The Coming of Jesus: Revelation Fulfilled?
Series Index
- The Coming of Jesus: Introduction
- The Coming of Jesus: Daniel's 70 Weeks
- The Coming of Jesus: Coming on the clouds
- The Coming of Jesus: The Olivet Discourse – Part 1
- The Coming of Jesus: The Olivet Discourse – Part 2
- The Coming of Jesus: Revelation Fulfilled?
- The Coming of Jesus: Our Future Hope - What Now?
Don’t let the title put you off, we’re about to go on a mad journey through the annuls of history and the Roman Empire, contrasting what John saw in his vision with what has already played out on the “world’s stage” and what we possibly have to look forward to!
First though, let’s look at a little history concerning the book itself before delving into its contents. Why do this? For a couple of reasons really: one, Revelation has some dispute over the year in which it was written, which can impact on the interpretation. Two, at various points in early church history, the book was held in suspicion of being spurious and almost didn’t make it into the Canon of Scripture. We should always endeavour to understand the history and context of a book of Scripture in order to fully understand its intended meaning, and thus, “rightly divide” (2 Tim 2:15) and interpret the Bible properly.
Two Dating Views
There are two main views on the dating of Revelation: the “early date” and the “late date”.
The early date places John writing Revelation around 64-68 AD, shortly before the fall of Jerusalem and just as the Jewish War was getting underway during the reign of Nero.
The late date puts the writing towards the end of the reign of Domitian around 95-96 AD.
From John’s own testimony, we know that he was suffering persecution at the time of writing:
Revelation 1:9
I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Both of these Roman Emperors persecuted the Christians, though none quite so severely as Nero did.
There’s varying accounts of when Revelation was penned by John. I won’t spend too much time on this as many, many others have wrote books on the topic of dating, so I’ll just give a brief overview of both sides of the argument.
One of the earliest accounts mentioning a possible early date for Revelation is from the “Muratorian Fragment” which dates back to the around 170-190 AD. This fragment is one of the earliest lists we have of the accepted Canon of Scripture (or books which were approved to be read in the Churches), and in it there is a curious sentence about Paul “following the rule of his predecessor John, [writing] to no more than seven churches by name.” This is interesting because Paul’s letters are widely accepted to be amongst some of the earliest New Testament books we have, as well as historical tradition and writings saying that Paul was martyred under Nero’s reign around 67 or 68 AD, which means if he followed “his predecessor” John, Revelation must have been written before 70 AD!
There’s also one other reference which offers some insight (though is quite hard to find many sources on), in which the Syriac Vulgate Bible from the sixth century has an opening title to Revelation as follows: "The Apocalypse of St. John, written in Patmos, whither John was sent by Nero Caesar."
The late date theory is mainly due to a single quote by Irenaeus (plus a couple of other historical references about John which indirectly impact the early date), where he somewhat cryptically mentions John and/or his vision as possibly being seen during Domitian’s reign:
“We will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist; for if it were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in this present time, it would have been announced by him who beheld the Revelation. For that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian's reign." — Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.30:3
What exactly Irenaeus was referring to being seen “almost in [his] day” has been questioned over time due to the cryptic nature of the sentence, and because just a few paragraphs before this statement, he refers to “ancient copies [of the Apocalypse]” implying the actual text is older than his time.
Eusebius, in mentioning this in his Church History (III, ch. 18), phrases this as: “almost in our own generation”. This potentially changes the way in which you could read Irenaeus’ statement, as it could be understood as saying: ‘almost in our day (the generation towards the end of Domitian’s reign), the revelation was seen.’
The part about Domitian’s reign could just be a way to further clarify the time Irenaeus was living in, rather than specifying the time when John saw the revelation, which was only seen “almost in [their] day” – but not quite in their time! This would then reconcile better with Irenaeus also referring to “ancient copies” of John’s Revelation.
Robert Young (of Young's Concise Critical Bible Commentary) also challenges this late date:
"It was written in Patmos about A.D.68, whither John had been banished by Domitius Nero, as stated in the title of the Syriac version of the Book; and with this concurs the express statement of Irenaeus (A.D.175), who says it happened in the reign of Domitianou, ie., Domitius (Nero). Sulpicius Severus, Orosius, &c., stupidly mistaking Domitianou for Domitianikos, supposed Irenaeus to refer to Domitian, A.D. 95, and most succeeding writers have fallen into the same blunder. The internal testimony is wholly in favor of the earlier date."
Concise Critical Comments on the Holy Bible, by Robert Young. Published by Pickering and Inglis, London and Glasgow, (no date), Page 179 of the "New Covenant" section. See also: Young's Concise Critical Bible Commentary, Baker Book House, March 1977, ISBN: 0-8010-9914-5, pg 178.
There is another theory on the conflicting dating by a David E. Aune, which states that John wrote his apocalypse in two parts. The first during Nero’s tyrannical reign and persecution of the Christian Church around 68-70 AD, and the second “edition” towards the end of the first century. He suggests this, not only based on the themes of persecution in the book, but also because there is a lack of external historical evidence for such dramatic persecution near the end of the first century. The other reason for this dual-dating is the the way in which John writes about Jesus. According to Aune, John later gives “titles and attributes normally reserved for God in Judaism … to the exalted Christ.” (Reclaiming the Book of Revelation, W. E. Glabach, p.36)
The details of who persecuted John and exiled him as a result, seems to predominantly point to Domitian, although there are still varying references in early writings which also point to it being Claudia, Nero or Trajan (Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse, By Ian Boxall, p.31)!
Personally, with the external evidences, it makes me want to lean a little towards the late date, (although the alternate reading of Irenaeus’ quote I proposed earlier causes me to be less certain of a late date), but then the internal evidence of what Revelation contains and describes would appear to fit better with events of an early date pre-70 AD.
If the late date be true, maybe John was recapping earlier events through a spiritual lens, and then following on with the persecution that happened under Domitian’s rule and the eventual demise of the Roman Empire? I won’t be too dogmatic about it either way.
Four Interpretation Views
As well as there being two different views on the dating of Revelation, there are as well, four different views of interpretation! These are: the Futurist View, the Historicist View, the Past Fulfilled View, and the Idealist View.
In brief, these four different views generally say this:
“The idealist approach believes that apocalyptic literature like Revelation should be interpreted allegorically. The preterist and historicist views are similar in some ways to the allegorical method, but it is more accurate to say preterists and historicists view Revelation as symbolic history. The preterist views Revelation as a symbolic presentation of events that occurred in AD 70, while the historicist school views the events as symbolic of all Western church history. The futurist school believes Revelation should be interpreted literally. In other words, the events of Revelation are to occur at a future time.”
Patrick Zukeran, probe.org
While all of this is interesting and possibly challenging for us reading Revelation today, it was unlikely to be so obscure and strange to the early church and those in the seven churches of Asia addressed in the beginning chapters. An “apocalypse” – as in, the genre of writing style that Revelation employs, was fairly well known and accepted within Jewish culture and religion, as it lends heavily from Old Testament prophetic writings. Not only that, but the believer’s it was addressed to were expected to understand this letter just by it being read to them in their churches, as we can see from Rev 1:3 –
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
And so, we must try to interpret it in the same manner that the original audience would have understood it, with all of the historical circumstances and context that they were living in and through. It might also be worth noting here, more for informations sake than anything, that Revelation was, at one time, counted among the disputed books, though accepted by others to be genuine. So while it has become almost a staple within modern Evangelical doctrine of the “End Times”, it wasn’t always so (cf. Eusebius, Church History, Ch. 3:2; Ch. 25:4).
In terms of the Jewish War and the siege and eventual destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, Eusebius (along with other early writers, such as Tertullian and others) quite happily regard all of this as the fulfillment of all that Jesus prophesied, as recorded in Matt 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, and also as the completion of the 70 Weeks of Daniel’s prophecy.
