Trump is an apocalypse

The original meaning of apocalypse is a moment of exposure. Seeing it can feel like the end of the world.

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, DickDuerrstein/iStock, Screenshot/Twitter)

The last book of the Bible is an apocalypse. We call it "Revelation" in English, but in the Greek it's apokalypsis, as in, the "apokalypsis of Jesus Christ ... to his servant John."

Apokalypsis does not mean "catastrophe." There is plenty of that in Revelation, but our use of "apocalypse" as a synonym for world-ending disaster is the result of this book, not the other way around. Apokalypsis is a literary genre our culture has abandoned, and it simply means "revealing." (Thus, "Revelation.") The concept is one of unmasking, of unveiling a previously hidden truth. The display is necessary, but that doesn't make it happy. Seeing it can feel like the end of the world.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.