The Book of Revelation can sometimes be... a lot to unpack. And when it is, well, it leaves a lot of questions.
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00:00The book of Revelation can sometimes be a lot to unpack, and when it is, well, it leaves
00:06a lot of questions.
00:08Revelation 1 opens by presenting the text as a prophetic vision given to John of Patmos,
00:13an early church figure who might be John the Apostle.
00:15Patmos is a Greek island, and John the Apostle was from Galilee, so that doesn't exactly
00:20add up, but let's not get too far afield.
00:23Anyway, let's all enter the rapture, the moment when God rescues his followers before the
00:27apocalypse ensues.
00:28The 18th-century puritanical Great Awakening in the United States and modern fiction like
00:32the Left Behind series have reduced the rapture to a single idea.
00:36God snaps his fingers like Thanos from the Avengers films, and poof, go the righteous.
00:40Right, Bucky?
00:42Steve?
00:49But that doesn't happen in Revelation.
00:51The term rapture doesn't actually exist in the Bible and isn't explained clearly anywhere.
00:56Many ideas about the rapture actually come from passages in other biblical books, like
01:001 Thessalonians 4.
01:02This talks about the dead in Christ rising following the trumpet call of God upon Jesus'
01:06return.
01:07Revelation remixes some gospel ideas into its second coming of Jesus story.
01:12Revelation 20 reads,
01:13"'And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them.
01:17And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word
01:21of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his
01:25mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands.
01:28And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."
01:31So is this the rapture?
01:32Where do these people go?
01:34Do we mean the physical dead or souls?
01:36What's supposed to happen, exactly?
01:38We've got no clue.
01:40666, the number of the beast.
01:43It's heavy metal lyrics and the most famous number from Revelation all in one.
01:47Since around 1000 A.D., everyone from unpopular popes, Satan-slash-Lucifer-slash-the-devil,
01:53to the generally unpious, and the political enemy of your choosing have been described
01:57as the Antichrist.
01:59But here's the twist.
02:00There are actually two beasts.
02:02The beasts, plural, appear in the book of Revelation 13, which describes one beast coming
02:07out of the ocean and another from the land, which is just like the movie The War of the
02:11Gargantuas.
02:12Really, it is.
02:13The only difference is the way the beasts look.
02:15The sea beast is described in Scripture as such,
02:18"'Having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the
02:23name of blasphemy.
02:24And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of
02:28a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion.
02:31And the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority."
02:35The description of the second beast is a little less fantastical.
02:38With two horns like a lamb, it speaks as a dragon and commands the first beast.
02:43Most importantly, it bears the ever-famous mark of 666.
02:46You may have heard the story that the number is actually a code meaning Nero, as in the
02:50Roman Emperor.
02:51There's even a specific passage that gives some allusions to what that number means.
02:56Revelation 13 reads in part,
02:58"'Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number
03:01of a man, and his number is 600, 3 score and 6.'"
03:06The catch is that most scholars put the writing of Revelation in the 90s A.D.
03:10Nero died around 30 years before that, so that might not be the solution to the puzzle.
03:15Now, if Revelation was written in the 60s, as some modern researchers have claimed, problem
03:20solved, and it's Nero.
03:21But if not, then it's another question without a clear answer.
03:26If you made it this far, A, thanks.
03:28And B, yes, we know that Revelation was written for a first-century audience, mainly.
03:33Obviously, it made it into the New Testament, so there's relevance to it from the eyes of
03:37the church leaders who wanted it in there.
03:39But what we're trying to do is look at how the passages are interpreted to a modern audience.
03:43So with that out of the way, let's get back into the story and use some words that social
03:47media hates when you use them.
03:50Here we go.
03:52The Whore of Babylon, aka the Prostitute on the Beast or the Mother of Prostitutes.
03:56This character requires the reader to stretch into the symbolic and engage in some enormous
04:01leaps of reasoning.
04:02The Whore of Babylon appears in Revelation 17 and 18, literally sitting on the beast
04:06that emerges from the sea.
04:08The writer describes it as such,
04:09"'I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having
04:14seven heads and ten horns.
04:16And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones
04:20and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her
04:25fornication."
04:26Revelation 17 does finally plainly say at the end that the woman represents a city.
04:31Most analysis marks the city as an economic center.
04:33Cut to Revelation 18, and she's dead.
04:36It reads,
04:37"...and a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and cast it into the sea,
04:41saying,
04:42"'Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found
04:45no more at all.'"
04:47What exactly does that mean, beyond the obvious?
04:49I'm not really sure.
04:51One topic is so fundamental to Christianity that it's shocking how unclear Revelation
04:55is about the whole thing — namely, the nature of heaven and hell, or more specifically,
05:00the new heaven and the Lake of Fire.
05:02Folks tend to think of the events in Revelation resulting in the separation of humanity into
05:06two camps — those who go to heaven, believers, and those who go to hell, non-believers.
05:11But Revelation 20 calls the final resting place for the dam the Lake of Fire, and Revelation
05:1521 calls the final resting place for the holy the new heaven above the new earth, a.k.a.
05:20the holy city or the new Jerusalem.
05:22Those verses imply that all those who've died until that point are hanging out in temporary
05:26resting places until the events of Revelation, so the Lake of Fire isn't what we've come
05:31to call hell.
05:32And the same goes for the new heaven, which isn't the current heaven.
05:35Where exactly are they?
05:37How are they different?
05:38This, too, is left up to interpretation.
05:41An ashen horse ridden by death, the moon turning blood red, a star named Wormwood, king of
05:46locusts — these are just a few of the better-known end-of-days things we have to look forward
05:50to according to Revelation.
05:52Did you also just realize how much metal depends on Revelation?
05:55Right?
05:56Didn't see that coming.
05:57Anyway, let's get to our next head-scratching revelatory mystery, the series of seven events
06:02— the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls.
06:06These events also connect to the famed four horsemen of the apocalypse and are bound into
06:10one series of catastrophes.
06:12From the text, it's at least obvious that disasters are happening, but that's about
06:16it.
06:17The seals, trumpets, and bowls — whatever they actually are — comprise three sequences
06:20of seven apocalyptic horrors described in Revelation that ravage the Earth.
06:25Jesus breaks the seals, angels blow the trumpets, and pour the bowls of God's wrath, and each
06:29time something terrible happens.
06:31The breaking of the seals summons the four horsemen, each one having a special ability.
06:36As Revelation 6-8 reads,
06:38And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell
06:42followed with him.
06:43And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword, and
06:48with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
06:51Seal-breaking catastrophes include events like stars falling as figs drop from a fig
06:56tree.
06:57Meanwhile, the trumpet section reads,
06:58The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze,
07:03was thrown into the sea.
07:04A third of the sea turned into blood.
07:07Events get even more weird in the bowl section, which reads,
07:10And I saw three unclean spirits, like frogs, come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out
07:14of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
07:18So yeah, in other words, the interpretations are practically endless.