(climactic music)
- [Narrator] The Bible, a book who's origins lie thousands
of years ago in the Middle East.
It still inspires billions today.
- Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
- [Narrator] Seven figures from different walks of life
offer their personal perspective on the best-selling book
of all time and what it means to them.
- Even if you've never read of a word of the Bible,
your life will have been shaped by it.
- [Narrator] In this program, Robert Beckford
goes in search of the Book of Revelation.
(dramatic music)
(dark music)
I heard the voice of the fourth beast say come and see
and I looked and behold a pale horse
and his name that sat on him was death
and hell followed with him and power was given unto them
over the fourth part of the Earth to kill with sword
and with hunger and with death and with the beasts
of the Earth.
- The Book of Revelation, the last in the Bible
and the most controversial work in the entire epic saga.
22 chapters describe horrific scenes of bloodshed, plague
and cataclysmic disaster as the beast with the number 666
and four avenging horsemen are let loose.
It's a horrifying vision of the end of the world
in which all but a handful of the Christian faithful
are wiped out.
- To Carl Jung, one of the great psychoanalyst
of the 20th century, these pages held a veritable orgy
of hatred, wrath, vindictiveness and blind destructive fury.
To DH Lawrence, the world imagined was hideous.
For centuries, many Christians have chosen
to ignore the Book of Revelation.
It's supernatural visions too problematic to unravel.
Others have embraced it's violent images,
believing the book can scare the faithful into piety.
This is the tradition I was brought up with.
I was taught that the Book of Revelation was literal truth
but I believe there's more to it than the death
and destruction that most people know.
I want to discover if this strange and confusing book
deserves it's bad reputation or whether centuries of misuse
and abuse have obscured it's true meaning.
(dramatic music)
And the first went and poured out his vile upon the Earth
and there fell a noisome and grievous sore
upon the men which had the mark of the beast
and upon them that worshiped his image.
And the second angel poured out his vile upon the sea
and it became as the blood of a dead man
and every living soul died in the sea.
The Book of Revelation is the terrifying resolution
to the Christian Bible.
The shocking images in this prophetic narrative
are it is said a record of the words of God
spoken to the Jesus Christ in a vision to a man called John.
But more about him later.
In Revelation, a door is open to heaven
and John witnesses the events that will lead
to a climactic battle between God and Satan.
At the center of the story is a book sealed seven times.
The opening of each seal unleashes another vision
of the horrifying experiences mankind will face
before the last judgment and salvation.
He sees the four horsemen bring destructive fury
and the wrath of God before which every living soul cowers.
While Satan, who gets a starring role in the book
appears in the guise of the beast
who is marked with the number 666.
But within all this, John sees a glorious future
in which Satan is defeated and cast into a lake of fire.
In the final verses, all humanity is called forth
to be judged by the creator.
Those found worthy are granted salvation
in God's new Jerusalem here on Earth.
- Praise the Lord. - Praise the Lord!
- I said praise the Lord! - Praise the Lord.
- [Narrator] Blessed are they that do his commandments,
that they may have right to the tree of life
and may enter in through the gates into the city,
for without are dogs and sorcerers and whore mongers
and murderers and adulators and whosever loveth
and maketh a lie.
- I was raised in the Midlands in the 1970's,
my parents were Pentecostals and I loved going to church.
We were taught to believe fervently
that our lives were driven by the word of God.
And for three hours twice a day, Sunday after Sunday,
I worshiped with my parents and my eight sisters.
At home and at church, we were taught to believe
that the words of the Book of Revelation
were quite literally true, a step by step guide
to the end of the world.
- [Pastor] In the mighty power name of Jesus.
- [Robert] As Bible believers, we understood that the spirit
of God was present in our daily lives
and that he saw everything.
When I was a boy, this scared me into obedience.
If I was good, then I'd be spared at the last judgment
but if I sided with Satan, I'd be condemned
to face eternal torment.
- Father as we have obeyed your word,
we pray that you open the windows of heaven
and you will flood us with blessings.
- Why should we be interested in the Book of Revelation?
- Well, first of all, it's probably the sort
of the best airport novel that there is in the Bible
that you can get ahold of.
I mean, it really is, it's popular literature,
it's sort of "New Moon" meets "Da Vinci Code"
all mixed together.
So, it's a fabulous read at one level.
