Revelation: - Knights of Columbus, Supreme Council

Why The Apocalypse?
But if this is so – if the Apo calypse has been so subject to
misinterpretation, if it really is not a detailed glimpse of world history – why
was it written in such a fashion? Why all the involved images and symbols?
Why was it necessary to put into such a form what, after all, is basically con -
tained in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament?
To answer this, we need know two things. First, the state of the Church
when the Apocalypse was written. Second, what kind of per son was its author.
The first answer is given from the Pauline Epistles and the Gospels as
well as from the Apocalypse. Persecutions, of the sort Paul had to console his
readers about, had begun to afflict the Church. Even worse persecutions, in
fact, had descended than any of those Paul had to face. There was no longer
question of Jewish discrimination against Christians, of petty restric tions on a
local level, of the indi vidual riot at Ephesus or the beat ing at Philippi and the
single mob in Jerusalem. Now the whole might of a vast and well organized
Empire was beginning to turn upon Chris tianity. Throughout the Acts of the
Apostles, Luke tells us by implica tion that the Romans were more likely to be
favorably disposed to Christians than not, as contrasted with their attitude to
the Jews. Certainly there had been no open hostility of Romans as Romans
directed against the Christians as Christians. If Felix had kept Paul in prison
unjustly, it was because he was a corrupt man, not because he was a Roman,
and because Paul was a potential source of income, not because he was a
Christian. Felix could not have cared less about Christianity as a religion. And
so it had been generally. But now all this had changed.
Roman Persecution
Paul had been in prison in Rome between the years A.D 61-63. He had
been released for lack of any evidence against him, and he had been imprisoned
in the first place because of charges made by his own people. But shortly after
Paul’s re lease the madman who ruled Rome under the name of Nero first fired
the city of Rome, as the Roman historians acknowledge, and then used the
Christian community as the scapegoat on which to lay the blame. Persecution
began. Paul himself was to be hunted down and executed in the year 67. The
ter rible spectacles were enacted that have been faithfully chronicled by
contemporary authors – the degen erate emperor feasting in a garden illumined
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