Books

Conquest of the Bloody Emperor: 

A Tour through the Book of Revelation

By Erik Haglund

WILL THE REAL MEANING PLEASE STAND UP?

Growing up, I could count the times I had seen the inside of a church on one hand.

And here at age 23, I was being irresistibly drawn, knowing less than the kids in Sunday school.

Now, I have never been accused of being the smartest man to walk through the doors of a church. And yet from the earliest, I had questions.

When I was newly converted, I devoured scripture. I couldn’t get enough.

And there, after the grandeur of the gospels and the diplomatic pastoral care of the epistles, I came upon what seemed to be… horror science fiction?

I did a double take. Yep, this was in my Bible. And this final book called The Book of Revelation appeared to be the capstone of the Word of God.

Why then, was everyone avoiding it?

The few who weren’t were willing to take a stab at my questions. Soon enough they were telling me about a satanic world ruler who would seize universal political power.

After I managed to swallow that pill, I read warnings of a coming invasion of human headed locusts torturing humanity for five months.

All this I had to put on the shelf until further review.

Also- They hadn’t sold me on the timing.

They told me this future Hell on earth would be a period known as the Great Tribulation. Some said it would last for seven years.

Others told me it would only last 3 ½ years. Another said 75 days.

It began to look like, though well meaning, they may have just been throwing stuff against the wall.

And was something off about the charts they were showing me?

Why was there a big red arrow across the span of world history to land ahead of us?

What was the reason for this huge chasm of centuries? What could this mean?

Each of my questions seemed to raise ten more. One teacher contradicted the next until I had to admit I was stalled in an eschatological traffic jam.

I had a decision to make.

I could passively accept this living horror movie in my future.

Or I could begin to research the range of positions on this topic.

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Are the lost destined to face a man named Antichrist who rules the future with an iron fist?

Does the Bible promise microchip implants and beheadings?

In the tradition of E.B. Elliott and H. Grattan Guinness, Haglund presents the classical Historicist view for readers of the 21st century. 

I learned that there were two other major views on the Apocalypse that challenged the view I had largely been taught. They had questions too.

Good.

Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought, Here we go. We are going to ask all the questions. And we did.

And after twenty plus years reading the great historians and theologians down through the centuries, I feel as if we’ve just scratched the surface.

But scratched it we have, enough to see a glimmer of the beauty and splendor of this masterpiece of apocalyptic literature known as The Book of Revelation.

From the study of ancient heavyweights Elliott, Guinness, Cachemaille, Gill, etc… I did my best to distill the riches of their work into one commentary that tackles every one of these mysteries.

Can we know what these mean?

Consider. The very title of The Revelation is the Greek Apokalupsis.

Literally… the uncovering, the unveiling… the revealing. The Revelation.

It almost seems providential. One of the last things said to me before I undertook this journey was from a man who looked across the room at me in Bible study and said something like, “It’s Revelations. It’s too cryptic to be understood. Just forget about it.”

To all those who choose to ignore that advice with me, I offer this work.