Apocalypse always: the persistent relevance of the book of Revelation
We are living in it
I’ve regained an unapologetic appreciation of the book of Revelation. Current events, of course, have played some part in this. It’s impossible (at least, it is for me) to read the book right now without applying it to the Iranian war, the Epstein horror show and the linked revelation (not that it was ever a carefully guarded secret) that our “democracies” are enthralled to the whims of insane billionaires and what are absurdly called “elites,” AI and intrusive mass surveillance technology, the delusional mad-scientist cult of “Transhumanism,” and the ongoing implosion of modern empires and kingdoms and republics, and… well, you get the gist. The book of Revelation speaks to all these things, if not directly then certainly through the perennial themes implicit in it (themes that Peter Thiel, incidentally, has either entirely misunderstood or knowingly twisted to fit his own bizarre notion of what is meant by “the antichrist”). Revelation is relevant because its message is, as I said, perennial, although that understanding of the work would likely have surprised the seer. For some, it’s the book of the Bible that should never have been added (and it was, in fact, a relatively late addition). Some scholars of a socially “progressivist” bent (e.g., John Dominic Crossan) have gone so far as to contrast the (I guess) “nicer” portrait of Jesus they think they see in the four Gospels with the divine warrior Christ of Revelation – a view that is simply untenable, given what Jesus himself actually taught and how he presented himself, as recorded in those Gospels. I used to share a moderate version of that opinion myself, but I no longer can. To put it candidly, to hold that view, where early Christianity is concerned, one must ignore all sorts of external (historical, contextual) and internal (textual) evidence. I’ve long since abandoned it, considering what has been gleaned in recent decades regarding the Second Temple Jewish setting that originally informed Christian thought. It should be noted that Revelation is also sometimes derided because it contains solecisms (meaning grammatical errors, unusual orderings of words, deviations from standard rules of language and syntax). Nevertheless, as many scholars have demonstrated, these “mistakes” were most likely intentional on John’s part.[1] John weaves together an impressively vast number of Old Testament allusions (though he never directly quotes his sources), especially from the Prophetic literature, and it appears that, in so doing, his Greek quite consciously retains a markedly Hebraic cast. In other words, his “errors” weren’t due to sloppiness or an incapacity to write in Greek – a notion belied by the book taken as a whole.[2] So, to cut to the chase, I am drawn anew to this oft-maligned book and its alarmingly perennial significance. What, then, do I mean by its “perennial significance” – a question, to return to my opening thoughts, that unabashedly assumes its relevance for Christians enduring our current civilizational morass?
