<P> Christina Rossetti was a Victorian poet who believed the sensual excitement of the natural world found its meaningful purpose in death and in God . Her The Face of the Deep is a meditation upon the Apocalypse . In her view, what Revelation has to teach is patience . Patience is the closest to perfection the human condition allows . Her book, which is largely written in prose, frequently breaks into poetry or jubilation, much like Revelation itself . The relevance of John's visions belongs to Christians of all times as a continuous present meditation . Such matters are eternal and outside of normal human reckoning . "That winter which will be the death of Time has no promise of termination . Winter that returns not to spring ...--who can bear it?" She dealt deftly with the vengeful aspects of John's message . "A few are charged to do judgment; everyone without exception is charged to show mercy ." Her conclusion is that Christians should see John as "representative of all his brethren" so they should "hope as he hoped, love as he loved ." </P> <P> Recently, aesthetic and literary modes of interpretation have developed, which focus on Revelation as a work of art and imagination, viewing the imagery as symbolic depictions of timeless truths and the victory of good over evil . Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza wrote Revelation: Vision of a Just World from the viewpoint of rhetoric . Accordingly, Revelation's meaning is partially determined by the way John goes about saying things, partially by the context in which readers receive the message and partially by its appeal to something beyond logic . </P> <P> Professor Schüssler Fiorenza believes that Revelation has particular relevance today as a liberating message to disadvantaged groups . John's book is a vision of a just world, not a vengeful threat of world - destruction . Her view that Revelation's message is not gender - based has caused dissent . She says we are to look behind the symbols rather than make a fetish out of them . In contrast, Tina Pippin states that John writes "horror literature" and "the misogyny which underlies the narrative is extreme ." </P> <P> D.H. Lawrence took an opposing, pessimistic view of Revelation in the final book he wrote, Apocalypse . He saw the language which Revelation used as being bleak and destructive; a' death - product' . Instead, he wanted to champion a public - spirited individualism (which he identified with the historical Jesus supplemented by an ill - defined cosmic consciousness) against its two natural enemies . One of these he called "the sovereignty of the intellect" which he saw in a technology - based totalitarian society . The other enemy he styled "vulgarity" and that was what he found in Revelation . "It is very nice if you are poor and not humble...to bring your enemies down to utter destruction, while you yourself rise up to grandeur . And nowhere does this happen so splendiferously than in Revelation ." </P>

How many times is the word revelation in the bible