“RUSSIA WILL RISE UP AND MEET ISRAEL ON THE PLAIN OF MEGIDDO FOR THE LAST BATTLE. ישראל AGAINST GOG AND MAGOG-- AND THEN JESUS COMES BACK AND, BOY, HE IS PISSED”

Revelation is my least favorite “book” in the bible. Why? During my childhood fundamentalist years (ages 0-9), Revelation received a vastly inordinate interest—subject to much verbal diarrhea—which I had to endure.  All sorts of exotic phantasicagorical stuff—the most I have ever heard in church.  I hated it.  (Of course, our college bull sessions about this, that, and whatever rank right up there at the very top.) There apparently is something sexy about the whole world blowing up.

It was/is commonly said that the Bible is so arranged that the earnest student proggesses through the entire Scriptures leading up to its very pinnacle at the end.  Revelation was the culmination of all that had gone before and itself served as a sort of post doctrinal study.  Even as a little Christian, I knew there was something amiss in this assessment.  I mean,  isn't the Gospel of John  far more important?

With the whore of Babylon being the Catholic Church, the ten horns of some monster being the European Common Market, the United States mixed in there somewhere, and the restoration of Israel, all was being laid out before our eyes for Christ's imminent return.  No doubt about it!

To all this, one might remind our prophesy scholars that Jesus Himself said that of that day and hour only the Father knows. (Mark 13:32).   With all this stuff you folk spend so much time figuring out so definitely, aren't you claiming to know something Jesus Himself said He doesn't know?  To which they would reply:  "Well. yes Jesus said that very thing.  But God left us so many clues in the Bible.  All we have to do is put them all together!"

There is no stopping these guys.

Once my mother, brother and I converted to Lutheranism (Well, more like married into the Lutheran Church.), all that fell to the wayside.  Much to my relief.  No more bad dreams about the Devil rising from some black pit!

Indeed, we Lutherans recite "He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.  From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" from the Apostles' Creed and pretty much leave it at that.  Still, it is hard to wash out of your mind all those hours of wraithlike prophesy.

Years past and while in college, thank goodness, I received the medicinal corrective of a scholarly few weeks of historical/critical commentary on the A. Of St. John with all that “what this means in the original Greek”, contextualization, formgeschichte, and sitz im leben regalia in my college biblical studies class.  As I say, it was a major corrective to all that B.S. of my early years.

Still, if I never ever have to listen to any more verbosity on Revelation, it would not be a minute too soon.

Not that I will have a choice in the matter!