Apocalypse

[Gr. from apokalyp to, I reveal.] ( Eccl. Hist.) The name of the last book of the New Testament, containing an account of the visions of St. John the Evangelist. It is generally Fig. 156. believed, that the Apocalypse was written by John in his old age, at the end APLUSTRE. of the 1st century, in the isle of Patmos, whither he had been banished by the Roman emperor Domitian. Though the book was commonly regarded as genuine in the first centuries of Christianity, critics have not been wanting who have doubted the evidence of its being the work of St. John. The A., on account of its metaphorical language, has been explained differently by almost every writer who has ventured to interpret it; and for the same reason, it is one of those parts of the Bible which has furnished all sorts of sects and fanatics with quotations to support their creeds or pretensions. - The A. contains 22 chapters, which may be divided into two principal parts. The first, after the title of the book (ch. i. 1-3), comprises "the things which are," that is, the then present state of the Christian Church, including the epistolary instructions and admonitions to the angels or bishops of the 7 churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, of Asia Minor. The second part comprises a prediction of "the things which shall be hereafter," referring either to the future state of the Church through succeeding ages, from the time when the apostle beheld the apocalyptic visions, to the grand consummation of all things, or the state of the souls of men after the great resurrection of the dead.