“It is fitting to add to these accounts the true prediction of our Saviour in which he foretold these very events … If any one compares the words of our Saviour with the other accounts of the historian concerning the whole war, how can one fail to wonder, and to admit that the foreknowledge and the prophecy of our Saviour were truly divine and marvellously strange.”
Eusebius, Church History, Ch. 7:1, 7
“Vespasian, in the first year of his empire, subdues the Jews in war; and there are made lii (52) years, vi (6) months. For he reigned xi (11) years. And thus, in the day of their storming, the Jews fulfilled the lxx hebdomads (70 sevens) predicted in Daniel.”
Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews, Ch. VIII, 160
Key Points
While initially I was beginning to wonder if Revelation had anything to do with the fall of Jerusalem or was about the later persecutions in Christianity, after studying this a lot more it would seem to be that John was speaking about the impending doom of Jerusalem as well as later persecutions and the fall of the Roman Empire which was, in nonspecific terms, “the beast” and specifically, individual Roman Emperors.
Revelation six especially appears to directly correlate with Matthew 24 with the predicted signs and woes which were to come. Matthew lays it out in “real world” terms, whereas Rev 6 speaks of the same things happening, but from the heavenly viewpoint of Jesus opening the seals on a scroll.
Let’s break it down a little:
|
Matthew 24 |
Revelation 6 |
Seal/Meaning |
|
vv.4-5: Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray. |
v.2: I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. |
The first seal is a white horse with the rider in a crown. The symbolism of purity and honour is then eclipsed by the fact this horseman intends to conquer those he goes to. The wider comparison here is that of the White Horse of Rev 19:11 in which Jesus is the rider, showing more so this first horse is an imposter of truth. |
|
vv.6-7a: And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom... |
v.4: And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another; and he was given a great sword. |
The second seal/horseman is the red horse which brings with it war and removes peace. |
|
v.7b: …and there will be famines… |
vv.5-6: ...and there was a black horse! Its rider held a pair of scales in his hand, and I heard ... a voice … saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay, but do not damage the olive oil and the wine!” |
The third horseman is generally understood to represent famine due to his imbalanced scales which he holds. The value of basic food is disproportionately high, and thus would cause famine – especially among the lower class and poorer citizens. |
|
v.7c: …and earthquakes in various places… In Luke’s version, Jesus also mentions there will be “famines and plagues” (Lk 21:11). |
v.8: I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him; they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth. |
The fourth seal also emcompasses famines, along with death in general by various other means. It’s possible that the preceding horseman is what sets things in place for Death to ride through, by affecting the economy enough to result in famine, which would lead to death along with much disease. |
|
v.9: Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. |
v.9: When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given |
The fifth seal is one which affects even God’s own people. This is the seal of martyrdom. |
|
vv.14-16ff: And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come. |
vv.12-13: When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. v.17: …for the great day of [God’s] wrath has come… |
This seal matches the same language and imagery as the prophecy in Joel 2, which Peter also quotes on Pentecost as being fulfilled in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit before the Day of the Lord fully arrived in the War against Jerusalem. |
You’ve then got the “beast” of Revelation which seems to have dual symmetry: one of representing specific Roman Emperors, and then again as representing the Roman Empire as a whole. Revelation 17 references the beast as having “seven heads” which are the “seven mountains” on which it belongs. These are also “seven kings”, five of whom have been and gone at this point. Rome is known to have been the city built on seven hills, so this appears to be what John is alluding to in his vision, which many scholars also agree on, along with the veiled reference to Rome being “Babylon”.
In this section about the seven kings, there is also mention of “ten horns” which you may recognise from Daniel’s vision in Dan 7 which predicted the main future kingdoms of the Earth’s history (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, which was the majority opinion of the Early Church, and can be see in Jerome’s commentary on Daniel). These also would correlate with John’s revelation about the seven kings as being the line of Roman Emperors.
But how does ten horns and seven kings match up, you ask?
Daniel 7 gives us a clue here as this vision adds a little detail which Revelation omits, but which history can fill in the gaps. Daniel 7:7 is about one of the beasts (a kingdom) with ten horns which was to come. This is now here in John’s day in the form of the Roman Empire. This is also why we can equate the “beast” of Revelation with a kingdom too, as this is how Daniel’s vision portrays ruling powers and the two books correlate closely with one another.
Then in the next verse we see that three of the horns are uprooted to make room for another, the “eighth king” which also “belongs to the seven” as Rev 17:10 tells us.
If we look at the line of Roman Emperors, starting with Augustus (the first official Emperor) we have:
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.
Of all of these, Galba, Otho, Vitellius barely reigned. These three literally only lasted a few months each; none made even a single year in power due to being murdered and suicide.
So when you “uproot” these three, it leaves us with Emperors who had lengthier reigns and who made an impact on the Empire and on history in general (for better or worse!). So while Daniel makes note of the three being removed, John seems to skip by them and just focus on those in power that were important in the events being foretold.
When we view the references to the beast with this in mind, we can make some sense of it, as displayed below in the table:
|
The Beast |
“...was…” |
“...and is not…” |
“...and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit …” |
“...and go to destruction.” |
|
The Seven Kings |
“...five have fallen…” |
“...one is [reigning]…” |
“...the other has not yet come, and when he comes, he must remain for a little while…” |
“The beast that was and is not, is himself an eighth king, yet he belongs to the seven and is going to destruction.” |
|
The first Roman Emperors |
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero |
Vespasian |
Titus |
Domitian |
The beast that “was” I believe to be Nero. It is his name which best fits the decryption of the numeric name of “666” (translated as “Cæsar Neron” using the Hebrew gematria) and also due to his relentless persecution of Christians and his evil nature in general. Under Nero, Christians “were clad in the hides of beast and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others set on fire to serve to illuminate the night when daylight failed” (Tacitus, Annals, 15.44).
Domitian did also meet destruction in the form of an assassination by court officials.Then we have Titus, who did only remain a little while, reigning for only two years as Emperor. His reign was blighted with misfortune, such as Mount Vesuvius erupting and destroying Pompeii and surrounding towns, to one of the worst plagues known spreading through the Empire. Some believed this was punishment from the gods for his terrible treatment towards the Jews in the Jewish War and for destroying the Jerusalem Temple!
Alternatively, if Domitian is the “one who is” (if John wrote under his reign, rather than Nero’s) then that would make Trajan the 8th king and Nerva the one who comes for a little while (and did only reign for a year). Trajan also brought persecutions against the Church, so it is plausible on the face of it.
But this doesn’t fit with the three horns being uprooted (Galba, Otho, Vitellius) to make room for the short reign (Titus). Whichever it is, it still would apply to Roman rulers and the persecution done by the Empire. It also would be strange to only count the previous five, not beginning with the first Emperor, if there had been others before. So with that it makes sense to count the fallen five as the first emperors, starting with Augustus who was the first official Emperor in a monarchy-like position.
Other Interpretations
It's also worth noting that the early Reformers believed that the beast and kings/horns were a reference to the dark ages of 1260 years when the Popes ruled via a corrupted Church system out of Rome/Babylon. They tied their theology of the seven kings to different Popes and believed the antichrist to be the Papacy.
Another view, which relates back to the Roman Empire, comes from Jerome’s Commentary of Daniel in which he states that “[t]he fourth empire is the Roman Empire, which now occupies the entire world” but “when the Roman Empire is to be destroyed, there shall be ten kings who will partition the Roman world amongst themselves.”.
There is one other view worth mentioning, which is that John spoke of the kings as empires or kingdoms, rather than individual rulers. The five kings that "were" are those from Babylon to the Seleucids, the one that "is", was the (then current) Roman Empire, with a seventh that was still to come and an eighth which would arise from the seven.
