Reading the Apocalypse

Reading the Apocalypse today, at the end of the 20th century, we feel how we are attracted and fascinated by the frightening visions of John the Theologian, which, incidentally, has happened more than once in critical times of crisis, such as ours. Although, earlier it was possible to perceive the pictures of the Apocalypse as a kind of fantasy, for example, a warning about the poisoning of the seas, rivers, air, land. Today, such pages sound, alas, quite realistic, and the idea that evil sows evil, that deviation from the precepts of the Eternal Truth brings death, is embodied before our eyes, and can make our existence tragically meaningless.

But reading the Apocalypse together with Father Alexander, we notice not only that this great prophetic book about the fate of the Church and the world is relevant to us today, at a time of the greatest crisis of culture and the human race. Walking through the mysterious and formidable pages of Revelation together with Father Alexander, we begin to discern among the gloomy dystopias of John the voice of hope and victory, for the blacker the historical perspective that the prophet gives us, the more amazing the trumpets of victory sound, the trumpets of the bright world that replaces darkness.

The Lamb wins. He is weak and defenseless, He is slain from the beginning of the world, and He overcomes.

"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." /Open. 3:20/ The Lamb Himself, the eternal Truth and Love itself, stands at the door of the human heart. And how important it is that this quiet knock of Love is heard. Before it's too late...

INTRODUCTION

Many people believe that it is impossible and even spiritually dangerous for an ordinary person to read the Revelation of John the Theologian, or the Apocalypse, that this book is completely closed and is called the "Book with Seven Seals" because it speaks of a book with seven seals. One gets the impression that there is some part in the Holy Scriptures that was not written for people, but was inserted there for an unknown purpose. Meanwhile, as the Apostle Paul says, all Scripture is useful and everything must be given to us for enlightenment. Consequently, the reading of the Apocalypse is not some forbidden area, and its content is not at all as incomprehensible as it seems. Most of the Apocalypse is deciphered when reading the Old Testament, because its author lived and thought entirely in concepts, images of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, which he knew by heart. In order for us to be convinced of this, let us read the Revelation of St. John the Theologian, the last book of the New Testament, the last book of the Bible. We will read it in parts.

First I will answer the question: what is the Apocalypse? The Apocalypse is a special genre of sacred biblical writing and ancient writing in general. The word means "revelation." God reveals something to individual wise men who tell the world about what is happening in the depths of history, what forces govern the world, where humanity and the entire universe are heading.

This genre is different from the Books of the Prophets. They prophesied, and actively acted in the atmosphere of their time, they were public fighters, servants of the Temple, in difficult times they spoke from the dais in the Temple. There was a moment during the worship service when the prophet had to make a speech, and then the Spirit of the Lord would come upon him, and he would tell the people who were there quite specifically what would happen to them tomorrow, what they were doing today. He spoke about political forces, about clashing empires, called for living according to the law of God.

The Apocalypse is the creation of the writer, the one who no longer participates in public life, he writes. And what is revealed to him can almost no longer be conveyed in words. The prophet speaks as the Lord says, but the apocalyptics do not have this, because the mysteries of history and the fate of the world cannot be contained in verbal formulas, and mystical writers depict them in metaphors, symbols, allegories, and images. Apocalyptic is always imaginative, it is always visions, always some pictures. Moreover, the apocalyptic does not so much talk about specific events of the time as it thinks about the future. And the world in the eyes of the apocalyptics is something that is already ending, passing away; all their thoughts are directed to the last struggle between good and evil. For the prophets, the evil forces are not yet so obvious, they are expressed in the action of specific bearers of evil – sinful kings, cruel emperors, unfaithful crowds, etc. For the apocalyptics, the dark forces of history are already whole demonic hordes, hordes of evil spirits that inspire empires, inspire rapists, inspire the apostasy of the crowd.

Apocalyptics do not view the history of the world as the pagans did. For them, the world is not going downhill, to decline, but it does not present a picture of continuous progress either. For them, history reveals two sides: both the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Antichrist grow. For the Old Testament apocalyptics, this is the kingdom of the Messiah and the kingdom of His enemy. But it must be said that almost never have apocalyptic writers been able to rise to the level of the truly biblical, very rarely does genuine Revelation shine in their books. Most of all there are human dreams, dreams, phantasmagoria. It is a glimpse of the prophetic vision, not the prophetic vision itself. Only some pages of the prophetic writings of Zechariah, Ezekiel, and Joel belong to the apocalyptics (only the Book of the Prophet Daniel in its entirety), while all the other writings of the apocalyptics were not included in the Bible, because they contained many elements alien to the biblical worldview, borrowed from the Greeks, Chaldeans, and Persians. There were many writings of the apocalyptics of the New Testament: the Apocalypse of Peter and others, but only one was recognized by the Church – this is the Revelation of John the Theologian.

Who wrote it and when? The author calls himself: I am John, your brother, a partaker in tribulation. Tribulation is a word that is used ten times in the Apocalypse and seems to mean "persecution" quite definitely. This means that the author is a person who participated in the sufferings of the Church, a person who considers himself a brother and mentor of the communities. He doesn't say anything else about himself.

According to established tradition, which dates back to at least the GO of the second century, this author was John Zebedee, the beloved disciple of Christ. This was the opinion of St. Justin the Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus of Lyons, Hippolytus of Rome (II and III centuries). Later this was confirmed in the Church, and therefore the book in modern editions is called "The Revelation of St. John the Theologian," i.e., John Zebedee. But even in the second century there were opponents of this point of view. They believed that the author of Revelation was another John, also a disciple of the Lord. This was the opinion of the famous presbyter Gaius, St. Dionysius of Alexandria and others. Science has not come to a definite conclusion, so the question of the author of the Apocalypse remains open. We can well imagine that he was a young man who breathed the apocalyptic visions of the Old Testament, who was so drunk with them that he wanted to bring down thunder and lightning, for which he was called Jesus Boanerges, the Son of Thunder. The son of thunder means a person whose soul is like thunder, such is the meaning of this phrase. You can call a person a son of blessing, a son of wrath, a son of grace, but he was a Son of thunder and could write just like that. A great irreconcilability with the Empire, with Rome, with the expectation of an imminent denouement — all this fully coincides with the spirit of the young Apostle John, as he is presented in the Gospel.