Christianity, like Islam and some branches of Judaism, looks forward to the end of time, when the world as we know it will either be destroyed or made over into an eternal paradise of peace and glory in God's presence. For orthodox Christianity, this apocalypse will include a final judgment during which God destroys all forms of wickedness in the world via plagues, war, and fire. All believers who remain steadfast in their faith will survive the destruction to live forever with God in paradise, or heaven.
The Revelation of John is perhaps one of the most famous sections of the Christian sacred text. Its terrifying imagery and complicated story line have been incorporated into literature and film for generations. Tradition holds that the writer John was a persecuted Christian exiled on the island of Patmos when he received his revelation from God. Scholars place John's revelation in a genre of writing that emerges from any community that believes itself to be under siege and desperately hopes for deliverance in a cosmic way. One might argue that the entire messianic message of Christianity reflects such a hope. Revelation, however, takes this hope to another literary and symbolic level. In the following passages, John narrates his vision of the slain Lamb of God (which is Jesus Christ), the widely pictorialized four horsemen of the Apocalypse and the angels who carry the vials of God's wrath, as well as the final culmination of the new heaven and new earth prepared for all believers. These are the images that close the Christian New Testament; moreover, they serve to place Jesus' life, death, and ministry at the center of God's cosmic plan for all the world, time, and history. This, more than anything, is the heart of the Christian "good news."
Apocalypse
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