There is an ancient battlefield in the modern state of Israel called Megiddo. It was celebrated in an exultant victory song by the prophetess Deborah as the place where kings fought but gained no spoils of war. It was remembered more soberly as the place where Josiah the Devout, the sixteenth king of Judah, was fatally wounded by the soon-to-be-defeated Pharaoh Neco. By the time of the prophet Zechariah it was a byword for anguish and the bitter harvest of battle.
But its greatest notoriety derives from an event yet to come, which some believe is imminent and others say will never happen. Armageddon, the mount of Megiddo, the hill of plagues, is the most famous name in the history of the future. It has come to mean disaster beyond repair, the final conflict in which defeat is guaranteed to all.
And that is only part of the story. Armageddon, no matter how terrifying, is only a fragment of a larger vision unique in the Bible for the savagery of its warnings and the ferocity of its promises. The final battleground belongs to the book of Revelation, the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible, which weaves an intricate web of allegory, hidden meanings and cryptic numbers to entrap mans instinctive fear of a future doom and turn it into irrational hope.
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There are many mysteries in the book of Revelation, with its horsemen and its whore, its seven-headed beast, and its woman clothed with the sun. It is a journey into the beginning of eternity and to the end of time. It starts in a cave on the island of Patmos where John the Divine saw the past and the future rolled into the present:
I John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lords day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, `Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamun and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.`Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the golden girdle round his breast; his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters; in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, `Fear not, Iam the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Now write what you see, what is and what is to take place hereafter...' (Revelation 1:9-19 )
It is still possible to visit the cave, now called Aghia Anna, where John looked upon an emerald rainbow and a crystal sea. The cave of the vision is surrounded by the plain ramble of a whitewashed monastery. The spot where John's head lay, while his mind was full of monsters, trumpet calls and a new Jerusalem, is encircled by a simple band of metal. The only other feature in the cave is a desk formed out of the natural rock where, according to the local monks, John's disciple Prochoros took down some of the most unfathomable dictation ever given.
John tells his readers that he has been exiled on Patmos for preaching the word of God. That much fits with historical possibility. Exile was a favourite punishment for troublemakers, and Patmos with its deadly barrenness was a favourite place for dumping political exiles throughout the 1st century AD. That is where historical certainly ends. Until 250 AD there was no doubt that John the Divine was John the son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and the only disciple credited with achieving a non-violent death. Jerome says that John survived into extreme old age. Finally, unable to preach, he had to be carried to services and would just say, `Love one another, that is enough'. Irenaeus, one of the best theologians of the 2nd century, knew people who had known John the Beloved in his last years in Ephesus, and was sure of Revelations apostolic authorship. Melito of Sardis, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Hippolytus all shared that conviction.
But the book has always attracted controversy. Luther and Erasmus did not like it. The heretical sect, the Alogi, found its teaching too harsh and so attributed its authorship to Cerinthus, another heretic. The most reasoned doubter was the 3rd century Dioysius of Alexandria, who pointed out quite rightly that the book bore little resemblance to the style of the Gospel of John. So either the book of Revelation was written by John the Divine, not an apostle, a Jewish Christian with detailed knowledge of Asia Minor who happened to fall foul of Rome and ended up in exile on Patmos.
Whatever the doubt about the authorship there was never any doubt about the identity of the vision-bearer, the one like the Son of Man with eyes like flame and a two-edged sword issuing from his mouth. John was certain it was the Word of God, present at the beginning of time, present at its end and made visible to him as the risen glorified Christ whose words are like the sword of wisdom brought down on a corrupt age.
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But which corrupt age? When precisely was the Patmos vision written down? According to Dr Sophie Laws, the generally held view is that it was in the reign of the Emperor Domitian at the end of the 1st century. This is not just a guess by 2oth century scholars. It was stated as early as the 2nd century by Irenaeus, and there is a good deal to support it. The book anticipates an attack on the Christian communities launched by the Roman State, and part of that attack comes through the consistent demand of the state that the emperor, who represents the state, should be worshipped. It is emperor-worship that provokes the crisis for the churches, and we know that the emperor Domitian towards the end of his reign did go off his head and required to be addressed as God. The cities of Asia Minor responded enthusiastically to this hint. A massive temple was built to Domitian, the living god, in Ephesus, a city very much associated with John. We may imagine the impact on a 1st century Asian Christian of the erection of this massive temple on the main street of Ephesus, which was to contain a statue of the emperor as god about seven metres high. Imagine the shock, the emotional and religious horror, of being confronted with that in your own city, your own province. What the state is requiring is the worship of a living man as god. What the church is developing is the worship of a man who lived and died and rose again. There is a head-on religious collision here.
