The End is Night - or then again, perhaps it isn't. That is the message of "Apocalypse: the Final Revelation", an art exhibition inaugurated this week in the Sistine Hall of the Vatican Museums which aims to cast new light on a controversial biblical book.

Simon Barrow says that beyond the popular scriptural fantasising which feeds much religion on the internet, there are processes of scriptural reasoning which produce a dynamic, fruitful bond between the Bible to lived reality.

A leading scholar has said that the end-times rapture theology propagated by many fundamentalist Christian groups, and said to be an influence within the Bush White House, is unbiblical and basically “nuts”.