Category Archives: Bible

It is getting harder to keep track of what is happening in Revelation. Everything seems to happen again and again. Angels unleashing major carnage on the earth. The sun and moon first turning black as cloth, then red as blood, then green as cheese. Or something like that.

All I know for certain is that God is letting an eternity’s worth of wrath loose upon the earth, and mankind is getting screwed. Take the trials of Lot, add the plagues of Egypt, and throw the Angel of Death into the mix. What do you have?

God’s love.

Chapter 16

It is time for the angels to pour god’s wrath onto the earth. These sound a lot like what happened when the seven seals were open, and definitely sounds like the signs that were shown in The Seventh Sign. So I am just a little confused. Not that this matters much, especially when there are seven bowls full of destruction to write about!

• The first angel poured his bowl onto the earth. A sore appeared on everyone who had the mark of the beast, or who worshipped the beast’s image.
• The second angel poured his bowl into the sea. The sea became like the blood of a dead body, and everything that lived in the sea died.
• The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers. Water in all of the rivers and springs turned to blood.
• The fourth angel poured his bowl onto the sun, which then burned people with its fierce heat. (Global warming?)
• The fifth angel poured his bowl onto the beast’s throne. The beast’s kingdom was plunged into darkness.
• The sixth angel poured his bowl on the Euphrates river, which then dried up completely.
• The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air. God roars “It has happened!” and then there’s a powerful earthquake.

Chapter 17

More imagery, but this time one of the angels of the bowls provides an instant translation. That was very nice of him! John sees the notorious prostitute Babylon sitting at the edge of many waters. The angel says this prostitute is the mother of all detestable things, and the waters she sits on are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. When the time comes, the beast will leave the woman abandoned and naked.

John is then carried off into the wilderness, where he sees a woman. She is wearing the finest of clothing and jewelry, but holds a gold cup filled with detestable things. The woman is drunk on the blood of true believers. This woman represents the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.

The woman sits on top of a seven-headed, ten-horned beast. The heads are the seven mountains on which the city rests. The are also seven kings. In a sentence that could be ripped straight from Tolkein, “Five of them have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come.” The beast is actually the eighth king, and will be destroyed with the other seven.

The ten horns are also kings. These kings have not received their kingdoms yet. They have one purpose: to give their authority to the beast.

Chapter 18

There is one thing that is absolutely, positively, 100% obvious in the book of Revelation: the city Babylon is going to get fucked up when the world ends. Plagues of death, misery and famine will strike the city all in the same day. The city will burn to the ground. Merchants everywhere will cry and mourn, since the city’s destruction means the destruction of commerce throughout that region of the world. The city is destroyed, as is industry.

Chapter 19

We are at the beginning of the end. There is celebration in heaven at the fall of Babylon. Everyone in heaven sings their praises to God. And everyone rejoices because it is time for the wedding of the lamb and the church.

Heaven once again stands open, and at the gates is a white horse ridden by Faithful & True. The rider wears a robe that was dipped in blood. The robe has “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” written on it. The rider has a secret name written on himself, and his name is the Word of God. To quote from the Gospel of John, “In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That all kind of flows together nicely.

The white rider leads the armies of heaven. A sharp sword comes out of his mouth (we heard of the mouth and sword thing earlier) and he uses this to battle the beast and the armies of the earth. In the end, the beast was captured. The beast and its false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire; the rest of the beast’s followers die by the sword of the white rider.

Up next: One resurrection, two deaths and a thousand years

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• The anti-Christ and the Beast – Revelation 12-15 (NTiR) (biffster.org)
• Angels can be bad-asses! – Revelation 9-11 (NTiR) (biffster.org)
• What is Babylon? (weareisrael.wordpress.com)

Once upon a time, back in my wild younger days, I had an actual alcohol-induced hallucinative episode. I blacked out, but continued to function. My friends said I left the apartment we were in, ran to the park across the street, then started climbing up a hill. I was yelling that I had to get to the top of the hill so I could greet spirits that had come to save earth from its destruction. That was – by far – the weirdest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

The Book of Revelation is even weirder than that.

