The Book of Revelations is among the most enigmatic texts in the Christian Bible. Rich in symbolism and gruesome in its imagery, the Apocalypse has been intently studied by prognosticators for nearly 2,000 years. Christians in every generation have read the text and decided that a literal destruction of the world would occur in their own lifetime and that they were the people to whom the text was directly addressing. And every one of them has been proved wrong in their interpretations, as time marches onward and this world continues to exist.

If everyone has always misread the text, what is the Book of Revelations actually about? Who was its author and who was his actual audience? What if the book is actually a theological proposition and not at all a prediction of future history? If so, what does it mean?