The Book of Revelation
Revelation closes the Bible like a summit. In common speech, this word evokes catastrophes, the end of the world in fire and blood. But its first meaning is quite other: apocalypse, in Greek, means unveiling, revelation. This book does not first announce a disaster, it lifts a veil. It shows the underside of things, what God sees behind visible history, and it shows it to Christians who suffer, to console and strengthen them. It is the book where Christ, one last time, reveals himself victorious.
The unveiling
The book presents itself as the vision received by the apostle John, exiled on the island of Patmos because of his faith. There, on a Lord’s day, he hears a powerful voice and turns to see the glorious Christ, who orders him to write what he is about to show him. From the first lines, the Risen One names himself: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, he who is, who was, and who is to come.” Revelation 1:8 The alpha and the omega are the first and the last letter of the Greek alphabet: Christ is the beginning and the end of all things, the one who holds history from one end to the other. The whole book flows from this certainty; it is not the description of a terrifying future, but the unveiling of the One who already reigns over time.
A book of images
Revelation speaks by symbols, and this is the key to reading it without error. Beasts, trumpets, seals, bowls, numbers: all is image. The numbers above all have a spiritual, not an arithmetical, meaning. Seven tells fullness, perfection; twelve, the people of God; a thousand, an immensity. To try to read there a coded calendar of the last days is to miss its meaning. John does not calculate a date, he unveils a significance: beneath the figures that follow one another, it is always the same combat that is played out, that of good and evil, of the Lamb and the dragon, through all the centuries. These images spoke to persecuted readers, who recognized beneath the beast the empire that crushed them, and beneath the Lamb the Christ who saved them. They keep their force for every age of tribulation. These images, John does not invent: he speaks the language of the prophets. The beasts rising from the sea come from Daniel, the throne surrounded by living creatures and the river of life come from Ezekiel, the lampstand and the horsemen come from Zechariah, the woman in labor and the city of light come from Isaiah. Revelation is like the great gathering of all prophecy: it takes up the scattered visions of the Old Testament and carries them to their fulfillment in Christ. To read Revelation is to hear all the prophets speak at last with a single voice.
The book of hope
For Revelation was written for Christians in trial, under the persecution of Rome, tempted to believe that evil had the last word. To them, John brings overwhelming news: the combat is already won. The crucified Christ is risen, he has conquered death, and nothing can any longer tear his own from him. He says it to a frightened John: “I am the first and the last, the living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever and ever.” Revelation 1:17-18 There is the foundation of all Christian hope: the one who judges history is the one who passed through death and came out of it victorious. The persecutors seem to triumph for a time, but their power is already broken. Revelation is thus, beneath its fearsome images, the most consoling of books.
Christ, master of history
From the first to the last page, a single figure dominates: Christ. He appears in turn as the glorious Son of Man, as the Lamb slain and living, as the faithful horseman, as the bridegroom of the holy city. The history of men, with its wars, its empires, and its martyrs, is not handed over to chance or to evil: it is held by him, it moves toward him. This is what tradition calls Christ master of time, the one who opens the sealed book of history because he alone knows its meaning and its end. For the believer of every age, this book is an invitation to lift the eyes: beyond the present tumult, the risen Lord leads all things toward the day when he will wipe away every tear. Revelation does not close the Bible on fear, but on victory. This last book answers exactly to the first. Genesis opened on a garden, a tree of life, a river, and man in the intimacy of God, then on the serpent and paradise lost; Revelation ends on a city, the tree of life regained, a river of living water, the serpent conquered, and man restored to the presence of God. What sin had made lost at the beginning, Christ gives back at the end, and greater still. All the Bible thus forms a single arch, stretched from paradise lost to paradise reopened, and Revelation is its keystone.