The book of Revelation is about more than the clash between a madman's empire and a kingdom which belongs to fools and children. However much he loathed Rome and all it stood for, John does not begin on a note of self-righteous hostility. His vision opens with a practical, and at times critical, message for the Church itself. With a voice like rushing water, the figure of the glorified Christ warns seven local Christian communities in what is now Turkey about their imminent trials and past failings.
The church at Pergamun, he says, must stand firm against false teaching. The church at Thyatira has been beguiled by a prophetess as corrupt as the evil Jezebel. The Christians of Ephesus, Sardis and Laodicea must revive their lukewarm love and compromised faith. Only the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia are praised for their energy and belief.
These messages to local churches pave the way for a more startling vision. John describes nothing less than the majesty of God who is older than time. Heaven shines more brightly than the most precious jewels known to man. It is more fragrant than incense burning in golden bowls and at its centre angels and elders worship not a symbol of power but a sacrificial lamb bearing the wounds of death conquered. From beneath the altar of the Lamb, the souls of the martyrs cry for vengeance.
Is such imagery with its insistence on revenge completely Christian? Is it a throwback to Daniel and to the more violent visions which comforted the Jews persecuted a hundred and sixty years before Jesus was born? Dr Carroll thinks that though it may look like a throwback it is more than that. When you are facing the Romans (and, he points out, they were not Christian gentlemen, in spite of what Paul writes in Romans), you need something stronger than `the magistrates are ordained of God'. You need something very much stronger. The old visions that were created to oppose the Greek invasion were revitalised in Christian terms. So the slain lamb leads his people against the enemy and defeats them, and Rome ends up in ruins. That goes right back to the attacks on Baal in Isaiah and Jeremiah. It is almost unchanged, and clearly represents a deep need. It is important either to believe that your enemies are going to suffer or to entertain visions in which they do, because, even if they do not, at least you still have the visions to keep you warm at night, or in prison, or at the stake. It is a way of transforming and giving a voice to those who now have no power.
But why was it necessary to express comfort to the persecuted in such arcane and terrifying language? John paints a nightmare canvas of the disasters which alone will loosen mankind's grip on this world. He promises a future at the mercy of conquest, war, famine and death - the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
For Professor Dun the problem of the interpretation of this vision is the mirror image of a question posed much earlier in the Bible. When you come to the New Testament equivalent of Genesis, he says, which is the book of Revelation - the end, as Genesis is the beginning - you have the same problems, as in Genesis, there is a dispute about how you understand the language, so in Revelation you have the problem of how to understand the symbols and the bizarre imagery. Christians have had widely divergent views on that for centuries.
From its earliest days there has been contention over the book of Revelation. Many have felt that its description of the last days, when the sun would turn as black as death and the moon as red as blood, and the sky would vanish and the mountains move, was too brutal and fantastic to be included in the New Testament. However logical its position at the end of the Bible may seem to us now, after generations of scholars have explored its symbolism and its promise of a tree of life which would undo the harm of the tree of knowledge, Sophie Laws believes that John was allowed the last Biblical word by default, not by human design.
It is an accident of history she says, that Revelation is at the end of the Bible. It is because so many people of a more scholarly turn of mind felt uncomfortable with it. Although they were bound, by its popularity, to include it in the Bible, they tucked it as far away as they could. It is a book that people either read obsessively, and know everything about, or have never touched. It is an unloving book. There are only two references to the love of God or Christ in the whole of its twenty-one chapters. On the other hand, it is a salutary book. It leaves one at the end of the Bible regarding this world as provisional, and it is perhaps as well to end on a note of discomfort.
