The Revelation of John
Who was John of Patmos, and what does his vision mean?
By JOHN LEAKE
In August of 2005, I chartered a 36-foot sailboat on the Aegean island of Kos—where the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates was born—and sailed up to the island of Patmos. The final leg from Leros took me all day, and it was dusk as I arrived at the island’s marina. The next morning I wandered into town to get a coffee, and as I passed a news-stand, I saw on the front page of the International Herald Tribune a photograph of a large swath of New Orleans under water. Hurricane Katrina had just made landfall, flooding the city.
Later that day I wandered up to a cave that was purportedly the home of John of Patmos when he lived on the island and had his nightmarish Revelation (Greek: Apocalypse) of the end of the world.
Most vivid and frightening is his vision of Four Horsemen who are unleashed on the earth. The first is mounted on a white horse, armed with a bow, and adorned with a crown. He apparently represents Pestilence. The second is mounted on a red horse and armed with a sword. He is thought to represent Civil War. The third, who apparently represents Famine, rides a black horse and carries a scale. Upon the fourth horse is mounted a pale and gaunt figure who represents Death.
John of Patmos has traditionally been identified as one and the same as John the Apostle, but many scholars have noted that the former’s Greek contains many grammatical errors and odd word choices, while the latter’s Greek is flawless. To me, this suggests that we don’t know who John of Patmos was, which makes him all the more intriguing.
He was apparently exiled to Patmos by Roman authorities because he preached the Christian faith, which was proscribed and heavily persecuted under the reigns of Nero and his successors in the 1st century AD. Historians think he was sent packing to the desolate island under Domitian (81-96).
However, in John’s reflections on the depravity of Roman rule, he seems to have been thinking mostly about Nero, who ordered cruel and sadistic persecutions of the Christian congregation in Rome after the Great Fire of 64.
Tacitus and Suetonius claimed that Nero himself set fire to the city because he (an aesthete) found the old buildings shabby and he wanted an excuse to rebuild them. Tacitus went as far as claiming that Nero wanted to burn the entire city down in order to re-found it and name it Neropolis.
It’s tough to say if the accounts of Tacitus and Suetonius were based on solid evidence or anti-Nero propaganda, given that the Emperor was hated by many of his Roman contemporaries, including the influential writer, Pliny the Elder.
According to Tacitus, Nero blamed the catastrophe on the obscure sect of people living in the city. They were, he claimed, a superstitious bunch who committed abominations in their communion rite of eating of the body and drinking of the blood of their crucified man-god. To punish them for their alleged arson, he ordered them burned alive.
That John of Patmos was thinking about Nero finds support in verse 13:16-18, which reads:
This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.
The Greek name “Nero Caesar” translated into Hebrew is NRON QSRN, which adds up (in the gematria numerological system) to six hundred and sixty-six.
John understood that the Roman imperial administration was immensely organized and powerful, with disciplined legions that could swiftly reach anywhere in the world and destroy any group of men who opposed their rule. However, as he saw it, this great earthly power was not guided by wisdom, truth, and goodness, but by an insatiable desire for aggrandizement and total domination of all people.
I have never known what to make of John, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about him and his strange Revelation.
The problem with those “scholars” interpretations is that they don’t finish the text. Nero did not cause all to receive marks on their hand or forehead, therefore it cannot be interpreted as Nero that John was speaking of..
When exegeting the scripture we have examine all of it and it all has to make sense..
It makes more sense contextually in the time period we are living in right now.. where there actually could be a global order where in lockstep, everyone uses their cbdc’s, for instance, by swiping their hand or scanning their forehead..
Kind of like how, during Covid, all the leaders were in lockstep, for the first time in history.. we are seeing shadows of things to come..
I think we spend way too much time thinking and talking about futures we don't want. History has been so fraught with barbarism, of course all previous commentary was predicated on more barbarity because that's all they knew, they couldn't see "outside of the box". But we are at a most interesting time now - where we have something no character in history ever predicted - we have the internet. And this allows us to communicate with each other in light speed. Nobody ever saw this - so their predictions are essentially defunct. We are currently perched at a very pivotal time where we can finally claim the reigns to our own destiny, individually and collectively. We can make seismic shifts in our thinking because now we have a communication channel that enables everyone to exponentially thrive. Let's start reimagining our future and make it one we want, not more barbarity and fear.