It is getting harder to keep track of what is happening in Revelation. Everything seems to happen again and again. Angels unleashing major carnage on the earth. The sun and moon first turning black as cloth, then red as blood, then green as cheese. Or something like that.

All I know for certain is that God is letting an eternity’s worth of wrath loose upon the earth, and mankind is getting screwed. Take the trials of Lot, add the plagues of Egypt, and throw the Angel of Death into the mix. What do you have?

God’s love.

Chapter 16

It is time for the angels to pour god’s wrath onto the earth. These sound a lot like what happened when the seven seals were open, and definitely sounds like the signs that were shown in The Seventh Sign. So I am just a little confused. Not that this matters much, especially when there are seven bowls full of destruction to write about!

• The first angel poured his bowl onto the earth. A sore appeared on everyone who had the mark of the beast, or who worshipped the beast’s image.
• The second angel poured his bowl into the sea. The sea became like the blood of a dead body, and everything that lived in the sea died.
• The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers. Water in all of the rivers and springs turned to blood.
• The fourth angel poured his bowl onto the sun, which then burned people with its fierce heat. (Global warming?)
• The fifth angel poured his bowl onto the beast’s throne. The beast’s kingdom was plunged into darkness.
• The sixth angel poured his bowl on the Euphrates river, which then dried up completely.
• The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air. God roars “It has happened!” and then there’s a powerful earthquake.

Chapter 17

More imagery, but this time one of the angels of the bowls provides an instant translation. That was very nice of him! John sees the notorious prostitute Babylon sitting at the edge of many waters. The angel says this prostitute is the mother of all detestable things, and the waters she sits on are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. When the time comes, the beast will leave the woman abandoned and naked.

John is then carried off into the wilderness, where he sees a woman. She is wearing the finest of clothing and jewelry, but holds a gold cup filled with detestable things. The woman is drunk on the blood of true believers. This woman represents the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.

The woman sits on top of a seven-headed, ten-horned beast. The heads are the seven mountains on which the city rests. The are also seven kings. In a sentence that could be ripped straight from Tolkein, “Five of them have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come.” The beast is actually the eighth king, and will be destroyed with the other seven.

The ten horns are also kings. These kings have not received their kingdoms yet. They have one purpose: to give their authority to the beast.

Chapter 18

There is one thing that is absolutely, positively, 100% obvious in the book of Revelation: the city Babylon is going to get fucked up when the world ends. Plagues of death, misery and famine will strike the city all in the same day. The city will burn to the ground. Merchants everywhere will cry and mourn, since the city’s destruction means the destruction of commerce throughout that region of the world. The city is destroyed, as is industry.

Chapter 19

We are at the beginning of the end. There is celebration in heaven at the fall of Babylon. Everyone in heaven sings their praises to God. And everyone rejoices because it is time for the wedding of the lamb and the church.

Heaven once again stands open, and at the gates is a white horse ridden by Faithful & True. The rider wears a robe that was dipped in blood. The robe has “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” written on it. The rider has a secret name written on himself, and his name is the Word of God. To quote from the Gospel of John, “In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That all kind of flows together nicely.

The white rider leads the armies of heaven. A sharp sword comes out of his mouth (we heard of the mouth and sword thing earlier) and he uses this to battle the beast and the armies of the earth. In the end, the beast was captured. The beast and its false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire; the rest of the beast’s followers die by the sword of the white rider.

Up next: One resurrection, two deaths and a thousand years

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• The anti-Christ and the Beast – Revelation 12-15 (NTiR) (biffster.org)
• Angels can be bad-asses! – Revelation 9-11 (NTiR) (biffster.org)
• What is Babylon? (weareisrael.wordpress.com)

Once upon a time, back in my wild younger days, I had an actual alcohol-induced hallucinative episode. I blacked out, but continued to function. My friends said I left the apartment we were in, ran to the park across the street, then started climbing up a hill. I was yelling that I had to get to the top of the hill so I could greet spirits that had come to save earth from its destruction. That was – by far – the weirdest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

The Book of Revelation is even weirder than that.

Chapter 12

Wow! I mean, seriously, WOW! Let’s see: we open up with a woman who dressed with the sun, stepped on the moon, and wore a crown of twelve stars. She is about to give birth. At the same time, a seven-headed, ten-horned, red dragon is there, waiting to devour the baby once it is born. However, the baby boy is whisked away to heaven. The woman flees to a safe house.