At another level, it is probably one
of the most dangerous books in the world,
so to ignore would be in fact to turn your back
on something that has shaped who and what we are.
- Explain this danger to me.
- I think it's dangerous because I think it fundamentally
subverts the Jesus of the gospels.
And I think that's a problem
because then it legitimates violence
where as the gospels show a Jesus
who turns his back on violence.
I mean, we have to remember, Robert
that the early Church was very ambiguous
about whether this book should be in the Bible at all.
Most of the Church didn't want the Book of Revelation
included in the cannon of the Bible,
which was basically fixed around 382 A.D.
It only made it in because it was believed
to have been written by the beloved disciple of Jesus,
John and I think that we would have been better off
without it.
However, we had it, it has given us a sense
that there are epoch moments
when if you can read the signs,
you can change the course of the entire history
of the world.
- I'm on a journey to redeem Revelation.
Do you think it's possible?
- No, I think you're on a fool's errand, I really do.
- The living book and the Bible is relevant
to every generation, even though it was written
all these years ago, you can't say
that oh, it was only for that generation,
because it is the same god that is behind this work.
♪ Because of who you are ♪
- [Robert] Whether we're familiar with the Bible or not,
the world imagined in Revelation
infatuates our existence, almost daily we're faced
with events of unimaginable horror
and turn to the apocalyptic language
in search of understanding.
Popular culture delights in it's grotesque visions
and our nightmares are inhabited by such figures
as the beast with seven heads and the whore of Babylon.
But if I'm to reclaim this work and celebrate
it's place within the Bible,
I have to uncover the world from which it sprang.
The small Greek island of Patmos
in what was once Asia Minor is dominated by the monastery
of St. John the Divine and the holy cave of the apocalypse.
And it was here that the final
and arguably the most controversial book
in the New Testament is believed to have been written.
The writer names himself as John in the opening verses
and traditional thought holds that he was Christ's disciple,
author of the Gospel of John.
At the time of writing in the first century,
a new faith, founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ
was spreading through the region but it's devotees
risked punishment at the hands of the ruling Roman Empire.
- When John's writing, you're at a time
when the Roman Empire is at the height of it's strength.
People are even beginning to worship the emperor.
So, you've got Christians who are probably being persecuted,
you've got people who are feeling under pressure
from political authorities.
So, what they're doing is, they're talking about
how even though they've suffered,
even though they've shared blood,
ultimately they will be victorious.
So, much of what Revelation is about
is about these Christians who have born testimony to Jesus.
- For most people today, the word apocalypse
means the end of time.
But the literal meaning from the Greek
is the lifting of a veil
and that's what happened here.
This is the cave where according to tradition,
John had his revelation and received the word of God.
- [Narrator] Blessed is he that readeth
and they that hear the words of this prophecy
and keep those things which are written therein
for the time is at hand on the Lord's day
and heard behind me a great voice as if a trumpet saying,
"I am alpha and omega, the first and the last
and what thou seest, write in a book
and send it onto the seven churches which are in Asia.
(speaks in foreign language)
- We don't know the exact spot where Christ stood
but we do know that when the voice of God was heard,
the rock split in three places.
This symbolizes the holy trinity, the Father, Son
and the Holy Spirit.
It was here in this holy cave
that the voice of God was heard.
- This is a sacred space, the point where John receives
his vision from God, the three fishers in the rock
representing the trinity and out of this
bursting the light and these amazing visions of the world.
(singing in foreign language)
It's moving, thinking about a man suffering persecution
but being inspired to write down his dreams.
Yet this book is not the scribblings of a man
overwhelmed by religious experience,
it is an exquisite literary and ornate text.
But is John really writing down the word of God
or is he trying to communicate something else?
- What happens is people like John write
as a persecuted minority, as a group that feel threatened
by this great huge Roman Empire,
so what it does is it uses symbols and signs
and picture language to try and repaint the picture
of the world that they're living in.
There's something rather reassuring to those
that are reading them.
If you read a book and you understand the symbol,
you understand the sign, you go ah-ha, I've got it
and that's partly what John's trying to do there,
you're supposed to recognize these things.
You go through and you say, oh yes, I see that in our lives.
- Help me work through some of the common assumptions.
