The Apocalypse of St John (The Book of Revelation)

The last book of the Bible opens with a blessing on whoever reads it: "Blessed is he, that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy; and keepeth those things which are written in it; for the time is at hand" (Apocalypse 1:3). It closes with the last prayer of Scripture: "Come, Lord Jesus" (Apocalypse 22:20). Its title in Greek and in the Vulgate is Apocalypsis, which means an unveiling, a revelation; hence the two English names, the Apocalypse in the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Book of Revelation (often miscalled "Revelations") in Protestant translations. It is the one prophetic book of the New Testament, a consolation for persecuted Christians and a warning for the lukewarm. Below this guide are all twenty-two chapters, the Latin of the Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims English, with Bishop Challoner's notes.

The author: St John the Apostle

The Church has received the Apocalypse as the work of St John the Apostle, son of Zebedee, the beloved disciple who also wrote the Gospel of St John and three epistles. The Council of Trent, listing the sacred books in its fourth session (1546), names it "the Apocalypse of John the apostle".

The witness of the book. The author gives his own name at the opening and the close: "his servant John" (1:1), "John to the seven churches which are in Asia" (1:4), "I John, your brother and your partner in tribulation... was in the island, which is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus" (1:9), and "I, John, who have heard and seen these things" (22:8). He needs no title to command the seven churches of Asia, where St John spent his last years. He shares with the fourth Gospel a language found nowhere else in the New Testament: Christ is "the Word of God" (19:13) and above all "the Lamb", as the Baptist had pointed Him out in John 1:29.

The witness of the Fathers. St Justin Martyr, in the middle of the second century, speaks of "a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him" (Dialogue with Trypho 81). St Irenaeus of Lyons, disciple of St Polycarp, who had known John, receives the book as the Apostle's and comments on it at length (Against Heresies V.30). The Muratorian Fragment (about 170), Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen and St Hippolytus all receive it as the Apostle's. St Jerome writes that John, banished to Patmos, "wrote the Apocalypse, on which Justin Martyr and Irenaeus afterwards wrote commentaries" (On Illustrious Men 9).

The doubts. In the third century St Dionysius of Alexandria, struck by the rough Greek, held the book inspired but thought it the work of another John (in Eusebius, Church History VII.25), and some Eastern Churches hesitated for a time; the West never wavered. Many modern scholars likewise propose another John; the Church's tradition, from Justin to Trent, names the Apostle.

The date: Patmos under Domitian

Tradition dates it to about AD 95, near the end of the reign of the Emperor Domitian. St Irenaeus, writing about 180, says of the vision: "For that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian's reign" (Against Heresies V.30.3). Eusebius (Church History III.18) places John's banishment in Domitian's persecution, and St Jerome in the fourteenth year of that emperor, about AD 95; after the tyrant's death the Apostle returned to Ephesus. Tertullian records that John had first been plunged into boiling oil at Rome, unharmed, and then banished to an island (Prescription against Heretics 36), the miracle long kept on 6 May as the feast of St John before the Latin Gate.

The book fits that setting: Christians are being cast into prison and slain for the name of Christ, like Antipas at Pergamus, "my faithful witness, who was slain among you" (2:10–13), death awaits whoever will not adore the image of the beast (13:15), and some churches have already grown cold. A minority of scholars, ancient and modern, prefer a date under Nero, before AD 70; the Domitian date remains the tradition of the Church and of most commentators.

Summary of the Book of Revelation

The Apocalypse is a single great vision given "on the Lord's day" (1:10), unfolded in series of seven: seven letters, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials. The Fathers, from St Victorinus of Pettau, author of the oldest surviving Latin commentary, observed that these series often go over the same history again rather than follow one another in time. The book is about Christ's victory over Satan through the whole age of the Church, and its consummation at His coming.

The Son of Man and the seven churches (chapters 1–3)

On Patmos John sees "one like to the Son of man" among seven golden candlesticks, and falls at His feet as dead: "Fear not. I am the First and the Last, and alive, and was dead, and behold I am living for ever and ever, and have the keys of death and of hell" (chapter 1). He is commanded to write to the angels, that is the bishops, of seven churches of Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus and Thyatira in chapter 2, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea in chapter 3. Ephesus has left its first charity, Thyatira tolerates "the woman Jezabel, who calleth herself a prophetess" (2:20), Laodicea is lukewarm; each letter ends with a promise to him that overcomes.

