Another term that is associated with the Book of Revelation is “Armageddon”. It is a word that means “hill of Megiddo” and refers to the site for the great battle of the end times. John identifies this as the battleground where evil is overcome. At Armageddon, the beast creatures are overcome by Christ. The Roman system of oppression ends, Satan is captured and imprisoned for a thousand years. The weapon that is used to defeat Satan and his minions is the sword of God’s word. This is another battle where the victory is Christ’s and not by force of human weapons or strategy. Peace and justice reigns on Earth. At the end of one thousand years Satan is released from prison and immediately causes trouble once more. This time fire rains from heaven and Satan is destroyed. God’s purposes are ultimately on the side of justice and truth and God wins out in the end.
The Book of Revelation almost didn’t make it into the collection of Christian sacred Scripture we know as the New Testament. If we consider the books that eventually made it into Scripture, there are a few common characteristics. These works are from the early years of the Church and associated in some way with apostolic sources. They were popular and often used in public worship. They were free from what the church leaders considered to be heresy. The Book of Revelation was associated with the Apostle John as its alleged author. It contains many hymns that ended up being part of the liturgy of the Christian community from the first centuries of the church. Further, there is nothing in it that was taken as heretical.
While Revelation met the basic criteria for inclusion in the collection of Scripture, it was the nature of apocalyptic literature that seemed to present the greatest problem. Such literature was not a straight forward presentation of Christian teaching but was highly symbolic. It was a literature that spoke to the heart. It had layer upon layer of meaning and was meant to be interpreted by the listener or reader. This wasn’t a bad thing, as the spiritual literature of the period was expected to be multi-layered with meaning and require a degree of analysis. There were a fair number of very popular Jewish and Christian apocalyptic works floating around at the time which didn’t make it into the official collection of works that made up Scripture.
You may remember from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians that there were different approaches to worship within the Christian community. One approach was a very charismatic, Pentecostal style in which the worshiper was overcome by the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues or gave some spirit mediated teaching meant to benefit the community. Another approach was a staid praying of the psalms, reflection on the Old Testament, a sharing on the stories from the apostles and the letters from Christian leaders. By the middle of the second century the staid approach to liturgy was the norm. Bishops were uncomfortable with the more charismatic approach to worship, as it was much more difficult to control and could be an open door to chaos and heresy in the community.
In a part of the Near East that is modern day Turkey there developed a movement within Christianity known as Montanism. They were very much in the charismatic tradition. There is no clear heresy associated with this group, though the way they did things was very counter-cultural and earned the enmity of many other Christian leaders. For example, there were several women who were among the movement’s leadership. The Book of Revelation was a popular work among the members of this movement, which earned it the suspicion of those who opposed the Montanists. By the fourth century the Montanist controversy had died down. When Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, compiled a list of works that belonged in the New Testament and could be used by the people of his diocese, he included the Book of Revelation. Over the years that list became the de facto listing of official New Testament Scriptures.
If we consider the writings of the Church Fathers regarding the Book of Revelation, they perceived the work as highly symbolic. However, they were close enough in time to the author of the work to be sensitive to the meaning that the author was trying to convey. If there was any controversy, it was over how deep into the symbolism one should dig to get to the meaning. For example, Origen saw the Book of Revelation in the context of a cosmic battle between good and evil but that the battle takes place in the human soul, so that the Book of Revelation was as much a work of psychology and spirituality, as it was about the battle being played out on the stage of human events and history.
By the High Middle Ages (11th and 12th centuries) the emphasis on the symbolic nature of apocalyptic literature, including the Book of Revelation, was being lost in favor of a more literal view of the Book of Revelation as a map of future history. Several factors played into this.
The concept of time was undergoing a change. At the time of the Church Fathers history was a stage on which the great spiritual and psychological struggles were played out. There ws no idea of movement forward toward some goal. We see this in the writings of Origen, Athanasius and Augustine. Even the methods they used to do theology reflect this emphasis on spiritual meaning and an inner search. Their search for the spiritual meaning of the Book of Revelation makes sense in this perspective.
As we move away from this classical period and into the Middle Ages, a sense of history as movement becomes more common. Over time things change. Life in the Middle Ages was very different from life in the classical Roman period; whether it was progress or regress could be debated but it was different. There was also the influence of Islam which viewed history as progressive. If people increasingly saw history as movement through time, then it was not difficult to interpret the Book of Revelation as a map of future history. We see this in the writings of the 12th century scholar Joachim of Fiore and in a variety of millennial movements that anticipated the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ. People began to expect that the world was ending next year and saw the signs of this by applying the details in the Book of Revelation to current events.
While scholars take a more literary and symbolic approach to the Book of Revelation, trying to understand it from the perspective of the first century author of the work, the map of history approach is still common in the popular literature. Just think of the “Left Behind” series of books and movies, as well as the many semi-documentaries on the SyFy channel about the end of the world that is allegedly foretold in the Book of Revelation, using a map of history understanding of the work.
The Book of Revelation seems a difficult work to interpret and use correctly in the 21st century. The symbolism is so distant from us that it seems difficult to interpret accurately and the map of history view of the Apocalypse just leads us off into fantasylands, missing the basic reason the book was written in the first place. However, it has enjoyed something of a renaissance among theologians and scripture scholars in recent decades. It part this is because the Book of revelation can speak powerfully to us in light of current events without being a map of history.
The basic Christian insight is that the death and resurrection of Jesus discloses God’s commitment to set things right in the world. No matter how difficult the present situation may be, there is hope for the future. Apocalyptic literature raises the question: Who is really Lord over the world? That is, who is making claims on our loyalty? There is a tendency to divide up our loyalties, to compartmentalize our lives. Revelation tells us we can’t do that and have any integrity. Christ makes basic and fundamental demands on us. Those demands are inconsistent with the values and demands that wealth, popularity or even society places upon us. Scripture scholar Ernst Kasemann reminds us that Revelation was composed by a writer who saw a clash between the claims of empire (the beast) and the claims of faith (Lamb). The beast wins by being the bully and subjugating others, while the Lamb wins through the power of self-sacrifice. Thus, the Book of Revelation challenges to us to examine to whom we are loyal and how that loyalty is reflected in our lives.