What is the meaning of the apocalypse in the Bible?

The concept of apocalypse has a long and rich literary and religious tradition whose meaning goes beyond what we see in dramatic movie posters.

The word apocalypse derives from the Greek word apokálypsis, which translates more literally into "a discovery". In the context of religious texts such as the Bible, the word is often used in connection with a sacred disclosure of information or knowledge, usually through a sort of prophetic dream or vision. The knowledge of these visions is generally related to the end times or intuitions about the truth of the divine.

Numerous elements are often associated with the biblical apocalypse, including, by way of example, symbolism based on specific or significant images, numbers and time periods. In the Christian Bible, there are two great apocalyptic books; in the Hebrew Bible, there is only one.

Keywords
Revelation: discovering a truth.
Rapture: the idea that all true believers alive at the end of time will be taken to heaven to be with God. The term is often misused as a synonym for apocalypse. Its existence is the subject of many debates between Christian denominations.
Son of man: a term that appears in apocalyptic writings but does not have a definition of consensus. Some scholars believe that it affirms the human side of the dual nature of Christ; others believe it is an idiomatic way of referring to the self.
Daniel's book and the four visions
Daniel is the apocalypse that Jewish and Christian traditions share. It is found in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible among the main prophets (Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah) and in the Kevitum in the Hebrew Bible. The apocalypse section is the second half of the texts, which consists of four visions.

The first dream is of four beasts, one of which destroys the whole world before being destroyed by a divine judge, who then gives eternal royalty to a "son of man" (same a particular phrase that frequently appears in apocalyptic writings Judeo-Christians). Daniel is then told that the beasts represent the "nations" of the earth, that one day they will make war against the saints but will receive a divine judgment. This vision includes several distinctive signs of the biblical apocalypse, including numerical symbolism (four beasts represent four kingdoms), predictions of end times and ritual periods not defined by normal standards (it is specified that the final king will make war for "two times and half ").

Daniel's second vision is of a two-horned ram that runs rampant until it is destroyed by a goat. The goat then grows a small horn that gets bigger and bigger until it desecrates the sacred temple. Again, we see the animals used to represent human nations: the rams' horns are said to represent the Persians and the Medes, and while the goat is said to be Greece, its destructive horn is itself a representative of an evil king to come. The numerical prophecies are also present through the specification of the number of days in which the temple is impure.

The angel Gabriel, who explained the second vision, returns for Daniel's questions about the prophet Jeremiah's promise that Jerusalem and his temple would be destroyed for 70 years. The angel tells Daniel that the prophecy actually refers to a number of years equivalent to the number of days in a week multiplied by 70 (for a total of 490 years), and that the Temple would have been restored but then destroyed again by an evil ruler. The number seven plays an important role in this third apocalyptic vision, both as a number of days in a week and in the crucial "seventy", which is quite common: seven (or variations such as "seventy times seven") is a symbolic number that often represents the concept of much larger numbers or the ritual passage of time.

Daniel's fourth and final vision is probably the closest to the revealing end-of-apocalypse concept found in popular imagination. In it, an angel or another divine being shows Daniel a future time when man's nations are at war, expanding on the third vision in which an evil ruler crosses and destroys the Temple.

Revelation in the book of Revelation
The revelation, which appears as the last book of the Christian Bible, is one of the most famous pieces of apocalyptic writing. Framed as visions of the apostle John, it is full of symbolism in images and numbers to create an end of days prophecy.

Revelation is the source of our popular definition of "apocalypse". In the visions, John is shown intense spiritual battles centered on the conflict between earthly and divine influences and the eventual final judgment of man by God. The vivid and sometimes confused images and times described in the book are full of symbolism that it is often linked to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament.

This apocalypse describes, in almost ritualistic terms, John's vision of how Christ will return when it is time for God to judge all earthly beings and reward the faithful with eternal and joyful life. It is this element - the end of earthly life and the beginning of an unknowable existence close to the divine - that gives popular culture the association of "apocalypse" with "end of the world".