Two Eschatological Battles and Two Faces of the Global Evil in the Apocalypse of John. Part 1
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31802/GB.2025.58.3.004Keywords:
literary structure of the Apocalypse of John, recapitulation, septenaries of trumpets and bowls, eschatological battle, chiliasm, amillennialism, beast, antichrist, second coming of Christ, ParousiaAbstract
This article attempts to interpret the double depiction of the eschatological battle based on a non-chiliastic understanding of the millennium mentioned in Revelation 20. The proposed hypothesis suggests that the two eschatological descriptions correspond to the two sevenfold cycles of the Apocalypse - the trumpet cycle and the bowl cycle - as their concluding stages. The first depiction (Revelation 19, 17-21) is interpreted as the culmination of the bowl cycle (Revelation 15-16), which concludes the narrative of the beast and its power, representing an element of this story. The second depiction (Revelation 20, 7-10) is linked to the trumpet cycle (Revelation 8-11), which signifies the judgments poured out upon primordial idolatry - less threatening in an eschatological sense than the organized and pretentious world system of the beast. This approach allows viewing the two descriptions of the battle as reflecting two aspects of the ultimate eradication of evil at the Second Coming of Christ.
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