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This article appears in the Eschatology issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.

By the Rev. Barbara R. Rossing

WHAT IS the Bible’s understanding of terror and evil? Or of God acting in the world today? Many answers can be found in the wonderfilled Book of Revelation, but the answers will vary greatly depending on biblical interpretation and on which story you read.

One popular version of the story of Revelation captivated millions of Americans between the years 1995 and 2004. This is the story of Left Behind — twelve novels packed with conspiracy, romance, violence, and Bible verses. The high-tech adventures of born-again Christians give new life to the ancient biblical story of good versus evil. The villain they face is the Antichrist himself, the real one!

The notion of a violent biblical script or storyline for the end of the world is not unique to the Left Behind novels. Whether on cable TV or radio, or in mega-churches across the country, fundamentalist preachers and televangelists are teaching their followers to correlate everything from failed United Nations peace plans, to earthquakes, to the September 11 terrorist attacks, with God’s grand storyline. Floods, wars, heat waves, SARS, or other deadly diseases? Now it all makes sense as part of God’s playbook, a cosmic countdown of ever-intensifying disasters leading up to what they view as God’s “main event” — the final, bloody battle of Armageddon.

The trouble is, the interpretation of the Bible on which these books are based is also fiction. Today’s end-times writings draw on a method for looking at prophecy that was invented less than two hundred years ago and, by now, is a dominant American view. In this system, the Bible — particularly the Books of Daniel and Revelation — spell out in detail God’s pre-ordained script of predictions for the end of the world.

Many other Christians read the biblical story differently, and I am one of them. The Bible does not provide a predictive screenplay for worldwide violence and disaster in the Middle East. Revelation’s gift to us is a story of God who loves us and comes to live with us. Biblical prophets are not predictors of endtimes events, they are inspired voices calling people to repentance and justice. They tell the wonderful and crucial story of God’s faithfulness. They give us hope.

I believe that God is active in our world, but not in the ways that end-times enthusiasts envision. The Book of Revelation is a crucial text for helping us see God’s life in our world. For that reason we must reclaim this text from fundamentalists.

Revelation takes us on a journey — a journey not to war in the Middle East, but a journey into the heart of God, a journey into the heart of our world. Revelation’s way of seeing teaches us how to look at the stories of our lives and the structures of violence and power in light of God’s shepherding Lamb. It teaches us to challenge oppression and to look for signs of hope, even when evil seems overpowering. It gives us an urgent vision for our future in which God dwells with us — on earth. This is a vision that can guide us in a post-September 11 world.

A river of life flows through the Bible and the Book of Revelation, a river flowing from the throne of God to bring healing to our world. Revelation offers its wondrous water of life as a gift to all who are thirsty for God’s presence.

Barbara R. Rossing is professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and an ordained Lutheran pastor. She is the author of The Choice Between Two Cities:Whore, Bride, and Empire in the Apocalypse and The Rapture Exposed:The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation.

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