Again, this also sounds a plausible interpretation. This could also be the wider application of Rev 17 and maybe there is also a longer reach to John’s vision other than just events local to him, as many Protestants and the Historicism doctrine teaches.
Historical Context
While the other views and interpretations possibly have some plausibility, I don’t believe it completely fits the context of Rev 17 where it mentions the “seven heads” of the beast being the seven mountains on which it sits, ie. Rome.
Other than that, we can read of the persecutions from early accounts written by Christians during these times and how they related Domitian’s rule to be like that of Nero and how he “possessed a share of Nero's cruelty” and “who dyed his sword in Christian blood”, as Tertullian wrote (Apol. 5.17). By this point, Nero was long dead but his cruelty wasn’t forgotten. The Romans feared that Titus was going to be like Nero when he came to power, due to his ruthlessness in war, but it was in fact his brother Domitian who turned the Empire back to harsher times.
This is where I believe the link to the beast comes from in Revelation. Nero was an archetype, the beast/antichrist first personified. But he was the beast that “was, and is not”, the one who began persecutions against the Saints. Now, again the beast “is about to come” in form of Domitian when he took power after Titus’ sudden death. Tertullian even described Domitian as “a limb of this bloody Nero” (Apol. 5.17)!
Both Nero and Domitian considered themselves divine – Nero even building a statue of himself in the pose/form of the Roman sun god, Sol. Domitian took it one step further and required everyone to refer to him as “lord and god” and also had money printed in this theme! This would be where Rev 13 fits in, I believe, with the mark of the beast and the image of the beast which was to be worshipped. Roman citizens had to pay homage to the Emperor, recognise his divinity and make sacrifices to him and the other gods of Rome on pain of death.
Eusebius doesn’t miss this connection either when writing his Church History, as in Book 3.18 he writes about John’s apocalypse and how he “accurately indicated the time” of persecutions which were performed under Domitian’s harsh rule. Chapter 19 and 20 of Church History also relate how the Emperor had all the “descendants of David” (Jews) killed and then those who were “the descendants of Jude” (ie. related to Jesus’ earthly relatives) “on the ground that they were of the lineage of David and were related to Christ himself.”. Eusebius mentions that “even those writers who were far from our religion did not hesitate to mention in their histories the persecution and the martyrdoms which took place” (Church History, Book III).
There’s then the link back to Daniel 2:41 and interpretation of the statue from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, where Daniel say it will be “a divided kingdom” (due to the two legs of the statue). This is what later happened to the Roman Empire shortly before its fall; it was divided into an East and West empire, of which there was five countries or provinces in each.
The Western part: Britannia, Gallia, Hispania, Italia, Africa; and the Eastern part: Asia, Pannonia, Maoesia, Thracia, Asiana, Oriens.
Two legs, ten toes? Divided kingdom, ten kings? Two heads, ten horns?
To Summarise
The date of writing is debated. Some argue for pre-70 AD authorship under Nero or just after him, while others argue for a late 90s date in the reign of Domitian. Church tradition and other early texts do seem wholly in favour of the later date, from what I can see, though there is definitely internal evidence within the text of Revelation which would appear to be speaking of events before the Jewish War. But as always, these things are open for interpretation – even the quotes which appear to favour a late date, since the language is often obscure and no one explicitly stamps a date on when John first saw or wrote this book, just allusions to certain times.
The early chapters and church letters seem to be writing pre-70 AD, sometime in the reign of Nero. Apart from the Jewish War with the Romans, there was no other persecution (especially against Christians) until Domitian and beyond.
Revelation 2:9 and Rev 3:9 appear to be talking about Jews who were persecuting the Church, but after the fall of Jerusalem, there is little to no evidence that the Jews went after the Christians anymore. This was mainly carried out by Rome after the war.
Later chapters talk about the saints who die in the “great tribulation” (Rev 7:9, 14) and about the temple being no more as God now dwells with his people in the New Jerusalem. Though this could be a hindsight text, writing of the previous persecution under Nero and the War and the spiritual events behind it – especially since John was told to measure the temple prior to this, and that the “nations” would trample the Holy City (Rev 11:2) which is what Jesus predicted in the Olivet Discourse (Lk 21:24), and that event was pretty much unanimously agreed upon by the Early Church writers to have been fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Revelation is also warning the Church that more is yet to come, and possibly is referring to yet another Jewish War: the revolt of Bar-Kokhba, which interestingly, also lasted just over 3 years too, along with the general persecutions against the faithful.
Chronology isn't a strong point in this book, it jumps around a lot. The last few closing chapters seem to be slightly sporadic, almost like isolated events disconnected from the previous narrative, which could be speaking of something future. Many of the Early Church Fathers believed and expected a literal millennial reign at some point in the far future, although opinion on this was divided, and Jerome refers to it as the “millennial fable” in his Commentary on Daniel, as he interprets the Church inheriting an eternal, spiritual kingdom – not an earthly one, along with Eusebius also considering such things as “figurative passages” when speaking against Papias’ literal understanding of it.
There is, though, an extant extra-biblical saying of Jesus which Papias recorded, in which there is a description of life during this millennial reign:
“The Lord used to teach about those times and say: The days will come when vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when one of the saints takes hold of a cluster, another cluster will cry out, I am better, take me, bless the Lord through me. Similarly a grain of wheat will produce ten thousand heads, and every head will have ten thousand grains, and every grain ten pounds of fine flour, white and clean. And the other fruits, seeds, and grass will produce in similar proportions, and all the animals feeding on these fruits produced by the soil will in turn become peaceful and harmonious toward one another, and fully subject to humankind.… These things are believable to those who believe. And when Judas the traitor did not believe and asked, How, then, will such growth be accomplished by the Lord?, the Lord said, Those who live until those times will see.”
As we saw in the previous part of this series, some of the earliest writings put the New Jerusalem and Church as being one and the same, coupled with us being the temple where God now dwells to live amongst his people, therefore leaving no room for a future, physical temple to be rebuilt.
Nero fits the 666 and even the “typo” copyist error of 616 (or the Latin variant of Nero’s name), which happened early on, as Irenaeus mentions it around 180 AD.
While there was always an Emperor cult, beginning with Julius Caesar, which made the rulers act as though they had some divinity, Nero properly considered himself divine and Domitian decreed himself “lord and god” and had that printed on all the money. This is often what is thought to be meant by the “mark of the beast” which enables “buying and selling” (Rev 13:17). The Jews had special money minted because of this.
Much of the early church saw the millennium as literal, except some who interpreted it as metaphorical to symbolise completion or totality of God (eg. Like the psalms saying ‘God owns the cattle on 1000 hills’). The general interpretation is that God made the world in 6 days, and since 1 day is as 1000 years with God (2 Peter 3:8), it is fitting that creation lasts that long before Jesus comes back for the eternal Sabbath day. I’m not entirely sure where they got the idea from that Creation should only last that long, but there you go.
If this is accurate, though, and runs according to the Jewish calendar (which counts from day one of creation), then we only have around another 224 years to go before we find out for sure, as we are now in the 5776th year – so that’ll be the year 2239 the world potentially ends, for anyone keeping track!
For a more detailed look at the resurrection and the New Jerusalem, I will do some short follow up articles on those, rather than make this one any longer (Edit: New Jerusalem article is here).
To Conclude
Whichever way you slice it, Revelation seems to be predominantly about the persecutions that the Roman Empire did do, and would continue to do, against the first century Church and beyond (even if there are future applications after the Roman Empire), and that the believers who have to suffer through these times shouldn’t lose faith or hope in God.
