All Will Be Revealed

Coming Soon: Unlocking the Book of Revelation and Applying Its Lessons Today

by Michael Barber

Emmaus Road
Publishing, 2005

326 pages, $14.95

To order: (800) 398-5470

emmausroad.org

The Book of Revelation might be called a theological Rorschach test because, like inkblots, what one sees in the Apocalypse often says more about the seer than the text. Just ask the nearest fundamentalist ready to use it to map out the end of the world.

But Revelation has an objective meaning. It is a message of comfort to the Church, a shout of hope conveying that, no matter how bad things might become, good will triumph because God will have the last word in history.

Evangelical Protestants often focus on the Book of Revelation, confounding Catholics who are baffled by the array of horsemen, trumpets, beasts, angels and dragons populating this last book of the New Testament. Michael Barber provides a readable interpretation of Revelation, making it more readily accessible to Catholic readers. Each major unit of Revelation is cited and then explained in easy-to-read language without academic jargon. Each chapter concludes with questions to spur reflection and reinforce key points.

Barber shows how Revelation is a summary of the whole of salvation history — a history leading to Christ, the new King David who “restores the kingdom. He brings about the new Exodus, ending the Exile. In this restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, He is like Moses. He is also like the son of man in the Book of Daniel, since the son of man received the kingdom and gives it to the saints. The prophets’ words are fulfilled and history comes together as God fulfills His plan.”

Barber strives for a thoroughly Catholic interpretation of the Revelation, applying traditional forms of exegesis. Some contemporary biblical scholars may look askance at such methods, which only have 1,000 years or more practice to recommend them. But Barber’s approach reminds us that the Bible is first and foremost the Church’s book. It is not a dead museum artifact, to be examined only with the biblical equivalents of archaeological tools. The Bible is and remains the living Word of God, where the Father speaks to his children of every age with great love. Studying the Bible against its historical context is important, but so is reading it in the context of our lives here and now. Barber repeatedly encourages us to draw applications from Revelation to our lives today.

Barber’s interpretation of Revelation is not without problems. He dates the book relatively early, to the 60s in Nero’s era, although admitting that “most” biblical scholars today would date the book 20 to 30 years later. That earlier date is, however, “of critical importance” for his more controversial argument: that Revelation is relatively contemporaneous with the fall of Jerusalem in 70, which he wants to treat as a foretaste of the end times. I would want to see more scholarly critique before buying into that view, which could also have implications for Catholic-Jewish relations.

Barber’s dating would also suggest that Revelation was written before the Gospel of John (at least according to the mainstream dating of the Fourth Gospel), which leads to a second controversial issue: authorship. Barber contends that John the Apostle is the author of Revelation, a disputed view today.

The Apocalypse remains for many a fascinating but avoidable add-on to the rest of the New Testament. Barber provides the useful service of welcoming in the avoiders while offering the preoccupied solid food for thought. Most important, those in the middle will find one more reason to go back to the Bible — not just select parts of it but the whole Word of God.

John M. Grondelski writes from Washington, D.C.