Jesus zwischen Gog und Magog

The Book of Revelation's imagery of war encompasses both the risk of reception and hermeneutic potential. The visions process experienced or perceived violence, approaching war with an analytical sense of reality. While they are violent in their mythical imagination, they are non-violent in their ethical instruction. In this manner, they initiate a psychodynamic process that transforms the audience by re-enacting war from God's perspective, symbolising the universal and final victory of both the Saviour and the victims through a reversal of roles, and dramatising the destruction of war. They relinquish all violence to God and enable eschatological tranquillity that has consequences for the social self-definition of the faithful. In all chaotic movement, the visions aim, under the sign of the Cross, at the end of misery and thus at the utopia of peace. The fulfilment of this utopia lies with the ever-questionable and - even for the Seer John - unpredictable God.