THE BOOK OF REVELATION

As an acadenic experience, on Saturday I attended Jeff Cavin's six-hour seminar outlining THE BOOK OF REVELATION from the New Testament. I taught textbook excerpts from Old and New Testament in my World Literature classes for many years, but not the Book of Revelation.

My observation is that practicing Catholics tend to blend church tradition and Bible readings and are generally not known as well as their Protestant counterparts for daily Bible readings. Fascinating as "the end times" literature has been in recent years [LEFT BEHIND series], this first century testimony supposedly authored by John of Patmos, contains rich symbolism, allegory, and metaphor detailing a cosmic battle between good and evil. A literal reading would be not be advisable.  I was fascinated to learn of the cyclical pattern of writing and of the many references to Old Testament readings in this text. A Catholic reader might observe in a very simplistic way that the major message in the Book of Revelation is the Covenant motif and God's love for man.

My Life on the Rock: A Rebel Returns to the Catholic Faith
http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Rock-Returns-Catholic/dp/0965922839/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252969788&sr=1-3

Jeff Cavin's book about his conversion to Catholicism