We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

A Guide to the Book of Revelation

Are you ready for the Rapture? Jesus is coming on Oct 28, 1992(!)

Marc Nozell via Compfight

Kurt Willems posted this excellent guide for reading the Book of Revelation as it was intended to be read. As Kurt points out, this is the most misunderstood and misinterpreted book of the Bible. If you were weaned on A Thief in the Night or the Left Behind series of books, this will be refreshing information for you.

From Kurt’s blog:

Revelation is a book that continues to be used as “trump card” against Christian nonviolence as it posits a future tribulation and war in which Christ comes back to lead people into a battle, one that apparently contradicts everything he taught during his earthly ministry. And of course there’s the baggage of the “Left Behind” series that imagines a rapture followed by the rise of an “anti-Christ” and a literal 7-year tribulation which fuels a mentality that the book is mostly about what will happen and how to escape that fate. I want to suggest that most of what you have been taught about Revelation, especially if you watched the cheesy Christian movies or grew up in conservative/fundamentalist expressions of evangelicalism, is wrong.

Related Reading

How Are We To Love the Soldiers of ISIS?

Over the last several weeks I’ve received some form of this question almost every day. In some cases the question is asked rhetorically, as though the very question exposes the absurdity of suggesting we are to love this terroristic group. Other times the question is asked with a pragmatic twist. One person recently said to…

Why the Rapture is a Bad Idea

Is the Rapture really what you think it is? Most Christians believe that God will take his followers up to heaven before the really bad stuff starts on earth, but is this what the bible says? Is this view consistent with the loving God that Jesus shows us in the New Testament? View the full…

That Weird Episode with the Pigs

In my opinion, the single strangest episode recounted in the Gospels is the account of Jesus’ encounter with a demonized man that ended with two thousand pigs drowning themselves in the Sea of Galilee (Mk 5:1-10//Mt 8:28-34; Lk 8:26-39). Some find it morally objectionable that this mass suicide was the result of Jesus allowing the…

Does the Old Testament Justify “Just War”?

Since the time of Augustine, Christians have consistently appealed to the violent strand of the Old Testament to justify waging wars when they believed their cause was “just.” (This is Augustine’s famous “just war” theory.) Two things may be said about this. First, the appeal to the OT to justify Christians fighting in “just” wars…

Podcast: Did Revelation Evolve or did God Evolve?

Greg discusses the revolution of God. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0387.mp3

Why Are You Vegetarian?

In this episode Greg talks about non-violence in his diet and in his treatment of household insects. Spiders=are worth saving. Mosquitos=apparently not. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0031.mp3