

What Augustine does past helping put the Volume of Revelation in the Bible really accomplishes two things. One, he provides what volition become, at least eventually, the normative reinterpretation of the book by reading all of the symbolism in it as but that, symbolism and non literal history. Now, that doesn't happen overnight, but his view is the ane that volition eventually comport the day throughout most of later Christian tradition.

The second thing that he does in canonizing the Book of Revelation is they put information technology at the finish of the New Testament, and this too has a very significant symbolic force. Considering at the end of the Book of Revelation, we have a strong alarm, "Y'all may not add to or take abroad from any thing in this book." Now originally in the Book of Revelation that refers to the revelation that John himself saw--write it, seal it, don't exercise annihilation more with information technology, information technology's over. Simply when you have that put it at the cease of the New Testament, it has the double force of proverb John'due south revelation of the end is sealed up but also this is the finish of the New Testament, there will no longer be any time to come revelations from God that volition stand up alongside of the New Testament itself. ...

But doesn't putting this volume correct at the end suggest that the cease of the world is yet to come?

In Augustine'south reinterpretation of the Book of Revelation what this actually does is to say that the symbolism, all the vivid elements that some people before had been taking literally, none of them were literal. He did non believe in a literal thousand year reign. He did not believe in a literal figure that would come every bit a kind of Antichrist or any thing like that. What he says essentially is that all of that ... is actually nigh the church, it's the church that is the thousand year reign of Christ on world, start at the resurrection of Jesus himself. And the symbolic thousand years will come to finish merely when Christ returns at the cease of the world and takes the kingdom away to heaven ... .

What finally forced Augustine to this much more spiritualising or symbolic interpretation of the Volume of Revelation is not only that he was facing heresy and he was having difficulties with people who thought it was coming any day, simply another major political event that occurred in the year 410 when the Visigoths, under Alaric, actually sacked the city of Rome. The city of Rome, that had been [thought of] since the days of Constantine as now being the protectors of the church building, the ones who would make the church building the kingdom on earth, had failed. And Augustine looks at the destruction of Rome kind of like the destruction of Jerusalem for an earlier generation and says, "How could this happen?" His response is as he writes in his very important work, the City of God, is to realize that the metropolis of Rome [is not], and indeed no political entity is, the true city of God. The city of God is the church. And it's only that city that will be preserved inviolable until the end of time when Christ comes in judgment... . For Augustine, then, the city of God, the church, is the new Jerusalem on earth and anticipates the final new Jerusalem in heaven. ...

The crucial term in Augustine's estimation is he sees, in the Volume of Revelation itself, that at that place are 2 resurrections. The 1 resurrection that comes at the beginning of the m year reign and another resurrection when Christ comes again and establishes the new Jerusalem. Augustine. though, takes that to mean the first resurrection is when ane is born into the church. For him, symbolically the yard yr kingdom on earth is the church, and so when you're going into the church building that'south your spiritual resurrection into the kingdom. But the second resurrection will exist the 1 that comes at the end of the world, when Christ literally does come over again and ... establishes finally his new heavenly kingdom.

	hildegard's depiction of the last judgment

For Augustine, the new Jerusalem is explicitly and exclusively a heavenly Jerusalem, not an earthly one. To join Christ there is to arise into heaven. But before one tin do that must come the resurrection and the judgment by Christ. He then takes the story of the judging between the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 where Jesus sits in judgment ... and says that's the scene that will take identify when Christ comes again to plant the terminal kingdom at the end of the world. Is there any reference to judgment in the Volume of Revelation?

... Augustine uses the sense of a concluding resurrection and a final judgment as we observe it in the Book of Revelation, especially in chapter 21, as the occasion we're talking near: Christ coming at the terminate of the earth to judge the quick and the dead.

How important was Augustine'southward decision almost the final judgment?

For the residual of Christian history, this notion of a final judgment at the stop of the earth where Christ himself comes dorsum to sit enthroned and read out judgment to the good likewise as to the evil, will become the major expectation of all Christianity thereafter. And [the] Augustine synthesis really is the one that establishes that connectedness for later Christianity.

How has the Volume of Revelation been interpreted through Christian history?

The complexity of the structure of the book and the difficulty of interpreting it is something that many Christians take tried to deal with throughout the subsequent centuries. In function, it is maybe even more problematic considering the expectations of John of an imminent overthrow of the Roman Empire within merely three and a half years didn't come to pass. The Roman Empire lasted for a great deal longer, and then how do nosotros understand this? How did Christians recollect about it, in the light of the fact that this claims to be a revelation from God himself given to John ... ?

Essentially nosotros can recollect well-nigh the unlike ways that this book has been interpreted in Christian history every bit breaking out into two bones categories. First, symbolic interpretations [in which] all of the images, all of the elements in the story of John are only symbols of the experiences of the Christian Church building throughout its history, merely with no specific implication for time. This is actually the view that will exist taken by Saint Augustine, that at that place is nil predicted in absolute historical terms anywhere in the Book of Revelation; it is all mere symbolism. It is also one of the common modes of estimation that is popular amid many Christians today. ...

