Revelation

"I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" (Revelation 1:9). The last era of the Bible is a vision, and it begins with letters. Seven churches in Asia are addressed by name, and with them come the people caught up in their disputes: Antipas, "my faithful witness, who was killed among you" at Pergamum (Revelation 2:13); the Nicolaitans, whose works are hated at Ephesus and held by some at Pergamum (Revelation 2:6, 15); those who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before Israel (Revelation 2:14); and Jezebel of Thyatira, "who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants" (Revelation 2:20).

Then a door is opened in heaven. Around the throne sit the twenty-four elders, clothed in white with golden crowns, who fall down before the one seated there (Revelation 4:4, 10), and four living creatures full of eyes never cease their song. A scroll with seven seals is opened by the Lamb "standing, as though it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6), and with the first four seals come the riders: one on a white horse with a bow and a crown, one on a red horse who takes peace from the earth, one on a black horse with scales in his hand, and one on a pale horse "and its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him" (Revelation 6:2-8).

The vision widens into figures the text names but does not explain. A hundred and forty-four thousand are sealed from the tribes of Israel (Revelation 7:4), and a great multitude no one could number stands before the throne (Revelation 7:9). Out of the abyss comes a king whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon (Revelation 9:11). Two witnesses prophesy in sackcloth for 1,260 days, are killed, and rise (Revelation 11:3-12). A woman clothed with the sun cries out in birth pains before a dragon (Revelation 12:1-6), a beast rises from the sea (Revelation 13:1), and a second beast rises from the earth and makes the earth worship the first (Revelation 13:11-12). What each figure stands for is argued over; the text itself says only what it shows.

The era ends where the story does. A rider called Faithful and True comes out of heaven (Revelation 19:11), the bride is made ready, and a voice from the throne says, "Behold, I am making all things new" (Revelation 21:5). In the city there is no temple, "for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb" (Revelation 21:22), and the servants of God "will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads" (Revelation 22:4). The people of this final era are the last named in Scripture, and the book closes with an invitation open to anyone: "let the one who is thirsty come" (Revelation 22:17).