Chapters have to do with the Garden of Eden, the trumpets of the Last Days, the rebuilt Temple of Solomon, the utopian reign of the saints on earth, and scale model replicas of the imagined New Jerusalem in the New World. The friars used what appears to be fortress architecture with crenulated walls, sentry boxes on the roofs, and battlemented gates. Rather, the architecture is symbolic of a moment which was thought to be the beginning of a loosely understood millennial kingdom and the commencement of the End Times. Like the other two books mentioned, The Indian Jerusalem is wonderfully illustrated with color plates on oversize heavy paper. In all three books, we see that Christians have been selective in visualizing Revelation, more often preferring the joyous worship-filled episodes of the story to the easily misinterpreted and frequently abused horror scenes.
Liturgical usage predominates.
Books that bring to our eyes the art and architecture of Revelation demonstrate how wonderful indeed is the God-given gift of the religious imagination. Jaime Lara is a Roman Catholic priest and assistant professor of Christian art and architecture at Yale University Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. He frequently writes on themes of medieval and Latin American colonial liturgy and art.