Good morning, this is Cardinal Francis George, and I invite you to join me for the next few minutes to reflect with Father Robert Baron on the word of God, which is the word on fire.

Father Baron will challenge us to open our hearts to the word on fire, which is God's word of love for each of us.

If our hearts are open, the Lord can change and transform us, so that we might speak with love about the one who is love.

The Archdiocese of Chicago through the generosity of Sacred Heart Parish in Winetka now presents the word on fire.

Peace be with you. Friends, today I want to talk to you about what is undoubtedly the strangest book in the Bible.

The book of Revelation, also called in some older scriptures the book of the Apocalypse.

I say the strangest because the plot is probably the oddest of any book in the Bible.

The events are the most interesting and bizarre, plagues and battles both on earth and in heaven involving angels, Satan, human armies, characters that are among the strangest in any literature of any time.

Also a book that is so symbolically rich that it's open to a wide variety of interpretations and has been interpreted a million different ways over the centuries.

I use that term by the way, a million different ways.

Seriously, last night just out of curiosity, I went on to the internet and I typed in book of Revelation, up came 2.8 million different websites about this book.

It has inspired an awful lot of commentary and an awful lot of interest.

There is I think another reason for this. The book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It is literally God's last word to us.

And so Christians for the past 2,000 years have been very interested in this final word that God is speaking to his people.

In recent years, the book of Revelation has become enormously important and enormously popular. I'll mention a couple of reasons why.

One is the series of books written by Hal Lindsay. Remember, he wrote The Late Great Planet Earth.

Lindsay is back in the 70s. He inaugurated a tradition in recent times of reading the book of Revelation as a very detailed prediction of what is going to happen soon.

God's judgment, Christ's return, and this battle, this literally apocalyptic battle that will happen at the end of time.

Lindsay's ideas became very popular in the 70s and 80s, especially in more evangelical circles.

And then just in the last several years, there's been a publishing phenomenon. I don't know if you heard about it or seen it, but the series of books called Left Behind.

They're thinking about seven or eight of them now. I bought a couple just to see what they're about.

They're books about the rapture, Jesus coming back, rapturing, taking away his loyal disciples, and then all of the terrible events leading up to the end of the world.

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