I thought this book was both profound and interesting. I have been trying for years to understand what evangelists are thinking, why they voted for Trump, are easily tricked into being anti-vaccination and so on.If you are interested in critical thinking, it was written by a biblical scholar who is still very devout, and explains brilliantly what Revelations and other verses in the bible actually mean within the historic context. The apocalypse was clearly meant to be happening back when the chapters were written, not in the future, not today. This book explains how that false idea became popular in the 1800s, and especially with Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth. And how in this and other books, instead of reading the Bible as a book, verses are randomly taken out of context and strung together to come up with really wacky predictions. Also, many evangelicals treat the bible like the I Ching, and randomly open it up and read a verse, hoping it will shed light on some problem they’re dealing with.The late great planet earth was a book important to none other than President Ronald Reagan, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and other members of Reagan’s cabinet, who were convinced that the bombs were eventually going to fly. For people in power to think that mutual self-destruction has been foreordained in holy writ is not, obviously, a comforting thought.”This belief in this book and Revelations in the Bible is scare because many evangelists believe that if the world is going to end (soon) as the Bible proclaims, no need to take care of climate change or the environment. The existential horror of nuclear bombs is not a problem, since maybe that is how God intends to destroy the planet. And we won’t go extinct, the Lord will build a better world covered in diamonds and gold and all many but not all followers of God in all of history who worshipped him correctly will be brought back to life.The violence in other chapters of the bible, full of genocide, slaughter, enslavement, rape of women who didn’t believe in God are also brought in to give perspective to the even greater horrors of Revelations. And hey, most people are going to eternally burn in the Lake of Fire for reasons explained in this book.Revelations is one torture after another. Men, women, and children are crushed like grapes with their blood flowing horse high for hundreds of miles. And my favorite: When the 5th trumpet blows, locusts emerge from a bottomless pit that look like horses equipped for battle, but with tails like scorpions that have stingers which give people with so much pain for five months that they beg to die, but God forbids the locusts from killing them (Revelation 9:1–6).Revelations is the ultimate prosperity gospel: And the opposite of what Jesus preachedThe apocalyptic visions of Revelations begin and end with glorification of wealth and heavenly opulence. God is described only in terms of precious jewels on a throne surrounded by a rainbow like an emerald. Imagine what the whole palace must look like. The new Jerusalem is made completely of gold with a wall of jasper, gates of pearl, and a foundation of jewels. The ground is covered by 2 million square miles of solid gold.Even The Beast has 10 diadems and controls the world’s economy, hoarding all the money, while Jesus’s followers have none at all. The Whore of Babylon is adorned with gold, jewels, and pearls. John castigates this grotesque affluence, but this is exactly what the new Jerusalem will be like – much much better in fact! The followers of God will get what Rome has now, and even more. All the wealth on earth will be transferred to the Saved. And not just wealth, but POWER. All the nations of the earth will be subservient to them (wait –weren’t they all destroyed?) For John, the problem is that the wrong people (the Romans) have all the power. But not after they are tortured in myriad ways, and burned in the lake of fireDespite the claims of televangelists and preachers of the “Prosperity Gospel,” this is surely not what Jesus had in mind. He insisted his followers not care what they eat, drink, or wear. They were to live spiritual lives removed from material concerns. Material things need to be abandoned.Jesus preached the opposite. The way to greatness was humility, the way to power through service, and mastery though sacrifice. Service is the goal. He tells Peter that God’s ways are not human ways. God values service, not domination. He never says that those willing to serve now will become ruthless tyrants in the afterlife. His message is far more radical than that: serving itself is the mark of greatness.