The throne, the Lamb and the seven seals (chapters 4–7)

A door opens in heaven (chapter 4): God enthroned, the twenty-four ancients with crowns of gold, and the four living creatures who cry without ceasing, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty". In chapter 5 no one is found worthy to open the book sealed with seven seals, until "the lion of the tribe of Juda" appears as "a Lamb standing as it were slain". The opening of the seals in chapter 6 releases the four horsemen, then the cry of the martyrs under the altar, then the great earthquake of the sixth seal. Before the seventh, chapter 7 shows the servants of God sealed on their foreheads, a hundred and forty-four thousand of Israel, and "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations".

The seven trumpets (chapters 8–11)

The seventh seal brings "silence in heaven, as it were for half an hour" (8:1); an angel offers the prayers of the saints with incense at the golden altar, and seven angels sound their trumpets. Like the plagues of Egypt in Exodus, the first four strike earth, sea, rivers (the star Wormwood) and sky. The fifth and sixth bring the locusts from the bottomless pit and the army of horsemen (chapter 9). After the little book John is given to eat (chapter 10), chapter 11 tells of the two witnesses who prophesy, are slain by the beast and rise again. At the seventh trumpet heaven proclaims: "The kingdom of this world is become our Lord's and his Christ's" (11:15), and the ark of the testament is seen in the temple of God.

The woman, the dragon and the two beasts (chapters 12–14)

The heart of the book. "A great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun" (chapter 12) gives birth to a son who is to rule all nations, while a great red dragon waits to devour him. The child is caught up to God's throne; Michael and his angels cast the dragon, "that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan", out of heaven; and he makes war on the rest of her seed. In chapter 13 the dragon gives his power to a beast from the sea, with seven heads and ten horns, served by a second beast from the earth that imposes its mark and its number. Against this, chapter 14 shows the Lamb on Mount Sion with the virgins who follow Him, and the harvest of the earth.

The seven vials and the fall of Babylon (chapters 15–19)

Seven angels pour out the vials of God's wrath (chapters 15–16), and the kings of the earth are gathered "into a place, which in Hebrew is called Armagedon" (16:16). Chapter 17 shows the great harlot, "Babylon the great", drunk with the blood of the saints, seated on a scarlet beast, and chapter 18 laments her sudden ruin. Heaven sings Alleluia for the marriage supper of the Lamb, and Christ rides out on a white horse, "faithful and true", with "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS" written on His garment (chapter 19); the beast and the false prophet are cast into the pool of fire.

The thousand years and the Last Judgment (chapter 20)

Satan is bound "for a thousand years", the souls of the martyrs reign with Christ in "the first resurrection", and at the end Satan is loosed for a short time and gathers Gog and Magog against the camp of the saints, before fire comes down from heaven. Then the dead, great and small, stand before the great white throne and are "judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Apocalypse 20).

The new heaven, the new earth and the New Jerusalem (chapters 21–22)

"Behold, I make all things new." The holy city comes down from God "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (chapter 21), its foundations bearing the names of the twelve apostles; it needs neither sun nor moon, "for the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof". Chapter 22 shows the river of the water of life and the tree of life, and ends with Christ's promise, "Surely I come quickly", and the Church's answer.

What is the main message of the Book of Revelation?

The Lamb who was slain has already conquered, and those who stay faithful to Him will share His victory. Every page turns on that: "Be thou faithful until death: and I will give thee the crown of life" (2:10). The book was not written to feed curiosity about dates, which Our Lord refused to give (Matthew 24:36), but to strengthen the Church under persecution, to call sinners to penance, and to lift our eyes to the worship of heaven and the Four Last Things: death, judgment, hell and heaven.

The Catholic reading: the Mass, Our Lady and the saints

The heavenly liturgy. What John sees in heaven is worship, an altar, incense, canticles and the Lamb "as it were slain", and the Church recognises her own Mass in it. The Sanctus echoes the four living creatures (4:8) together with the seraphim of Isaias 6; the Agnus Dei adores the Lamb; and the prayer Supplices te rogamus of the Roman Canon asks that our offering be carried by the hands of the holy angel to the altar on high, as the angel of Apocalypse 8:3–4 offers the prayers of the saints at the golden altar before the throne. Challoner notes on 6:9 that the souls of the martyrs live "under the altar" in heaven "as their bodies are here deposited under our altars", which is why relics of martyrs are sealed in every altar stone.

The intercession of the saints and angels. The elders hold "golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints" (5:8). The saints who reign with Christ offer their prayers to God for us, as Trent taught in its twenty-fifth session on the invocation of saints. The book also gives us the war of St Michael the Archangel against the dragon (12:7–9), the source of the Prayer to St Michael the Archangel that Leo XIII ordered after Low Mass.

