Marginal Theology: Peace, Revelation, and “The End of the World”

Chadwick Walenga

By Chadwick Walenga

Let’s talk about the end of the world.
For a lot of us, when we hear "Book of Revelation," our minds jump to a very specific kind of story. Maybe you're thinking of the Left Behind books, which have sold over sixty-five million copies. One in five Americans has read at least one. 

In this story, Jesus returns as a conquering king, ushering in a "violent bloodbath" where his enemies are "splayed and filleted". 
It's a peace brought by the sword. 
It's rugged, it's masculine, and it's incredibly popular.
And it raises a fascinating question: how did the central hero of Christianity, whose victory came through a cross, get reimagined as a kind of divine John Wayne? 

How did the defining image of victory in Revelation—a Lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered—get traded for a warrior on a warhorse?
The answer, I think, is that we modern people connect with images and symbols much more than we do with doctrine and dogma. We find our truth in movies, novels, and music. 
And the story of a conquering hero is a powerful one.
But what if we’ve been reading the wrong story all along?

The Book of Revelation is notoriously difficult. Its imagery is strange, its structure is complex, and it’s wide open to misinterpretation. The thing is, it was never intended to be an "apocalyptic soap opera" or a coded forecast of events in our future. It was a first-century socio-religious critique of Roman power. 
It’s a political cartoon, full of code and metaphor that its original audience would have understood instantly.
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The problem comes when we read it with a "wooden literalism", trying to map its symbols onto our headlines. This turns a timeless message about the nature of power into a fanciful end-times schedule.
And this is where it gets really dangerous, especially when we talk about a word like peace.
Because if you misread the story, 
you can end up with a very different kind of peace. 
You can end up with the "peace" of the sword, the "peace" of the conquering hero. 
But Revelation was written to unmask that very idea as a great lie.

So today, we're going to peel back the layers of our modern interpretations and try to get back to the original, explosive message of the book. We're going to talk about how the Roman Empire sold a brilliant, attractive, and deceptive brand of peace. And how Revelation stands up and exposes it, offering instead a more challenging, more hopeful, and far more revolutionary vision of what true peace actually looks like.

So: peace. 
It seems simple, right? But when you start looking at it through the lens of a book like Revelation, it gets messy. 
Fast. 
Because we’re not just talking about peace; we’re talking about false peace. 
We’re talking about how the biggest, scariest figures in the story—the Beast, the Empire, the Antichrist—don’t show up with horns and a pitchfork. 
They show up with a smile, 
a handshake, 
and a promise of stability and prosperity.
And this is the key: Revelation isn't just saying these powers are violent. 
It's saying they’re deceptive. 
They wrap up tyranny in the beautiful language of peace.

To really get this, you have to understand the air people were breathing 2,000 years ago. This wasn’t some abstract philosophical debate; it was a direct, razor-sharp critique of Rome.
Rome had a brand name, and it was a brilliant one: 
The Pax Romana. 
The Roman Peace. 
It was their core story. 
"See these roads? 
See how you're not getting robbed on your way to the market? 
You can thank us for that". 

It was the promise of justice and order for the whole known world, and it was the default setting for reality.
And Revelation stands up and shouts, "That’s the big lie!".
The imperial propaganda machine was massive. 
Emperors like Augustus were called "Savior" and were said to have launched a "golden age". 
This wasn't a fringe idea; it was stamped on coins, carved into buildings, and announced in official decrees. 
Believing the "good news" of Caesar's peace wasn't just a good idea; it was your civic duty.
So if the emperor is the "savior" bringing "peace," how do you even begin to push back without getting crushed?

This is where the New Testament writers get clever. 
They take the Empire’s language, and they repurpose it. 
When the angels announce Jesus's birth in the Gospel of Luke, they use the exact same language of "peace on earth." It’s not just a nice Christmas carol; it’s a political statement. They are directly challenging Caesar's claim, saying, 
"No, this one—the baby in the manger—he is the real Savior, the real bringer of peace".
And this is the move Revelation makes:

It says your ultimate allegiance belongs to this true King, not the one demanding your worship and your taxes. The author is looking at the Pax Romana and saying, "We see your so-called peace, and we reject the entire violent foundation it's built on".
So, if the Pax Romana is the ultimate peace, why does Revelation’s vision get so brutal? Because it’s showing you what’s really under the hood.

The Lamb opens the seals, and after a rider of deceptive conquest comes a rider on a fiery red horse. His job?
"To take peace from the earth and make people slay each other". 
It’s a stunning confession. 
The system that sells itself as the ultimate peace-bringer actually maintains its power by stirring up conflict to keep everyone in line.
And how does it do it? 
Through spectacle and economics.

The "false prophet" in the story is like the ultimate propaganda minister and economic enforcer, all rolled into one. He performs "great miraculous signs"—flashy displays of progress and power—not for good, but "to deceive the inhabitants of the earth" and make them worship the Beast.
But it’s not just about winning hearts and minds. 
It’s about your wallet. 

The critique gets chillingly practical. The system sets it up so that "no one could buy or sell unless they had the mark," the symbol of total allegiance to this ruling power. 
You play along, or you get cut off. 
Ruined.

So if that’s the false peace, what’s the real thing?
The contrast couldn't be sharper. The Beast is the conquering emperor on a warhorse, the symbol of military might. But how does the true King, the Messiah, show up?
He’s humble, riding on a donkey.
It’s the polar opposite of imperial power. 
This is the one who "shall command peace to the nations". True peace, in this vision, doesn't come from force. It comes from humility, from reconciliation, from destroying the "dividing wall of hostility" between people.
It all leads to the final vision of the story: not the conquering of nations, but the "healing of the nations". Healing is the opposite of the Beast's system, which thrives on dividing and exploiting.

So, if the ancient critique was about unmasking a system that used spectacle, propaganda, and economic control to enforce a false peace, it leaves us with a pretty heavy question.
In our own hyper-connected, digital world, what modern systems might be using amazing technological "signs and wonders" to push their own brand of peace and prosperity, all while demanding our total economic and political allegiance? 
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How do we tell the difference between genuine, humble progress and sophisticated propaganda designed to serve a lie?

Chadwick Walenga is the writer behind "Marginal Theology", a weekly column that explores the vital intersection of faith and public life. Drawing on experience primarily within Evangelical spaces, this column seeks to move beyond rigid religious ideology and the partisan co-option of faith to reclaim the Gospel's essential call for hope, compassion, and justice. A resident of Newaygo County, Chadwick is committed to sharing truth gently, with patience and love, while advocating for clarity against ambiguous claims and evasions of truth.
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