Apocalypse and Revelation

What if God still speaks through fire and tempest?

The eerie red haze enveloping strip mall parking lots and suburban neighborhoods evoked a post-apocalyptic movie set. But these images from the waning days of 2021 were from the devastating Marshall Fire in Boulder County, Colorado. That same red cast filled the skies of the American West and Australia as raging forest fires consumed unimaginably large tracts of land in 2020. Other natural disasters also struck that year in the form of water and wind. The sheer number of storms during Atlantic hurricane season required the World Meteorological Association to adapt its naming conventions: After cycling through an entire alphabet’s worth of proper names, it began assigning Greek letters. This hit home for me in a poignant way in November of 2020, as apprehensive updates filtered in from Nicaraguan friends bracing for storms with Greek names. When Hurricane Eta struck, it was the country’s worst storm in decades. It proved to be the warmup act for Hurricane Iota two weeks later, which made landfall as the strongest storm in Nicaragua’s recorded history. 

An unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season, record-setting wildfires on two separate continents, and a global pandemic: Each of these events was extraordinary. For them to converge on a single year strains credulity. Those of us who dared to hope that 2021 would bring reprieve were in for a rude awakening as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The year concluded on an ominous note with the Omicron surge (what is it with these Greek letters?) and suburban hellscapes. 

Fire. Flood. Tempest. Pestilence. It all feels, well, apocalyptic. Amid widespread unrest and rumors of wars, politics appears to be following nature’s lead. These are apocalyptic times. 

The term “apocalypse” conjures images of doom and gloom. But this is only part of its meaning. Fittingly enough in the era of Delta and Omicron, the word “apocalypse” is a nearly exact transliteration of a Greek term: αποκάλυψη, which means, “revelation.” This is also the Greek name for the final book of the New Testament. The book of Revelation bristles with foreboding imagery of the end of the world: pestilence, war, and stars falling from heaven—hence our grim cultural associations with the term “apocalypse.” But the book of Revelation also gives the blueprints for the New Jerusalem and foretells a prolonged time of peace on earth. This points to an important characteristic of revelation more broadly: Even in its apocalyptic modes, it inspires hope as well as fear. Our own apocalyptic moment is no different. 

In its broadest biblical sense, the term “revelation” describes whenever God reaches out to and communicates with humanity. Revelation can take various forms. Culturally, we most readily associate revelation with sacred text. Yet God also communicates through signs and wonders (the Parting of the Red Sea, Jesus raising the dead) or through the elements (flood waters, lightning bolts, etc.). The message that revelation conveys can vary: It can bring joy or sorrow, comfort or judgment. But it always offers us the opportunity to change for the better. All revelation will transform us if we let it. 

Revelation is inherently unnerving. Even those who profess belief in God or regularly attend church tend to treat it as a relic of the distant past. Few take seriously the possibility that God still communicates, not just to the pious remnant, but to all of humanity in the same blunt and uncompromising terms recorded in sacred text. Yet this is precisely what our apocalyptic times challenge us to consider. 

In the Bible, the elements feature prominently at world-defining moments. In Genesis, God unleashed floodwaters to destroy and remake the world. In Exodus God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, unleashed hail and pestilence and darkness on Pharaoh, and guided the people of Israel out of Egypt by cloud and fire. When Jesus breathed his last at the crucifixion, the earth trembled and the heavens darkened. The elements are God’s megaphone that captures humanity’s attention when other, quieter forms of revelation go unheeded. 

Today, the megaphone is blaring. Virtually every corner of the globe has been touched by pestilence, flood, fire, or tempest. In the face of such portents, it is tempting to either collapse in despair or bury our heads in the sand. But on a spiritual level, they challenge us to acknowledge and change the collective behaviors that brought us to the brink. Like all revelation, they offer the possibility of redemption: If we meet the moment, our worlds can be remade and the heartbreak of our collective night will give way to joy. In short, we are being called to repent and to hope. 

Few of us, however, have taken this to heart. We would rather pine for the world that was or retreat to our ideological bunkers than risk transformation. Those who have met the moment—brainstorming strategies for getting COVID vaccines to developing countries, urging collective action on climate change, pushing for more effective international responses to natural disasters—often do so for secular reasons that have nothing to do with belief in God. Like all attempts to address large-scale problems, their plans are bound to have flaws. But we dismiss them and their efforts at our peril. They have read the signs of the times and are acting with a commensurate sense of urgency. In so doing, they put entire communities of believers who ignore, mock, or resist such efforts to shame. Jesus marveled at the irony of lepers, tax collectors, and sex workers embracing his message while respectable religious folk resisted it. We are watching a similar irony unfold today: Those who are often shunned by religious communities spring to action while those who wear their faith on their sleeve harden their hearts.

But it is not too late. Revelation, even at its most apocalyptic, always offers us a chance to repent—and thus to hope. The world has been turned upside down. But it can also be remade if we are willing to risk the personal and collective transformation we are being called to embrace.

Jeremy Sabella lectures at Dartmouth College and is the author of An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story.