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In the Jewish tradition, apocalyptic thought presupposes a universal history in which the Divine Author of that history will manifest His secrets in a dramatic End-Time that, with finality, will establish the God of Israel as the one true God. The end of days (Acharit Hayamin) is bound up with the coming of the Messiah, but before he arrives, governments will become increasingly corrupt, religious schools will become heretical, the wisdom of the scribes and teachers will become blasphemous, young people will shame their elders, and members of families will turn upon one another. Then, just prior to the arrival of the Messiah, the righteous of Israel shall defeat the armies of evil and monsters that have gathered under the banner of Gog and Magog, and the exiles shall return to the Holy Land.

The advent of the Messiah promises a great Day of Judgment in which the dead shall rise from their graves to begin a new life. During the period known as the World to Come (Olam Haba), the righteous will join the Messiah in partaking of a great banquet in which all foods, even those previously judged impure, shall be declared kosher. All the many nations of the world will communicate in one language, the Angel of Death will be slain by God, trees and crops will produce fresh harvests each month, the warmth of the sun shall heal the sick, and the righteous will be nourished forever by the radiance of God.

To most orthodox Christians, the profound meaning of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ will one day return in the Last Days and his Second Coming will prompt the resurrection of the dead and the Final Judgment. The heart of the gospels is eschatological, end-oriented. The essential theme of Jesus and the apostles is that the last stage of history, the End-Time, was being entered into with his appearance.

But John the Revelator does present monsters in Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, and he provides a guidebook for the Christian on what to expect during the time of Tribulation. Specifically, the book was written for the members of the churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea in order to prepare them for what John the Revelator believed to be a fast-approaching time of persecution and the return of Jesus Christ.

The first terrible beings arrive when the Seven Seals are opened (Revelation 6:12) by the Lamb (Christ). This action discloses a conquering king astride a white horse, the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some believe this to be Jesus, but since no good comes of his arrival, more contemporary scholars maintain that this is the Antichrist in disguise.

The Four Horsement of the Apocalypse is a fifteenth-century engraving by German artist Albrecht Dürer. The horsemen symbolize the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death that will come with the Apocalypse.

The Second Seal (6:34) reveals the red horse, representing civil war; the third, the black horse, symbolizing famine (6:56); the fourth, the pale horse, representing the suffering that follows war and famine. The Fifth Seal to be opened by the Lamb yields a vision of the persecution of the Church throughout history and during the Last Days.

When the Sixth Seal is revealed, it displays the coming signs of a great Day of Wrath when there will be earthly upheavals, a darkened sun, stars falling from the heavens, mountains and islands removed, and more strife and revolution throughout the nations.

The Seventh and final Seal releases seven trumpets that sound the triumphant blast signaling the approach of the final and everlasting victory of Christ over the Kingdoms of the World.

Rising out of the abyss to block Christ’s triumph at Armageddon is a monstrous army of demons, some resembling locusts and scorpions, others a repulsive mixture of human, horse, and lion. This motley crew of hideous demons is soon joined by 200,000 serpentine-leonine horsemen capable of belching fire, smoke, and brimstone. Led by Satan, the once-trusted angel who led the rebellion against God in Heaven, the Prince of the World sets his legions upon the faithful to make their lives as miserable as possible in the End-Time.

To make matters even more complex for those who serve God, the greatest monster of all time, the Antichrist, appears on the scene pretending to be the Lamb, the Messiah. John the Revelator is told that this man, this Beast in lamb’s clothing, can be recognized by a name, the letters of which, when regarded as numbers, total 666.

Although the term Antichrist is frequently used by those Christians who adhere to the New Testament book of Revelation as a literal guide to the time of the End of Days, which they feel is upon us, the word is nowhere to be found within its text. It is, however, very likely from the apostle John that we first learn of the Antichrist. In 1 John 2:18, he declares that the enemy of Christ has manifested and that many false teachers have infiltrated the Christian ranks, and in 2 John, verse 7 he declares that there are many deceivers already at work among the faithful.

At last Christ and his angelic armies of light destroy the forces of darkness at Armageddon in the final battle of good versus evil. Babylon, the False Prophet, and the Beast (the Antichrist) are dispatched to their doom, and Satan, the Dragon, is bound in a pit for a thousand years. With Satan imprisoned and chained, the millennium, the Thousand Years of peace and harmony, begins.

Although Christ’s Second Coming is said to be mentioned over 300 times in the New Testament, the only references to the millennium are found in Revelation 20:27. Christian scholars disagree whether or not there will be an initial resurrection of the dead just at the advent of the millennium and a second one a thousand years later, immediately prior to the Final Day of Judgment.

For some rather incomprehensible reason, Satan is released from the pit at the conclusion of the millennium; and true to his nature, he makes a furious attempt to regain his earthly kingdom. His former allies, The Beast (the Antichrist), the False Prophet, and the hordes of Babylon, were destroyed at Armageddon, but there were some demons who escaped annihilation at the great battle who stand ready to serve their master. In addition to these evil creatures, Satan summons Gog and his armies of the Magog nations to join them in attacking the saints and the righteous followers of God. Although the vast multitude of vile and wicked servants of evil and grotesque monsters quickly surrounds the godly men and women, God’s patience with the rebellious angel has come to an end. Fire blasts down from Heaven, engulfing and destroying the satanic legions and the armies of Gog and Magog. Satan himself is sent to spend the rest of eternity in a lake of fire.