- Usually in Revelation, when you're getting talk about 666,
about the number of the beast, about the whore of Babylon,
it's Rome that's in view.
So, he calls Rome Babylon,
'cause Babylon was a great empire of the past.
He uses the number 666, which probably is a symbol
of the Emperor Nero, the notorious Roman emperor
in the 60's of the first century
and the whore of Babylon again, it's a representative
of that great Roman Empire that people saw
as being so oppressive and being something
that they had to kind of fight against.
- What's the danger of reading it literally?
- It isn't a book that is giving you a literal,
detailed picture of exactly how things will be.
So, when in Revelation it talks about when the new heaven
and the new Earth arise.
You'll be nuts if you try to kinda work out the exact date
when this thing's going to happen,
what happens is you warp it
and you try and make it work
for whatever your own particular agenda is.
And that's always a problem.
- [Robert] It's this clash of interpretations
that has encouraged centuries of arguments
about the book's meaning.
Prophecy versus allegory, believing that every word is true
and that faith alone will save us,
as I was taught as a child
or using the stories in Revelation to provoke change
for the betterment of society.
This is the reading that excites me today.
But what happens when the prophetic reading
is taken to the extreme.
In February 1993, American federal authorities
were involved in an attack on a small Christian sect
called the Branch Davidians holed up in Waco Texas.
The group was led by the messianic David Koresh
who tried to spread his message throughout the world.
- His tongue is the pen of the (indistinct).
So, how's God gonna talk to men in the latter days?
(indistinct)
And who's gonna bring that book?
- [Audience] God.
- So there'll be no excuses!
- [Robert] Koresh believed the events unleashed
by the opening of the seven seals in Revelation
were taking place in the world around him.
Even the attack could be seen as a sign
that the end was coming.
I remember watching the events unfold in 1993 on television
and wondering to myself, how could the Book of Revelation
lead to such catastrophic consequences?
I'm about to meet a man I'm hoping will provide answers.
Livingston Vegan was a British member
of the Branch Davidians who was at Waco
as the events unfolded and the follower of David Koresh.
So, what was David Koresh's understanding
of the Book of Revelation.
- The thing was David had an experience in 1985
on a visit to Jerusalem where I'll put it just directly
here Robert, he was visited by an angel.
He had an illumination.
And that experience was what was the basis
for everything that followed.
- [Robert] Clarify that for me.
He was visited by an angel and the angel
showed him that revelation was coming to pass, we were.
- That's right, the events, the prophecies spoken of
in the Book of Revelation.
- [Robert] How should I understand Revelation and see
this moment in history?
- At this stage, we're going through what is the judgment.
This has to do with the book seal, the seven seals
and the information that was contained in there.
- A 51 day siege followed the authorities' assault
at Waco ending in a blazing inferno.
Livingston Vegan's wife and mother were amongst those
who died.
How did you feel when you saw loved ones,
people you knew then being slaughtered?
- Robert, this really wasn't about feelings.
- [Robert] It was about prophecy.
- Yes, essentially and faith.
Come on, when you saw Christ on the cross,
father forgive them for they know not what they do
or it wasn't about his feelings.
Now sure it hurt that our loved ones were killed
but the point about this is that that should not overwhelm
or override our faith in God.
We had hoped that our attackers would at least hear us,
because really the message was about salvation.
- When I read the Book of Revelation,
I see it as a book to inspire me to inspire every age
to resist tyranny and empire.
- It could, it could, but then that would be interpretation,
not fulfillment.
When you saw Waco and the people that were there,
would you conclude that they were inspired by the word?
- [Robert] I don't know because-
- [Livingston] Hold on, hold on, hold on,
do you think that in their thinking, they were inspired?
- Yes. - Okay
and in their thinking, they were resisting tyranny?
- No.
- So, when the government came against us the way
that they did, we weren't resisting tyranny.
- Well, you have to, well only you can tell me.
- No, no, no, hold on, hold on, the government
came against us with tanks, helicopters to kill us.
- Why?
- No, it's not why, but the question I'm asking here is
don't you think we were resisting tyranny?
Don't you think that we were following our conscience
and our faith?
- Yes.
Do you think people have completely misunderstood what-
- Absolutely but then God doesn't judge them for that.
- I understand why the Branch Davidians
would have felt persecuted by the authorities
and I do respect Livington Vegan for holding fast
to what he believes, despite all he's been through.