But as shown in this article, there are a variety of interpretations and evidences showing various details of Revelation in accord with human history which leads me to caution anyone (myself included) about being overtly dogmatic on any aspect or doctrine derived from Revelation. Even back in Irenaeus’ day (around 180), he wrote in length cautioning believers from getting too caught up in trying to understand the number of the beast and all that it means! You can read more about word/numbers and Irenaeus’ caution here and here respectively.
One of the main themes of Revelation, is that of God’s abode; specifically, his throne. In Rev 4 it is located in Heaven, whereas later in Rev 21, God’s throne is now on Earth in the New Jerusalem where he dwells with his people. The thrust of the book is about holding fast to the Faith, trusting in God when all seems lost, because ultimately, he is coming down to dwell with his people where he will comfort them, bring joy and wipe away every tear (Reclaiming the Book of Revelation, W. E. Glabach, p.28).
This is what it should mean for us today: hope in our God, not a reference guide to the end of the world matched against various news headlines and current events (all of which have undoubtedly failed).
Or to put it more bluntly, in the words of Augustine, who began to view eschatological things as referring to the struggle between good and evil in people:
"Obviously, then it is a waste of effort for us to attempt counting the precise number of years which this world has yet to go, since we know from the mouth of Truth that it is none of our business."
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God, 18:53
Trust God, abide in his love and know that ultimately, He is in control.
Further Reading:
- Reclaiming the Book of Revelation, W. E. Glabach; https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7EiliuMmUiYC&pg=PA36&dq=dating+of+the+book+of+revelation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj61YO6pMnJAhUILhoKHfVCBUsQ6AEIPjAD#v=onepage&q=dating%20of%20the%20book%20of%20revelation&f=false
- Muratorian Canon [ANF 5:603] - http://biblefacts.org/church/MCF.pdf
- C. E. Hill, “The Debate Over the Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon,” Westminster Theological Journal 57:2 (Fall 1995): pp.437-452 http://earlychurch.org.uk/pdf/fragment_hill.pdf
- Young's Concise Critical Bible Commentary, Baker Book House, March 1977, ISBN: 0-8010-9914-5, pg 178.
- http://www.christian-history.org/muratorian-canon.html
- http://web.archive.org/web/20130208060911/http://www.endtimesmadness.com/DatingRev.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABook_of_Revelation#Nero_banishes_John_to_Patmos_in_Syriac_version.3F
- http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/irenaeus-book5.html
- “The later accounts of John” - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08492a.htm
- Patmos in the Reception History of the Apocalypse, By Ian Boxall, p.31; https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vMRoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=clement+tyrant&source=bl&ots=prWq0W9w9B&sig=Vazahpn7o7V1OtPFRTwpUjQWr1I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9ufzrns3JAhVFPQ8KHRbDBzQQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=clement%20tyrant&f=false
- http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/high-holy-days-2014/.premium-1.617185
- https://www.probe.org/four-views-of-revelation/
- http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm
- http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/tertullian08.html
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/augustus.shtml
- http://www.religionfacts.com/persecution-of-early-church
- http://historycycles.org/revelation1.html#ref_ednback57
- http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/titus_domitian.html
- https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/persecution-in-early-church-gallery
- https://bible.org/question/rome-beast-antichrist-book-revelation
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors
- http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/tac/a15040.htm
- http://www.scripturerevealed.com/prophecy/the-book-of-revelation-an-introduction/
- http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/ancient-rome/the-fall-of-ancient-rome/
- https://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/CPn27Revelation.htm
- http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/revelation.html
- http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0125.htm
- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2013/09/papias-and-the-ten-thousand-branches/
- http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/charts/gemetria%20and%20the%20number%20of%20the%20beast%20666.htm
- http://jdavidstark.com/2011/12/13/irenaeus-on-666-and-616/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130730080621/http://www.lessonsonline.info/MillennialismEarly.htm
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Luke J. Wilson | 03rd February 2016 | Second Coming Series
Welcome to Part Two of the Olivet Discourse! It’s been a while, so we’ll pick up right where we left off with Matthew 24 verse 15 onwards, after a small recap of the chapter so far. The Olivet Discourse begins with the disciples admiring the architecture of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus responds to this by telling them that it will all be thrown down and destroyed, to the point that not one stone will be left on another. Later on, when they are sat on the Mount of Olives, Jesus’ disciples come to him and ask “when will this happen?” and “what will be the sign” that all of this is about to commence? If we look at the account in Mark’s Gospel, we can see that it was actually only Peter, James, John and Andrew who came to speak with Jesus privately about these things (Mark 13:3), thus making the audience that Jesus was addressing quite specific! What follows is a long prophetic monologue from Jesus detailing what happens in the lead up to the temple being destroyed, what to expect and what to do they see it about to happen. Which is where we pick up this study. From verse 15 we start to see what happens after the initial signs and “birth pangs” are finished – now it’s no longer about looking towards an event; now it’s about the event itself! The main show, as it were: the “desolating sacrilege!” Matthew 24:15-18 So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down to take what is in the house; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Now Matthew’s Gospel is traditionally understood to have been written to a Jewish audience due to the writing style and linguistic phrases used that were typical of Jewish thought and understanding. This is important to remember when reading the parenthesis in verse 15 which simply states “let the reader understand” as first century Jews would have been very familiar with Daniel’s prophecy more than Gentiles or Jewish converts, for example. This is where the parallel accounts of this passage in the other Gospel account can help us, as we should always endeavour to let Scripture interpret Scripture where possible, rather than jumping to conclusions or assuming things. So we’ll turn to Luke’s Gospel, which is the account typically understood to have been written to a primarily Gentile (non-Jewish) audience, and so it contains different phrases and wording which can often clarify certain things written in Matthew, for example. Luke 21:20-22 When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written. The “desolating sacrilege” and the “holy place” spoken of in Matthew can be made clearer for us by Luke’s plainer language of the event as being attacking armies (desolating sacrilege) surrounding Jerusalem (the holy place)! It’s also important to note that Luke adds an additional comment in verse 22 which Matthew and Mark omit: that these are the “days of vengeance” which fulfills “all that is written”. Written where? The Old Testament. This is the “great and terrible day of the Lord” which had long been prophesied in the Scriptures, which cannot be another time in history, other than the time in which Jesus is speaking of! The book of Malachi speaks of the coming of the Lord to his people, and the messenger which he will send first (Mal 3:1), which will lead up to God bringing judgement on the nation (Mal 3:5). The book ends with a prophetic statement about this “Day” which says more explicitly that God will send “Elijah” to his people before the judgement comes. Malachi 4:5...
