What Is It Really Saying if It's Not Giving People Hope?

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I try to see the book of Revelation as something like it must be offering hope of some kind, but I didn't really read it in detail. The problem is that this particular message of hope comes to such a tiny little sliver of the human race. It's not even everybody who's ever lived is going to be raised from the dead. And if they're not true followers of God, they're going to be cast basically screaming into a lake of burning sulfur alive. Even being a Christian isn't enough. You've got to be a Christian just like John is a Christian.

You’ll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But whether you understand the book as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture, what you think Revelation reveals…is almost certainly wrong. In Armageddon, acclaimed New Testament authority Bart D. Ehrman delves into the most misunderstood — and possibly the most dangerous — book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse.

Shermer and Ehrman discuss: Ehrman’s religious journey • Who wrote the Bible and why? • how to read the Bible and the book of Revelation • Who wrote Revelation and why? • why Jesus spoke in parables • why worry about climate change if the world is going to end soon? • David Koresh and Waco • Reagan and end times politics • how Jesus became a capitalist and militarist • faith healers, televangelists, and other Christian con artists • Christian ethics and what Jesus really said about the poor and needy.

Bart D. Ehrman is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity and a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of six New York Times bestsellers, he has written or edited more than thirty books, including Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, The Triumph of Christianity, Did Jesus Exist?, God’s Problem, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, and Heaven and Hell. Ehrman has also created nine popular audio and video courses for The Great Courses. His books have been translated into 27 languages, with over two million copies and courses sold. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End.