The Bible is the last book of the Bible, with a total of 66 books, many different people from different times and places gave them to us. This book contains every detail that could be put into the Bible. It also explains how we got here and our purpose as humans. The Word has been preserved by God and can be found over and over again throughout history. It explains who God is and what he wants for humanity
Letting your eyes rest on the words of the Bible is a way of worshipping and communing with God. If you have never done so before, you will be amazed at how God’s Word works in your life. Pray, read, and let God speak to you through His precious Word.
Jesus’ final word to his followers, the Book of Revelation is often regarded as the most difficult book in the Bible to understand. In “The Last Book of the Bible,” Steven L. McKenzie provides a clear and concise explanation of this complex book. Easily approachable, this text presents Revelation’s story line and chronological order of John’s visions, making it easy to see how they relate to each other and fit into the overarching plan of God.
Last Book Of The Bible
Revelation to John, also called Book of Revelation or Apocalypse of John, abbreviation Revelation, last book of the New Testament. It is the only book of the New Testament classified as apocalyptic literature rather than didactic or historical, indicating thereby its extensive use of visions, symbols, and allegory, especially in connection with future events. Revelation to John appears to be a collection of separate units composed by unknown authors who lived during the last quarter of the 1st century, though it purports to have been written by an individual named John—who calls himself “the servant” of Jesus—at Patmos, in the Aegean Sea. The text includes no indication that John of Patmos and St. John the Apostle are the same person.
The book comprises two main parts, the first of which (chapters 2–3) contains moral admonitions (but no visions or symbolism) in individual letters addressed to the seven Christian churches of Asia Minor. In the second part (chapters 4–22:5), visions, allegories, and symbols (to a great extent unexplained) so pervade the text that exegetes necessarily differ in their interpretations. Many scholars, however, agree that Revelation is not simply an abstract spiritual allegory divorced from historical events, nor merely a prophecy concerning the final upheaval at the end of the world, couched in obscure language. Rather, it deals with a contemporary crisis of faith, probably brought on by Roman persecutions. Christians are consequently exhorted to remain steadfast in their faith and to hold firmly to the hope that God will ultimately be victorious over his (and their) enemies. Because such a view presents current problems in an eschatological context, the message of Revelation also becomes relevant to future generations of Christians who, Christ forewarned, would likewise suffer persecution. The victory of God over Satan and his Antichrist (in this case, the perseverance of Christians in the face of Roman persecution) typifies similar victories over evil in ages still to come and God’s final victory at the end of time.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, artwork by Peter von Cornelius, 1845.
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biblical literature: The Revelation to John
The Revelation (i.e., Apocalypse) to John is an answer in apocalyptic terms to the needs of the church in time of persecution, as it awaits…
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Although Christ is clearly the central figure of Revelation, an understanding of the text presupposes familiarity with Old Testament language and concepts, especially those taken from the books of Daniel and Ezekiel. The author uses the number seven, for example, in a symbolic sense to signify “totality” or “perfection.” References to “a thousand years” (chapter 20) have led some to expect that the final victory over evil will come after the completion of some millennium (see Millennialism).
Last Book Of The Bible Old Testament
The last book of the Old Testament is Malachi.
Malachi is a prophetic book, meaning that it contains messages from God to his people. The book’s main message is that God is faithful and will keep his promises to Israel. It also warns against false prophets and those who try to lead people away from God.
Malachi was probably written around 400 B.C., although there is some debate about this date among scholars.
The last book of the Bible is the book of Revelation. This is a very important book because it’s the only book in the Bible that talks about what will happen in the future. People have been trying to interpret this book for centuries, but no one knows for sure what it means.
The other books of the Bible are called “the Law and the Prophets” because they tell us about God’s law and his prophets. The Old Testament contains 39 books, but these are divided into three sections:
Law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
History: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings
Prophets: Isaiah (1-39), Jeremiah (1-25), Lamentations (chapters 1-4), Ezekiel (1-24), Daniel (chapters 1-12)
New Testament: Matthew (1-28), Mark (1-16), Luke (1-22), John (1-21)
The last book of the Old Testament is Malachi. It is a collection of prophesies given by the prophet Malachi to the Israelites before they were taken into captivity. He warns them against idolatry and encourages them to be faithful to God.
The last book of the Bible is Revelation, which means “unveiling” or “revelation”. This book contains letters from Jesus Christ to seven churches in Asia Minor, describing their condition as well as giving a preview of things to come. The book also contains an account of the end times, when Christ returns to earth and establishes His kingdom on earth for 1,000 years, followed by eternity with God in heaven.
The last book of the Bible is the book of Malachi. The word “Malachi” means “my messenger” or “my angel.” It is a book of prophecy and it was written by a single author who lived during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.
The book begins with a vision that the Lord gave to Malachi (1:1-2). In this vision, God promised to send Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord came (4:5). He also promised to send his messenger before the coming of his great and dreadful day (3:1-5).
