Revelation Unveiled [Paperback]

However, when Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins released their wildly popular best-selling series "Left Behind," it re-energized the flagging school of prophecy and is now almost considered a cornerstone of orthodoxy within conservative evangelical churches.

To capitalize on these successes LaHaye re-released an older commentary he had produced on the Revelation with updated info and charts. The packaging is slick and easy to understand.

The main problem is... well... with the numerous theological and historical gaffes. He cannot seem to answer some of the most basic questions about why the letter was written to the 7 churches. Why would St. John write a letter to 7 churches under going severe persecution about something that was completely unrelated (19 chapters at least) to the events at hand? He prizes the "literal" method which interprets every passage in the literal since (unless the wording is hyperbolic in nature etc.) and claims that the church became corrupted by Celment of Alexandria and Augustine who prized the allegorical method of interpretation. This is almost too silly to even comment on because the two church fathers mentioned above didn't interpret scripture allegorically always and didn't interpret literally always, they just believed that scriptures can have multiple interpretations. Ironically, most of the New Testament writers uses the allegorical method to interpret the Old Testament (St. Paul seems to be a big fan of this method, see Romans 5 and 9, 1 Cor. 10, Galatians 4:21-31 etc.). Moreover, LaHaye himself is forced to allegorize most of Revelation, even allegorizing the 7 churches to whom the letter is written (something that indeed probably should be understood literally and requires a great leap to interpret allegorically).

The Catholic bashing also follows the typical fundamentalist formula of brutal "straw-man" arguments. He takes a cue from the Lorraine Boettner handbook by putting out a list of Catholic "additions" to the gospel without commentary that is used to shock Fundamentalists and uninformed Catholics at how far Catholics have strayed from the "true gospel." The problem is that reasonably informed Catholics could have given an anwser to everyone of these "additions" had Mr. LaHaye just asked and, in fact, many works of Catholic apologists have been produced for the precise purpose of answering that particular list. Second, the guilt-by-association argument is promoted heavily. LaHaye gets a lot of mileage out of the fact that Jesuits educated the devout skeptic Voltaire, as if the mere fact that he was educated by Jesuits makes him an instant skeptic. The "guilt-by-association" argument is used against virtually every contrary opinion (mainly amillennialists and postmillennialist) too.

Another big problem I had with it is that the book simply panders to the texts that LaHaye believes teach his belief in a "Pre-Trib" rapture without much discussion of other possible interpretations or biblical texts that flatly contradict him. For instance, the New Testament is littered with texts that explicitly say that their will be a resurrection of the righteous and the wicked (John 6:39, 40, 44 55; 11:24; 12:48; Acts 24:15, Luke 11:31-32; Romans 14:10-12 etc.), which LaHaye doesn't even attempt to harmonize with his belief that Christians will be raptured 7 years before the rest of the world. This method (sadly typical among most Fundamentalists) leads to a rather boring read for anyone wanting exciting biblical discussions.

The bottom line is that this isn't a very good commentary on Revelation by any standard. It borrows way too much from popularizers of this particular rapture theory, it doesn't really prove its case, and all the information you'll get about groups that disagree is mud-slinging and guilt-by-association.

"Revelation Unveiled" chronologically examines the Bible's most enigmatic book from the Epistles to the Seven Churches on through the Great Tribulation and on to the New Millennium. Along the way, LaHaye dissects specific passages, unraveling some of the difficulty for those of us who lack his thorough theological background. I found this book indispensable to my increased understanding of this last and important book in the Bible. This is a book definitely worth the reader's time and interest.

Britt Gillette
Author of "Conquest of Paradise: An End-Times Nano-Thriller"