"You have beasts, the devil at work." "Its visions have inspired and scared for 2,000 years." "Many see the pages of the Book of Revelation an uncanny series of predictions:" "global warming, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, war in the Middle East." "There is no more perfect battleground in the world than this." "Some believe the book is a guide to one of the greatest riddles of all, the date for the end of the world." "Could the Book of Revelation hold such a secret?" "New evidence has revealed that the key to the mystery of last book in The Bible lies in the dust of modern-day Turkey and that the infamous number of the Beast may not be 666 after all." "To understand Revelation we need to know who wrote it and where." "Approximately sixty years after the death of Jesus, a collection of scrolls was delivered to the small Christian community in Ephesus in Asia Minor - modern-day Turkey." "The scrolls contained what is now known as 'The Book of Revelation'." "The authors name was in the book" "John." "Tradition says that this is the disciple John, the fisherman son of Zebedee, the writer of John's Gospel who looked after Mary," " Jesus' mother, after her son's crucifixion." "Yet in Revelation John never describes himself as a disciple of Jesus nor writes as if he ever knew him." "Now, new scientific methods can help resolve the question of who the author really was." "Sir Anthony Kenny is a leading expert in stylometry, which analyses writing technique." "The things that are most characteristic of authors are not special words that are their favourites but the frequency with which they use very common words." "Two of these common words examined by Sir Anthony were "de"" " a word similar to "but" and "kai" meaning "and."" "The word "and" is twice as frequent in the Book of Revelation as it is in any other book of the New Testament." "Whereas the Gospel of John was not particularly fond of "and"" "and its use is less than average." "On the other hand the Greek word "de"" "which is very frequent in any other Greek I've ever met occurs only 7 times in the whole of the Book of Revelation." "Sir Anthony carried out 99 similar tests on Revelation and John's Gospel." "His results were conclusive." "I could then by using a simple statistical technique, put together these 99 tests into a particular way of discriminating between texts, and it was at the outcome of that that I saw that the 4th Gospel and the Book of Revelation were right apart." "I think that it's extremely unlikely that the 2 books were written by the same author." "So the case for John the Disciple writing the Book of Revelation doesn't seem a strong one." "Greg Carey an expert in the meaning of Revelation believes there are clues in the text that can point us to the true author." "John addresses his audience in such a direct way." "He says: "I, John, your brother,"" "as if he's someone who knows them and whom they all recognise." "The Book of Revelation begins with a series of seven letters to Churches that are located in what we call Asia Minor or south-western Turkey." "Each letter addresses a single Church, congratulates it for its virtues or admonishes it for its faults," "so that one assumes that John knew these Churches and had been present among them." "And there's a further indication that John was writing to a congregation" "John's Apocalypse - which means "revelation", describes colourful visions of angels and monsters." "The letter, likely to have been dictated to a scribe, is clearly no routine correspondence to a Christian church." "John has something important to say, and he may be using his audience's imagination to help get his point across." "It's important to remember that the Book of Revelation was written to be heard." "John blesses those who hear the words of the prophecy, as well as the one who reads it, presumably aloud to an audience." "In other words, the book was written to have an effect upon people who weren't studying it like we read books today, but were experiencing it through their imaginations, much as modern audiences listen to radio programmes." "And there was a clear need for Revelation to be written for the ear and not the eye" "Most early Christian communities would have had a few people who were literate, and they would most likely be the leaders of that particular community, but the majority would be illiterate, and this was a reflection of society generally." "So John was almost certainly a man of authority in the church, writing to his flocks in Asia Minor - yet that raises a fundamental question." "Seven-headed demons, four terrifying horsemen, are unusual images even by First Century standards." "What made John draw on such fearsome images to convey his message?" "To understand the true meaning of the book we need to go back to its roots." "According to the Bible, John wrote Revelation on the island of Patmos off the Turkish coast, at that time under the control of the Roman Empire." "John tells his audience that he's on the island because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus." "Whenever the Book of Revelation mentions the testimony of Jesus, it connects it to suffering." "In fact, the Greek word 'martus' for 'witness' has become our word 'martyr' and it takes that usage first in the Book of Revelation." "If John was suffering on Patmos, then was he a prisoner of the Romans?" "Ian Boxall is an expert on the author of Revelation." "This is the cave where, according to tradition, John has his visions." "You