Chapter 12

Wow! I mean, seriously, WOW! Let’s see: we open up with a woman who dressed with the sun, stepped on the moon, and wore a crown of twelve stars. She is about to give birth. At the same time, a seven-headed, ten-horned, red dragon is there, waiting to devour the baby once it is born. However, the baby boy is whisked away to heaven. The woman flees to a safe house.

Then a war breaks out in heaven. Michael (presumably the Archangel) and his angels battle the dragon and its angels. The dragon is Satan, of course. Up until this point, Satan has been allowed to stay in heaven and to speak with God. That’s… interesting. Doesn’t seem internally consistent with other passages of the New Testament. But I’ll let that slide. Michael and his angels win the war, casting Satan and Satan’s followers out of heaven, down to the earth.

The woman’s safe house was also on earth, which was a bad idea. The dragon sought her out, looking to get revenge. The woman was given eagle’s wings and was able to fly away to an even safer house. The dragon is even more pissed off, so he opens his mouth and a river of water streamed out of its mouth. The plan was to drown the woman, but the earth opened up and swallowed the river.

What the fuck?

Chapter 13

This chapter is the basis for a lot of end-times stories and sermons and fears. It reinforces the tale of the anti-Christ, as well as the mark and number of the beast. The first beast comes out of the sea. it has 10 horns wearing royal crowns. It had seven heads, each with blasphemous names. One of the heads was wounded by a sword and appeared to be dying. However, that head was healed, which was taken as a miracle by the people of the earth. The dragon gave the beast his power and throne, and complete authority over everything on earth. The people of the earth started to follow the beast.

A second beast rose from the earth. It looked like a lamb, but talked like a dragon. It too had authority over the earth. It bragged of its miracles and signs – it was even able to make fire rain down from heaven – and demanded that everyone worship the first beast. The second beast also forced all people to be marked either on their right hands or on their foreheads. If they did not do so, they wouldn’t be allowed to do such things as buy food. The person would be marked with the number of the beast, which was mis-translated as 666.

This just came to mind: the idea of the mark of the beast is very much in-line with biometrics. We use the swipe of a fingerprint to access some systems. Super-high security places require retina scans. Hands, forehead, etc. Maybe John’s revelation is the work of a time traveler? Like a really bored security engineer?

But now I am just being silly.

Chapter 14

If I didn’t know there were 8 more chapters to go, I’d swear this is building to a crescendo. The true lamb is finally back, standing on Mount Zion. He is commanded to swing his sickle and harvest the earth. Everyone who was worthy was saved. A second angel – one who had authority over fire – also was called to harvest. He harvested grapes to add to the winepress of the wrath of God. Which is weird, but what is weird is the winepress was trampled outside the city. Blood flowed from the remains of the winepress, creating a lake of blood that was 200 miles across. Ick!

Chapter 15

This is by far the shortest of all of the chapters of Revelation. There are seven more angels, these holding the last seven plagues. Once they released their plagues, God’s wrath was finally been sated. John also saw a sea of glass, on which stood everyone who had remained true to God and Jesus, and who had spurned the beast and refused the mark.

Things still weren’t quite over, though. Because apparently God still had seven cups of wrath-wine. These were given to the seven plague-bearing angels.

Up next: Babylon is going to get fucked up

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• Angels can be bad-asses! – Revelation 9-11 (NTiR) (biffster.org)

One theme in the book of Revelations is the importance of the holy numbers. Threes and sevens are littered throughout the book. Three angels. Seven seals. Seven trumpets. John wanted to make sure that we knew divine numbers are in use here. Expect many more instances of the divine numbers, and we’ll be adding in twelve to go with them soon.

