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Introduction - The Hint
More than 30 years ago in the spring of 1990, when I was studying in Prague and life was at its lowest point, one evening as I was walking on the street deep in my thought about life and felt its desperation, a group of students handed me a Bible. That was the very first Bible I have ever had. I was very curious and had this strong desire and ambition to understand it. I decided to read the last book "Revelation" to see how it ended and to unlock the mystery of why so many people for so long have held this Book so Holy and adhering to its teachings ardently. Little did I know that the Revelation was the most mysterious book of Bible and puzzled many before me and will still puzzle many after me. I failed so miserably. I couldn't understand a word of it. The only thing I remembered about The Revelation was the last word "Amen". Since then, I have never tried to open The Revelation again. Though I occasionally listened to YouTube videos about the Revelation, none of them made sense to me. Something was missing. I couldn't put everything together as a consistent and coherent picture to satisfy my curious mind.
Since the time I first opened the Bible, much of my life has changed, especially about my belief in God. I grew up in China and lived half my life as atheist. Then also in Prague a classmate from Egypt taught me the concept of God that changed my atheist perspective. And later in USA I became a baptized Christian, studied New Testament of Bible with Christian friends (but not Revelation), eventually I became a believer in Baha’i faith.
In the past few years, for whatever the reason, I started to listen to the teachings of Rabbi of Judaism and found it very interesting and rewarding. I learned Israel’s history, their patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), their slavery in Egypt, their exodus from it, their glorious times during King David and Solomon, their first Temple destroyed, their first captivity to Babylon, their return to Jerusalem through Cyrus the Great and most importantly their prophets. In addition to Jewish history, I also learned via Baha’i literatures about the end time, about the timing of the Return in the framework of Islam. Recently, with the world seems to go mad (Covid, Ukraine-Russian war and Israel-Gaza war), conflicts occurred in many parts of the world, many end of time theory flowing around, I decided to open the book of Revelation and read it again. I didn’t expect anything different from the first time when I read it 30 years ago. One of the evenings when I was reading the section of the seventh trumpet, a few verses caught my attention: Rev. 12:1-2 and Rev12:5-6. It talked about “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.” and “She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations…”, and “The woman fled into the desert … where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.” (Emphasis added). I said to myself: wait minute, this sounds so much like talking of Islamic and Baha’i revelation and interaction between them. The moon is the main sign for Islam and in the Shia branch of Islam there was total Twelve Imams and Islam started in desert and spread mainly in desert regions. And Baha’i faith started in the Islamic country of Persia and was initiated in the year 1260 of Islamic calendar (1844 of Gregorian Calendar) and Baha’is believe its teachings are for all the nations of the world. Is it even possible the Christian Bible talked something or anything Islamic related? Could this be just coincident? Is there any coincidence in the Words of God ever or Is God trying to reveal to us something totally different from the current general Christian understanding of this last chapter of His Holy Book? “Revelation” after all means to reveal. If God is trying to reveal to us, why did He write this book in a way so confusing? Or is it because we have been interpreting this book from a too narrow viewpoint so caused the confusion ourselves? With this new epiphany and new questions, I did some dig into the whole book of Revelation and had so much new discoveries since. The following content in this article is the summary of what I have come to understand the book of Revelation. Of course, I have enough humility to know these are only my own perspective and with high possibility it could be totally wrong. And there are still many blanks I couldn’t fill. I decided to write them down and share with others in hope that this may inspire some seekers who have the same aspiration to understand God’s word and who have much more knowledge in this area than me to carry out further investigation from a new and wider angle and together we may construct a more satisfactory answer to the mystery of the Book of Revelation.
