The Revelation of John IV

This is the end, both of this project and of all creation, if memory serves.

17:1 I wonder if the word "whore" represents the same tonal shift in the original language as it seems to in English.

17:3 These "blasphemous names", are they so in the sense that we would expect?  Namely, appropriating the divine for themselves? Or are they merely profane?

17:6 I too am "greatly amazed", and I'm merely reading it.  Is there any more vivid image in the Bible?

17:8 If only we had some time markers here, this would be a lot easier to identify.  Without them, it's entirely possible that this apparition is not a symbol or a metaphor at all, but an actual spirit that holds influence over the rulers of the world.  Perhaps it's best to read it as though the angel is speaking with reference to his own time, not to the time in which the vision is to be fulfilled.

17:11 This verse is pretty challenging to parse.  The sentence is structured such that the beast itself is the eighth king in a line of seven, of which each is both a precursor and a part of the whole.

17:13 Which makes an interpretation of the ten kings who didn't exist at the time of John's writing as the security council of the United Nations pretty tempting.  Kings that had their own time, but are now all part of a larger body to which they yield their power.

17:16 Which makes a religious interpretation of the whore rather tidy.  Unless . . . she is repeatedly referred to as a city.  Only two cities could possibly fit the bill: the Vatican and Jerusalem.  Wouldn't it be a twist if the beast (the UN) turned on secular Israel, and dissolved it?  The recent censure of the general assembly would be a first step.

18:1 Since this is a vision, I wonder what sort of visual cues led John to believe that this angel had "great authority".

18:2 And I continue to be obsessed with the question of why certain verses are set as poetry.  Is it some artifact of the original text?  In other cases, I have assumed it is because they are quotes from a passage that was also set in verse, but this book is entirely original, so that seems unlikely.

18:2,3 More arguments for seeing the whore as having an actual temporal city.

18:6 I find this passage very poetic.  Something about the rhythm of it is more poetic than John usually displays.

18:9 These very kings seem to be the ones who in chapter 17 gave her up to the beast, that which is made up of they themselves.

18:24 Certainly sounds like a religion to me.  But the Vatican, or Jerusalem?  Or perhaps Mecca?

19:4 This tableau is evidently still visible from wherever John is watching.

19:5 Is God referring to himself in the third person here?  Or is the figure seated upon the throne some other individual?

19:6 Is this the same great multitude mentioned in chapter 7, those who passed through the great ordeal, or just a generic crowd?  If the former, then we begin to see something resembling an actual timeline.  And the description here gives nothing to contradict such a reading.

19:11 Difficult not to see this figure as the same who led the four horsemen earlier.

19:17 This is certainly a unique wedding feast.

20:2 Been a while since we heard from this fellow.  Not much information on the relationship between him, the beast, and the whore though.

20:4 This gives the lie to the old "only God can judge me" chestnut.

20:5 But if the rest of the dead are not resurrected, those who worshiped the beast were slaughtered, and those who did not were reigning, then over whom did they reign, and whom did they judge?

20:7 The religion in which I was raised interpreted these events as happening well after the great tribulation and the battle of Harmageddon. And John certainly seems to be following a linear timeline in these final chapters, so if we are to take the beast as the UN, and the whore as some religious entity, then such a timeline doesn't have any inherent inconsistencies.  But suppose that the beast and the whore and the day of judgement were actually symbols of something else, something that has already passed.  The fall of Rome?  The fall of Jerusalem?  I suppose the symbology could be made to fit either event.  Is it possible then, that this 1000 year period of imprisonment has also come and gone?  This would be a more tempting line of inquiry if there were anything that would have resembled the end of the world 1000 years thereafter.  

20:8 And are we to suppose that Gog and Magog, whatever they might be, are still around after the day of judgement?  Human nature being what it is, such a thing would not be at all surprising.

20:14 Pretty impossible to take this lake of fire as anything other than allegorical, when Death and Hades are themselves cast into it.

21:3,4 And here's the coda.  The happy ending that let John wake up from his vision without gouging his eyes out.  I find myself supposing that without these verses, religion as we know it today would look very different. 

21:24 Pretty absurd to suppose that there would still be nations after all of this. No doubt used metaphorically to represent all mankind.

21:26 This seems redundant.  Weren't all those who aren't written in the book of life cast into the lake of fire last chapter?

22:5 Wait, no more night?  This would require some serious rewiring of the universe.

22:10 "Near" is always relative.

22:12 As is "soon".

22:15 No, the sorcerors and fornicators et al were destroyed.  They cannot be outside to gnash their teeth.

22:16 PLOT TWIST The angel showing these things to John was Jesus all along!  And furthermore, he says not to worship him, that he is just a fellow servant.  Either John forgot some of the theology from his epistle, or there is some change in speaker that he forgot to record.

Well, there you have it folks.  The end of many years of pondering, overanalysis, suspension of disbelief, and skeptical query.  I find that this book, obscure and inconsistent as it was, was a rather good microcosm of the rest of the Bible.  Taken too seriously, it becomes dangerous, confusing, and maddening.  But taken on its own merits, a profoundly deep and poetic book with reams of insight about humans, as seen across a slice of thousand of years.