ABSTRACT
The enigmatic nature of the Book of Revelation has enabled a variety of improbable interpretations. Most people, and certainly all serious academic interpreters of the book, would agree that St. John the Divine was not talking about spaceships, the Hale-Bopp comet, the Heaven’s Gate leaders Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, and how to gain transition from the realm of human existence to “the next level above human.” Why, then, should an iconoclastic interpretation of the book by two leaders, both devoid of any formal qualifications that enabled them to pronounce authoritatively on its meaning, not only gain credence by their followers, but persuade them to commit collective suicide, in the certainty that this interpretation was true.