John sees a dying world where power has become meaningless and even kings and great men lie cowering in caves and rocky fortresses longing to be no more. For those from the tribe of old Israel, and those from the new Israel gathered from all the nations, all that will matter is the seal of faith, the only guarantee of a new life beyond the horror of a ravaged earth. When the final seal on the scroll of destiny is broken by the Lamb, there is even silence in heaven.
How can modern theologians swallow John's vision? Is not Jesus the healer, who taught his friends how to pray, all but obliterated in Johns vision of a Lamb transformed into a symbol, not of gentleness, but of fearsome majesty? Dr Thiselton says that Christ is actually prominent in the book of Revelation, but it is not the pre-resurrection Christ of the Gospel stories, it is the living Christ through whom God rules his church. So Christ is there, but not as we see him in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
John was not the only one to believe that the world will come to a sudden and violent end. It was an intuition shared by the Gospel writers. In Mark, Jesus warns of a time of wars and rumours of wars. Famine and earthquake will herald the beginning of the end. In Matthew, Jesus says that false Messiahs and false prophets and the coldness of men's hearts will be a sign of the close of the age. Death, in the final days, according to Luke, will be unpredictable and certain. The last days will be beyond human understanding, coming, says the writer of Peter's second letter, like a thief in the night.
John the Divine tries to prepare his readers for the worst that persecution or disaster can throw at them. He gives his imagination free and fruitful rein. In the last days seven trumpets will announce three woes. The natural world will be destroyed. Trees will be shrivelled up by fire, the sea will turn to blood, the fresh water of rivers will be polluted, the sky will be darkened by smoke from a bottomless pit, monstrous locusts will ravage the earth and horsemen armed like the Parthian cavalry, riding beasts with lions heads and serpents tails, will cut a swathe of destruction through men longing for death. No matter how fevered John's imaginings, Professor Dunn believes they are necessary for the balance of the Christian message. It is, he says, recognition of the wholeness of the human person and human society. We cannot simply function on the level of the mind and body. There is an element of imagination, and it is important for any religion, for Christianity in particular, to have scope for that imagination, that ability to perceive and speak in a vision, because it is operating on a different level from the purely cerebral.
Nowadays we are more cerebrally inclined. Geologists, astronomers and ecologists who explore John's world of the final days are read compulsively. Doom is a best seller. Theological naivety may have replaced John's scientific naivety and his paranoid hatred of the Roman emperors who killed believers and counterfeited divinity, but the impulse of fear and curiosity is the same. There are times when John seems more mad than inspired, but his vision of the end has a fascination which has outlasted the more tangible successes of his enemies.
Dr Carroll says that the apocalyptic strand is always topical. Some people think the centre of the old Bible is the apocalyptic part, the exodus. There is something to be said for the apocalyptic, because it allows people to go to the Emperor, like the old Quakers who would wear their hats in the presence of the King and say: `ok you can get us now, but we will get you in the end'.
When John saw his vision, the world annihilation he promised could only be the figment of fanatical imagination. It is an index of mans shame, not of Johns clairvoyant skill, that in this century we recognise total destruction as something within mankind's ability. For all his violent foreboding, John never foresaw that human ingenuity could make the four horsemen of the Apocalypse redundant. John planted his feet on the threshold of eternity. That means he belonged to the present not the future. He was firmly rooted in the first century AD and his aim was to bolster the Christian community battered by a hostile empire. But why should anyone think that images of terror be encouraging? Dr Thiselton believes that much of the message of the Revelation is that, as far as God is sovereign, questions about judgement belong to God. The book of Revelations never says that Christians should make judgements. It says that Christians may be confident that the world and history are in Gods hands. There are some very beautiful passages in the boo: for instance, the passage about the river of the water of life that flows on the tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
Much of the violence in Revelation belonged specifically to John's own age. When he speaks of a woman clothed with the sun giving birth to a child, he is drawing on the Jewish tradition of the Holy Spirit as mother overlaid with the metaphor of chosen Israel as Gods bride. The child is the Messiah, but there theology ends.
