The God of love is not plotting doomsday!

There is no fear in love;
but perfect love casteth out fear.” -- 1 John 4:18

A Revolutionary New Explanation Of Revelation

My book, From Fear To Love: Transforming Revelation, is a revolutionary explanation of the book of Revelation as a serious resource for spiritual growth, not a book of doomsday predictions. The God of love is not plotting doomsday!

What if Revelation, the primary doomsday manual for “The end is near” prophets for 1900 years didn’t say that the end is near? What if, instead, it said that the end is far off and it told us what to do about that?

What if Revelation were instead an inspiring and uplifting exploration of the nature of God and the angelic possibilities of people? What if we could transform Revelation into a useful spiritual resource instead of a doomsday story?

What if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--war, violence, famine, death and disease--were not future harbingers of doom but simply the obvious age-old conditions of human life? And what if Revelation were God’s prescription for solving these problems rather than His threat to impose them?

What if the only weapon which God uses at Armageddon--a double-edged sword coming out of the mouth of the Word of God--were a transparently obvious symbol for truth and not for nuclear weapons? And what if Armageddon were therefore not really a war but the triumph of God’s truth over war?

What if Revelation’s two radically different scenes of heaven, at the beginning and at the end of the story, with their radically different views of God, humans, and our relationship with God, told us something important about its meaning and about our beliefs and destiny?

A story of past, present, and future (“the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter” - Rev. 1:19), Revelation is an epic of our growing spiritual consciousness.

From Fear To Love--Revelation’s Main Theme

Revelation’s main theme is spiritual growth and change, from ancient beliefs in a God who is angry, vengeful, destructive, and fearsome to belief in a God of love who is concerned for the well-being of His children. It explores big spiritual questions such as the nature of God, the human situation, our relationship with God, and our destiny. The answers to those questions change as the story progresses, from traditional fear-based beliefs to Jesus’s teachings of love and how we can realize Jesus’s love in the world.

Early in the story, God is up in the sky, aloof, distant, and fearsome, sending out thunder and lightning. By the end of the story, God is here on earth, lovingly involved with people, giving the water of life. Revelation tells how the Judeo-Christian tradition has grown from its ancient origins and how it must grow further still.

Mysteries Of Revelation--Solved!

Here are some of the mysteries that this book solves and some of its surprising conclusions:

• How we can tell that Armageddon is not an actual cataclysmic war but is the end of war. (Find the answer in the free excerpt.)
• The significance of the strange name Armageddon. (Also in the free excerpt.)
• Why Revelation's two descriptions of heaven, at the beginning and end of the story, are so different, almost opposites. And how the differences form an organizational frame for the whole Revelation story. (An overview of this topic is in the free excerpt.)
• Why every generation thinks that theirs is the one when Revelation will be fulfilled.
• Why the martyrs of God do such a seemingly un-Christian thing as calling for revenge.
• How John of Patmos (Revelation's author) knew, even in the first century, that the second coming of Christ was not soon going to interrupt the flow of history, in contrast to almost all other early Christians who expected it “any day now.”
• How marvelous and brilliant some of John's symbols are. For example, his description of the beast from the sea reads like a page of gibberish and nonsense, but after you know the meaning, the gibberish transforms into smoothly flowing and sensible prose.
• The distinct meanings of all seven antichrist figures--the dragon, the beast from the sea, the beast from the land, “the” beast, the false prophet, Babylon, and Satan himself. Also, why there are so many antichrists, and the relationships among them.
• And many more.

Some Short Articles About Revelation

To read some short articles about Revelation and this very new and different way of understanding Revelation, please go to my Articles page. To give you an idea, here are a few samples of the articles:

A Brief Summary of the Book of Revelation
Questions About Revelation to Make You Think
How my view of Revelation is different from all the others
The Down Side of Heaven
Why are there so many beasts and antichrists in Revelation?
Armageddon--A “War” Between Truth and Falsehood, and Why It Has that Strange Name
Revelation and the Big Questions of Spiritual Life