Then a war breaks out in heaven. Michael (presumably the Archangel) and his angels battle the dragon and its angels. The dragon is Satan, of course. Up until this point, Satan has been allowed to stay in heaven and to speak with God. That’s… interesting. Doesn’t seem internally consistent with other passages of the New Testament. But I’ll let that slide. Michael and his angels win the war, casting Satan and Satan’s followers out of heaven, down to the earth.

The woman’s safe house was also on earth, which was a bad idea. The dragon sought her out, looking to get revenge. The woman was given eagle’s wings and was able to fly away to an even safer house. The dragon is even more pissed off, so he opens his mouth and a river of water streamed out of its mouth. The plan was to drown the woman, but the earth opened up and swallowed the river.

What the fuck?

Chapter 13

This chapter is the basis for a lot of end-times stories and sermons and fears. It reinforces the tale of the anti-Christ, as well as the mark and number of the beast. The first beast comes out of the sea. it has 10 horns wearing royal crowns. It had seven heads, each with blasphemous names. One of the heads was wounded by a sword and appeared to be dying. However, that head was healed, which was taken as a miracle by the people of the earth. The dragon gave the beast his power and throne, and complete authority over everything on earth. The people of the earth started to follow the beast.

A second beast rose from the earth. It looked like a lamb, but talked like a dragon. It too had authority over the earth. It bragged of its miracles and signs – it was even able to make fire rain down from heaven – and demanded that everyone worship the first beast. The second beast also forced all people to be marked either on their right hands or on their foreheads. If they did not do so, they wouldn’t be allowed to do such things as buy food. The person would be marked with the number of the beast, which was mis-translated as 666.

This just came to mind: the idea of the mark of the beast is very much in-line with biometrics. We use the swipe of a fingerprint to access some systems. Super-high security places require retina scans. Hands, forehead, etc. Maybe John’s revelation is the work of a time traveler? Like a really bored security engineer?

But now I am just being silly.

Chapter 14

If I didn’t know there were 8 more chapters to go, I’d swear this is building to a crescendo. The true lamb is finally back, standing on Mount Zion. He is commanded to swing his sickle and harvest the earth. Everyone who was worthy was saved. A second angel – one who had authority over fire – also was called to harvest. He harvested grapes to add to the winepress of the wrath of God. Which is weird, but what is weird is the winepress was trampled outside the city. Blood flowed from the remains of the winepress, creating a lake of blood that was 200 miles across. Ick!

Chapter 15

This is by far the shortest of all of the chapters of Revelation. There are seven more angels, these holding the last seven plagues. Once they released their plagues, God’s wrath was finally been sated. John also saw a sea of glass, on which stood everyone who had remained true to God and Jesus, and who had spurned the beast and refused the mark.

Things still weren’t quite over, though. Because apparently God still had seven cups of wrath-wine. These were given to the seven plague-bearing angels.

Up next: Babylon is going to get fucked up

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• Angels can be bad-asses! – Revelation 9-11 (NTiR) (biffster.org)

One theme in the book of Revelations is the importance of the holy numbers. Threes and sevens are littered throughout the book. Three angels. Seven seals. Seven trumpets. John wanted to make sure that we knew divine numbers are in use here. Expect many more instances of the divine numbers, and we’ll be adding in twelve to go with them soon.

In the previous chapters, the destruction of earth begins. And then begins in a slightly different way. The sun, moon and stars are either darkened or turned black and blood-red. People all over the planet are getting killed. Again and again, by plague, famine, you name it. We left off after the fourth angel blew his trumpet, and an eagle warned that things up until this point have been tame compared to what comes next…

Chapter 9

Every time I think that this book can’t get weirder, it does. And in this chapter, things quickly change from weird to bizarre! It is definitely a trip down the rabbit hole.

The fifth angel blows his trumpet, and a plague of locusts invades the earth. These aren’t ordinary locusts, though. They looked like horses with human faces. They had hair like a woman’s, teeth like lion’s, they were wearing breastplates, they had scorpion tails, stinger and all. The locusts were allowed to torture people for five months.
The sixth angel blows his trumpet, and four more angels are released. One thing to note here: angels can be bad-asses! First the horsemen of the apocalypse, then the angels with the trumpets, and now angels who were imprisoned at the Euphrates river. These angels ride with an army of 200 million calvary troops, and are allowed to kill one-third of humanity. The horses in this attack breathed three plauges – fire, smoke and sulfur. These plagues killed another third of humanity.
The remaining third had not learned their lesson, and did not repent of their sins.