can see the place over there, where traditionally he laid his head and then, not being quite so agile, there's a grip for him to lever himself up" "John, according to all the traditions, is here as an exile and they differ precisely as to why he was here, who exiled him but they all agree that he was here as a result of his Christian belief." "Although there is no archaeological evidence of a Roman prison, the location of the island suggests it served a military purpose." "Patmos may have been one of a number of fortress islands defending the important Roman seaport of Miletus, about 40 miles away on the mainland." "It was an ideal place to detain exiles." "But if John was in exile, it seems strange that he had the freedom to find a cave, see visions, write them down and then to send the documents to his Churches back on the mainland." "This may well be due to the way Rome exiled troublemakers." "When Roman authorities would place someone in exile, he would have had quite a bit of freedom - he wouldn't have been imprisoned." "He would have only been excluded from appearing in certain regions, or he would have been told that he had to restrict his movements to just this one island, but he may have been able to carry on a correspondence through intermediaries" "who sailed from the island back to the mainland and return." "So that he may have been able to keep in touch with the Churches he was addressing" "Despite this freedom to communicate, John was still trapped on Patmos, separated from the Christian churches in Asia Minor." "This sense of frustration may have lead John to write Revelation, with its violent images of world-wide catastrophe." "The theory is that John was furious with the Romans for persecuting him and his fellow Christians." "There's a lot of anger in Revelation, and a yearning forjustice to be done, and that's often been seen as a direct result of Roman persecution of Christians" "On the face of it, John had every reason to be angry." "The established view is that in the first century the Roman authorities systematically persecuted Christians across the Empire." "It was believed that the violence, started about 20 years before Revelation was written, under the reign of the Emperor Nero in AD64" "Tradition has it that Nero blamed the Christians for the tragic and catastrophic fire that devastated the city in that year." "Some Christians were crucified;" "he used their bodies as torches to light the pathways into the city." "It was such a devastating experience that the memory of Nero stayed within the early Christian communities." "Most academics agree that Nero did persecute Christians." "But Revelation probably wasn't written under Nero." "It's been dated at around AD 90, in the reign of the Emperor Domitian." "And evidence in Revelation itself seems to show that" "Domitian was far less brutal than Nero." "If Revelation had been motivated by the persecution of John's community, then you might expect him to list a host of martyrs by name." "In fact Revelation mentions only one." "The Book is obsessed with those who have died on account of their testimony to Jesus;" "he numbers them in the thousands, but he only names one, a believer named Antipas, who has died on account of his testimony." "Although John does mention the death of the martyr Antipas, there's now evidence that the Emperor Domitian may not have the blood of many Christians on his hands after all." "Recent historians have begun to question whether Domitian actually did persecute Christians, and indeed whether he was quite the tyrant that he was made out to be by later historians" "There's not a great deal of evidence for that, when one begins to scratch the surface." "So if Christians were not being systematically persecuted, it's hard to imagine how Revelation could have had any impact on its audience" "John must have had another target." "These Second Century ruins hold a vital clue as to what drove John to write Revelation, and whether the Book really does have the key to the end of the world." "The ancient city of Pergamum lies two hundred miles north of Ephesus in modern day Turkey." "And it was a major political and religious centre in the Roman province of Asia Minor." "It was also home to one of the fledgling Christian communities who first received the Book of Revelation" "But Dan Schowalter - an expert in Biblical archaeology" " believes that Pergamum's pagan temples give the greatest insight into what concerned John." "The partially-reconstructed remains give us a good idea of what an impressive building this would have been, but it was actually in the courtyard around the temple where most of the activity would have taken place." "There would have been sacrifice on an altar in front of the temple, the people would have gathered around, would have sung songs, would have offered prayers and vows, and then when the ceremony was over," "they might have been able to take home some meat to help supplement their diet." "John was familiar with Pagan worship but this religious practice was growing in popularity and was in direct conflict with Christianity." "It had begun around 100 years before Domitian, with the building of temples to a new god -the Emperor" "Augustus." "There would have been sacrifices that took place at the lmperial Temple, where people in the city would have gathered and participated in honouring both the presence and power of Rome and the Emperor as an individual." "This idolatry spread across Asia Minor throughout the First Century." "Every