The other style of interpretation is what we might call a literalist mode, where information technology is causeless that at least some events in the Volume of Revelation are literal historical events that have played themselves out in homo history, or will practise so. There are basically three types of this literalist reading of the book. The kickoff is what nosotros might call the continuous historical literalism. It assumes that some events described in the Volume of Revelation really took place in John'southward day, just that other events will carry on in future history down to some later period of time, in fact, downwards fifty-fifty to the finish of the world. And then they would look at, let's say, current events of their ain twenty-four hours, whether it's in the menstruum of the Crusades or in the menstruum of the Protestant Reformation or even downwards into the nineteenth and twentieth century, as existence fulfillment of what John predicted way dorsum at the end of the commencement century. This is a mode of interpretation that we find quite a lot in the Middle Ages and in the Reformation menstruation. It'due south somewhat less used these days, but it is still around and it tends to wait at, especially, the end of the earth, as the kind of final result that's described in the Book of Revelation and also the thousand year reign, when Christ will dominion, as another primal and very literal feel. ...

Another mode of literalist interpretation is what is referred to every bit the futurist school. The futurist would say that nothing in the Volume of Revelation past chapter 4 has yet been fulfilled. Everything is coming in the hereafter, and virtually of it is in the concluding days earlier the eschaton itself, before the return of Christ and before the beginning of a literal thousand year reign on earth. So this school of estimation sees all of the afterwards cloth every bit something that we're watching for. What'due south been very important about this particular schoolhouse is it looks ahead for signs so that we know when the clock will begin ticking. ...

So the third kind of literalist interpretation is one that says that all the events in the Book of Revelation are literally historically truthful, just that almost all of them have been completed in the past, either in John's day or within the early years of Christian history, with the possible exception of the end of the world itself. Now it's this last interpretation where most scholarship on the New Testament in early Christian history actually is located. Almost all the scholars would say that either John was talking explicitly about his ain days and had a very express expectation of the future, or that the Revelation of John was predicting events, basically down to the time of Constantine and nothing beyond except for an expectation of the end of the world. ...

What is the key message of the Book of Revelation?

		Collins is a Professor of the Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School. (more than about Collins)

With a book similar the Volume of Revelation, you will inevitably have several primal messages depending on the angle from which you expect at them. Some people run into it primarily every bit a political statement, where the fundamental bulletin is resistance to tyranny, as exemplified in that case by the ability of Rome. Other people would see it as a more spiritual book where the accent is on the end product, where everybody gets to sing like the angels in heaven and where detachment from this globe is the central point of it. I suppose yous would have to say that the central message encompasses both of these. That on the one manus there is in that location a rather terrifying vision of this world, as a place that is brutal, where vicious powers are allow loose, only also and then that sees this world in perspective, where the powers of this world are passing away, and I suppose I would say at the end of that is the basic message of the book. That the powers of this world, no matter how terrifying they may be, are passing abroad and that in the cease righteousness and justice will prevail. ...

To what extent is the Book of Revelation a political tract?

Well, in the ancient world, when early Christians were interpreting the book, there was i group who read it every bit having to exercise with this globe and who read the messianic reign every bit having to exercise with a pleasure, with a great feasting and fulfillment of the promises, advantage for the faithful, and this involved the downfall of Rome. And there were others who thought that that kind of reading was unworthy. It was too material, likewise self centered, and they were the ones who initiated what we would call an allegorical reading, as a struggle between good and evil in general, not good and evil in particular. In [that] sense the book is a political tract. And I think that'south one of the strengths of the mod fundamentalist readings. Hal Lindsey and his ilk. They see that it's almost politics, whereas the more spiritual mainline church reading misses that aspect.

Is the Volume of Apocalypse a unique work?

The Book of Revelation is not a unique book. Information technology does vest to a tradition of apocalyptic writing, which began in Judaism in the 2d Temple period. And so the Book of Daniel would exist the only other apocalypse in the catechism, but there were many other books from virtually the same period that shared this literary grade in this perspective. ... The prophetic books are based on the idea that God selects certain man beings to speak to and to send them out as spokespeople for God. The typical literary form of a prophetic book is an oracle. "Thus says the Lord." And then an announcement of God'due south give-and-take. It might be an announcement of judgment, or an declaration of salvation, or an admonition, an ethical admonition. And the apocalypses tend to be less straightforward. Less a simple declaration of God's words spoken to an private, and more complicated, more of a narrative. And apocalypse is a kind of narrative account of how revelation came to the seer.

When some people hear the word prophetic, they think it means something in the futurity, what's going to happen next.

Prophecy and apocalypticism share a hope on the future, and theologically speaking, in the twentieth century, many mainstream or liberal pastors and theologians have argued that prophecy is not primarily prediction of the future, information technology'southward much more an advocacy of certain moral positions. For instance social justice for the poor. But I think that prediction of the hereafter is an of import element in prophecy. ... That's not all they are, but that'southward an of import element.

And John's Apocalypse is in some sense prophetic in the usual sense of the give-and-take.

John's Apocalypse as well relates to the future, but not a hereafter historical consequence. ... The Volume of Revelation has come to be read as prophesying the events of the finish of history. A general resurrection, a general judgment and a new historic period. ...

Can you describe the way in which some people, literalists if that's the right word, read the book quite literally?

On the one hand the Book of Revelation I think needs to be taken seriously as grappling with history and with actual events, only a fundamentalist or dispensationalist reading tends to impose a schemer on the text that isn't there. I would say that [with] Hal Lindsey, for example ... the trouble is not so much that he reads it literally, is that he reads it in a kind of apartment style. That he sees the images equally simply code linguistic communication for certain events in the hereafter, and misses the overtones of symbol and myth.

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