Revelation and End Times?

[SeanF1989]

Someone on Yahoo Answers asked the question “What does the Catholic Book of Revelation say?” and this is what one answerer replied.

It predicts the return-from-death of the Roman emperor Nero,
a renewal of Nero’s persecution of Christians,
the visiting upon the world of many bitter plagues, tribulations and hardships,
the complete destruction of a world of luxurious materialism (specifically, the Roman Empire of the 1st century),
the second coming of Christ as King of Kings,
the Battle of Armageddon between the armies of evil and good,
the imprisonment of Satan and the Antichrist,
the thousand-year rule of the just,
the escape of Satan and the second gathering of his armies,
the destruction of Satan’s armies outside the camp of the Lord,
the judgement of the dead, each according to “what he had done,”
the creation of the new Heaven and Earth,
the establishment of the new city of Jerusalem on Earth,
and the flow of the River of Life through the center of the new Jerusalem.

Here is the link to the question - answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aj5GhssImtWseq06PIMS2bgjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20090720174257AAC9Z2t

 

[TimothyH]

There is only one Book of Revelation. Whether you call it Catholic or not, there are not different versions which say things different from other versions. There is one Book of Revelation. There are however, different interpretations of the Book of Revelation and much of the answer given is not consistent with Catholic beliefs. For example, Satan has been chained and this has been done by the Church through its sacraments and teaching. We are in the 1000 year reign of Christ. But my point is not to refute the answer given point by point.

My point is that there is a reason why God and the Church put the Book of Revelation at the end of the Bible and has less to do with the end of the world than it does the fact that much of it is based on the books before it.

Asking what Revelation means is like reading the last chapter of the the Lord of the Rings trilogy and asking what that means or trying to understand what Gone with the Wind is about by reading only the last Chapter. It is assumed that you have read and understand all that came before it. Revelation is last because the Bible tells a story and Revelation is the last part of the story. Revelation references everything from Genesis through Daniel through John’s Gospel. Unless you undersand all that, you will have a faulty interpetation of Revelation and come up with things like a literal army of locust soldiers with armor and womens hair.

To begin to understand Revelation, one has to have a basic understanding of everything that comes before it in the Bible and one has to have an understanding of the story - the narrative thread which runs through the Bible.

Taking individual verses or passages out of the context of the rest of the Bible and explaining what they mean doesn’t work. If you want to know what Revelation means than you have get into a good Bible study and start with Genesis.

-Tim-

 

[bmullins]

Each of those points is a very small gloss as to the implications of them and what they truly pertain to. One could write pages on every single one. Each one is pointing to realities at the time of the writing, to realities in the future (near future, and even maybe all futures). They are also written in languages that point to liturgical use, and even to symbolism from the prophets of the Old Testament. To truly understand Revelation requires a lot more study and a lot more time than just a few sentences.

So does the Catholic book of Revelation say that? I would argue that all books of Revelation (that haven’t been watered down or modified) say those things. Does it mean those literally as a future Armageddon event? Likely not but all things are possible. The link to Rome is one that all theologians agree on and many agree with the comment on Nero, but there is so much more there that is left out in such a short overview.

 

[COPLAND_3]

The book is deep and complex enough to be interpreted literally, allegorically, historically, morally, litergically, and anagogically. I have found that the greatest minds of the Christian faith have found a variety of ways to apply it in the last 2000 years, which tells me that there is not just one rigid interpretation of the book of Revelation that is superior. I do believe that the book applies to every moment of the Church, and there is a final fulfillment of many parts of the Revelation that is destined for the end of the world. That being said, I highly recommend anyone the check out the footnotes on Revelation that I put together for the Aquinas Study Bible, it has numerous quotes from commentators and Church writers from every generation back to the Apostles. The link is below

 

[Nelka]

Not Nero.