city in the Roman Empire had many temples, but this was one temple built to worship and give thanks to a living person -an imperial god." "And here may lie the key to Revelation." "For John, this cult of the emperor would have been a terrible blasphemy." "John would have resisted the imperial cult because it stood against the belief of Jesus that he was so interested in promoting." "John is a Jewish Christian, and he knows there's only one true God, so he cannot, because of his upbringing, compromise in any way on that basic fact." "But the most compelling evidence that the Roman Empire and especially the lmperial cult was John's target, comes from one of his most frightening visions" " a terrifying Beast, who makes war against God's people." "The Beast, he writes, demands worship." "And this gives the first clue as to what it really represents." "Worship of the imperial gods had become extremely popular, to the degree that persons who didn't participate may have been perceived as disloyal." "In this strange vision, the Beast had not one head, but seven." "By John's time seven Emperors had ruled the Empire." "John tells us that these are seven kings, or rulers, and though scholars can't agree on which Roman Emperors these seven heads may represent, they seem to represent Roman lmperial power." "John also associates the Beast with seven hills, and of course the city of Rome was known then as it is now as 'The City of Seven Hills'." "To many academics, these cryptic but repeated references to the Beast show that John's target isn't Roman persecution, but the paganism of the lmperial cult." "However, that can't be the whole story." "John's audience, as fellow Christians, would have shared his views and therefore he'd have had no need to write such a letter." "But a closer look at the text of Revelation reveals just why John felt it was so important to send his message." "John, it seems, may have been alarmed about the behaviour of some members of his flock." "One such church was to be found in another part of the Roman Empire." "To the south of Pergamum was the ancient city of Ephesus." "Standing on this square in the ancient city of Ephesus, it's easy to get a sense of the Ephesus that John would have known." "The streets would have been full of people the shops full of people selling their wares." "This was an ancient port city, where people would have come from all over the Mediterranean world and beyond, to trade, to share ideas and sometimes to share religions." "In this Mediterranean cultural melting-pot the Christian Church would have been a tiny minority." "A theatre like this would hold twenty five thousand people, and the Christian community, the churches here, would probably account for a very small percentage of that." "The Christians probably would have filled up only a couple of rows." "The pressure on these communities was great, especially in a thriving pagan centre like Ephesus." "Pressure that could weaken the faith of a struggling church." "Their neighbours were continually celebrating the various gods who were popular in the region, as well as the imperial gods of Rome, and on occasion, even the Emperor himself" "Symbols of the various deities would be all around them." "One of the major issues for somebody like John seems not to be the fact that they are suffering persecution, but the fact that they've just become too comfortable, they've settled down, they've found their place in society" "and he's wanting to shake them up a bit." "If John was writing to those Christians who had begun to worship Rome's Emperors, it would help explain why the last book of the Bible was written:" "The visions were less about prophesying the future and more about chastising those who had joined the lmperial Cult." "But there is something left unanswered, the vivid apocalyptic images which have captured the imagination of millions of Christians for centuries." "What possible meaning could these have had for the Christians in John's churches?" "Maybe they had little to do with the cult of the divine Emperor and everything to do with the visions of a terrifying future." "To those who lived 2000 years ago," "John's visions of the Four Horsemen, Armageddon and the Beast may have held entirely different meanings than today." "Some see them now as signs for the end of the world." "But that's not necessarily what John meant." "The word "apocalyptic" had a different emphasis then." "Many people, when they hear the word 'apocalyptic', think about the end of the world, but that's only part of this great tradition." "There had been other apocalypses or revelations, written in the previous two hundred years" "The key feature of apocalyptic literature is that it claims to reveal God's will directly, it's a message that no ordinary mortal would have access to." "They're all stories." "A single human visionary has this dramatic, revelatory experience and he requires the assistance of a heavenly being to explain what he's seeing and experiencing, so the apocalypses unfold as stories describing these experiences." "Apocalypses promised their readers an escape from the harsh reality of everyday life." "For first century Christians," "John's writings offered a world where their faith triumphs." "They promise their audiences God's world." "It's either in the heavenly realms or it's coming in the future, and it's a world where the faithful will be rewarded for their faithfulness and where justice will prevail and where wickedness will be judged." "John was in good