But it shows me how dangerous Revelation can be
when it's read literally.
(dramatic music)
It's hard to imagine the tragic events in Waco
taking place in Britain.
We celebrate our faith more privately.
But it seems to me from the very beginning,
America has broadcast a powerful commitment to God,
as every dollar bill reminds us.
In America, it's in God they trust.
- [Narrator] And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,
"Now has come salvation and strength
for the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ
for the accuser of our brethren is cast down,
which accused him before our God day and night
and they overcame him by the blood of the lamb
and by the word of their testimony.
- [Robert] In 1620, a small group of Christian separatists
known as the pilgrim fathers left Britain
in search of a world in which they could practice
their zealous form of Protestantism.
At the heart of their faith was an absolute belief
in the word of the Bible and a commitment
to build a pure, new world worthy of God's presence.
- The American puritans had a sense that God had somehow
chosen them for a special purpose,
to create here on Earth a divine model
of what human society could be
if people truly followed the word of God.
- What did they find, text in the Bible
to give them this sense that they were here,
God had called them and something new was to take place?
- Well, they found texts throughout the Bible.
The Book of Revelation provided a model
for what the Puritans in an ideal sense
believe that they could achieve.
The beautiful passage, there will be no more tears,
God shall wipe away their tears,
it's a very inspiring passage.
So, the Book of Revelation provided both an inspiration
of a glorious future but also the most frightening
kind of warnings of what would happen to those
who did not follow Christ and fell into wickedness.
- [Robert] Just 70 years after the Puritans arrived,
the wickedness they feared did appear in their midst.
In 1692, 20 people were executed in Salem Massachusetts
for alleged witchcraft offenses.
The new world had become corrupted by the presence of Satan.
- Satan was believed to use human agents
to achieve his purposes, then if you add on to that a belief
in witchcraft, that human beings
can sell out to the other side, go to the dark side,
this creates a climate of potentially of intense suspicion
and fear, not only at some abstract supernatural power
but at one's own neighbors.
- [Robert] The witchcraft hysteria began at the home
of the Reverend Samuel Paris, when his daughter and niece
began exhibiting strange behavior.
Unable to cure them, a local doctor declared
that they were under the evil hand.
- The Reverend Samuel Paris preached a powerful sermon
in Salem village in September 1692 at the height
of the outbreak.
He chose his text from the Book of Revelation, chapter 17.
Here is the lamb shall make war and the lamb shall triumph.
And he elaborated the meaning of that.
There are only two forces in the world,
the lamb and the dragon,
Christ and Satan, you must be on one side or the other.
- So where was Revelation in the contemporary America?
- The post-911 context, I think was one
in which prophetic apocalyptic world views
tended to be particularly attractive.
The opinion polls I've seen tend to show about 30 to 40%
of people when asked say that the world will end
in a battle with Armageddon between Jesus Christ
and the anti-Christ.
Now that doesn't mean that 40% of Americans
are going around day in and day out obsessed with this,
this is sort of in the back of people's minds
but it can surge forward under proper circumstances.
- It's amazing to think that over three centuries later,
the battle between the dragon and the lamb
is still taking place.
Many Americans believe they have a God-given mission
to create the new Jerusalem.
The battle in Salem between good and evil
is now being played out on a global stage
and America has cast itself on the side of good or God.
It's an alliance that has huge consequences for us all.
- [President Bush] I know we can overcome evil
with greater good.
- [Man] Evil empire.
- [President Clinton] Thank you and God bless you all.
- [Man] God bless you and God bless America.
- [President Reagan] The struggle between right and wrong
and good and evil.
- [President Obama] We can heal this nation,
we can repair the world, God bless you.
- [President Bush] Evil is real and it must be opposed.
God is near.
- [President Reagan] And one day with God's help.
- So help you God. - So help me God.
- [Robert] To see faith in Revelation at work today,
I'm on my way to Richland Creek Community Church
in North Carolina.
- And we have seen the power of this book
as it unveils to us Jesus Christ.
This book is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
It is not a difficult book to follow.
The only time it becomes difficult
is when you try to allegorize or spiritualize
all these things and insert your own meanings into the text.
- So, you read the Book of Revelation literally, why?
- Well, I think God's word is to be taken literally.
