Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”  

The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

//Ever wonder why Noah’s Ark ran aground? The Bible says it’s because the waters receded, but that turns out to be hardly necessary. Here’s how much it rained:

The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. –Genesis 7:20

On the face of it, this sounds impressive. Indeed it is … the waters rose to twenty feet above the mountains. But it isn’t nearly as impressive as the measurements of Noah’s boat.

This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. –Genesis 6:15

So the ark was more than twice as high as the water level! I’d say Noah did some pretty miraculous steering to have kept the boat afloat for 150 days.

★★★★

Let me start by saying Chapman reads Revelation the traditional way: as a promise of our future. She also firmly believes in the inerrancy of scripture. Therefore, she and I will certainly differ in opinion. It’s hard for me to grasp how any serious scholar of Revelation can still read the Bible as inerrant scripture, but  Chapman gives herself two outs: She emphasizes that her foundation is scripture alone, and she admits that John did not fully understand the vision himself. Whereas I read the book from the understanding that John knew full well the things he was watching happen with his own eyes, and the things he anticipated in his near future.

That said, Chapman’s writing is logical, simple, and well-organized. It’s a nicely written book, and will be appreciated especially by conservative Christians. It’s also true to the flavor of Revelation, which made it enjoyable for me as well. She remains true to the Scripture, varying only occasionally for embellishment, and does not dampen the spirit of revelation by pulling punches. She reveals revelation to be a song of wrath and vengeance. She highlights the dichotomy of Revelation, its us-versus-them plea. For example, she wonders if the sword of the red horseman represents the sword of Islam. “Islam is already murdering Christians because they don’t follow the laws of Islam.”

Scholars will protest, of course, knowing that John’s intended meaning couldn’t possibly have been a nation or religious movement he had never heard of. But Chapman’s book shouldn’t be read in that manner. Chapman makes Revelation contemporary, as if it were written by a minister of today. She modernizes the message by substituting Muslims for the hated Rome, and the apostate church for the wayward Jerusalem, and maintains precisely the right tone of vitriol for both.  As Revelation’s Babylon became a dwelling place for demons, so has the Vatican today (the Vatican’s chief exorcist says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession in his life). Chapman brings to life the apocalyptic, leave-it-to-Jesus atmosphere of John’s day by suggesting that the plagues of Revelation will mock the attempts of environmentalists to save the earth and the seas from pollution. This treatment actually brought Revelation alive for me, by forcing me to imagine how its fiery message was first received by the Christians John was writing to. I imagine with much the same disparate feelings as fundamentalist Christians today would read Chapman’s book. (I confess, that worries me.)

Two-thirds of the way through the book, the coverage of Revelation dwindles and Chapman begins discussing the rapture and the argument for a post-tribulation timing. Rapture is, of course, a Pauline idea, and most of Chapman’s treatment the rest of the way concerns the writings of other Biblical authors. I merely scanned from this point forward as my interest waned once the topic moved away from Revelation. But back to Revelation and a few of the discussions I found interesting:

Chapman believes in a post-tribulation rapture. She understands the two periods of tribulation to be periods of trial for the Christians. She welcomes this time with joy and anticipation, knowing what is to follow.

She and I agree a great deal on how to interpret Revelation’s bizarre imagery. For example, we agree that the rider of the white horse is an apostate force. We agree that the seals, trumpets, and vials are unique sequences. She proposes that we have entered the seal period, just as I surmise that John of Patmos felt he was living in the seal period as he wrote. Yet Chapman surprised me at times with new ideas, such as her comparison of the four beasts around the throne with the four horsemen.

A large part of Chapman’s theology is the rebuilding of the Temple. She anticipates this during the era of the two witnesses. This puzzled me at first, because Revelation says absolutely nothing about rebuilding the Temple; one of John’s most striking contributions is his direct contradiction of the prophets (primarily Ezekiel) who promised a new Temple. Instead, Revelation says just that opposite, that there will be no Temple in the New Jerusalem. Jesus, says both Revelation and John’s Gospel, is the new Temple. But as I continued reading, I began to recognize the reason for Chapman’s emphasis on a rebuilt Temple. If she is translating Revelation to the current day, the Abomination of Desolation has to go somewhere! From the point of view of my own book, the AofD came and went back in the first century while there was still a Temple, of course, but we must somehow make Revelation current to our time for Chapman’s treatment, and we don’t have a Temple today! Ergo, it apparently has to be rebuilt!

That led to the next confusing part for me. She apparently interprets Revelation’s “new heaven and new earth” to coincide with the arrive of a NEW New Jerusalem…this second New Jerusalem residing up in heaven and having no Temple…presumably replacing the first New Jerusalem. “The millennial city has no walls, but the eternal city has walls.” I hope I haven’t misinterpreted her meaning.