company." "Some scholars believe that" "Jesus himself was deeply influenced by apocalyptic literature." "One of the most famous prayers in the world seems to share the same themes as the Book of Revelation." "When the Disciples of Jesus ask him to teach them how to pray, then Jesus teaches them to say the Lords Prayer and that prayer can be read apocalyptically," ""thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in Heaven"" "that implies that the Kingdom of God has not yet come to earth, that the will of God has not been done on earth, so that's like the Book of Revelation seeing God and Christ exalted in Heaven" "And the Lord's prayer may even have a Beast of it's own." "As God's kingdom began to come then the powers of evil would do their uttermost to battle against it so you have beasts you have the Devil at work and that's probably what is meant at the end of the Lord's prayer," ""Lead us not into the trial but deliver us from evil"" "probably "deliver us from the evil one", deliver us from the power of Satan." "If Jesus used apocalyptic imagery, why not his follower John." "Perhaps this tradition of apocalyptic writing can help decipher some of John's visions" " like the infamous 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse." "These terrifying beings appear first in a text from the Old Testament" " the book of the prophet Zechariah." "But John didn'tjust copy these images." "His genius lay in updating them for the 1st century." "In Zechariah, each horse is linked with a particular colour." "John takes this idea, but gives it a new twist." "His 1st Century audience would probably have understood the meaning of the colours lan Boxall believes he can crack John's code..." "John seems to make the significance of the colours more explicit." "You have a red horse." "Red is the colour of blood and according to tradition, the colour of a kind of idolatrous luxury which has brought Rome its current dominance, but at the expense of so much blood being shed." "The rider on the black horse seems to symbolise famine and disaster" " the aftermath of war." "Then there is a pale or green horse - the sickly colour of death itself." "But one horseman described by John, the rider on the white horse, has a bow in his hand." "This suggests vengeance is on John's mind and he believes it will come at the hands of Rome's sworn enemy." "Now, the average Christian would know that the great enemy of Rome, the great threat to Rome on the east, the Parthian Empire, had a cavalry which carried bows." "The Parthians are on their way, and the ultimate effect of this will be the destruction of this apparently impregnable empire." "So even the vision of the Four Horsemen is part of John's encouragement to the Christian Church that the Empire's days were numbered." "But the 4 Horsemen are not the only apocalyptic images in the book." "Just as famous is Armageddon" " the battlefield where Revelation says the forces of good and evil will wage war" "Archaeological evidence shows that this image too is meant to evoke hatred of the Romans." "This is Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley in modern-day Israel." "Archaeologists believe that its name holds a clue to the site of Armageddon." "In Hebrew, the site of Megiddo is actually Har Megiddo, the mountain of Megiddo, and we go from Har Megiddo, to Har Mageddon to Armageddon." "And indeed in some of the earliest versions of the New Testament written in Greek" "Armageddon has an aspirant at the beginning meaning that is pronounced with an 'h'." "So it originally was Harmageddon and you can get from Har Megiddo to Armageddon very easily." "This tranquil site seems an unlikely place for John to choose as the location for the battle at the end of the world." "But in fact, it was entirely appropriate." "The Jezreel Valley would have been the bloodiest place in Palestine that John knew about." "At the time that John was writing in the First Century AD, there had already been twelve or thirteen battles fought, either at Megiddo or in the Jezreel Valley itself." "Napoleon supposedly said:" ""There is no more perfect battleground in the world than this,"" "and looking over the Jezreel Valley, I have no trouble believing that." "Archaeologists believe there's also a very practical reason why John chose Megiddo as his battle site" "In his time, it was the base for one of the most brutal armies in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Roman Sixth Legion." "Know that the Romans located their camp here, the camp for the Sixth Legion." "They were continuing the job that ancient Megiddo always did throughout history:" "protecting the area, controlling the paths controlling the trade routes." "The Sixth Legion had a nickname that reflected their strength and ruthlessness in battle" " they were called the Ironsides" "The Ironsides had a particularly nasty reputation amongst Roman legions." "They were known for their brutality." "They would have used all the known means that we know the Romans did against their subduing populations:" "crucifying them, flaying them alive." "They crucified people all the way from the coast to Jerusalem." "So where better to place a battle between the forces of good and evil than at the headquarters of an army whose reputation caused fear across the Empire." "Anybody at that time would have known that the legionnaires were camped here" " these were the forces of darkness at Megiddo." "John realised that any major battle fought for control of this region or control of the world is going to have to involve Megiddo had been so crucial in previous battles, from his point of view there was no reason to suppose that it wouldn't be crucial in upcoming battles" "If John's aim in Revelation is not to predict the end of the world but to attack the Roman Empire using contemporary events and ancient apocalyptic tradition, then perhaps we can look differently at the most famous "prophecy" of all" "666 the number of the Beast." "If the Beast means the Emperor then what did John mean by its number?" "The ancient world loved puzzles." "A common trick was to use numbers to disguise a name." "In the Greek and Hebrew alphabets, every letter had a corresponding number, so if you added up the total value of the letters in your name you had a numerical code." "So here's a good example:" "'Anna' written in Greek capitals, which just happen to be the same as ours." "Now the number for 'A', alpha, is one and the number for 'N' is 50, so I'll do a bit of simple arithmetic" "and you end up with 102 as the number of the name of Anna." "Ancient graffiti has survived that suggests this game had a mainly frivolous purpose." "There's quite a nice one that was found in Pompeii, written on a wall somewhere:" "'I love the girl whose number is 545.'" "Now, she knew that her number was 545." "Others, perhaps, had to do a bit of working out to find out precisely who she was." "But for John this game is deadly serious." "He gives us the puzzle in reverse." "He gives the number and invites his audience to work back to the name." "He writes in Revelation:" "'..." "Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the Beast." "For it is a human number." "Its number is six hundred and sixty six.'" "For historians the answer seems obvious." "Now, the best explanation is that John is thinking of the Emperor Nero, and if you write the name 'Nero Caesar' in the Hebrew alphabet, then you end up with this:" "50, 200, 6, 50, 100, 60 and 200, which then, with a little bit of swift arithmetic, gives us the number of Nero Caesar." "666 seems to be an ancient code, linking the Emperor Nero with the number of the Beast, but a collection of recently-deciphered documents has cast doubt on whether 666 is really the number of the Beast after all." "100 years ago a group of British archaeologists digging in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus made a fascinating discovery." "Not buried treasure but waste paper in a garbage dump 30 feet deep." "This vast hoard was brought back to Oxford where ever since they have been cleaned, catalogued and translated." "Then in 1999 a papyrus fragment as a 3rd century extract from the book of Revelation." "Closer examination revealed that the world's most infamous number... was not what it" "You've got a tiny fragment here." "It was written by somebody who was a good scribe, who wrote clearly, and he wrote helpfully for people, but he also wrote quite quickly." "And it has part of the line which would have read" ""let the person with understanding calculate the number, which would have been somewhere there, and then three letters, each standing for a numeral - the letters are chi, which stands for 600, iota like our "l" which stands for 10," "and stigma at the end is a 6." "So the number here, clear as daylight is 616." "If the number of the Beast is 616, then it doesn't add up to Nero." "It suggests that John's real target was someone else altogether." "By applying the same rules of the number game a new hate figure emerges..." "another Roman Emperor." "Caligula was Emperor from 37 to 41, and Caligula was actually a nickname, his proper name was Gaius." "Now if we take Gaius Caesar and change it into Greek letters, we get Gaius Caesar." "Giving a numerical value to each of the letters of that name, we end up with 284 for Gaius, and for Caesar 332." "That gives us 616." "The reason why John would see Caligula as the Beast lies in a controversial decision made by the Emperor during his short reign." "Caligula ordered a statue of himself to be put in the temple at Jerusalem." "This was a blasphemy to the Jews because the temple was dedicated to the worship of their one true God." "Its very possible that that would have continued to be unacceptable to early Christians with this strong folk memory of a defining act by a Roman Emperor which stood up for everything which they found unacceptable in the lmperial power." "So if Revelation isn't a prophecy about the end of the world but an attack on Rome where does that leave John's visions?" "Few scholars deny that John had them." "Indeed visionary experiences are so common in other faiths, but in John's case they could have served to inspire his flock." "John's vision was in a Christian tradition but it does seem to have many features that parallel that of shamans in other cultures." "A shaman is somebody who can go into a controlled trance, who is able to travel to other worlds, other realms in order to receive a message who then returns in order to give that message or to heal somebody." "And John like shamans in many cultures has a message which he communicates to others it isn't something for him alone, its a message for the community." "He's there to heal his community, to support them, to encourage them, sometimes to correct them." "All the available evidence from recent archaeology and history suggests that the Book of Revelation is not a series of prophesies predicting the end of the world." "Instead it is an urgent message for a First Century audience, in