The woman clothed with the sun. Challoner explains the woman of chapter 12 first of the Church, who brings forth Christ in her children amid persecution, and adds that it "may also, by allusion, be applied to our blessed Lady". St Pius X wrote in Ad diem illum (1904): "Everyone knows that this woman signified the Virgin Mary, the stainless one who brought forth our Head." Pius XII, defining the Assumption in Munificentissimus Deus (1950), recalled that the scholastic doctors saw it signified in "that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos", and the Introit of the Mass of the Assumption of Mary is Signum magnum, Apocalypse 12:1. She is the new Eve set against "that old serpent" (12:9) of Genesis 3:15.

The thousand years. Some early writers, Justin and Irenaeus among them, expected a literal earthly reign of a thousand years after the resurrection. St Augustine, who had once held this himself, taught instead that the thousand years are the whole time of the Church, from Christ's first coming to the last persecution, during which Satan is bound and the saints reign with Christ (City of God XX.7–9). Challoner follows him: the first resurrection is "that of the soul to the life of glory", the second that of the body at the General Judgment.

Famous chapters and verses of the Apocalypse

The seven seals and the four horsemen (Apocalypse 6). Only the Lamb can open the sealed book of chapter 5. Challoner reads the rider on the white horse, who "went forth conquering that he might conquer" (6:2), as Christ subduing the world by His gospel, and the red, black and pale horses as war, famine and pestilence: "his name was Death, and hell followed him" (6:8).

The four living creatures (Apocalypse 4). "The first living creature was like a lion: and the second living creature like a calf: and the third living creature, having the face, as it were, of a man: and the fourth living creature was like an eagle flying" (4:7). They recall the cherubim of Ezechiel, St Irenaeus already saw in them the four Gospels, and the reading that prevailed in the Church is St Jerome's: the man for St Matthew, the lion for St Mark, the calf for St Luke, the eagle for St John.

The two witnesses (Apocalypse 11). "I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth" (11:3). They are "the two olive trees" of Zacharias 4; Challoner notes that "it is commonly understood of Henoch and Elias", the two men taken from the earth without dying, whom tradition expects to return before the end.

The mark of the beast and 666 (Apocalypse 13). The second beast makes all "to have a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads", so "that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character", and "the number of him is six hundred sixty-six" (13:16–18). Many names have been proposed since the second century; St Irenaeus counselled that "it is therefore more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment of the prophecy, than to be making surmises" (Against Heresies V.30.3).

The word Antichrist is not in the Apocalypse but in the First Epistle of St John; the tradition sees in the beast the persecuting powers of every age, culminating in the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2, a subject treated in our article What Does God Say About the Antichrist?

Babylon the great (Apocalypse 17). "On her forehead a name was written: A mystery; Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications, and the abominations of the earth" (17:5). Challoner explains her as "the city of the devil in general" or "pagan Rome, which then and for three hundred years persecuted the church"; St Peter already calls Rome "Babylon" (1 Peter 5:13).

"Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock" (Apocalypse 3:20). Christ's words to lukewarm Laodicea, whom He threatens to "vomit... out of my mouth" (3:16): "If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."

The book of life and the new heaven (Apocalypse 20–22). The book of life appears from the letters (3:5) to the judgment (20:12) and the gates of the city, into which nothing defiled shall enter, "but they that are written in the book of life of the Lamb" (21:27). "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more" (21:4). "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (22:13).

The Apocalypse in the canon and in the liturgy

The Apocalypse stands last in every Catholic and Protestant Bible, the twenty-seventh book of the New Testament. It belongs to the canon received in the West from the beginning: the Muratorian Fragment, St Athanasius's Easter letter of 367, the Council of Rome under Pope St Damasus (382), the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), the Council of Florence and, finally and solemnly, Trent (1546). Martin Luther in 1522 wrote that he held it "neither apostolic nor prophetic" and set it apart at the end of his New Testament, but Protestant Bibles kept it. Its roots are in the Old Testament: the beasts and the "time and times, and half a time" of Daniel 7, the new heavens of Isaias 65.

