啟示錄 {qi3-shi4-lu4}
New Testament – Apocalypse
(No zombies need apply)
The Book of Revelation (Not Revelations) is arguably the most debated and revered Book in the Bible. Its literary style and fantastical content challenge people’s conventional understanding of time, causality, and God’s will regardless of their cultures and eras. Perhaps that’s because it truly is a book from heaven. We may simply lack the cognitive capacity to comprehend every detail. Nevertheless, as the Book says, “… blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” (Rev 1:3)
There’s nothing complicated about the name of this Book, English or Chinese. What’s interesting though is its Greek name, ἀποκάλυψις, or apokalypsis. You guessed it, that’s where “apocalypse” comes from. Apocalypse is one of those words whose meaning got so stretched out of its original shape that it begins to take on an entirely different life. In its original sense, ἀποκάλυψις means manifestation, appearance, or disclosure of truth or instruction. In another word, apocalypse literally means revelation: a big reveal of what’s going to happen in the end.
Revelation is filled with details of war, famine, plague, dragon, and even asteroid, which are basically different avenues of total destruction before the creation of the new heaven and new earth. For that reason, people, mostly fiction writers and Hollywood, begin to associate “apocalypse” with any imaginative scenarios where earth and humanity are wiped out. Gradually, the word “apocalypse” morphs from “revelation” to “destruction”, but now you know better.
Revelation is hotly debated even within Christendom partly because it’s not written as a movie script or instruction manual, but rather as a description of mystery. There’s a whole field of Eschatology [es-kuh-TO-luh-jee] 末世論 {mo4-shi4-lun4} that studies how the end time plays out and how to interpret Revelation along with other revelatory Books such as Daniel and Ezekiel, which is not for the faint of heart. The good news is, this is as far as any interpreter needs to know about it to do the job.
Photo by Viktor Vasnetsov on Public Domain