The Apocalypse of John seemed nuts to plenty of early Christians. In the fourth century, Eusebius found it necessary to include the thing both among “the Divine Scriptures that are accepted” and among “those that are not.” As late as 1522, Martin Luther only grudgingly included it in his translation of the Bible, writing, “I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.” The number of the beast, by the way, probably just refers to Nero.

The Greek apokalypsis is the first word of the text of the Apocalypse of John, not a title bestowed by the author: “Apokalypsis Iēsou Xristou hēn edōken autō ho theos” (“A revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him”). It means “unveiling” or “uncovering.”

It has inspired Stephen King’s novella “The Langoliers,” and Tom Perrotta’s novel The Leftovers, which was made into one of the best TV series of the century, not to mention Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’s best-selling evangelical Left Behind novels. I tried to read the first installment for this essay, but was defeated by the opening sentence: “Rayford Steele’s mind was on a woman he had never touched.”

The IPCC has projected five future warming possibilities; I ignore the most optimistic, which assumes that global carbon dioxide emissions will be cut to net zero by 2050. Barring an extinction-level cataclysm, this will not happen.

As critics have noted, “striving with” can mean both “striving within or alongside” and “striving against.” I intend the former here, obviously.

See also Jonathan Crary’s recent polemic, Scorched Earth, which argues that we are all just prisoners here of our own devices.