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Four times, the book of Revelation identifies its author as “John” (1:1, 4, 9; 22:8). This was an extremely popular name at the time. In fact,John was fifth most common among names for Jewish men in Palestine in this period.The fact that John does not further identify himself (e.g., as John Mark, John son of Zebedee, or John of Jerusalem) shows that he must have been well known to his audience. He only says that he is “your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdo …

A Different Kind of Christmas Story At their feet spread the great Egyptian desert, a shadowy ocean of sand rolling southward into Africa. The woman, a pale redhead with dark rings of sorrow under her eyes, had otherwise the look of ease and city life about her. Her child seemed even more incongruous: a scrawny, big-eyed boy, five, perhaps, six years old, with an ominous, unending cough; a dark, mixed-race runt with a head of kinky yet unmistakably Celtic red hair.Most Roman women would have e …