Sr Dan M Appel

The Revelation Sr Dan M Appel

For almost 400 years, the Bible's Book of Revelation was one of the most well-known books in North America. Politicians quoted from it; preachers and evangelists railed from it; scholars debated its meaning down to the last word; attorneys used it in their summations; teachers made their children memorize from it; parents scared their wayward children from it; authors alluded to its many word pictures; people argued about it; prophets used it to give credence to their prognostications; churches were founded on various understandings of its mysteries; artists delighted in illustrating its garish word-pictures and there were plenty more who, to quote the late Eugene Peterson, "who are simply foolish and who, like pushy guides at a tourist site, try to get us to hire them to tell us all about the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell, the numbers of the beast, and the calendar of doomsday. All of this was amazing considering that, like the prophecies of Nostradamus, few could agree on what it was all about. Like one wag remarked, "If you get three people in the same room discussing Revelation, you will get at least 25 opinions." Thomas Jefferson wrote: "It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (the Apocalypse) and I then considered it merely the rantings of a maniac, no more worthy of capable explanation than the incoherence of my own dreams." And George Bernard Shaw, called The Revelation "a curious record of the visions of a drug addict which was absurdly admitted to the canon under the title of Revelation." No Biblical book has been quoted and misquoted, interpreted, and misinterpreted more than The Revelation. Bookstores, religious book emporiums, and the Internet are replete with volumes all purporting to have the last word on The Revelation. Legions of Preterists, Futurists, Historicists, Pre-millennialists, Post-millennialists and combinations of all the above along with the occasional spiritist and New Age visionary have all clamored to have us believe that they have the only and best understanding of this amazing little book. What John wrote as a dynamic appeal to fire the imagination of humans caught in the crossfire vortex of a cosmos-wide conflict is reduced to debates and checklists and arguments over who is the greatest in the little religious kingdoms we have created on earth. So, why would anyone in their right mindset out to write a commentary on such a book? Because! Because if there is any roadmap that can lead us through what appears to look more and more like the end of life as we have always known it on this planet, it is this little book hiding at the very end of the Bible. The Revelation was written by John to be just that, a revelation, a revealing. Instead, we have all too often turned it into anything but as we have argued and debated its meaning. In the very first paragraph of the book, the author promises that those who read and live by it will be blessed. You can't live by something you don't understand! And that, tragically, is the result of the wrangling and arguing about what was intended to be simple and easy to understand. This book is intended to wipe away all that makes the Revelation obscure and obtuse and a host of other fifty dollar words and to make it something you can live by. Come join me on what promises to be a fascinating journey.