He's not trying to confuse people,
he's not trying to deceive people.
This is actually the very breathe of God on paper.
If we just take God's word for what it says,
we're gonna get an understanding of his heartbeat,
his love for people and the fact that he's coming again.
- My opinion would be that you're wrong
in reading it literally because it's actually a book of code
and symbols and about the first century.
How do you respond to that?
- Well, there's nothing in the Bible that would seem
to indicate that we should read it in code.
God's saying, hey, believe what I'm saying
about these events, they're actually
gonna go down the way it's described right there
in the book.
And God is giving us a time table, setting us up
for his literal return.
- As a Bible-believing Christian,
as a man who loves the Lord, loves your congregation,
what do you make of the image of God in Revelation?
- I think that's a great question
because I think people wanna picture God
as a God of love and a God of hope
and he's all those things but he's also a God of wrath
for those who are opposed to him and opposed to his way.
He warns us about the judgment that's coming.
So, we can't say that God hasn't been fair.
- [Robert] If you read it literally,
you end up with a timeline for the end of the world
and I think that literal reading promotes pacifity
and complicity as opposed to resistance and fighting
for a more just order.
That's why your interpretation worries me.
- Hmm-hmm.
I've already said what I had to say about it, so.
Look, the Bible is to be taken at face value
and when you say it's simplistic, I agree with that.
He literally is coming again, he literally is
going to fight the battle at Armageddon.
He literally is going to make all things new,
a new heavens and a new Earth.
- In this part of the U.S., in North Carolina,
would you support political candidates
who were unChristian, who didn't read the Bible
in the way that you read it?
- Well, me personally, I would love to support a candidate
who holds to the teachings found in God's word
because there you're gonna have a candidate
who ascribes that which is right defined by God,
not by man.
And so the moral attributes of that candidate
are reflected in his adherence to the word of God.
- Pastor Simms' teaching of Revelation
is very familiar to me.
But I'm no longer seduced by the book's power
to prey on my darkest fears.
Where in his reading is that hopeful message of resistance
that I now believe is fundamental to a true understanding
of the book.
In April, 1981, a London community was torn apart
as residents took to the streets to protest
against racial harassment.
Riots spreads through Brixton and over two days,
more than 350 people were injured
and houses and shops burned.
When the rioting took place, I was 16 and living
in the Midlands.
I remember going to church
to hear my pastor praise the Pentecostal youth of Brixton
for not being involved in the rioting.
As far as he was concerned, the suffering
was not part of God's plan and they didn't need
to be involved in the affairs of this world
because their salvation was assured.
I had a big problem with that.
If racism and social inequality were part of God's plan,
then perhaps the plan was flawed.
I was realizing that the Bible and the Book of Revelation
in particular could be profoundly political.
In the 17th century, as the Puritans in America
were building their new world,
Christians here were living a world of political
and religious chaos in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The old authoritarian order had been swept away.
In 1649, a small group of men and women
led by radical Christian, Gerrard Winstanley
occupied some common land near Weybridge in Surrey.
This is St. George's Hill, a private estate,
gated community with it's own golf course
and just about everything else.
But it's also the unlikely setting
of the Digger's revolutionary movement.
Inspired by the Book of Revelation,
they seized these pastures in order to build their vision
of the new world.
I'm not sure this is what they had in mind.
Like John on Patmos, Winstanley believed he had
received divine vision and God had instructed him to act.
What did god tell him to do?
- He believed that God called him
to gather people together to basically to eat together,
to share bread together, to work together
for the common good and his interpretation of that
was then to see the common lands
which were very poorly utilized and unused
and he got off his backside, went up into the hill
with a group of people and started digging the common land.
- What was the role of the Book of Revelation
in the life of the Diggers?
- Well, the book of Revelation was incredibly important
because you put yourself in his place in the 17th century,
the king has been executed, the Church of England
is dissolved, the bishops have gone,
everything is up for grabs, the world is turned upside down.
And he really believed this was the time
which the Book of Revelation was written about.
It was the time that the new order was coming in,
so he didn't see the Book of Revelation as this book
dealing with the end of the war
but he saw it as the beginning of a whole new society,
a new order which God was going to bring in.
- But the world God had instructed Winstanley to create
couldn't survive.
This radical social movement threatened the power
of the authorities and within months,
the Diggers were thrown off St. George's Hill.