danger of being seduced by the Roman lmperial cult." "Rather than seeing John on this island as gazing into the dim and distant future, rather like a, a clairvoyant gazing into a crystal ball, perhaps we should see John rather as sitting on this island, gazing across the sea." "The seven churches are over there." "He's got an urgent message for them and he wants them to hear it." "Yet one stubborn question remains about John's prophesies." "If Revelation is simply a church leader's attack on decadent First Century Christians, why does John have such an uncanny gift of foretelling future events?" "Are these just coincidences or as some people claim accurate predictions of the end of the world?" "John's list of apparent predictions is impressive." "Revelation talks about dramatic climate change, the seas drying up and unbearable heat." "In recent years, scientists, of course, have warned us with increasing urgency about global warming, about the greenhouse effect with possibilities of increasing levels of skin cancers, with effects of global warming on the water systems of the world." "Another apparent prediction talks of the drying-up of the River Euphrates to make way for the armies of the kingdom of the East who would number 200 million." "In recent years, there have been a number of proposals to build dams on the Euphrates River and one of these dams is called the Attaturk Dam." "During the period when Americans and others were very concerned about Chinese Communism there were studies of the size of the Chinese military and some estimates ranged as high as two hundred million." "And I think this is viewed as another example of an uncannily precise prophecy being fulfilled." "And perhaps most chillingly of all," "Revelation talks about a great star, called 'Wormwood', falling from heaven upon the rivers, turning them bitter and killing many people." "At Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, in 1986 occurred a nuclear disaster that's really the worst we've had in world history." "The power plant melted down, a wave of radioactivity swept over the area and the local residents died or, or were seriously, seriously affected." "In the Ukraine, the word 'Chernobyl' means 'Wormwood'." "For many people this is evidence of John's gift of accurate prophecy." "If you believe the prophecies, in fact, are delivered by God and that they tell us about future events if we can interpret them correctly, then all of events unfolding in the world take on a particular spiritual significance." "But for some scholars the evidence from history contradicts the idea that John had a gift for prophecy." "For 2000 years Revelation has been used to set a time for what some see as John's ultimate prophecy:" "the date for the end of the world." "And it's clearly not been right yet." "Down through the ages, there have been almost endless examples of people and individuals who have thought they could identify the specific date when the end would come." "The year 1,000 in Europe ...in the nineteenth century ...1843... 1844... the year 1666... 1987 and the year 2,000 of course." "Many scholars believe that John's prophecies were not intended for the Twenty First Century reader at all, but for the First Century Church." "He tells that audience that what he's narrating are the things that are about to happen soon." "That claim occurs at the very beginning of the book in the first verse, and also in the last chapter, so that he believed he was living in the climatic moments of history." "I think John would have been surprised that we're talking about his book today." "Although it seems that the Book of Revelation isn't, as many had hoped and perhaps many more have feared, a vision for the end of the world, one of John's prophecies may actually have come true." "In the ruins of Ephesus fallen statues were discovered, statues of the Emperor Augustus and his wife, Livia." "They had been vandalised." "The Pagan imperial god had been marked with the sign of the cross." "One of John's predictions had definitely come to pass" " an event, which changed the world forever." "In the early Fourth Century, the Emperor Constantine decides that this policy of trying to wipe out the church is not going to work, and he declares that Christianity is an official religion within the Empire." "From that point on, the Church continues to grow and develop until by the end of the Fourth Century, it has become a dominant force within the Empire." "John's vision that the Roman Empire would fall, the Beast would be defeated and that God's Church would triumph, did after all come true." "The vision provided by the author of Revelation, of a fallen Rome, the destruction of all the glorious buildings that we can still see evidence of today, is in some ways a fulfillment of what John expected to happen." "John of Patmos, the angry exile, may not only have predicted the end of the pagan Empire', he might have played a part in its downfall, by giving Christians the courage to make it happen." "If the churches had been lured in by the glory that Rome was offering it's very likely that the Church would not have survived." "There's no reason to think that a small minority group would have been able to persevere, if they hadn't had the faith to stand up to and resist the temptations and the threats that the Empire brought against them." "Although many will continue to gain hope and inspiration from its words, perhaps the true significance of Revelation is to be found in the past, rather than the future."