I ended the last installment of this article on the New Testament with the idea that REVELATION contains highly symbolic language and that numbers are also highly symbolic, especially the number seven. In Revelation there are seven letters, a scroll with seven seals, seven angels with seven trumpets, seven bowls of wrath. The number twelve appears twenty-two times. So also the number 144,000 is symbolic – twelve times twelve times one thousand.

There are also symbolic animals in the book: the Lamb; a pale green horse; locusts with crowns of gold, teeth like lions, and tails like scorpions; horses with lions’ heads and tails like serpents; a red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns; a beast rising from the sea whose number is 666; another beast with two horns like a lamb who speaks like a dragon.

Among the symbolic women is one clothed with the sun; she has the moon under her feet and wears a crown with twelve stars. (For those who have seen some of the religious art of the Western Church, you will remember a picture of Mary the Mother of God which looks much like this image). She is pregnant and about to give birth, and a dragon waits to devour her child. Another, the great whore, is clothed in scarlet and purple and adorned with gold, jewels, and pearls. She rides on a red beast with seven heads and ten horns. Her name is Babylon the Great, and she is the great city that rules the earth.

The dating of Revelation is based on the fact that it refers to persecution. It has been commonly dated either in the mid to late 60s, shortly after Nero’s persecution, or in the mid-90s near the end of the reign of the emperor Domitian (d. 96 CE). But Nero’s persecution of Christians was confined to the city of Rome and did not affect Asia Minor, and the historical evidence for official Roman persecution under Domitian is very weak.

Moreover, the document itself does not indicate that large-scale persecution was already under way. The letter to Smyrna warns that suffering is imminent, but has not yet begun: do not fear what you are about to suffer. Beware, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison so that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be faithful until death.

This all tells us that Revelation was about things that were transpiring or about to transpire around the time of its writing. The book, however, has become for some Christians a prediction of things yet to come. If you haven’t, why not try reading Revelation – last book in the NT.