Malachi declares that God hates divorce and he will send his judgment on those who commit adultery (2:16-17). He also warns people not to forget how much they owe their parents (6:5), but he promises also that if people honor their parents, then he will bless them with long life (6:3-5).
The last book of the Old Testament is Malachi. In Malachi 4:5, we read that Jesus will come again and restore all things. The Bible does not tell us when Jesus will come again, but it does tell us that He will come as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2-4).
In Daniel 7:13-14, we read of a time when people would not be able to buy or sell unless they had the mark of the beast on their forehead or right hand. In Revelation 13:16-18, we see this mark being given to those who receive the mark of the beast by worshipping him instead of God.
The last book in the New Testament is Revelation, which describes what happens at the end of time when Christ returns to earth. It also talks about heaven and hell and other places such as heaven and earth after Jesus has returned to earth with his angels to judge all people who have ever lived (Revelation 20:11-15).
The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, has some of the most dramatic and frightening language in the Bible.
In her new book Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation, Princeton University religious professor Elaine Pagels places the Book of Revelation in its historical context and explores where the book’s apocalyptic vision of the end of the world comes from.
“The Book of Revelation fascinates me because it’s very different than anything else you find in the New Testament,” Pagels tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “There’s no moral sermons or ethical ideas or edifying things. It’s all visions. That’s why it appeals so much to artists and musicians and poets throughout the century.”
Pagels says the Book of Revelation’s author, who calls himself John, was likely a refugee whose home in Jerusalem had been leveled by the Romans in response to a Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire.
“I don’t think we understand this book until we understand that it’s wartime literature,” she says. “It comes out of that war, and it comes out of people who have been destroyed by war.”
Other images in Revelation — which include bright red beasts with seven heads, and dragons, monsters and cosmic eruptions — were likely influenced by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried and destroyed the city of Pompeii, she says.
“Most people think John was writing at about the year 90 in the first century. That would be 60 years after the death of Jesus, and the eruption of Vesuvius happened in the year 79,” she says. “Much of what we find in the Book of Revelation couched in the fantastic imagery are descriptions of events that for John were very close — the war in Jerusalem, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Roman Emperors who were ruling at the time. … It seems as though [John] reacted to that, saying, ‘Jesus is coming and he is going to destroy all of this.’ It was John’s conviction that the destruction of Jerusalem was the beginning of the end of time that Jesus had predicted.”
Many of the images in the book, she says, are thinly disguised metaphors for images associated with the ruling powers in Rome. The great scarlet beast with seven heads and seven crowns, for example, may represent the emperors from the dynasty of Julius Caesar, says Pagels. And the name of the beast — which is not named but is represented by the numbers 666 — may refer to Emperor Nero.
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“This is a reference to the technique of calculating numbers and letters,” she says, “so that you can take anyone’s name and have a numerical value of each letter, and you add them up or multiply them in complicated ways, and you find out what the name is. … John would have wanted his readers to understand that that number, which is couched in a mysterious code, would be understood to his readers as the name of one of those emperors who destroyed his people.”
Shortly after John wrote the Book of Revelation, Christians fearing persecution from the Romans seized on his message, seeing it as a way of deliverance from evil. For the past 2000 years, Christians have been reading Revelation as if it applies to conflicts and struggles in their own time, says Pagels.
“If you read it as John intended, you think, ‘God is on our side; we of course are on the side of good,’ ” she says. “Now we could be Lutherans fighting against the Catholic Church, we could be Catholics fighting against Lutherans. … What I found so remarkable is the way that people on both sides of a conflict could read that same book against each other.”
In the Civil War, she says, Northerners were reading John’s prophecies as God’s judgments for America’s sins of slavery.
” ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ resounds with all of those imageries of the Book of Revelation,” she says. “People in the South, in the Confederacy, were also using the Book of Revelation, seeing the war as the battle of Armageddon at the end times, and using it against the North. And that’s the way it was read in World War II. That’s even the way it was read in the war in Iraq.”
What Is The Longest Book In The Bible
The longest book in the Bible, and indeed in all literature, is Psalms. The Hebrew text of Psalms is about twice as long as the next longest book, Isaiah.
The shortest book in the Bible is Obadiah. It is only one chapter (21 verses) long, but it still contains all 66 books of the Bible except Esther, which is omitted because it was not considered canonical by Jews or Christians until the 16th century CE.
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms, which has 150 chapters. The shortest book is Obadiah, with only one chapter. You can find a list of all the books in the Bible here:
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms, which has 150 chapters. The shortest book is Obadiah, with only one chapter. You can find a list of all the books in the Bible here: http://bibleresources.biblegateway.com/books-in-the-bible/
How Long Is Each Book Of The Bible?
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms, with 150 Psalms.
