The Book of Revelation

Question:

Any time that I hear others of other denominations speak of the Book of Revelation, their interpretations are always very frightening to me. However, when I hear Unity's interpretations of anything I always feel so at peace. A good friend was speaking of Revelation and her Sunday school study today, and I just feel that I have no good understanding in general of the book. I need insight.

Comment:

People have, indeed, been using the Revelation to John as a rich source of scary and disturbing images and pseudo-prophetic utterances for hundreds of years. In fact it offers a vivid description of the mistakes, temptations, confusion and false values we find in this human experience that serve to distract us from our spiritual Truth. It would be impossible to discuss all the imagery with which the book is packed in this one brief response.   The important thing to realize is that it is all descriptive of the specific world and time in which it was written. It is an allegory of the suffering Christians were enduring at the hands of the Roman Empire—written in a kind of code so that authorities would not recognize themselves in its pages.    Metaphysically, the Revelation to John describes the great journey each of us makes from spiritual ignorance to full spiritual expression. It is the great culmination of the epic journey that began in the first pages of Genesis—the journey of a spiritual being through the distractions and challenges of human consciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness that Jesus describes as the kingdom of heaven.   That journey is summarized and concentrated as the epic battles and tribulations described in the Revelation. It all culminates in the great realization of Chapter 21: "Then 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, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God." The kingdom of heaven, then, is not some place beyond the clouds where we will go after death. It occurs in this human experience; it is the perfect spiritual expression of everything that has been imperfectly expressing here on earth. "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men (21:3)."   The promise is, then, that our journey will be joyfully complete when we have removed from our consciousness every thought and false belief of separation from our divine Source, and become clear and nonresisting channels for the creative Power that is God. Then our lives here on earth will be completely infused with the divine, and the kingdom of heaven will not only be at hand; it will be the consciousness in which we live.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed