What is the book of Revelation?
Short answer
Revelation is the last book of the Bible, and the word means unveiling, not catastrophe. It was written by John, on the island of Patmos, as a letter to seven churches under persecution (Revelation 1:9). It uses visions, numbers and symbols — a common genre in Jewish literature then — and ends with God making all things new.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 4 min read
The English title is the honest one, and the popular name is what misleads. Apokálypsis, in Greek, means unveiling: pulling the cloth off something so it can be seen. The book opens exactly that way, announcing a revelation of Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the line apocalypse became a synonym for disaster, which is why so many people open the book expecting a timetable for the end of history and come away frustrated or frightened.
The second thing that changes the reading is material: this is a letter, with an addressee. The writer identifies himself as John and says he is on the island of Patmos on account of the message he carried. Whether he is the apostle John is something the tradition affirms and scholars debate — the text itself goes no further than the name. Chapters 2 and 3 address, one by one, seven real churches in Asia Minor, in present-day Turkey, each with its own specific praise and rebuke. There were people with names and addresses reading this under pressure. Any reading that skips those first readers starts off wrong.
The third is genre. Apocalyptic was a known literary form in the Judaism of that period, with rules of its own — visions, beasts, numbers with meaning, images borrowed from Daniel and Ezekiel. Seven means fullness, not seven units; twelve points to the people of God; the book itself says that 666 belongs to a human being and invites anyone with understanding to work it out. Reading symbol as statistic is the commonest error, and it is what produces the date predictions that have been failing for nineteen centuries.
The key to the whole book is in chapter 5, and it is an inversion. A Lion out of Judah is announced, the victor; John looks and sees a Lamb that appears to have been slain. The power that opens the sealed book is the power of someone who was killed and won that way. Everything else — the trumpets, the plagues, the beast, the battle — passes through that lens. Without it, Revelation turns into a disaster film; with it, it becomes the claim that the one who looked defeated is the one on the throne.
On how to apply the book to history, Christians read in four main ways, and they coexist within Catholicism and within Protestantism alike. The preterist reading sees there mainly the events of the first century, under the Roman Empire. The historicist reads the book as a panorama of the history of the Church. The futurist takes it as a description of events still to come. And the idealist treats it as a symbolic portrait of the permanent conflict between good and evil, valid in any era. None of them is the official reading of one group against another, and this page does not choose among the four.
It is worth noticing how the book ends, because it contradicts its reputation. It does not finish in fire: it finishes with a city coming down, with a renewed creation and with God dwelling among people. And the last words are not a threat — they are a request that Jesus come. It is a book of comfort written for persecuted people, not a manual of terror.
What the passages say
1The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him, in order to make known to his servants the things that must soon occur, and which he signified by sending his Angel to his servant John;
2he has offered testimony to the Word of God, and whatever he saw is the testimony of Jesus Christ.
3Blessed is he who reads or hears the words of this Prophecy, and who keeps the things that have been written in it. For the time is near.
The book says what it is in its first line: a revelation, given and passed on. And there is a blessing declared for the one who reads and for those who hear — a sign that the text was made for reading aloud in a gathering, not for solitary decoding.
9I, John, your brother, and a sharer in the tribulation and in the kingdom and in patient endurance for Christ Jesus, was on the island which is called Patmos, because of the Word of God and the testimony to Jesus.
Before any vision, the author presents himself as someone suffering alongside his readers, not above them. It is the most important historical information in the book — it was written from inside the persecution, for people who were inside it too.
5And one of the elders said to me: “Weep not. Behold, the lion from the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has prevailed to open the book and to break its seven seals.”
6And I saw, and behold, in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb was standing, as if it were slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, sent forth to all the earth.
The inversion that organises the whole book. A Lion is announced; what appears is a Lamb bearing the marks of having been slain. Hold on to this image: it is the lens through which every scene of power that follows should be read.
18Here is wisdom. Whoever has intelligence, let him determine the number of the beast. For it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.
The most exploited verse in the book, and notice what it actually asks for: understanding and calculation, plus the information that the figure belongs to a human being. Centuries of attempts to fit the names of contemporaries into it have all failed — which is no surprise, since the calculation was proposed to first-century readers.
3And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: “Behold the tabernacle of God with men. And he will dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be their God with them.
4And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be no more. And neither mourning, nor crying out, nor grief shall be anymore. For the first things have passed away.”
5And the One who was sitting upon the throne, said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And he said to me, “Write, for these words are entirely faithful and true.”
This is where the book is headed, and it is not fire: God coming to dwell among people, and a declaration that all things are made new. Notice the verb — it is not replacing with something else, it is making new what exists.
20He who offers testimony to these things, says: “Even now, I am approaching quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
The last words of the book and of the whole Bible are not a sentence or a warning: they are a request that he come. That is how the text with a reputation for frightening people actually ends.