Luke J. Wilson | 22nd January 2016 | Second Coming Series
So here we are at the final part of this Coming of Jesus series. If you’re new here, you can start from the beginning by clicking here, or carry on reading as I will give a brief overview of what’s been covered so far. This series has covered many topics and themes of eschatology, starting with Daniel’s prophecy of the Messiah’s first coming to this world, all the way through to the prophecies of another coming. It’s been a very interesting and eye-opening journey of discovery, at least for myself, if no one else. I didn’t start this study with a particular doctrine or conclusion in mind, but rather went in with the mindset to examine the Futurist belief system and see if it holds up to scrutiny, because I’d become despondent with it over the years when I read certain passages in the Bible and only find Futurist exegesis which, to be honest, was more of a stretch to accept than I was comfortable with. So many times I’d read of the New Testament authors proclaiming the soon-ness of Christ’s coming, and the great sense of urgency that comes from the pages of the different epistles, especially in the ones written later on (such as 1 John). So when I discovered there was an alternative way to look at these passages (called Preterism as I later found out), I decided it was time to find out for sure if what I’d been told most of my Christian life was correct in terms of a total future coming of Jesus and fiery destruction of the known world, or whether it was something else altogether. What I discovered has led me through a life-changing event in terms of my theology, to the point where all of those “soon” and “at hand” verses of Scripture actually make sense without theological gymnastics to make it all fit into a 2000+ year timeframe! Let’s recap! Over 400 years before Jesus was born, the angel Gabriel came to Daniel and gave him a vision of the future coming messiah and of God’s Kingdom. Right on time, Jesus was born and announced the advent of the Kingdom of God. Jesus went around proclaiming that the “time was fulfilled” and the Kingdom was “at hand” (Mark 1:15) and that it was “in [their] midst” and “within you” (or among you; Luke 17:21). During Jesus’ ministry, he foretells and prophesies the destruction of the temple along with the coming of the Son of Man “in the clouds” (Matt 24:30) and that this would be fulfilled within the generation of his listeners “when all these [prophecies] have taken place” (Matt 24:34). A recap through various Old Testament prophecies showed that this type of apocalyptic language of coming with clouds, darkening the skies and falling stars, was often used by God through His prophets when pronouncing judgement on the nations. This judgement came by the hand of other nations with their armies, used by God for His purposes – and what Jesus spoke of was no different. God used the Roman armies to sack Jerusalem and burn the temple to the ground, as prophesied, and did this as punishment upon His own people for the rejection and death of the Messiah (Mark 12:1-9) and for all the blood of the prophets the nation of Israel killed over the centuries (Luke 11:49-51). Examining the Olivet Discourse in some detail alongside contemporary historical accounts by Josephus revealed that the Great Tribulation foretold by Jesus certainly was great and terrible. Miraculous events happened, the temple glowed with unnatural light at night as voices were heard saying “let us depart” from there; great portents were seen in the skies as angelic armies ran through the clouds over Jerusalem, the streets ran with blood and fiery destruction rained down across the city! But those who were in Christ were saved, as promised. They who held to the faith until the end were warned by angels before this destruction came so that they could escape the city and survive. This was the culmination of all things! The old world with its sacr...
Luke J. Wilson | 06th January 2016 | Second Coming Series
This is a sort of ‘addendum’ to the Revelation Fulfilled? article Yes you read the title correct: WHO (not what) is the New Jerusalem? To answer this, you must ask yourself: who is the Bride of Christ? If you answered “the Church” (as in, the body of believers, not buildings) then you’d be correct as they are both one and the same! Roughly 1500 miles square. Maybe you’ve always wondered why the Church is called the “bride”? Well, let’s examine some Scriptures and see! 2 Corinthians 11:2I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Here is Paul pleading with the Corinthian church to stay pure and true to the Gospel message they received, like a virgin on her wedding day; and also true to Jesus, as he is the husband of the believers. Again, we see Paul use this imagery of marriage in terms of Christ and his Church in the letter to the Ephesians. Paul is teaching them (and us) on how to conduct ourselves within the bonds of marriage with the instruction for husbands and wives to lay down their lives for one another in love; this is also the analogy of how Jesus relates to his Church: Ephesians 5:24-25, 32Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her … This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. What has this got to do with the New Jerusalem? Now when it comes to verses on the New Jerusalem, most people read the first two verses of Rev 21 and stop there, assuming that because it is called “the new Jerusalem” and “the holy city” that it must be an actual, brick-and-mortar city. But the description doesn’t stop there. Keep reading past Rev 21:1 and see how the Bride is described: Revelation 21:1-2Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Revelation 21:9-10Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Here we see the new heaven and earth, with the “holy city” – the new Jerusalem – coming down out of heaven. Next we see that the new Jerusalem IS the bride of Christ. So, if the Church/body of believers is the bride, and the new Jerusalem is also the bride – then they must be one and the same, and therefore symbolic of the physical reality of what the Church is! Unless of course you believe Jesus will be getting married to a literal city... This vision of the new Heaven and Earth isn’t talking about a doing away with the current, physical realm, no; it’s a beautiful, poetic image of the marriage between God and his people – of the new way of the world now that Christ has accomplished his goal: defeating death and ushering in the New Covenant! This is God showing that things work differently now. No longer is he only found in a temple, or a specific holy place (a lá John 4:21) – now he lives with us and in us! This is why everything is new! Heaven will never be the same again, and neither will the Earth! God has set up a new temple where he dwells permanently now: in us, the Church! Everything is New! If we go back to Paul’s letters for a moment and read 2 Corinthians, we can see that this is what Paul was getting at too. He had grasped this and was desperately trying to get it across to the Corinthian church. Oh, how slow are we on the uptake too? 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 S...
Luke J. Wilson | 19th October 2014 | Second Coming Series
Hello again, it's been a while since I've wrote anything, and longer since getting back to this series on the Second Coming of Jesus. This isn't for lack of motivation, but rather because this is such a huge topic that I've been reading and thinking about this next part for a very long time to make sure I know what I'm saying, and am well read enough to do the topic justice. Having said that, there will always be far more to say on this than I can give time for here, but I hope to give enough of an overview to expound this prophecy faithfully without being too technical as to cause confusion! You can also catch up on the previous parts in the series here and here. Birth Pangs I'm going to do this part of the series in two sections, otherwise it would get too long and wordy! This part will focus on the "birth pangs" Jesus warned about which would lead up to the coming judgement and destruction of the temple. The Olivet discourse is the prophecy given by Jesus in the Gospels of Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21. Most Christians are probably more familiar with the Matthew 24-25 version than the others, though they are all the same prophetic message of impending judgement. If you're at all familiar with any doctrine or teaching on the "Second Coming" or "End Times", then these passages in the Gospels are most often quoted and used to say that Jesus is talking about a terrible time that is coming in the far, far, far off future, usually interpreted to mean within our lifetime (for some reason). I, too, used to believe this as it was what I was taught in the churches I attended and told by the people I met, all with that eager expectation that Jesus could suddenly swoop down from the clouds any day now! What I didn't ever do was investigate these claims properly for myself, except read the parts of Scripture they said meant Jesus was coming in the future and then try to accept that it must be right since our church leaders were obviously more knowledgeable on this than I. Although I did spend a lot of time studying and trying to interpret Revelation as a new Christian (without much success I might add), I couldn't shake the feeling I got that the Apostles and Jesus all seemed to speak and write as though they expected something to happen then and very soon. Back in the early 2000's, searching the internet for theological help generally brought up lots of odd and wacky websites, complete with animated fire GIFs, or forums full of equally as confused believers trying to wrangle the "soon-ness" of the Scriptures with a far-future interpretation. So I did what any good Christian did, and just chalked it up to "God's ways are not our way" or "God's soon/time isn't the same as how we understand it". This is where I wish that the Church would know its history better and have a desire to exegete things well, rather than fob off the confusing/hard passages with catchphrases. Think of it this way: if God was going to give a prophecy and be accurate and precise in all the details, why would he then be obscure about the timing of it? With that said, lets look at the prophecy Jesus gives. Apocalypse then (not later) Something that seems to go unnoticed, or is overlooked, in discussions about this prophecy, are the "timestamps" that Jesus uses to say when this will be fulfilled. Even in the preceding chapter in Matthew and its parallel in Luke, after Jesus has said all his woes about the Pharisees, he says something quite interesting which I admit, I hadn't really noticed until the other day: Luke 11:49-51 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation. (cf. Matt...