The Diggers' dream of a utopian world had failed
but for a brief moment, the persecuted had found a voice
in the words of their Bible.
They were following John's call to resist their oppressors
but this time, though the battle was not between empires
and religious faith but between authoritarian rule
and the need for social justice.
In the late 18th century, a new profit stepped forward
to champion the oppressed and once more
it was Revelation that showed the way.
William Blake, renowned artist, poet and visionary
was commissioned to illustrate the book.
Though Blake was born just over 100 years
after the Diggers' revolt, he grew up in a world
of radical Christian thought which echoed that
of Winstanley.
His parents were dissenters, part of a Christian sect
which had separated from the established church.
And Blake grew to oppose the idea of a theology
that oppressed man and permitted injustice.
I'm going to see his illustration of chapters four and five
from the Book of Revelation in which John sees heaven
for the first time.
When I look at this I see God enthroned in heaven
and everyone paying homage, what am I missing?
- I think the most important thing to say
is that he has understood what is there in the Bible
and was actually expressing what's there in the text.
Blake gets one to kinda focus on the central image of God
and we would pardoned, I think, for missing fact
that the most important image is right there at the bottom
just below the feet of the almighty
what looks like a dead animal and it's there
in the Book of Revelation chapter five
that John sees, after he's seen the almighty,
he sees a lamb that is slain.
And the lamb who's slain is a symbol of Christ,
the one who identifies with the meek and lowly.
And so the meek and lowly are drawn into this picture
identifying with the lamb who is slain,
who is the key to history.
- Is Blake is telling us that the lamb symbolizes
the common person, is he also telling us
that the common person has incredible power
to change their world, to bring about the new heaven?
- I've absolutely no doubt at all that he is doing that.
What he wants to do is to say, look, realize who you are,
realize that divine image is already there in you
and if you've got that then you will be empowered,
not only to be better persons for yourself
but also in relating to other people.
- So, we have here in Blake's depiction of Revelation,
a manifesto for social change, is that correct?
- I think in every work that Blake did
was in a sense a manifesto for social change
and how it is that humans need to change in order
to bring it about.
(slow music)
- To me, the battle that affected my life the most directly
was waged in America in the 1960's.
On the 31st of July, 1966,
the Black Liberation Theology Movement
hit the streets of America
when 51 African-American pastors
took out a full page advertisement in the New York Times,
demanding an end to racism and racial segregation.
When American leaders are forced by American people
to quit misusing and abusing American power,
then will the cry for black power become inaudible,
for the framework in which all power in America operates
would include the power and experience of black men
as well as those of white men.
I can't imagine the impact that this must have had
on American society.
I mean, just picture it, the Church is calling
for all Americans to stand firm and resist white racism.
It seems to me that this is what the Book of Revelation
might have sounded like, if it were written
in the 20th century.
Professor James Cone was a pioneer
of the New Black Liberation theology.
- The key thing about the Book of Revelation
and the oppressed is that John himself
and the Christian churches that he is writing to
in the Book of Revelations are living
under a similar situation that blacks perceive themselves
to be living under.
- Black people didn't have to go to seminary to know
that the Bible spoke to them.
They didn't have to go to the university to know
that that situation was analogous to the poor and the weak
and the hapless within the Bible.
- [Robert] So, in the 1960's, who was the beast
for black America?
- Who was the beast in the black community
as they saw it, white supremacy, white power,
the U.S. government which refused to acknowledge
their right of citizenship.
We were fighting for the right to vote in the 1960's.
- [Robert] Was America Babylon?
- Yes, America was Babylon, it's the beast.
We felt we were living in Babylon.
- [Robert] So within the 1960's struggle, black power
is not that far removed from the new heaven.
- I mean, you have to shout it when you've been denied it
more than 350 years, you have to shout it,
you have to go crazy about it.
And that's what's happening within John's vision,
people are going crazy about the new heaven
and the new Earth.
I lived during the 1960's.
The vision of a new America, a new Jerusalem
was prominent and powerful during that time.
King spoke of it as his dream.
He spoke of it as the beloved community,
that's the new Jerusalem.
There he is preaching, I've been on the mountaintop,
I've seen the other side, I was there.
We believed that it was going to come.
And in some sense, some people would say Barack Obama
is the realization of that.