The monsters who are its enemies are only thinly disguised. They represent all the powers who have persecuted the Jews and Christians from Nebuchadnezzar to Nero. John is anxious that his meaning will be clear. The monster seals people on the hand or the head with the number 666, the mark of the beast, described by John as a human number. In ancient times letters were used as numbers. John's clue would have been obvious to anyone familiar with Hebrew or Aramaic. 666 is Neron Kaisar: that is, Nero the Emperor.
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So is there a case for using John the Divine merely as a coded commentary on the past? The Rev. Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority, disagrees. He believes that Revelation contains the message of an escape route for believers. He believes that it is basically a prophetic book. Chapter 1 deals with the past. Chapter 2 and 3 deal with the present, with what is going on today through the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The seven churches of Asia Minor each represent a particular time period in church history. Chapters 4 to 22 have to do with the future. Many, he says, believe that when Jesus comes, all who have ever believed in him as Lord and Saviour and who have accepted the cleansing power of the blood of Christ shed at Calvary will be caught up to be with the Lord. Then will begin seven years of tribulation on earth, described in chapters 6 to 19 as an awful and terrible time. During that time God will purge the earth and prepare it for the establishment of his kingdom. The Second Coming of Christ, says Falwell, is in two phases. First, at the beginning of the seven-year tribulation period, Christ will come to carry away or rapture his church. At the end of it he will return to earth with his glorified church. He will sit upon the throne of his ancestor David and reign in perfect peace for 1000 years.
Many fundamentalists, particularly in the United States, believe that they will avoid the death-throes of the earth and will return after the world carnage to enjoy 1000 years of peace - a dangerous thought in people whose government has a nuclear capacity.
Was John seeing things he could not understand? Is it significant that the literal translation of Chernobyl is `wormwood', the falling star that makes water bitter? Was John predicting World War III? Sophie Laws thinks not. John, she says, speaks in images. He is not concerned to provoke the imagination. He does not believe that the world will end simply as a result of human wickedness. He does not accept that man can destroy the world by being wicked. He believes that the world will end because God will vindicate his own people against human wickedness. What brings the end of the world is Gods redemption of his own.
Revelation concludes with a vision of the new heaven and the new earth and a vision of a future life in the presence of God. That message of a new life has also been interpreted at an individual level. For believers, the last things will stand on the brink of eternity. Over the years there has been much debate about Johns precise meaning. After Armageddon John paints a lurid picture of a whore dressed in scarlet and adorned with gold and pearls. She rides a seven-headed beast and, in the manner of the prostitutes of ancient Rome, she bears her name written on her forehead. She is Babylon the Great, the Mother of Abominations: at one level a byword for occultism and materialism, at another the Jewish apocalyptic codeword for `Rome'.
Down the centuries Christians have accorded each other the dubious privilege of identification with Babylon. Anti-Christ and the False Prophet, the other two members of John's satanic trinity, are constantly being re-identified. Indeed our own century, disfigured by Nazism, has provided all too convincing contenders. John's message is ultimately victorious: Christ will return and conquer all that is evil.
The book of Revelation is constantly being re-interpreted. Is there any way we can pinpoint the events it describes? Jerry Falwell believes that we cannot be certain that we are not living in the last days. Jesus warns us, he says, against date setting. He specifically tells us that no man knows the day or hour. Those in the past who have presumptuously set dates have all been embarrassed. However, he says, we are given certain signs of the Lords return. One is the re-gathering of the Jewish people into the land of Israel, which since 1948 has been a reality. Another is the increase of knowledge and travel - the past hundred years have seen a dramatic revolution in communication and transport. As Jesus said, we can know the times and the seasons, but not the day or the hour, so that it is right to preach that the Lords coming is imminent, that he could come at any time, and we should live and work as though we were planning for the next generation. We should plan and establish equity and peace on earth for our children and our children's children, but we should also live with a consciousness that this may be the crowning day when we meet the Lord face to face.
John's warnings about false prophets and fraudulent religion have turned the Bible itself into part of the Armageddon armoury. One American professor has gone so far as to maintain that the Anti-Christ will be somebody like Professor Albert Schweitzer, who will convincingly throw doubt on the literal truth of the Bible. An untenable view, according to Professor Barr at Oxford, who argues that if you take every word in the Old Testament literally you will prove that it is not true, because there are many things within one part of the Old Testament, or within one part of the New Testament, which do not agree exactly and literally with some other part.