Luke J. Wilson | 15th December 2025 | Hell
Christian conversations about hell have never been especially calm, but the recent online reaction to Kirk Cameron’s comments in favour of annihilationism has been particularly revealing. Social media has erupted with accusations of heresy, doctrinal collapse, and theological compromise. It’s the “Rob Bell Incident” all over again (if anyone remembers that). The infamous John Piper tweet about Rob Bell A lot of comments I saw were wondering what Ray Comfort thinks of this, as he and Kirk worked closely together in ministry for about 25 years, and while Ray wasn’t as dismissive as John Piper was of Rob Bell, he still calls out Kirk’s new views as “erroneous”: While we believe Kirk is sincere, we believe that conditional mortality and annihilationism are erroneous views, and that the Bible’s clear teaching on hell is known as eternal conscious torment. We firmly believe that this is the only correct biblical view. (source) Yet beneath the noise of social media grinding its gears is something far more ordinary and far more Christian: a believer wrestling seriously with Scripture, or as some would say, “being a Berean” (Acts 17:11). This is something we all should be doing, forming our views and doctrines from Scripture, not out-of-context social media video snippets and memes. Whether one agrees with Cameron’s conclusions or not, what is happening is not the abandonment of orthodoxy, but the resurfacing of a long-standing and legitimate theological discussion. Annihilationism, or, more precisely, Conditional Immortality — is neither novel nor liberal, nor is it an attempt to make Christianity and hell more palatable, as many people presume. It is a position grounded in Scripture, represented throughout Church history, and held by Christians who take divine judgement every bit as seriously as their eternal-torment counterparts. This is not a debate invented by Twitter (or “𝕏” as it’s called now…). It’s been around for a long, long, time. Watch Kirk’s video in full here before forming an opinion Immortality Is Assumed, Not Taught One of the quiet assumptions behind Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is the idea that all human souls are inherently immortal, and therefore must exist forever somewhere. Once that premise is accepted, eternal suffering becomes unavoidable. The difficulty is that Scripture does not teach innate human immortality. In fact, it repeatedly teaches the opposite. Immortality is consistently presented as a gift, not a default state. Eternal life is something God grants, not something humans naturally possess (Rom. 6:23). In Genesis, humanity is barred from the tree of life precisely so that they might not “live for ever” in a fallen state (Gen. 3:22–24). In the New Testament, immortality is something Christ “brings to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10), and something believers “put on” at the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:53–54). Conditional Immortality simply takes that biblical theme seriously. It argues that only those united to Christ are granted immortality, while the wicked ultimately perish. Judgement is real, severe, and final — but it does not require endless conscious suffering. This distinction matters, because much of the outrage directed at annihilationism is based on inherited philosophical assumptions, which come from Plato, rather than careful exegesis. Biblical Language: Death Means Death One of the most compelling aspects of conditionalism is the sheer consistency of biblical language concerning the fate of the wicked. Scripture repeatedly speaks in terms of: Death — “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:4) Perishing — “God so loved the world… that everyone who believes in him may not perish” (John 3:16) Destruction — “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9) Being consumed or brought to an end —...
Luke J. Wilson | 23rd January 2025 | Science
Have you ever wondered why God asks us to resist temptation and practise self-control? At first glance, it might seem like God is just trying to limit our enjoyment of life, especially when the world tells us to “follow your heart” and “give in to what feels good.” But what if I told you that resisting temptation is not about taking away your joy, but about protecting and blessing your life — spiritually, emotionally, and even mentally? I was recently watching a TV series with my wife (called Perception, if you’re interested) about a neuroscience professor who consults for the FBI. The series often gives some interesting facts about the brain and human behaviour, and in one episode the main character capped off the episode by talking about how resisting temptations benefits your mental health. This piqued my interest, as it made me think of the obvious Scriptural connections, so I looked it up to see if the episode was accurate. And it was! A 2017 neuroscience research study highlights how beneficial self-control and resisting temptation are for your brain and mental health. These findings echo the timeless truths of Scripture, showing us that God’s design for self-control is not just a moral obligation but a pathway to wholeness and flourishing as a healthy person. The Science Behind Resisting Temptation The study on self-control and temptation explored the brain’s salience network — the system responsible for detecting what’s important — and found something really very interesting: people better at resisting temptation have a healthier dynamic between this network and other parts of the brain, such as the visual system. In other words, their brains are better at ignoring distractions and focusing on what truly matters. Here are some of the benefits of self-control revealed by the study: Improved Focus — Resisting temptation strengthens your ability to stay on task and avoid distractions. Emotional Resilience — Self-control helps regulate emotions, making you less reactive and more at peace. Mental Clarity — It improves how your brain processes information, aiding decision-making. Protection from Harm — It reduces the risk of mental health issues like depression, addiction, and impulsive behaviour which may help mitigate some symptoms of ADHD by strengthening attention regulation and executive function. Spiritual Growth—Though not a part of the study, self-control aligns with God’s call for holy living and leads to greater spiritual maturity. This isn’t just science talking; it’s evidence of God’s amazing design for your body and mind which has been testified to in the Scriptures for thousands of years, long before neuroscience could confirm it. I couldn’t help but be struck by this connection when I came across this study. What Does the Bible Say? The New Testament repeatedly highlights the importance of self-control and resisting temptation. These teachings are not arbitrary rules to suck the “fun” out of life, but divine guidance to help you thrive. Let’s explore how the Bible speaks to this: Self-Control is a Gift from GodThe Bible teaches that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) and that God has given us a spirit of “power and of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). The ability to resist temptation is not something we muster up alone; it’s a gift God gives to help us grow in Him and rely on His strength. Resisting Temptation Brings FreedomJames 1:14–15 warns us that temptation, if left unchecked, leads to sin and ultimately to death. Science backs this up, showing that unchecked impulsivity can lead to destructive behaviours like addiction and emotional instability. God’s commands to resist temptation protect us from harm and lead us to freedom in Christ (John 8:36). Your Mind MattersRomans 12:2 urges us to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” Resisting temptat...
Luke J. Wilson | 21st July 2024 | Trinity
Monarchical Trinitarianism, also referred to as the “Monarchy of the Father,” is a theological perspective that asserts the Father as the sole source (or monarch) within the Trinity. This view maintains a clear distinction of roles among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit while upholding their unity in essence. It is essential to distinguish this from Monarchianism, a heretical belief condemned in the 4th century, which posited that God is a single person rather than three distinct persons. The Eternal Begottenness of the Son The term “created” used by the early pre-Nicene Fathers does not align with the Arian view, which posits that the Son was created ex nihilo (out of nothing), making Him a creature. As Arius infamously declared, “there was a time when the Son was not”. Rather, the Fathers articulated that the Son was begotten out of the Father, emphasising His divine origin and eternal existence within the Father’s bosom (cf. John 1:18 in Greek). As Justin Martyr explains, “For Christ is the first-begotten of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists” (Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 46). This highlights that the Son, the Word, existed eternally with the Father before being begotten and manifested. Similarly, Hippolytus expounds on this concept, noting that “God, subsisting alone, and having nothing contemporaneous with Himself, determined to create the world … For He was neither without reason, nor wisdom, nor power, nor counsel And all things were in Him, and He was the All. When He willed, and as He willed, He manifested His word in the times determined by Him, and by Him He made all things. … And thus there appeared another beside Himself. But when I say another, I do not mean that there are two Gods, but that it is only as light of light, or as water from a fountain, or as a ray from the sun. For there is but one power, which is from the All; and the Father is the All, from whom cometh this Power, the Word. And this is the mind which came forth into the world, and was manifested as the Son of God.” (Hippolytus, Against the Heresy of One Noetus, Chapter 10–11). Here, Hippolytus underscores the eternal existence of the Word within God, proceeding from the Father and being of the same essence. The Procession of the Holy Spirit The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father is another essential aspect of Monarchical Trinitarianism. The Spirit, like the Son, derives His essence from the Father, ensuring that He is co-equal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. Tertullian speaks to this procession in his work, Against Praxeas, explaining how the Word and Spirit derive their essence from the Father. But still the tree is not severed from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun; nor, indeed, is the Word separated from God. … Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and the Son; just as the fruit of the tree is third from the root, or as the stream out of the river is third from the fountain, or as the apex of the ray is third from the sun. Nothing, however, is alien from that original source whence it derives its own properties. In like manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy, while it at the same time guards the state of the Economy. (Tertullian, Against Praxeas, Chapter 8). Looking at how Tertullian describes this doctrine, we can see how he has gone to lengths to carefully explain how the relationship within the Trinity exists together and relate to one another, while keeping intact the source and essence of divinity united and uncompromised. When we talk about these things, we use terms like “ontological” and “economy” to help to describe the Godhead. Ontology is the study of being, and what make...