The longest book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John, with 21 chapters.
The shortest book in the Bible is Obadiah, which has only 1 chapter.
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms. The shortest book is 3 John.
The longest book of the Old Testament is Psalms, with a total of 1,189 chapters. It comes in at just over 150,000 words.
The shortest book of the Old Testament is Obadiah, with only one chapter and 21 verses.
The longest book of the New Testament is Matthew’s Gospel, with 1,245 chapters and 773 verses.
The shortest book of the New Testament is 2 John, with only 3 chapters and 8 verses.
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms, which is also one of the books that are most often read during worship. It’s a book of songs and poems written by different people over a long period of time. Some of them were written by David, king of Israel, who was also the author of many psalms (see 1 Chronicles 29:30). Other psalms were written by Asaph, a musician who worked with David (see 1 Chronicles 16:7). Psalms also contains prayers, praises and complaints from people who faced difficult situations.
Psalms contains 150 chapters, but they’re not all equal in length. The shortest chapter is only one verse long (Psalm 117), while the longest chapter has 176 verses (Psalm 145).
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Elaine Pagels has been called one of the world’s most important writers and thinkers on religion and history. She won the National Book Award for her book The Gnostic Gospels. She is also the author of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
Jerry Bauer/Courtesy of the author
Interview Highlights
On other books of revelation, now known as the Gnostic Gospels
“One of the surprises that I found when I started to work on the Book of Revelation is that there is not only one. That is, most people think there is one Book of Revelation because there’s only one in the canon, but I discovered that this was one of an outpouring that Jews were writing; Greeks who followed the Greek gods were writing many books of revelation. The Book of Ezra, for example, is another revelation written by a Jewish prophet — not a follower of Jesus — but very similar to John’s in many ways and very grieved about the Roman Empire and concerned about the question of God’s justice.”
On why the Book of Revelation has been so controversial
“One reason why the book is so contested is that people who saw its prophecies against the Roman Empire suggesting that the empire was going to be destroyed by God realized that those prophecies had failed. What happened instead is that the Roman emperors become actually Christians, and the Roman Empire became a Christian empire — that is, completely contrary to what the prophecy said. So some people would have said, ‘The prophecy failed, so let’s leave that in the dust the way we leave other prophecies that fail.’ Other people said, ‘Wait a minute, that is not what it really means.’ If you interpret these images differently, and they open themselves to a very wide range of reading, then you could say, ‘Well, the prophecies are being fulfilled in a totally different way.’ “
On the Book of Revelation’s authorship
“John apparently was not only a Jewish prophet, but he was a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, who of course had been crucified about 60 years earlier. But they say that Jesus had prophesied that the end of the world was coming, and it seemed as though Jesus’ prophecy had simply failed. What John saw 60 years after the death of Jesus was that the Roman Empire was going stronger than ever, and I think he responded to the enormous power of Rome, which you can see in the buildings and the monuments and the architecture and the armies, which he would have seen stationed throughout those provinces. …
“It’s the response of one of the followers of Jesus, who was last seen on Earth crucified and in a horrible way tortured by the Romans. … And his follower John sees that Jesus is enthroned in heaven and returning as the ruler of the world. It’s almost like a perfect retaliation for what he sees as the execution of Jesus.”
On the images in the Book of Revelation
“One of them is an image of an enormous, bright-red beast with seven heads with crowns on its head — a violent, threatening, raging monster. Another is a giant whore called the Whore of Babylon who sits on the back of one of these dragons with seven heads, and she’s drinking from a golden cup the blood of innocent people who have been killed. Then there’s another image of Jesus coming forth from the sky and starting the battle of Armageddon, which ends in heaps and heaps of corpses at the end of the book.”
On what the Book of Revelation says about the new world
“It’s striking that the author sees nothing of the present world surviving except the people who are dead come back to life in this new world. But the new world as he sees it will be on Earth, will be a new Jerusalem full of the glory of God.”
On the followers of Jesus
“The earliest followers of Jesus were all Jewish, and they don’t seem to have imagined that they would ever diverge from their adherence to their tradition. It was just that they had found the Messiah of Israel. It’s the Apostle Paul who decided that Jesus had offered a message for non-Jews and opened it up for the salvation of the entire world. As John sees it, yes, gentiles will eventually be included in the blessings brought by Jesus, just as the Hebrew Bible says all the gentile nations will be blessed through Abraham, but for John the focus is on Israel and the Jewish people.”
On various interpretations of the Book of Revelation
“Many Christians assume John is a Christian, he’s a follower of Jesus, it’s a Christian book, and when the catastrophic events of the end times happen, everyone will have to be converted to Christianity. What I discovered, and it was surprising working on this, was in a sense you could say Christianity hadn’t been invented yet. That is, the idea of a new movement that was quite separate from Judaism and its obvious successor the way Christians see it today.”