 It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. I'm Dr. Raiglozano from the Philosophy Department. Technically we are now the Philosophy Psychology and Education Department here at San Antonio College. And today is the sixth annual Special Edition Halloween Lecture. Today we are talking about the Apocalypse Book of Revelation, the end of the world as we know it. So the book is quite possibly the most frequently cited or quoted or feared book that is the least read. And so it's sometimes also called the Apocalypse, the Revelation of Saint John the Divine or Saint John the Apostle or Saint John the Patmos, which may possibly be different people. But we are going to look at this just from the terms of what is this in the situation of apocalyptic literature? What is that as a literary genre? What is this specifically contained? This is told as a future of our people. Now the main thing that we encounter when we read this book, usually not in a church study, but more often in popular culture, is in an accurate description of what's going to happen to us at the end time. Is this what we can look forward to? Is this what we ought to be dreading? And so we're going to look at the historical context today in which it's situated. And try and understand how it might have been read by the earliest audience. Readers in the first century were a lot more accustomed than we are to reading apocalyptic literature. This would have been part of their expectation of daily life. Is that at any given time began to cook up? Now the word apocalypsis here as it appears in Greek, and of course apocalypsis, is hidden from view, hidden from our sight, or that which is about to be revealed unto us. Most of us, when we talk about apocalyptic literature, we are looking at Mad Max or The Walking Dead. How about this guy, huh? How King Joffrey is no longer the most hated fan on TV. And we've got Book of Eli over there. Even Thomas Hobbs Leviathan is kind of this apocalyptic approach when we talk about the state of nature, where in life is solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish and short. Now, the lot of apocalypses that we've got is just one of several that are out there. This was a very, very popular genre in which to write. And we'll talk about a few that are out there now. Like all literary genres, there are some common features that we can identify. And here they are. Almost all of these works are pseudonyms. What we mean by that, they were written under a pseudonym. Because let's face it, nobody's interested in hearing about the end of the world according to Jack. Or the end of the world according to Harry. However, if it's John, John the Apostle, or Peter, or Paul, well, now suddenly we all sit and take interest. And so, most of these are going to claim to have been written by either one of the apostles or one of those people that we closely associate with Christianity or in the case of Judaism or prophets and so on. The reason being possibly twofold. One, it's a lot easier to get your work read if they think that someone famous wrote it. Two, it was very common in the ancient world to write and attribute things to your teacher. So it's possible that this could have been an apostle of the apostles or a disciple of the disciples, writing saying, it's not my work but it's in the patrimony of Paul or Peter or John or whoever. These are all going to be very, very highly symbolic in their writing, very allegorical. You interpret it in the text. So there will be the vision, the depiction of whatever is going to happen. And then usually an angel is going to come along and say, now this is what this stands for and this is what this means. The revelation that we're going to talk about today is a little unusual in that it's not fully explained. A couple different theories attend to that. One is that parts that are simply missing or that parts that were edited out. This was kind of a contentious book of its time. It still is, but it very nearly didn't make it into the Canada of Accepted Scripture. That it's the only full book of apocalyptic literature that's accepted in the Christian canon is kind of unique and so we may be missing bits of it. It's not meant to be interpreted literally. Seriously, just don't. Look at the Middle Ages. It did not work out well when they interpreted these books literally. This is one of ongoing concern because we see a lot of groups of people that are inclined to take events that are recorded in Revelation and try to understand it as literally we need to be looking for the moon to turn to blood, literally we need to look for the horsemen of the apocalypse and they're misguided in their reading of this unfortunately. There is almost always, not always, but almost always a triumphal ending. So, God will prevail and this is the part that's critical, especially to the audience for which this was written is readers are on the hook. They want to get a happy ending out of the story and they almost always are guaranteed one of this. Now, the worldview that comes out of this is one of ancient Near Eastern or what today we would call Middle Eastern religion and a lot of it stems from Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Persia which is probably the oldest continually practiced religion. Here we have the struggle between good and evil taking place in a Zoroastrian depiction. Zoroastrianism features what we call a cosmogonic dualism meaning that the world is created out of two forces good and evil but an eschatological monotheism. So at the end of time, one God will prevail defeating good and evil. But we start out with kind of those dueling forces there and since most of us don't know eschatology or use it on a regular basis the eschatom is the Greek word for the end where that connotes talking about the end and the end of this particular story, God will prevail over these things. Now, to best understand the context in which Apocalypse was written we've got to understand sort of what other genres were going on and what had come before this. This comes out of Judaism predominantly and we start off with a covenantal understanding. God has erected a covenant with man and provided they follow his commandments in this case Mel broke showing the 15 commandments before the one gets broken in history of the World War I God provided that we follow God's commandments that covenant will be established and in this case the people of Israel will be protected. As we get into the prophetic worldview our ancient Jewish prophets come along they understand themselves to still be under terms of the covenant but we're far enough