Eschatology

What this is

Another category of one. Revelation stands apart because it is a different kind of writing: apocalypse, a genre of symbolic vision that was well established in Jewish literature and that its first readers would have recognised immediately.

How to read it

Two things help more than anything else. First, Revelation is saturated with the Old Testament — hundreds of allusions, almost no direct quotations — so it reads very differently once Daniel, Ezekiel, Exodus, and Isaiah are familiar. Second, it was written to seven actual churches in Asia Minor facing actual pressure, and it meant something to them.

Christians have read this book in several sincere and long-established ways, and those readings differ across and within traditions. This site does not take a position among them. What all Christians confess together is the book’s own conclusion: that Christ returns, that God dwells with his people, and that every wrong is finally set right.