In the previous chapters, the destruction of earth begins. And then begins in a slightly different way. The sun, moon and stars are either darkened or turned black and blood-red. People all over the planet are getting killed. Again and again, by plague, famine, you name it. We left off after the fourth angel blew his trumpet, and an eagle warned that things up until this point have been tame compared to what comes next…

Chapter 9

Every time I think that this book can’t get weirder, it does. And in this chapter, things quickly change from weird to bizarre! It is definitely a trip down the rabbit hole.

The fifth angel blows his trumpet, and a plague of locusts invades the earth. These aren’t ordinary locusts, though. They looked like horses with human faces. They had hair like a woman’s, teeth like lion’s, they were wearing breastplates, they had scorpion tails, stinger and all. The locusts were allowed to torture people for five months.
The sixth angel blows his trumpet, and four more angels are released. One thing to note here: angels can be bad-asses! First the horsemen of the apocalypse, then the angels with the trumpets, and now angels who were imprisoned at the Euphrates river. These angels ride with an army of 200 million calvary troops, and are allowed to kill one-third of humanity. The horses in this attack breathed three plauges – fire, smoke and sulfur. These plagues killed another third of humanity.
The remaining third had not learned their lesson, and did not repent of their sins.

I have to say, that’s pretty fucking stupid. If I were to see fire and brimstone rain down from the skies, the oceans boil, the sun and moon blackened, a plague of mutated scorpion/locust hybrids wiping out a third of humanity and mounted army of 200 million come sweeping across the world, killing another third of the world’s population, you can rest assured that I’d be saying “okay, I was wrong. I’m sorry!”

Chapter 10

We’re going back to the bad-ass angels. The next has legs that were like columns of fire, and his face was like the sun. He speaks with the roar of a lion, and is big enough that he can set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on land. The angel speaks, and then seven thunders (???) cried out. God wouldn’t let John write down what the thunders said, however. Which I take to mean that John couldn’t figure out how thunder could talk, nor what it would say. But that’s just me being cynical.

The giant angel holds a scroll in his hand. God tells John to eat the scroll. John does, and finds that the scroll tastes like honey, but sours in his stomach. And look, I know that this is symbolic of something. The scroll stands for something – maybe the teachings of a false prophet? I am not completely blind to imagery. I don’t have a lot of patience for it, though. I am too literal a person to make these types of connections. My brain doesn’t work that way. I don’t like imagery, and this chapter is one great big batch of symbolism.

*blegh*

Chapter 11

John is told to measure the temple of God, but I’m not sure why because his measurements are never used. God does say that the Holy City (Jerusalem, I presume) will be trampled by representatives of all nations for 42 months. During this time, there will be two witnesses (who are each an olive tree and a lampstand) who will prophesy of things to come. These two witnesses will have the power to rain down plagues upon the land. In the end, they will do battle with the beast from the bottomless pit. Never fear, though: the Beast will conquer and kill the witnesses.

No, wait, what?

The peoples of the earth rejoice, since the two witnesses had been saying things like “you’re a sinner living in a land of evil!” Who wouldn’t want to be able to put a sock into a self-righteous party pooper? The witnesses aren’t buried, and lay displayed for three and a half days. At that point, God resurrected them and took them into heaven. Then there was a powerful earthquake, destroying 1/10th of the city (I’m surprised there’s that much still standing) and killing 7,000 people.

Getting back to the angels and the trumpets, the seventh angel finally steps up to bat and blows his trumpet. There was singing from heaven. The Elders fall to their knees to praise God. The heavenly temple of God is finally opened – oh, look, there’s the ark of the covenant!

Up next: The anti-Christ, the mark of the Beast, and the number of the Beast (sorta)

New installments of The New Testament In Review will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday. The new posts will always be on my blog, http://biffster.org. The entire series is accessible via http://biffster.org/ntir. If you are one of my Facebook friends, you can get an advance preview on my Facebook page. You can also follow me (@biffster) on Twitter to be alerted to new posts.

Related articles

• The end is here! (New Testament in Review) (biffster.org)