The Book of Revelation

The Best of Times, The End of Times:
A Lenten Study of The Revelation of John
Updated 18 April 2003

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
Adult Lenten Sunday School Class, March 9 - April 20, 2003

The season of Lent gives us all the opportunity to reflect on our lives, as well as the entirety of human history. Some, like the purveyors of tabloids, use the apocalyptic vision of prophets to sell newspapers (like the cover at the right from the Feb 25, 2003 issue of the Sun). This seven week course will give us a unique opportunity to use the apocalyptic vision of John of Patmos as a scriptural place to focus our attention during our Lenten journey. The Book of Revelation makes great demands on those who read it. It is first and foremost apocalyptic in nature, which means it is a prophetic work, but not a work that foretells the future. Rather, it tells the truths of God as revealed to the prophet. Our task in reading prophetic literature, is to understand the imagery and symbolism in its historical context, so that we do not read into the work things from our own culture and time period. The writer of Revelation gives us God's perceptions of the situation of the original readers (hearers) of the work, and then tells us what God will do about that situation. In the end, the righteous will be rewarded, and the wicked will be punished. During Lent, this is a particularly apt topic.

Our goal in this class is to develop an understanding of the Book of Revelation and what it said to first Century readers, and to apply that to us today - insofar as that is possible. In this class we will use a book by Charles T. Chapman, Jr. to guide our reading of the Biblical text itself (see immediately below). The Chapman book and the Book of revelation have been divided to accommodate a five week class. Check out the class schedule.

Although any version of the Bible can be used, the following study Bible NRSV translation is recommended.

An additional text that would be useful is a commentary on Revelation. I recommend:

A beautiful collection of art by Pat Marvenko Smith inspired by the Book of Revelation can be found on line at http://www.revelationillustrated.com. Her work is for sale and can be ordered on line.

Some of the class notes may be in Adobe 5.0 *.pdf format.
If you need to, you can download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader™ .

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Class Date	Period	Topic	Pages of Chapman to Read	Chapters of Revelation to Read
March 9, 2003	Intro Class 1	Introduction; The Prologue; The Seven Letters (Note there links to two periods at the left)	1 - 38	1:1 - 3:21
March 16, 2003		NO CLASS - TIPPY LECTURE
March 23, 2003	Class 2	The Seven Seals	38 - 59	4:1 - 8:5
March 30, 2003	Class 3	The Seven Trumpets	60 - 77	8:6 - 11:18
April 6, 2003	Class 4	The Seven Scenes; The Seven Bowls of God's Anger	77 - 103	11:19 - 16:21
April 13, 2003	Class 5	The Fall of Babylon	104 - 115	17:1 - 19:4
April 20, 2003	Class 6	The Last Things; The Epilogue	116 - 136	19:5 - 22:5