- [Robert] So is America still the beast?
- I don't know, I don't know, I don't know whether America
is the beast, there are a lot of beasts
in the world though.
America is not the only beast.
But it's a big old beast out there.
- That's amazing, Professor Cone has spent his whole life
using Revelation to fight injustice.
I've never heard anything like that growing up
in the Church and definitely not from a Pentecostal pulpit.
Today, the Book of Revelation is still being used
to fight injustice and it's been taken right
into the heart of the community.
In the early 1990's, stories of gang warfare
and drug-related violence dominated the headlines
of Boston's newspapers.
Within the largely poor Latino
and African-American neighborhoods of the city,
youth crime was spiraling out of control.
In 1992, after a gang shooting at a funeral,
a group of church ministers banded together
to tackle the problem.
What the police couldn't solve, the Church would.
The Reverend Eugene Rivers, a Pentecostal minister
was the founding member of the 10 Point Coalition.
- One of the ways that we have taken some
of the theological themes in Revelation,
some of the images and symbols
is to talk about the nature of the beast.
The image of a source of evil that exists in the cosmos,
in the world, whose bidding I may unwittingly do
by acts of evil.
When I go to prisons, dudes respond to that,
oh yeah, oh yeah.
Dude, don't disrespect yourself, don't do the work
of the beast by disrespecting yourself.
Ah, I'm telling you, oh man, cats, whew!
So the image of the beast now must be reinterpreted
for a generation of young people
who do not understand the nature
of the evil and the systems against them.
- [Robert] The Ten Point Coalition began working
within the communities to combat a culture violence
amongst the youth.
Today, the police actively seek their help.
- As law enforcement, we have a law enforcement aspect
down pat, boom, we can knock them out
but there's apart of it that we can't take on.
We can offer a certain amount of degree to that effect
as far as law enforcement but I think clergy
has to really solidify the deal.
- The book is subversive, from Genesis to Revelation,
it's subversive.
And there is subversive, radically egalitarian content
that is emancipatory, that is reconciling right,
all of which the Church ignores
because it's just very uncomfortable.
- For more than two millennia, apocalyptic writings
has come out of times of great social
and political upheaval.
Those moments when the establishment is held in suspicion
and the oppressed find their voice.
Today, more than ever before, a crisis threatens
to engulf us all and surprising, the Book of Revelation
may hold the key to understanding how we deal with it.
(dark music)
- [Narrator] And I saw a new heaven and a new Earth.
For the first heaven and the first Earth were passed away.
On the throne said, "Behold I make all things new."
And he showed me a pure river or water of life,
clear as crystal proceeding out of the throne of God
and of the lamb.
- 2,000 years ago on the island of Patmos,
John wrote of the battle between good and evil.
The Christian faith faced the enemy of the Roman Empire.
Today, the battle continues but it is the Earth itself
that is now at stake.
In the face of impending disaster,
brought about by climate change,
it's easy to see why environmental protestors
use apocalyptic images from the Book of Revelation
to shock us into acting.
When I was growing up, my vision of the end of the world
was the nuclear bomb.
I'd never envisage that my children's generation
would face an even greater threat.
- There's only so much the Earth can take,
so we have to be preserving the world now
for future generations.
- I think probably like kinda destroy ourselves in a sense.
- How do we even know that the world is dying,
how do we know that it's not just meant to happen.
Animals die all the time and they become extinct,
what if it's just our turn to become extinct.
- The Book of Revelation is a book that says
you must fight to save the world.
Is it right to read the Book of Revelation that way?
- Maybe it's about pollution and whatever's happening now,
but I think it's like what we need to be prepared for
whatever's gonna happen to us in the future.
- It's not necessarily about climate change
but it shows that everything's not set in sandstone,
we're not powerless and we shouldn't overlook it all.
- When it was written,
they didn't know what was going to happen,
so how could it possibly be about climate change?
- John is writing about anything that creates tyranny,
disaster, believers have to resist.
Can I use that in the future and apply it to climate change,
the Book of Revelation?
- I wouldn't say climate change was tyranny
but you could but I don't, I think it's a crazy man
writing from a cave thousands of years ago.
- It may well be the ramblings of a crazy man
writing from a cave but the message that he's given
to stop people being lazy and to take up action
against oppression and tyranny and all forms of it
is a really good message.