I have to say, that’s pretty fucking stupid. If I were to see fire and brimstone rain down from the skies, the oceans boil, the sun and moon blackened, a plague of mutated scorpion/locust hybrids wiping out a third of humanity and mounted army of 200 million come sweeping across the world, killing another third of the world’s population, you can rest assured that I’d be saying “okay, I was wrong. I’m sorry!”

Chapter 10

We’re going back to the bad-ass angels. The next has legs that were like columns of fire, and his face was like the sun. He speaks with the roar of a lion, and is big enough that he can set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on land. The angel speaks, and then seven thunders (???) cried out. God wouldn’t let John write down what the thunders said, however. Which I take to mean that John couldn’t figure out how thunder could talk, nor what it would say. But that’s just me being cynical.

The giant angel holds a scroll in his hand. God tells John to eat the scroll. John does, and finds that the scroll tastes like honey, but sours in his stomach. And look, I know that this is symbolic of something. The scroll stands for something – maybe the teachings of a false prophet? I am not completely blind to imagery. I don’t have a lot of patience for it, though. I am too literal a person to make these types of connections. My brain doesn’t work that way. I don’t like imagery, and this chapter is one great big batch of symbolism.

*blegh*

Chapter 11

John is told to measure the temple of God, but I’m not sure why because his measurements are never used. God does say that the Holy City (Jerusalem, I presume) will be trampled by representatives of all nations for 42 months. During this time, there will be two witnesses (who are each an olive tree and a lampstand) who will prophesy of things to come. These two witnesses will have the power to rain down plagues upon the land. In the end, they will do battle with the beast from the bottomless pit. Never fear, though: the Beast will conquer and kill the witnesses.

No, wait, what?

The peoples of the earth rejoice, since the two witnesses had been saying things like “you’re a sinner living in a land of evil!” Who wouldn’t want to be able to put a sock into a self-righteous party pooper? The witnesses aren’t buried, and lay displayed for three and a half days. At that point, God resurrected them and took them into heaven. Then there was a powerful earthquake, destroying 1/10th of the city (I’m surprised there’s that much still standing) and killing 7,000 people.

Getting back to the angels and the trumpets, the seventh angel finally steps up to bat and blows his trumpet. There was singing from heaven. The Elders fall to their knees to praise God. The heavenly temple of God is finally opened – oh, look, there’s the ark of the covenant!

Up next: The anti-Christ, the mark of the Beast, and the number of the Beast (sorta)

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

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• The end is here! (New Testament in Review) (biffster.org)

There are a few theories tossed about regarding why, exactly Revelation is so bizarre. Some of my favorite theories are:

• John was stoned out of his mind
• John was extremely drunk, or had sobered up and was having the DTs
• John was starving/dehydrated during his imprisonment and banishment, and his fevered brain pulled up a number of hallucinations.

Whatever the true source, Revelation is one hell of a trip.

Chapter 6

The seven seals are opened in a faster manner than I remembered. The first four seals are, of course, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The rider of the white horse is given a bow and sent out to conquer. The rider of the red horse is given a sword and sent to take peace from the world. The rider of the black horse was given a scale, and sent out to go grocery shopping. Or something like that. He is instructed to take a quart of wheat for a denarius or three quarts of barley. But he was not supposed to damage olive oil nor wine. I guess this actually means he is to bring famine to the world. What an odd way to say that, though. The rider of the pale horse was Death, and Hades followed. They were given control over a quarter of the earth, to destroy with war, famine, and plagues.

There are more seals, though! When the fifth is open, the souls of everyone martyred in the lords name cry out for vengance. The martyrs were given robes and told to be patient for just a while longer, until the last martyr is killed and joins them. When the sixth seal is opened, destruction came. There was a terrible earthquake, the sun turned black, the moon turned red as blood. The stars fell out of the sky, and the sky itself vanished. People on the earth fled to caves and the mountains, hoping to escape the wrath of god.

Chapter 7

Finally, an angel declares that the four horsemen stop what they are doing. The servants of God – both Jew and Gentile – needed to be marked with a seal on their foreheads.

Chapter 8

The seventh seal is opened. There is silence in heaven for a half hour, then seven angels step forward, each holding a trumpet. The angels take turns sounding their horns. The first angel blows his trumpet, and a mixture of hail, fire and blood were thrown on the earth. A third of the earth, trees and grass were burnt. The second angel blows his trumpet, and a volcano opens in the sea. A third of the sea is turned to blood, and one-third of all sea life is killed. The third angel blows his trumpet, and the star Wormood falls from heaven onto the earth, destroying a third of the rivers and springs. One-third of all water is turned into wormwood, sickening and killing those who drink from it.

One more angel for this chapter: the fourth angel blows his trumpet and a third of the sun, moon and stars were turned dark. (So ignore that bit up above where the sun turned black, the moon turned red and the stars fell out of the sky. Apparently, that didn’t really happen when the sixth seal was opened. Or it did, but John was so stoned that he forgot that detail.)

An eagle flies overhead, warning that things are going to be even more terrible for people of the earth when the other three angels blow their trumpets.

Up next: Angels can be bad-asses!

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• John takes a spiritwalk (New Testament in Review) (biffster.org)

In the last entry, Jesus was sending nasty letters to the seven churches of Asia. These letters contained everything from praise to condoning the murder of children. There were also some bits about stars and candlesticks and whatnot. I dunno, it isn’t my hallucination…

Chapter 3

Three more churches to go. Three more messages to read. I am starting to grow weary of this book, but I know far weirder things lie ahead.

The church in Sardis appears to be alive and healthy, but Jesus declares them dead. He wants them to work to strengthen those few things that remain in the church, to try and keep those from dying, too. There are a few Sardisians (Sardines?) who are worthy; those will walk beside the Lord and will remain in the Book of Life.

The chuch in Philadelphia is weak, but have continued in their belief of Christ. Jesus will reward them for this by making the disbelievers and slanderers bow at their feet. Their endurance in their faith has won them a reward: the Philadelphian church will not have to suffer the hour of testing that is to come for the rest of the world.

Finally, the church in Laodicea. This church takes a middle road, neither being on fire in faith for Jesus, nor being cold towards Christ and his teachings. Instead they are content with their own wealth and comfort. Jesus says he would rather they be cold than lukewarm, it is better to choose one side or the other. There’s no room to sit on the fence.

Chapter 4

John’s hallucination kicks in strong. He says “instantly I was in the spirit” and of that I have no doubt. What that spirit was – gin? wine? opium? – I cannot say, but he was into something. John sees a throne in heaven that had someone sitting in it. There were seven flaming torches burning in front of the throne, symbolizing the seven spirits of God. (Seven?) There were also 24 lesser thrones arrayed around the main one, and in these thrones sat 24 elders who were wearing white robes and gold crowns.

Wait, it gets even better! The throne is set on a sea of clear glass or crystal. There were four living creatures surrounding the throne. These were beings that resembled a lion, an ox, a human and an eagle. Each of these creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes. These creatures constantly sang praises to Jesus Christ. The 24 elders join in with this song, also giving glory to God.

Chapter 5

At this point, it is left up to the reader to determine who is actually sitting in the throne. Sure, it is safe to assume that it is God. But that is never expressly stated. One could’ve also thought it was Jesus Christ who sat there. Until this chapter, that is.

The one sitting in the throne had a scroll in his right hand. The scroll was sealed with seven seals. An angel asked who was worthy to open the scroll. Throughout creation, none was deemed worthy. John cried bitterly at this thought. But one of the 24 elders told John to stop crying, and instead look at the throne. There was now a lamb standing in the middle of the throne. The lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, also representing the seven spirits of God. The lamb also looks like it had been slaughtered. The lamb takes the scroll, causing everyone in heaven and in all creation to sing of the worthiness of the lamb.

I had thought that this chapter disproved the theory of unitarianism – or at least made a credible argument against it. After all, how could Jesus be “the one sitting in the throne” if he approached the throne and climbed onto it? But I misread the opening verses. It does not say that the lamb approached the throne, nor had to climb on it, nor wasn’t already seated on it. It simply says that the lamb was standing on the throne. It is conceivably possible that the lamb was sitting on the throne all along, but then rose to stand in the middle of the throne.