removed from that covenant's establishment that we've forgotten our role in it. We've gotten away from the commandments we're not quite obeying it and so the prophets come along and inevitably say three things to us one, there is only one God two, you're doing it wrong three, here's what you're supposed to be doing instead that if the Israelites would return to God he would ease their torments and they would once again prosper and prevail and then finally out of this comes this apocalyptic worldview this seems to come out of kind of a frustration with the prophetic and the covenantal view where we're suffering maybe not because of our sins as was the view usually given by the prophets but because now there's an evil force that's opposed to God that's trying to draw God's people away from it this very particular kind of Zoroastrian then Jewish, then Christian, then Muslim understanding of how the apocalypse would come about follows kind of a pattern of isms so here are the isms that we usually associate with this the first of them up there is dualism there's this definite sense that there is good and there's evil and everything and all of creation and everyone is sided with either one or the other history is also understood dualistically in the current age whenever it happens to be whether it's the first century or now the 21st century history's understood dualistically as we're under the sway of evil what good is about to come any minute now, any day we can expect good good will triumph and evil will be devout there's also a sense of pessimism to go throughout this because the current age is evil things are probably going to get a lot worse before they get better and so we have descriptions throughout this something's getting much much worse triumphalism at the end of the current age of being devout is ideal, worldly kingdom and at this point all the dead are going to be erased again bodily to face the last judgment evil will be punished and ultimately good will be rewarded the last one up there I'm going to admit if you run a spell check that is actually false but it ought to be a word let's bring it back hashtag imminentism now, imminentism is this guy, idea that recalling the name Emmanuel means God is with us this is kind of the approach we understand God's arrival be something happening very soon or expected very soon and then we ought to be preparing for by repenting by turning to God and these four isms really tend to direct apocalyptic literature both in the Old and the New Testament and outside of it the Old Testament features chunks of apocalypse these are instances of apocalyptic passages or chapters that show up for instance in Isaiah the Lord devastates the earth and then there's a celebratory song of praise and then there's a celebratory song of praise so we've got that anticipation of God coming and thank you God for coming and then ultimately Israel will be delivered also in Isaiah in the later chapters there that should actually be 33 to 35 on 25 this is the Israelite experiencing the stress they call out to God for help there's a judgment that comes across the nations and joy is experienced as they're redeemed in Jeremiah day and the night will cease they just stop and the line of David will be broken so presaging what we're going to see in the New Testament in Ezekiel the Lord's great victory over the nation and restoring to Jacobs as representing Israel's fortune in Joel the sun and the moon both darken so we have a simultaneous solar and then lunar eclipse stars will no longer shine the shepherd will roar from Zion heavens and earth will tremble then blessings for God's people oops, a little too far in Zechariah Jerusalem's enemies will be destroyed the one that they pierced will be mourned so again presaging New Testament the house of David will be cleansed from sin the shepherd will be struck and the sheep scattered and the Lord will come and reign now there is one fully apocalyptic account that we find in the Old Testament that occurs in Daniel chapter 7 through 12 Daniel dreams of four beasts and the descriptions are scary each one's more horrible than the one preceding it they're based on lions, on bears, on eagles, on leopards kind of semi-humanoid figures they're going to then be destroyed by the Son of Man there's a portion where the dream is interpreted by the angel another vision of a ram and a goat another interpretation of the apocatory prayer on Daniel's part and then the 70 of 7 which has been interpreted various ways this is the foundation of for instance some aspects of 7th day adventism and some of the other American innovations within religion the New Testament has miniature apocalypses with it in Matthew 24 we have the destruction of the temple of being predicted at the time it was written it was probably a retro addictive account of it but predicted as it shows up in Matthew the end times where the day and the hour aren't known there's several references throughout that to Daniel to Isaiah in the very next chapter you get the separating of the sheeps and the goats so if that occurs in Matthew 25 then that is an apocalyptic vision in Mark 13 it's the exact same as the Matthew account because both are synoptic gospels in 2nd Thessalonians 2 the man of lawlessness and reminders to stand firm and then of course the entire book of Revelation which is well ascribed to John unlikely to be the same person that wrote the gospel account there are also several non canonical accounts that for whatever reasons were not included in scripture either in the Old Testament or the New Testament but are easily found and interesting to read for purposes of comparison and again we see that sedonymous tendency a lot of them are ascribed in this case to Abraham to Adam Baruch, Daniel, Elijah Ezra, Lamech the Metatron, not the same character from Dogma in this case it ties to the books of Enoch which if you saw the movie from a couple years ago Noah the big rock creatures that are throwing rocks to volcano that comes from Enoch but is not actually found in the Genesis account of Cedric, of Zephaniah of Zerobabel, Gabriel's separate Revelation and then the Aramaic Apocalypse all of these are non canonical but specifically Jewish apocalypses there are non canonical Christian ones too James has an apocalypses Golius, Methodius Paul plus Acoptic version Peter plus Anostic version the Calamon this one now exists only in Erebon we've got an early translation of it of Stephen the proto-martyr of Thomas there's also an Anostic Gospel of Thomas and that of the Seven Heavens which seems to have probably actually shown up sometime in