In the 1962 Roman Breviary the Apocalypse is read at Matins in Eastertide, beginning on the Third Sunday after Easter ("Incipit liber Apocalypsis beati Joannis Apostoli") and continuing through that week, before the Catholic Epistles; see our Roman Breviary. In the Missal it gives the Epistle of All Saints (7:2–12), of St Michael on 29 September (1:1–5), of the Holy Innocents (14:1–5), of the Dedication of a Church (21:2–5) and of the daily Requiem (14:13), and the Introits of Christ the King, Dignus est Agnus (5:12; 1:6), and of the Assumption, Signum magnum (12:1), all marked on our liturgical calendar.

How to read the Book of Revelation

Read it first straight through, in one or two sittings, so the great movements stand out before the details; then chapter by chapter with Challoner's notes, which keep the reading sober. Keep Daniel, Ezechiel and Exodus at hand, since almost every image comes from them. Leave aside speculation about dates and names; ask instead what each letter of chapters 2 and 3 says to your own soul. On the Church's teaching about the end, see What Does God Say About the End Times? The Latin of the Vulgate opposite the English, explained in our guide to the Latin Vulgate Bible, often shows the force of a word.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the Book of Revelation?

The Church holds that the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse, was written by St John the Apostle, author of the fourth Gospel, in exile on Patmos (Apocalypse 1:9). St Justin Martyr, St Irenaeus, the Muratorian Fragment, Tertullian and St Jerome attribute it to the Apostle, and the Council of Trent lists it as "the Apocalypse of John the apostle".

Who is the John who wrote the Book of Revelation?

He is St John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple and brother of St James the Greater, who stood at the Cross with Our Lady and later governed the churches of Asia from Ephesus. Banished to Patmos under Domitian, he received the vision there; his feast is 27 December.

When was the Book of Revelation written?

It was written about AD 95, toward the end of the reign of Domitian, while St John was in exile on Patmos. St Irenaeus, who wrote about 180, says the vision was seen "towards the end of Domitian's reign", and St Jerome places the exile in that emperor's fourteenth year. A minority of scholars propose an earlier date under Nero, before AD 70.

What is the Book of Revelation about?

It is a prophetic vision of Christ's victory over Satan through the whole history of the Church. After letters to seven churches of Asia, it shows the worship of heaven, the Lamb opening the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the woman clothed with the sun and the dragon, the beast, the seven vials, the fall of Babylon, the thousand years, the Last Judgment and the New Jerusalem.

What are the seven seals in the Book of Revelation?

They seal the book of God's plan that only the Lamb is worthy to open (Apocalypse 5–8). The first four release the four horsemen, which Challoner explains as Christ conquering by the gospel (the white horse), war, famine and pestilence; the fifth shows the souls of the martyrs under the altar; the sixth a great earthquake and cosmic signs; the seventh opens on silence in heaven and the seven trumpets.

What is the mark of the beast and the number 666?

In Apocalypse 13 the second beast forces everyone to receive "a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads", without which no one may buy or sell, and the beast's number is "six hundred sixty-six". Challoner notes that "the numeral letters of his name shall make up this number". The Fathers, St Irenaeus first, counsel against guessing the name and bid us rather keep faithful and refuse the worship of the beast.

Who is Babylon the great in the Book of Revelation?

Babylon the great, the harlot of Apocalypse 17–18, is the city of the world in rebellion against God, drunk with the blood of the saints. Bishop Challoner reads her as the city of the devil in general or, if one city is meant, pagan Rome, the persecutor of the first three centuries. Her fall, lamented in chapter 18, foreshadows the end of every power that makes war on the Lamb.

How many chapters are in the Book of Revelation?

The Book of Revelation has 22 chapters in the Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims and every modern Bible. Chapters 1–3 hold the letters to the seven churches, 4–20 the visions, and 21–22 the New Jerusalem. You can read all 22 chapters here in Latin and English.

When was the Book of Revelation added to the Bible?

It was received as Scripture from the second century: St Justin and St Irenaeus quote it as the Apostle's, and the Muratorian Fragment lists it about 170. It appears in the canon of the Council of Rome under Pope St Damasus (382) and of the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), and the Council of Trent defined it in 1546.

Read the whole Apocalypse verse by verse, the Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. The Apocalypse of St John, Douay-Rheims (Challoner) with Bishop Challoner's notes, and the Latin Vulgate; St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 81; St Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.30; Tertullian, The Prescription against Heretics 36; Eusebius, Church History III.18 and VII.25; St Jerome, On Illustrious Men 9; St Augustine, The City of God XX.7–9; the Muratorian Fragment; Council of Trent, Session IV (1546) and Session XXV; St Pius X, Ad diem illum (1904); Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus (1950); Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Apocalypse"; the Roman Missal and Roman Breviary (1962).