(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



The Terrifying Book of Revelation Has ‘Affected Our World in Ways You Might Not Expect’ [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-24

If you pay attention to the world around you, you’ve no doubt heard of the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament. No, I’m not talking about ProPublica’s brilliant reporting on the ginormous number of gifts Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has pocketed from right-wing billionaires (although Thomas’ troubles could certainly fill a Book of Revelations)! I’m talking about The New Testament’s Book of Revelation.

Maybe you’ve read one of the super-bestselling Left Behind apocalyptic novels, or seen one of those films. Maybe you’re familiar with Hal Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet Earth, a 1970s bestselling book of nonfiction that laid the foundation for modern-day apocalyptic fiction. Maybe you saw Ingmar Bergman’s classic film The Seventh Seal. Maybe you think that The Rapture comes from the Book of Revelation. Maybe you read D. H. Lawrence’s last book titled The Apocalypse. Maybe you’re wondering why Israeli right-wing politicians have built such a cozy relationship with America’s Christian Zionists.

But how much do you really know about the Book of Revelation’s origin story? Where it came from? How it has become the lynchpin for the End Times for many evangelical Christians?

While many Christians do not take the Book of Revelation literally, biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman, says a strict interpretation has "affected our world in ways you might not expect, involving carnage, U.S. foreign policy and the welfare of our planet." In an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, Ehrman, author of the new book, Armageddon: What The Bible Really Says About The End (Simon & Schuster, 2023) pointed out that “the people who start reading [the Book of Revelation] find it so confusing and so bizarre, they just give up, and they never get to the end, with the exception of evangelical or fundamentalist Christians who use it to kind of mine … for pieces of the puzzle that will explain what's going to happen in the future” (https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/1167715957/armageddon-shows-how-literal-readings-of-the-bibles-end-times-affect-modern-time).

Bart Ehrman was an evangelical Christian in college, who while attending Princeton Theological Seminary stopped believing the literal truth of the Bible and became an agnostic. He is now a distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

On Fresh Air, Ehrman explained the origin story of the Book of Revelation.

Hold onto your hats ladies and gentleman, because this story is even more fantastical then a script for another Mel Gibson biblical rendering or a Jim Caviezel religious-themed movie.

So in this book, we have a prophet named John - who calls himself John. And he says he's on the island of Patmos, off of the west coast of Turkey. And he writes his book about various visions that he has had that he indicates are predictions of what is soon to take place, he says. It's going to happen very soon. He goes up - he's transported up to heaven. And while - when he's there, he sees the vision of God. God himself is sitting on the throne, and in his hand is a scroll that is sealed with seven seals.

This scroll is - appears to be holding the secrets to the future of Earth. And the thing about these seals is that nobody can break them. It turns out that there is one who can. It's a lamb who has been slain - a reference to Christ. What ends up happening is Christ receives the scroll from God, and he starts breaking the seals. There are seven seals. He breaks them, and every time he breaks one, a huge catastrophe hits the Earth - war, starvation, various kinds of calamities, you know, natural disasters.

And when he breaks the seventh seal, we're introduced to seven angels who have seven trumpets. They blow their trumpets. And every time they blow a trumpet, a disaster hits the Earth. And when the seventh trumpet gets blown, we're introduced to seven angels who are carrying bowls of God's wrath. And each one pours out God's wrath on the Earth - more disasters, one after the other.

And so masses and masses of people are being slaughtered and killed in natural disasters and so forth until the end. Finally, God intervenes and there's a big battle between Christ and his opponent on Earth, a figure called the beast, at the battle of Armageddon. And Christ slays the beast and slays the armies and brings in a new kingdom on Earth, a new Jerusalem that descends from heaven, a city made of gold with gates of pearl. And the saints, the followers of Jesus, live there then, forever. So that's the Book of Revelation in a nutshell.

Terry Gross: “This emphasis on, you know, pearly gates and a city of gold and Christ himself as bejeweled in the image that John describes of him - it seems very counter to the anti-materialistic Jesus of the New Testament. How do you reconcile that?”

Ehrman interprets the Book of Revelation from a historical perspective, and explained that the reality of the Gospels is in direct contradiction to the Book of Revelation. “When Jesus talks about wealth, he's against it.” Jesus rails against material things and believes in divesting oneself of wealth and giving it to the poor. Jesus “left everything … for his mission. His disciples left their homes and their families and their jobs. And Jesus praises them for it. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus embraces a gospel of spirituality that is anti-materialistic.”

Unfortunately, today people “interpret it as saying that Jesus thinks that if you give some away now, you'll have even more material wealth in heaven, you know that treasures in heaven means you're going to have palaces and things. And that's not what he's talking about. The point is the material things are not what you're supposed to live with or live for. And you won't have those in heaven. You'll have a spiritual existence in heaven. So that's Jesus's teaching.

“The Book of Revelation has just the opposite view in some ways. The Book of Revelation does have a problem with wealth. It has a problem because the enemy of God in Revelation, the city and empire of Rome, is fantastically wealthy. … [having] exploited all the provinces of the empire … [and] accumulated huge amounts of wealth. And so the problem in Revelation with wealth is not that wealth itself is bad. The problem in Revelation is that the wrong people have it. The Romans have it, and, you know, we should have it. We're the Christians. And so what ends up happening is God takes the wealth from Rome, destroys the Roman world, destroys - takes away all their wealth. And the Christians then have a city of gold and, you know, gates of pearl and eternal life living in fantastic wealth. So I don't think that's the gospel of Jesus at all. I think it's contrary to the gospel of Jesus.”

Evangelical Christians, politicians including Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, and Reagan’s secretary of the interior, James Watt, have all dabbled with elements of the Book of Revelation. During one of his confirmation hearings, Watt said that while it was important to protect the nation’s natural resources, he wasn’t sure “how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns…”

When President Donald Trump authorized the provocative move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Pastor James Hagee rejoiced. Hagee, a prominent Christian Zionist who founded Christians United for Israel -- the largest pro-Israel evangelical Christian organization in the country (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/10/2186382/-An-Unholy-Trinity-Pastor-John-Hagee-s-Christians-United-for-Israel-The-End-Times-Israel} -- performed the benediction. Hagee who had previously stated that God sent Hitler to force Jews to Israel in order to establish the state of Israel, recognized that the moving of the embassy could lay the groundwork for something he has been writing about for years; the End Times.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/24/2189283/-The-Terrifying-Book-of-Revelation-Has-Affected-Our-World-in-Ways-You-Might-Not-Expect

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/