The Gospel of Death

In 1997, I was sitting in my dorm room at a Bible college in Australia, preparing to begin master’s-level papers on the book of Revelation. I was young, enthusiastic and in my mid-twenties. It was a daunting task.

As I began to unpack the text, something quickly became apparent: much of what I had been told about this mysterious book was, quite frankly, probably not true.

I finished the paper, received my mark and was left with a question that mattered more than the assessment: how was I going to apply what I had learned to my life?

For a long time, I hardly mentioned it to anyone. When the subject came up, it was difficult to find people willing to consider that Revelation might be something other than a book about the end times and the end of the world. The defence of that view could be fierce, sometimes almost frantic. Mostly, I let those conversations slide.

Even people with no particular connection to the Christian faith could be adamant about Revelation’s purpose. Of course it was about the end of the world. What else could it be? Sometimes I thought I could see a glimmer of fear behind their eyes.

As the years passed and I met people from many different backgrounds, I kept returning to the same question: how did we get this whole thing so twisted?

I had come to see Revelation as a beautiful, poetic and often bewildering piece of ancient literature. It contains difficult images, and I do not pretend they all fit comfortably together. Yet the image that drew me back was the Lamb who had been slain: a gentle creature, bearing the marks of violence, standing at the centre of a vision of victory.

To my reading, that image challenges our assumptions about power. The Lamb’s apparent powerlessness stands in stark contrast to the raging beasts. Love, compassion and sacrifice offer a different way to lead the world. They also ask something of us now, in the way we treat the people around us.

I began to ask another question: how could I communicate the possibility that we had lost the plot?

Here, at last, is my attempt.

This book traces how the teachings of Darby and the notes of Scofield helped shape the way many of us learned to read Revelation. My concern is personal as well as historical. I want to understand how an inherited explanation can become so familiar that we mistake it for the text itself—and what happens to our lives when it does.

There is some trepidation as I move towards publication. I am questioning ideas that some people hold close to the centre of their faith. I expect I may lose a few acquaintances. Then again, I may gain some new friends.

The warning from Revelation on the preceding page is a challenge to my own handling of the book too. It concerns the words of John’s prophecy; it does not make my interpretation immune from scrutiny or settle an argument against someone else’s notes. I must be willing to have my conclusions tested by the same text I ask others to read carefully.

If you are reading this, perhaps you have also suspected that something did not quite add up with the whole end-of-the-world story. Or perhaps you disagree with me and are willing to hear me out. Either way, I hope this little book helps turn our attention towards the centre of our faith: the Lamb who was slain, and the love we are called to practise.

Stuart Corlett