- [Robert] And it seems that the Church
is uniting behind this message.
Thousands of Christians believe as I do,
that we have a duty to save the planet
and that by making ourselves heard,
we can bring about a change that will preserve our world.
- It looks in the last few decades, particularly
in perhaps the last few millennia
as if the human race has on the whole
not been very good news for the rest of creation.
We depend on the health of the world around us.
And because of that, the health of the world around us
and our own longterm health are not two things but one.
Let's not lose sight.
- Revelation says we are living in the last days.
Revelation time.
- [Robert] Why is the Book of Revelation appealing
to the Green Movement and environmentalists?
- Because the Book of Revelation comes out of a situation
where people are at their wit's end,
they don't know where to look
and they're faced with an incredibly powerful
and oppressive regime, the Roman regime
and the book talks about the possibilities of hope there
and it's a situation which is analogist
with the situation that we face today.
So it calls for a different way of organizing our economy,
a different way of organizing our whole society in fact.
Do we really care about climate change,
does it affect our behavior?
If it doesn't, are we actually complicit
with the ongoing destruction.
The question is where we stand in relation
to the future is exactly the prophetic question.
- It seems to me the environmentalist movement
are using the cataclysmic, apocalyptic visions
in Revelation to inspire us to fight for heaven on Earth.
Now whether we're frightened into doing that
or inspired, they don't really care,
so long as we act.
- We're here because God's creation is under threat
because of climate change.
We live in a unique point in history
where if we're not careful,
we're gonna throw the whole of the planet into imbalance.
- What do you find within the Book of Revelation
to help make sense of your environmental campaign?
- It's a crazy book, isn't it?
And sometimes people say, oh all the wild weather,
oh, it's not climate change, it's all been foretold.
The question is agency.
Who's changing the climate, is it God or is it us?
I believe in free will.
If we are going to burn fossil fuels
and destabilize the planet, it has nothing to do with God.
God might be weeping while we do this.
If there is a beast in the subject of climate change,
it's the beast in all of us,
it's the beast that is consumption.
The fact that we are taking up resources
which took millions and millions of years
to be formed in the Earth's crust
and are using them at an extraordinary rate, it's.
You know when you look at the message of getting people
animated against Hitler, against the threat of invasion,
you can point to an external enemy,
this time the enemy is within,
it's our own patents of living.
It's not an external beast.
I think there's a beast of consumption
which is within and I think that's the one
we have to concentrate on.
- Western civilization oscillates between two models.
It oscillates between this Book of Revelation horror story
and it oscillates between the end of the Book of Revelation
which has this astonishingly beautiful image
of the city of God coming down out of heaven
in which everyone lives in peace, the waters are there,
the trees over the healing of the nations.
So, we've swung, we swing between apocalypse,
scare everybody, terrify them into behaving properly
and utopia.
(slow music)
- [Robert] It's easy to read the Book of Revelation
and be seduced by it.
All those images of blood and vengeance
could have come straight from Hollywood
and just like watching a horror film,
we love the power that those terrifying images have.
And that's why so few people remember the world
at the end.
If you get all the way through the 66 books in the Bible,
you get back to where you started on page one,
a glorious untainted world created by God.
- The Book of Revelations speaks to everybody.
It just doesn't say the same message to everybody.
It doesn't always say the message that you want to hear
but it does speak to all people.
Really it's a book of pictures, it's a book of images,
it's a book that's evoking something
to try and get a response out of people,
not something that's going to give you a detailed plan
for how the world is going to be forevermore.
- The literal meaning makes most sense,
it helps us to understand chronologically
and it leaves no room for misinterpretation
by a man inserting his own opinions there.
The text is meant to be taken literally.
- I am now convinced that the last book of the Bible
is the most misunderstood piece of writing in history.
Today, I simply cannot except
that terrifying literal interpretation
that was taught to the boy in the Pentecostal Church.
Everything that I've discovered and learned
has proven that the Book of Revelation
is best not and probably should not be read as a guidebook
to the end of the Earth.
Instead, I'm with those revolutionaries
from the early Christians onwards
who are inspired by it's message to the oppressed
and persecuted.
Today, 2,000 years on from John having his vision,
I believe his message still speaks to all of us committed
to building the new heaven and the new Earth.
(spiritual music)