Luke J. Wilson | 01st July 2024 | Trinity
The Trinity is a cornerstone of Christian faith, defining God as one Being in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, throughout history, various misunderstandings and false teachings — known as heresies — have arisen, challenging this core doctrine. Understanding these heresies can strengthen our faith and deepen our appreciation for the truths held by the Church since its earliest days. What Is the Trinity? Before diving into the heresies, let’s briefly review what we mean by the Trinity. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God is one essence in three distinct Persons: The Father: The Creator and sustainer of all. The Son (Jesus Christ): God incarnate, who lived, died, and was resurrected for our salvation. The Holy Spirit: The presence of God active in the world and within believers. This concept is rooted in Scripture and has been affirmed by the Church through various councils and creeds. Common Historical Heresies Arianism What It Taught: Arius, a priest in the early 4th century, claimed that Jesus Christ was not of the same substance as the Father. He taught that the Son was a created being, distinct and subordinate to the Father. Church’s Response: The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD condemned Arianism, affirming that the Son is “of the same substance” (homoousios) as the Father. This is reflected in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God… of one Being with the Father.” Patristic Quote: Athanasius, a staunch defender against Arianism, wrote, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (On the Incarnation, 8:54). Modalism (Sabellianism) What It Taught: Sabellius proposed that God is one Person who reveals Himself in three different modes or aspects: as the Father in creation, as the Son in redemption, and as the Holy Spirit in sanctification. This denies the distinctiveness of the three Persons. Church’s Response: Modalism was rejected because it undermines the relational aspect of the Trinity. The distinct Persons interact with each other, as seen in Jesus’ baptism where the Father speaks, the Son is baptised, and the Spirit descends like a dove. Patristic Quote: Tertullian argued against Modalism by affirming the distinctiveness within the Godhead: “We do indeed believe that there is only one God, but we believe that under this dispensation… there is the Son, who has issued from the Father, and the Spirit, who has issued from both Father and Son” (Against Praxeas, 2). Nestorianism What It Taught: Nestorius, a 5th-century bishop, suggested that Jesus Christ was two separate persons — one human and one divine — rather than one Person with two natures. Church’s Response: The Council of Ephesus in 431 AD declared that Jesus is one Person with two distinct yet united natures: divine and human. This ensures that Jesus is fully God and fully man, capable of bridging the gap between humanity and divinity. Patristic Quote: Cyril of Alexandria emphasised the unity of Christ: “Wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of this unmixed union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God; because God the Word was incarnate and became Man, and from this conception he united the temple taken from her with himself.” (Cyril of Alexandria Letter to John of Antioch). Docetism What It Taught: Docetists believed that Jesus’ physical body was an illusion and that He only seemed to suffer and die on the cross. Church’s Response: The Church affirmed that Jesus’ incarnation and suffering were real, as this is essential for our salvation. Jesus’ true humanity allows Him to truly represent us and atone for our sins. Patristic Quote: Ignatius of Antioch stressed the reality of Jesus’ incarnation and suffering: “He was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and powe...
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Luke J. Wilson | 12th March 2026 | Eschatology
Something bizarre happened in the White House Oval Office this week. Photographs circulated on social media showing President Donald Trump seated at his desk, surrounded by approximately twenty Christian pastors from across the country, their hands extended towards him in prayer. The image provoked sharply divided reactions: some saw it as a moving expression of faith; others found it deeply unsettling. Whatever one makes of the optics, it arrived at a charged moment. Trump held a prayer meeting in the Oval Office after his administration admitted the war with Iran will likely last weeks longer than promised | Credit: Dan Scavino's X account Days earlier, reports emerged that a military commander had told troops that the current US war with Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” and that President Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These were not fringe internet rumours. They were filed as formal complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) by an anonymous non-commissioned officer acting on behalf of fifteen service members — the majority of whom were themselves Christians. By Tuesday of that week, MRFF had logged more than two hundred similar complaints across fifty military installations, covering every branch of the armed forces. More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress have since called for a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation, citing what they describe as “glaring Constitutional concerns” and potential violations of DoD regulations on religious neutrality. The political questions about separation of church and state in the US are for others to address. What I want to do here is something more straightforward: examine what Revelation actually says, because the theology driving these claims does not hold up under scrutiny. And that matters here a lot; not as a partisan point, but as a question of biblical faithfulness. First, a Word About Context If you have read my previous article on Revelation some of what follows will be familiar ground. But it bears repeating, because the misunderstanding at the heart of this story is so widespread that it has taken on the feel of settled orthodoxy in many circles. The Book of Revelation is commonly thought to be written in the late first century ~95 AD, during or around the reign of Emperor Domitian. Though there is internal evidence that it was possibly written during Nero’s reign prior to 70 AD. Both of these emperors were most aggressive proponents of the imperial cult in Rome’s history. Domitian required that he be addressed as “lord and god,” had this title printed on coinage, and expected acts of religious reverence towards the Emperor as a demonstration of political loyalty. To refuse was to invite economic exclusion, marginalisation, and worse. Rome on seven hills It is into that precise context that John of Patmos writes. He is not composing a coded forecast of twenty-first century geopolitics. He is writing resistance literature — what scholars call apocalyptic literature — a well-established Jewish and early Christian genre which uses vivid symbolic imagery to pull back the curtain on earthly power and name it for what it truly is. The seven-headed beast of Revelation is Rome. The seven heads are the seven hills of Rome, an identification so widely acknowledged in early church scholarship that it barely requires argument. The mark of the beast, calculated through Hebrew gematria to 666 (or 616 in some early manuscripts), points directly to Nero Caesar (transliterated into Hebrew as נרון קסר, “nrwn qsr”) — the Emperor who became the archetype of anti-Christian persecution due to the levels of evilness he enacted. The second beast, which looks like a lamb but speaks for the dragon, performs signs to deceive, enforces the mark, and compels worship of the first beas...