There is all the difference in the world between taking the Bible seriously and understanding every word mechanically. If literalism were taken to its logical conclusion, no translations, or variants of the Bible should be allowed. Jerry Falwell believes in the inheritancy and infallibility of scripture. With so many translations, words may be different; but in the general meaning and intention of most of the translations, they are all quite accurate. The Bible, he says, can be relied upon whether it is speaking to theology, geology, biology, history, or any other study.
There is a middle way of interpretation - of evaluating each book in the Bible and developing preferences and priorities. But Clive Calver, General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, thinks there are dangers behind this picking and choosing. Many people try to do that, he says, and they are very good at it. One of the difficulties is that the Bible actually claims that it is a totality of content, that the Old and New Testaments go together and that the stories contained within the Bible are a coherent unity. The Bible claims that it speaks as a single entity, and therefore you cannot pick and choose. He believes that the events described did take place, and that what we have in the Bible is men speaking what they understood to be the word of God as the Holy Spirit inspired them. But critical belief is not such impossibility. Dr Thiselton says that the analogy is the difference between the reader and the critic. There is a sense in which the critic is making judgements and assessments. They are not the same activity, but the student who is also a person of faith combines the two roles. We might call him a critical reader. He is both a reader and a critic. `I want to say of myself, Iam both a Biblical critic and a Christian believer. I find no contradiction between those two things'
Many early Christians, including John, felt that the last days were at hand. Our own last days, always are. The last book of the Bible looks forward beyond death to a new heaven and a new earth, where mans wickedness has burnt itself out, and day and night are no more. In the final chapter John the visionary points to a paradise restored where the tree of life heals all the wounds of a tree of knowledge - where there is no need for a temple or a church because everything is alright with the living God.
The message behind John's nightmare vision is one of peace. A place called Armageddon is not the last staging-post of the Bible journey. The destination of those who walk from Eden's garden is a new city, which John calls the heavenly Jerusalem.
See: http://www.templeinstitute.org/current-events/RedHeifer/index.html
There have been some red heifers in the past, but they turned out to become flawed by a single white hair or something else. Our non-believing Orthodox Jewish brothers and sisters await a flawless Kosher red Heifer to sacrifice for the ashes that they will put in their mikvahs for the priest to go down into so they will be ceremonially clean.
Then they can go up on the Temple mount and commence the laying of the cornerstone for the third Temple (Ezekiel's Temple) and the building of the altar for the daily sacrifices.
This will consitute the beginning of said third Temple and that officially, to the Orthodox Jews, brings in the Messianic Era....
Now for us what does this mean? ....
The covenant that is confirmed by many for seven years will also be making way for this Temple to be built. This begins the last seven years before Yahushua (Jesus Christ) returns! I estimate that we are within five years of this all commencing and the anti-annointed one taking his seat in the rebuilt Temple and declaring himself to be Elohim (God). What exciting times we are living in!
The mayhem before he comes back will go something like this.... The Temple begins and Israel welcomes a Messiah (the false one). 3 1/2 years will pass and then the abomination that makes the Temple desolate (mentioned in both Daniel and Revelation) happens and then the last 3 1/2 years of the 7 year period is the time called the "Great Tribulation". Yahushua said there will not have been such great tribulation ever seen upon this earth before.
It is my personal belief that during this time non-Torah observant Christianity will be suffering greatly and not knowing why.
Then after the tribulation of those days (Matt. 24:29) the sign of Yahushua's coming will appear. He'll come down and ressurect those who are dead in Him and then we will be changed in a moment. From there I guess it's off to the battle of Armageddon? and then the marriage supper of the lamb that many think regular Christians may not be able to be a part of because their garments are spotted because of saying the Torah was nailed to the cross and they didn't have to obey it. Truly, Yahushua said not one Jot or Tittle shall pass from the Law till all things be fulfilled. It won't be too much longer and all things will be fulfilled.
wooooowhoooo!