The Apocalypse Chapter 2 – As it is still happening:

On Revelation 11:1-4; 11:7-14; 12:6 and 14; and 12:12

 

John of Patmos. Icon from the school if Novgorod. 17th Century, artist unknown.

Introduction:

In this Chapter, I shall deal with the prophesied Third Woe, in Revelation 12:12, as quoted below. This second section of Revelation, from chapter 12 onwards—which Sir Isaac Newton regarded as “the interpretation thereof,” because it recapitulated the “introductory prophecy” of chapters 4-11:15[1]—I will interpret in broader historical terms. In my view, John the seer foresaw that when the Third Woe would break forth, it would encompass all the troubled conditions seen in the first two woes, now magnified out of all proportions and reaching their extreme global limits. As the end would be insight, John enjoined:

Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!

As I see the passage quoted above—12:12, which describes the arrival of the Third Woe—it is only loosely connected with the subsequent chronology, from 12:14, which describes the woman dwelling in the wilderness for “a time, and times, and half a time.” While this description of time is similar to that describing the 1,260 years assigned to the Two Witnesses, this later prophecy of “a time, times and half a time” wraps itself symbolically around all similar woeful-like conditions, thus making it the more dire of the predictions. In my view, it was not intended to be used as a chronological indicator, for, as the verses in Revelation 12:10-12 suggest, thankfully, the devil’s period of wrath is to be fore-shortened.

The Apocalypse Chapter 1 – As It has Already Happened

Revelation Chapter 9 to 11:14; and Chapter 20: 4-8

Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos, By Hieronymus Bosch.

Introduction:

Rev. 9:12: “The first woe has passed. There are still two woes to come.”

Rev. 11:14: “The second woe has passed. The third woe is coming very soon.”

[Note on sources: all biblical sources are cited either in text or in brackets, while scholarly sources are cited using endnotes.]

This essay will focus largely on the history of Christianity and Islam, which Revelation 11:3 characterized as “Two Witnesses.” In the Words of the Lord: “I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred sixty years, wearing sackcloth.”  Long after John of Patmos wrote the Book of Revelation in the late-1^st century, the early 4^th century Roman emperor Constantine, who had acquired great power, issued the Edict of Toleration, which afforded the Christian Churches greater freedoms. The emperor himself fostered debates among the churchmen during the 4^th century, with the result being that the Western Church at Rome and the Greek Orthodox Church centered at Constantine’s new city, Constantinople in the East, each gained an important ascendancy in their own right.

Throughout the millennial-long endurance of the Orthodox Church at Constantinople, its importance in the region, upheld by Roman imperial power, afforded some protection to other independent Eastern Churches, stretching all the way across Asia. Early in the 5^th century, however, mainly due to the energetic efforts of the Popes from the Old Roman West, those Churches in the East were condemned as heretical.

When the Muslims came to political power in the East during the 7^th century, those Arab Islamic regimes, enjoying the Golden Age of Islam, extended tolerance to Christian minorities, with a particular appreciation of the contributions made by Syriac-Christians in translating into Arabic the highly-valued Greco-Roman classics of literature and science.