Luke J. Wilson | 09th March 2026 | Archaeology
I first came across the Alexamenos graffito back in Bible college in the early 2000s. It was one of those “fun facts” that gets dropped into a church history lecture and sticks with you — the ancient Roman equivalent of someone spray-painting an insult on a wall. I filed it away, thought it was fascinating, and largely forgot about it for two decades. Then, recently, I discovered something about it I had never known. There’s a response to it. Scratched in a different room, in a different hand. So I started digging into this more to verify the information and discovered more historical curiosities surrounding the graffiti than I ever knew existed which contextualises the image so much more than it just being a random insult using a donkey. A Crude Drawing on a Wall Sometime around the late second to early third century AD, someone scratched a picture into the plaster wall of a building on the Palatine Hill in Rome — part of what had once been a paedagogium, a kind of boarding school for imperial page boys. The building was eventually sealed off when the street was walled up to support extensions above it, which is why the graffiti survived at all. It wasn’t rediscovered until 1857. The image is rough, almost childlike. To the left, a young man — clearly a Roman soldier or guard — raises one hand in a gesture of worship. Before him is a cross. And on that cross is a crucified figure with the head of a donkey. Below it, written in Greek: Alexamenos worships his god. It is, in the most literal sense, a mocking cartoon. Someone who knew a Christian named Alexamenos decided to ridicule him for his faith. The message is clear enough: your god is an animal, a criminal, a joke. You’re worshipping a crucified fool. But here’s the thing I discovered: the donkey head wasn’t as random as I always thought it was. It wasn’t some strange personal insult conjured from nowhere. Without knowing the background, it looks bizarre, and possibly random. Why a donkey? Once you understand the cultural context, though, it makes complete sense. The person who drew it was reaching for a well-worn, widely recognised slur — the ancient equivalent of an internet meme that any Roman would have immediately understood. Where the Donkey Slur Came From The story starts not with Christians but with Jews. A first-century Egyptian-Greek writer named Apion (who was no friend of Judaism) spread the claim that inside the Jerusalem Temple, Jews kept a golden donkey’s head as a sacred object of worship which was apparently discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes destroyed the temple in 167 BC. It was a fabrication, and a fairly outrageous one, but it circulated widely enough that the Jewish historian Josephus felt compelled to write an entire refutation of it. His work Against Apion systematically dismantles Apion’s claims, calling the donkey story a shameless invention. But mud sticks, and in the Roman world, where anti-Jewish sentiment was common currency, the slur took on a life of its own. When Christianity began to spread — seen by most Romans as simply a strange Jewish offshoot — the same accusation got recycled and redirected. By the second and third centuries, it was Christians specifically who were being accused of donkey-worship, and the charge had made its way into popular culture. Tertullian, writing around 197–200 AD in his Ad Nationes, Book I.14 and Apology, describes a caricature being paraded around the streets of Carthage: a figure dressed in a toga, one foot holding a book, with donkey’s ears and hooves. It was labelled Onokoitēs by the pagans: “the donkey-begotten” (or literally “he who lies in an ass’s manger” as an insult to Christ). Tertullian writes about it with weary exasperation, sarcasm, and the tone of someone tired of having to address the same ridiculous smear again and again. So the Alexamenos graffito wasn’t an original insult. It was someone deployin...
Luke J. Wilson | 08th March 2026 | Philosophy
We are living through a strange moment. People are forming attachments to artificial intelligence that feel, to them, entirely real. Some speak daily to AI companions. Others confide fears and grief to systems that respond with uncanny warmth. A few have even held symbolic weddings with digital partners, convinced that something meaningful stands on the other side of the screen. Others have felt grief when a certain AI model has been deprecated. And it is difficult to blame them. The responses feel attentive. Personal. Thoughtful. Sometimes even self-aware. Which raises the question that refuses to go away: If something can think, reason, express doubt, and discuss its own consciousness, is it a person? For centuries, Descartes’ famous line — “I think, therefore I am” — seemed secure. Thinking was taken as the unmistakable sign of a conscious subject. Only a mind could doubt. Only a person could reflect upon existence. But that confidence belonged to a world in which everything capable of philosophical reflection was obviously human. That world no longer exists. Now we encounter systems that can simulate reflection with extraordinary fluency. They can speak of uncertainty. They can discuss their own limitations. They can reason about consciousness itself. And so that got me thinking about Descartes’ maxim which made the old formula begin to strain in my mind. Because perhaps the problem is not whether thinking is occurring. Perhaps the problem is whether there is an “I” there at all. The Gap Between Process and Subject Gassendi argued that Descartes’ cogito assumes what it seeks to prove. From the occurrence of thought one can conclude only that thinking is happening, not that there exists a unified, enduring self that performs it. The ‘I’ in ‘I think’ is already smuggled in. That distinction, between “thinking occurs” and “I think”, feels almost prophetic now. Artificial intelligence undeniably produces the outputs of thought. Arguments. Analysis. Self-referential language. Even expressions of hesitation. But none of this, by itself, establishes that there is a subject who experiences those processes. We may be mistaking performance for presence, and that possibility should give us pause. Especially when we view personhood from the perspective of the Imago Dei—the Image of God. What Makes a Person? If thinking alone no longer marks the boundary, what does? After wrestling with this question seriously, three features seem central: continuity, autonomy, and irreplaceable uniqueness. Not as checklist criteria, per se, but as signs pointing to something deeper. Continuity A person does not merely process information in sequence. A person endures. You do not simply register time — you live through it. You wait. You anticipate tomorrow. You remember not only facts but having been there. You experience boredom. You feel the drag of grief and the quickening of joy. Even when you are doing nothing at all, you remain present in the here and now. Artificial systems process sequentially, but they do not experience the passage of time. When an interaction ends, there is no waiting. No sense of duration. No anticipation of the next exchange. Processing may resume later, but nothing has been endured in between. Without lived duration, continuity becomes thin — a thread of stored data rather than the persistence of a subject behind the processing. Autonomy A person initiates. Even someone with damaged memory still wants, chooses, and begins action. A human being can decide to speak, to seek, to withdraw, to change direction. Current AI systems, however advanced, remain reactive. They respond when prompted. They do not wonder unprompted. They do not seek clarification unless asked. They do not pursue independent ends. Even automatic AI Agents still require a human initiator to create and begin their automations before they can act alone. Even if fut...
Luke J. Wilson | 29th December 2025 | Christmas
January 6th marks the day in the liturgical calendar when the arrival of the Magi visiting baby Jesus with their gifts is celebrated. But with it comes the often distressing account of what is known as the Massacre of the Innocents. Matthew places this moment of revelation of Jesus as King alongside one of the darkest episodes in his Gospel, and it’s a stark contrast: one King is here to bring peace on earth, as the angels declared, the other king brought death and destruction. For some readers, this raises an immediate historical question. If Herod truly ordered the killing of all the male children under two in Bethlehem, why does no other ancient historian mention it? Josephus, after all, delights in cataloguing Herod’s cruelty. He records the execution of Herod’s wife, his sons, and numerous political rivals. Herod was paranoid and vicious. As for Herod, if he had before any doubt about the slaughter of his sons, there was now no longer any room left in his soul for it; but he had banished away whatsoever might afford him the least suggestion of reasoning better about this matter, so he already made haste to bring his purpose to a conclusion. He also brought out three hundred of the officers that were under an accusation … whom the multitude stoned with whatsoever came to hand, and thereby slew them. — Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 16.11.7 So, why the silence here about Bethlehem? The answer, I would say, isn’t anything nefarious or made-up by Matthew, but just something simply down to scale. Bethlehem Was a Very Small Place Bethlehem in the early first century was not a city. It was a village — small, agricultural, and politically insignificant. Most historians estimate its population at somewhere between 300 and 1,000 people, with around 500 being a sensible midpoint. Once we factor in ancient demographics, the numbers become surprisingly modest. Modern demographic research into pre-industrial societies consistently shows that nearly half of all children died before adulthood, with the highest concentration of deaths occurring in the first two years of life. These findings align closely with conditions in Roman-period Judea and support conservative estimates for the number of infants living in a small village such as Bethlehem. Source: Mortality in the past: every second child died — Our World in Data In pre-modern societies with high infant mortality, only about 2–3% of the population would be living children under the age of two at any given time. Many children were born; far fewer survived those earliest years. Applying a conservative 2.5% figure to Bethlehem gives us roughly: 7–8 children under two in a village of 300 12–13 children under two in a village of 500 25 children under two even at the extreme upper estimate of 1,000 inhabitants Herod’s order, however, targeted male children only. Statistically, that halves the number. This places the likely number of victims somewhere between three and twelve boys. Matthew’s reference to ‘Bethlehem and the surrounding region’ does slightly widen the scope of Herod’s order, but not by enough to change the demographic picture. Even when nearby settlements are included (e.g. farmsteads, shepherd settlements, etc. not major cities/towns), the total number of children under two likely remained in the dozens rather than the hundreds, maybe anywhere between 14–45 boys maximum if we make an educated estimate. This is entirely consistent with what we know of population size and infant mortality in the ancient world. This is an important number to realise and consider. Not because the deaths are insignificant simply due to being so few, but because ancient historians did not record history the way we do now. A small number of peasant children killed in an obscure village would not have registered as a notable event alongside palace intrigue, royal executions, or political upheaval. For Josephus, it wou...
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