An Alternative Interpretation of the Book of Revelation

The Book of Revelation was written by a man called John, who would later become known as John the Divine.  Because of his Christian faith, John was exiled to the island of Patmos, a Roman penal colony.  The Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse, is one of the hardest books of the Bible to understand because it abounds in unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism.  This book is said to contain an account of visions.  Couched in symbolic and allegorical language, it borrows from the books of Ezekiel, Zechariah and Daniel.

The usual interpretation of Revelation, especially popularized  in the Left Behind books, goes something like this.  Satan comes to Earth in human form as the Antichrist and sets forth to take over the world.  A seven-headed beast comes from the sea.  One of the heads has ten horns which represent the reconstituted Holy Roman Empire.  Apocalyptic writers like Lindsey, La Haye and Jenkins, claim that this Empire is actually the European Community. 

The Antichrist takes over the EU as a step toward establishing a world government.  The “Whore of Babylon” is a new world religion that replaces the other faiths.  The story ends with a final battle between the forces of Jesus and the forces of Satan.  By the way, the word Antichrist only appears a couple of times in the Bible while “rapture” does not appear at all.  The Rapture comes from a series of visions had by a teenage girl in Europe a few hundred years ago.

The above interpretation is embraced by most Protestants and some Catholics. However, there is another view that many Catholics believe: The book of Revelation was a veiled account of life in the first century A.D.  In this interpretation, the Antichrist was the emperor Nero.  The beast from the sea was the Roman Empire with the seven heads representing the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian and Titus.  The ten horns are vassal rulers, sometimes called kings, under the supremacy of Rome.

The Whore of Babylon symbolizes pagan Rome.  Here, John was writing about the ruthless persecution of early Christians by the Roman authorities.

I am not telling you that this is THE interpretation of the book of Revelation.  I am only saying that there is more than one way of looking at the Apocalypse.  Jesus is still going to return and the world as we know it is still going to end.  It just may not happen the way most people think it is.  Perhaps we should re-examine the Apocalyptic books of the Old Testament – Ezekiel and Daniel.