The Book of Revelation

Faith, fellowship, and food are the fundamental elements of a successful Bible study. This spring, the graduate students affiliated with InterVarsity’s Graduate Christian Fellowship opted to study the most obscure and interesting book of the New Testament, Revelation, with a motley crew over potluck dinners. Keyla and Tori, our leaders, had difficulty finding an organized study of this book, because there just don’t exist too many prepackaged studies of Revelation out there.

Eventually, we got to see the marriage union of heaven and earth in a way that is rife with prophesy and symbolism taking us back to the Garden of Eden and the book of Daniel especially. The seven angels with the seven bowls containing the wrath of God, the plagues, the dragon and the serpent representing the devil, the prostitute representing ancient Babylon, and the slain lamb were all highlights in the passages that we covered. The descriptions of the angels and the temples are absolutely stunning visually, where fine linen and dazzling jewels cover everything.

The Bible Project accompanying video highlighted how the disciple known as John (the same author of the book of John) wrote to give hope and encouragement to the seven churches that were facing persecution under Nero’s Rome after Jesus’s resurrection but before the widespread rise of Christianity. The Babylon about which the book of Revelation speaks most likely represents Rome, a city full of emperor and idol worship at the time.

I am fascinated by the idea that there’s a Judgment Day where God decides who is righteous and who has behaved too despicably to go to Heaven. When a professor’s husband passed away, I gifted her with the Barbara Walters documentary Heaven, in which the acclaimed journalist interviews religious leaders of different faiths to ask them what the afterlife is like in their imaginations. I wonder about questions like what happens to former believers, what happens to scientists who wanted to believe but couldn’t, as well as what happens to those who followed religious laws and principles even if they weren’t believers. Revelation describes this judgment day in metaphorical detail, but leaves the faithful reader with more questions than answers.