the Middle Ages now the basic idea of the Apocalypses of John is that he is a prophet and to be understood as a prophet so these are some of those that we encountered earlier Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel Daniel, Joel and now here comes John that he's following the Israelites he's shown and reveals to his readers the coming destruction of the earth to prepare for the second coming of Christ the final judgment and that ultimate triumph over evil and so what I'm going to go through really really quick is a summary of all of those major things that take place in the book so John is said to be on the island Patmos which is down here this is modern day turkey so the ancient Near East and the first part are messages for the seven churches of Asia and they are these seven that are located here I have various messages based on certain things that word has gotten to John is taking place in those areas we then have an appearance of the throne of God surrounded by 24 thrones with 24 elders and there is a description of a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes and various pictures are out there these are some of the things that people because they don't read the book have no idea are in the book but it really is kind of interesting we hear about the seven seals and those events that accompany each of those probably the most familiar to most people are the riders of the horses so we've got a white horse a red horse, a black horse and then a pale horse and depending on your translation it will either say a pale horse, a sick horse even a green horse and there are riders being the personifications of the seven horse or of the four horsemen of the apocalypse there is an interlude following the breaking of the six seal and this is where quite a bit takes place we've actually got these out of order you've got the 144,000 mentioned during the interlude there and that of course is not a literal number because we shouldn't take this literally it's 12 representing the religion or the tribes of Israel or the apostles times 12,000 so giving us a notion of a great many there are seven trumpets interlude throughout all of this and various things take place some of them replicating the ancient the plagues against Egypt like locus for instance the turning of the blood and accompanying this we have descriptions of a woman and a white we have a great dragon we have a great many beasts and then overcoming all of this the lamb will occur now one of the most frequently cited instances in this is the famous mark of the beast and people have attempted to use Walt Disney's logo they've said that you can look at monster and find out Hebrew numerals that the back of certain dollar bills will contain this I'm kind of inclined to believe the one about google chrome they may be on something there but what this is this is what we call geometry if you take numbers and Hebrew and Greek don't have separate numbers the numbers that we use are either Roman numerals or what we call Arabic numerals and so in this case this is the verse in which it appears this calls for wisdom so they're telling us you're going to have to know something about how to use if anyone has insight let them calculate the number of the beast the man's number and his number is 666 and so from Alistair Crowley to Charles Manson and many other people they really keyed in on this as the mark of the beast now what happens is if you spell out the name of this man check out the neck beard that's the Roman inferred Nero and if we write his name in Hebrew it does add up through this grammatical 666 there is in the Greek version because remember, Revelation is written in Greece Aranaeus guesses it might be these gods these are separate interpretations of either Roman emperors or other effects during the time now we do know that Nero was usually the emperor at the time of Paul's martyrdom I'm sorry of Paul's martyrdom and Peter's martyrdom was fight upside down and Paul was being headed in Rome during the reign of Nero and so it stands to reason that the author of this text remembering that is a relatively recent event is going to include that as the worst possible thing to have taken place there are seven bowls that are opened during this and they of course each has significant symbolic value there's a specific reference to the Euphrates so we know that we're situating this in an ancient Near Eastern cultural context again the Whore of Babylon is one of those famous figures that also gets brought up very frequently note how many heads the beast that she's riding has seven and the seven hills of Rome or the city of seven hills as it's typically known so this is we're almost certain in reference to the city of Rome, the power of Rome which in the lives of first century Christians living under active persecution would have been the most awful thing that they could imagine now at the end of this we say we're called to the marriage of the sufferer of the land so this is where in the great multitude comes together they praise God there's a judgment of the two beasts the dragon, ultimately the dragon which is imprisoned in the bottomless pit for a thousand years and you get an idea of a thousand year reign which gives rise to millennial interpretations of the church terms like free millennial post millennial and so on get thrown around based on this there is a reference to the new Jerusalem that will be established and again it has symbolic meaning that follows through that after this great battle that will take place the imprisonment of the dragon and after the final judgment Jerusalem will rise again and will become the heavenly city the entire book of Revelation can be demonstrated like this this is a fairly old image of it and this is kind of a biased interpretation of the events going on in the context of 19th century Protestantism but it's fairly complete in its representation at the end of the book we have this as one of the final verses the alpha and the omega first and the last and the very end of the book itself ends with a blessing so it is not the doom and gloom that is sometimes reported and how should we read this book now if we're going to well certainly not literally don't look for the signs of the apocalypse or the seals being broken or trumpets being blown or heavenly figures showing up or anything like that but do read it as indicative of kind of this apocalyptic literature genre read it as indicative of the thinking of first century Christians and others in their world and sharing their worldview read it as kind of a uniquely canonical example of this type of writing