Conclusion: I enjoyed reading and enjoyed the atmosphere of the book. None of it is relevant to me as a historian except that fitting the story into contemporary surroundings, fearing the Muslims and dreaming of living in heaven, helped me share in Revelation’s original flavor. Yet I cannot give it five stars because, should it be read by the wrong audience, it would stimulate distrust rather than understanding between religions and nations.

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces;

//Yesterday, I pointed out the verse in Revelation that tells how hell would be destroyed. It turns out that God isn’t destroying hell at all, but Sheol, a dark, shadowy netherworld where the Jews believed the souls of all men descended after death. At first it was imagined that these souls would gradually fade away and disappear, but in time, the Jews came to believe in bodily resurrection, and imagined Sheol to be only a holding place until its residents were brought again to life.

But what’s this about Sheol being destroyed? Today’s verse shows that the destruction of “death” was long believed to be part of God’s glorious plan. Paul jumps on the bandwagon as well:

1 Corinthians 15:26, The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Many seem to read these verses as a sort of creative way of promising that there will be no more death in the age to come. Indeed, Revelation makes that promise, but accomplishes it by literally destroying the abode of the dead! It reads quite plainly: Death and Sheol are literally destroyed in a lake of fire.

A number of other Jewish writings continue this theme, if you want to study further: 4 Ezra 8:53, The Apocalypse of Baruch 2:23, and the Testament of Levi 18.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

//Few Christians are aware of this verse, and fewer still know what to make of it. John’s famous apocalypse, the book of Revelation, promises here that hell will one day be destroyed. All of the evil people down there will be emptied out and tossed into a flaming lake of fire, and then hell itself will be tossed into the flames.

Wait. Isn’t the lake of fire down in hell to start with? How can hell be disposed of in the lake?

Answer: This isn’t hell that Revelation is talking about, it’s Sheol, the underworld where the souls of men descend after death to await punishment or reward. And neither is the lake of fire part of hell. It’s just a place to dispose of evil fellows, to kill them a second time. “This is the second death,” today’s verse explains, after they have been brought up from Sheol.

It’s absolutely amazing to me what people think Revelation says. There’s no hell in that book at all. More about this topic tomorrow.

On that day they read in the book of Moses in the audience of the people; and therein was found written, that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into the congregation of God for ever.

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled which said, “They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” So this is what the soldiers did.

★★★★★

This is a fantastic book idea! Nearly half of America’s scientists believe science and religion are compatible. So, let’s take believing scientists from the three major monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and get them to talk about evolution. Why the evidence forces them to acknowledge a 13.7 billion year old universe and a human race that evolved over nearly 4 billion years, and then how they reconcile this scientific evidence with the Bible.

The first half of the book, which discusses the evidence for planetary and biological evolution, is interesting but not as strong. All readers will presumably be interested in religion, but not all will be interested in science, and I think this section could have been summed up more succinctly. Ten pages for each of the three writers would have been sufficient.

The second half, however, is superb. Let me give you a sampling of each writer.

Christian scientist Howard Van Till: Howard has learned to respect scripture in a new way. Claims of divine inspiration and infallibility are unwarranted. Many people, he surmises, will find this disappointing. But for him, it “feels like a load has been taken off my shoulders.” He now recognizes the Bible as “storied theology,” creatively crafted stories shaped by a deeply theological agenda.

Trying to reconcile Genesis with what we now know about our origins is “wrong, wrong, wrong. This wonderful bit of dramatized theology should never be mistaken for some primitive version of Big Bang cosmology.” Concordism, says Howard, is a failed strategy.

Jewish scientist David Kay: We are wrong to dismiss our ancient ancestors as primitives. These guys knew the rains came (or didn’t) regardless of the faithfulness of their fellow Hebrews. Readers of the Torah back in the day knew better than to take it literally, but rather sought in its pages a deeper lesson.

“If reality doesn’t conform to Scripture, don’t assume either is wrong: the problem isn’t reality or Scripture; the problem is your own understanding of one, the other, or most likely both.” Rabbinic interpretation finds ways to understand sacred text that are both reverent and relevant.

Muslim scientist T. O. Shanavas: Thankfully for more conservative readers, they may find more of a kindred spirit in Shanavas, who definitely believes in the Genesis story. Not that Shanavas disagrees with evolution; on the contrary, he argues convincingly that the Qur’an describes our evolutionary beginnings much more directly than the Hebrew Bible. Genesis is accurate, but Adam and Eve should be understood not as a story of biological origin. Adam was the first spiritual man.

Prepare to be astounded as Shanavas digs up ancient Muslim thinker after thinker who describes natural selection and the creation of man in evolutionary terms. These guys pre-dated Darwin by as much as a thousand years! Yikes, while we Christians were fumbling around in the dark ages, were the Muslims beating us to the punch? Many of us still remain in the dark, and it’s time we realized that, in a number of ways, we can remain Muslims/Christians/Jews without rejecting the scientific discoveries which should leave us in awe of our world.

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.