John, the apostle of love, had no bitterness in him. This was a divine, hopeful yet fearful revelation given to him then interpreted by Christian's for hundreds of years. The great and terrible day of the Lord, or the 2nd coming of Christ, is prophesied throughout the whole Word.

"The book purports to be addressed to seven churches on the mainland (now Turkey) warning them against laxity and compromise with Roman authority, Greek and gnostic philosophy, and with Christian schismatics. His message is bleakly fundamentalist; about being ready for the imminent end of the world. It is a brutal narrative for a brutalised community. Luther could find little of the Christ in it. But Gerd Luedemann tells us more about the historical background. "This had unpleasant aspects, and destroys once and for all the idea that circumstances in earliest Christianity were pure and ideal. Polemic between the two sides"[38] reached such a pitch that sometimes it is no longer even clear what the substantive or theological issues were ... Christians threatened to tear one another limb from limb, caught up in a mishmash of mutual misunderstanding, violence but also self-assertion.[39] It is this last phrase – self-assertion – that perfectly characterises John the Divine. The view he wished to impose upon others is that the old earth and the old heaven will soon pass away and a New Jerusalem will "descend" to enable the elect to dwell in God's real presence. God is working his purpose out precisely because, to ordinary human understanding, the very opposite seems to be happening. John lays bare, without a trace of sentiment, that people will only be prepared to leave vengeance to the Lord if they are certain that, when the Lord finally does come, vengeance is what he'll bring. Revelation is a story of how apparent delay and present weakness will only make the final judgment more emphatic. Revelation is, in Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza's view, a "vision of a just world". Some might argue that John seeks vindication rather than justice and at a cost of the entire universe going up in flames along the way."

"Impassioned and imbittered exile on an island"......hmmmm, now, who does that remind me of????? 😑 Not everyone mentioned in the Bible....was an anointed Saint. Not every Pope was a good guy. Not everything ever muttered in the context of religion.....is a REVELATION!!!!!!! But, nice armageddon pic. 😐