Up next: The Four Horsemen of the apocalypse

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• The anti-Christ and the Beast – Revelations 12-15 (NTiR) (biffster.org)

Ah, the book of Revelations. The capstone of the New Testament. The weirdest book in the whole Bible, and one of the weirdest books ever written. Revelations makes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland seem pedestrian. The end of the world, the four horsemen, something about swords and seals and locusts…

I have had a life-long fascination with Revelations. I remember back in my high school days ordering a set of three booklets offered on a late-night commercial by the Church of Latter Day Saints. The books were laid out to cover three major topics from this book. I don’t remember what those were, but we’ll know by the end of this book.

One note before we get started: John claims many verses being said by Jesus Christ. I don’t buy it. By the time Revelations is released, Jesus is long dead. John’s experience here conjures up visions of Christ speaking, but these seem to me to be figments of John’s imagination. I will treat anything attributed to Christ in this book as such.

Revelation of John

Chapter 1

John gets the administration out of the way right off the bat. John has been exiled in Patmos. Jesus has commanded this letter is for the 7 churches in Asia. The end times are nigh (don’t let Peter hear you say that!). Jesus has conquered death and rules over all other kings. He has made as a kingdom, and the kingdom awaits.

With the formalities, John moves on to the stranger, more esoteric and mystical parts of his story.

John is on the island one Sunday, minding his own business, when he hears a voice trumpet into his ear. John turns to see who is commanding him, and instead sees seven gold lampstands. In the middle of the lampstands was someone who looked like Jesus – he was wearing a robe and a golden belt. One thing I didn’t remember: Jesus had white hair, white as snow or wool. Jesus also had a two-edged sword sticking out of his mouth, and he held seven stars in his right hand.

I know what you’re thinking: what the hell is up with the sword? I told you this book is esoteric!

John does the wise thing and drops to his knees in fright. Jesus tells him to stop being afraid. Jesus lives forever, and he holds the keys to death and Hades.¹ Jesus does try and make sense of some of the symbols for John: the lampstands are the seven churches, and the stars are messengers for the churches. That info is like a map legend; it’ll come in handy later, when we need it.

¹Translation note: The KJV has this as “death and hell.” Every other translation I checked had “Death and Hades.” I don’t pretend to know what the difference is, I just find the demarkation between King James and everything else interesting.

Chapter 2

I am surprised at how quickly this book lunges down the rabbit hole. This chapter recounts the m

essages Jesus wants to send to the lampstands. There’s a consistent structure to this chapter: first Jesus says something good about the church, then something negative, then gives a way to improve. It’s classic “Delivering Feedback” training material, with some very weird examples.

The people of Ephesus works hard for Jesus, does good deeds, and doesn’t tolerate evil. They have been able to root out false apostles. However, they have abandoned the love they once had to favor their discipline in following Christ’s words. The church needs to repent and get back to its original teachings.

On a side note: who are the Nicolaitans, and why does Christ (or John’s vision of Christ) hate them so?

The people of Smyrna live in poverty and suffer for their beliefs. Even worse, others in Smyrna who claim to be Jews say derogative things about Smyrnians. They fear what further sufferings they must endure, though. Rightfully so, for apparently they will suffer 10 days of intense suffering to test their faith. If they are faithful up to death, they will be rewarded.

Holy crap!

Satan apparently rules Pergamum, ‘cuz that’s where his throne is set. The people of the church there hold fast to their belief and love of Christ. A prominent Christian leader – Antipas – is killed in front of the Christians to try and dissuade them from their faiths. The people of the church in Pergamum continue to stand by their belief in Jesus. They are not blameless, however. Some of the membership hold to the teachings of the deceiver Balaam, some are Nicolaitans. The church must repent, and presumably sever ties with these people.

The people of Thyatira are faithful, and they continue to get stronger. But they also allow Jezebel to stay among them. Jesus apparently gave Jezebel the chance to repent, but she did not. So he has thrown Jezebel into a sick bed. Anyone who has sex with her will suffer greatly. Christ will strike all of her children dead.

Again: holy crap! And since when does Jesus condone killing children?

Up next: John takes a spiritwalk

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• The anti-Christ and the Beast – Revelations 12-15 (NTiR) (biffster.org)