The 'time of the Chalice' represents an historical period in which was defined the Lamb of God and the adoption of the Eucharist.

Jesus is often depicted as a lamb, a symbol probably derived from the Passover lamb of Exodus 12. The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, and refers to the Crucifixion of Jesus as a parallel to the ceremonial killing of the lamb eaten at the Jewish Passover. The chalice became the centre of the Christian Eucharist because it symbolises Jesus' last meeting with his apostles at the Passover supper. There, according to St Paul, Jesus explained that the wine they shared should be understood symbolically by proclaiming "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" He then enjoined them to "drink it in remembrance of me" Legends rapidly developed in the growing church around the idea of 'The Holy Grail', an icon which, for example in British legends of King Arthur, initiated quests for the actual chalice of the Eucharist, or the dish of the paschal lamb, used by Jesus at the last supper.

The 'time of Revelation' refers to the period when the Christian church began to take root in countries of the Eastern Mediterranean. This was a period when the main task of its prophets was to buttress the church's missionary outposts. However, it deals through prophecy with time to come, and particularly with the signs and events that will lead to the second coming of Christ. In this context, Revelation influences the thoughts and actions of many of today's Christians, who live their lives in anticipation of the immanent realisation of the prophecies.

The Book of Revelation is closely related to ancient Jewish literature but differs in that this text was not attributed to a figure from ancient times. Its author seems to have been a Christian named John, who was probably known to his readers. Most scholars have concluded that this John was not the apostle John, but was a Christian leader living near the end of the first century after the birth of Jesus.

Some authorities place the writing toward the end of the reign of the emperor Domitian (A.D. 81- 96), when John had been exiled to the small island of Patmos in the Aegean, as he says, "on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" (1:9). Although we know little about John, the churches to whom he was writing knew him. In other words, they realised that the document was composed in their own time, with direct importance for them.

John wrote Revelation for a community of people struggling to survive against the threats of a hostile empire. Its message was for them to take heart in their conflict against the political power of the day. Despite their strangeness, the visions were clear in their message. Satan and his Roman beasts would continue to war, but not a single faithful heart would be lost. Thus they could be confident in Jesus' second coming, expressed in the last lines of the Bible as:- " 'Surely I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!".

These struggles of the early Christian communities are symbolised in the combat of St Michael and Satan. Sutherland placed their battle in the plane of the mandorla where he positions Christ in Glory. This realised his main design specification for the tapestry. The graphic images summarise the Book of Revelation and its textual imagery, which had evolved from ancient Middle Eastern imagery of conflict between supernatural powers

This particular panel, like that of the Holy Ghost originated in 'off the cuff' discussions. The idea seems to have been compatible with Sutherland's long held feeling that he wished to have something in the plane of the mandorla. In his conversation with Eric Newton, Sutherland recalled that there had been a lot of talk about incorporating St. Michael and the Hosts of Heaven, with possibly a sort of traditional Last Judgement, with a lot of figures, in the area which is now blank on either side of the mandorla. He eventually abandoned this idea because it would have added far too much pictorial complexity, and would detract from the impact of the central figure.

The selection of the Revelation episode involving the Archangel Michael is an obvious reference to the patron 'saint' of the Cathedral. In the tapestry, both Michael and Satan are given human forms. In particular, Sutherland did not attempt to depict Satan as a dragon as described in Revelation. Nevertheless, the faceless head of the archangel is a pointer to the apopoclyptic connotation of the great celestial supernatural battle between good and evil. Both contestants are posed naked, locked in violent conflict. This humanisation of the composition may be a metaphor for man's inhumanity to man that had released the destructive forces responsible for the ruin of old St Michael's. The conflict is reflected again with two interlocking human forms in the Jacob Epstein's sculpture on the external wall of the building.

We must assume that Sutherland was realising an important idea in every pictorial feature he positioned on the green field of the tapestry. What therefore are we to make of the plane above the battle window which contains the reptilian beaked head of Satan? It places Satan's declared destination, which is our own earth, in the plane of the Evangelists, but also gives a view through the green cosmos into a dark abyss. Is this a reference to the source of the great beast of the 'second woe', referred to in the previous chapter of Revelation, which overpowers God's Two Prophets in preparation for their Ascension to Heaven and the eventual resurrection of all Christian believers ?

A representation of the darker side of the Book of Revelation in the tapestry is a reminder that Sutherland's specification confined him to a relatively small selection of images from part of the Bible, which, because of its distinct apocalyptic genre, some Christian leaders over the ages would have liked to remove completely. There can be little doubt that the Book of Revelation is a hunting ground for Christian fundmentalists in search of divine authority, to support their deeply held beliefs in the reality of global disasters that will precede Jesus' Second Coming. For example, with the Book of Revelation in one hand and a copy of today's news in the other Christians are able to discover 'proof' that John predicted the coming of tanks, battleships, and the atomic bomb. Further, these are going to be Satan's instruments which will, at the battle of Armageddon when West confronts East, destroy all those who have not been born again in Jesus. Parts of Revelation are also being used in mainstream Christian thinking, to support the belief that Jerusalem will become the capital of a Christian world government from which Jesus will rule for a 1000 years with a rod of iron.

Only a minority of Christians believe in the literal truth of everything written in the Bible, and live in the expectation that Domesday could come in their lifetimes. However, the Second Coming is a central belief of Christianity. In all of these respects the tapestry image of St Michael and Satan represents only the tip of the notional iceberg that is Revelation. Beneath the 'water' nature confronts the supernatural.

The images of the time of the Evangelists denote the beginning of Christianity when the faith was spread beyond Judea through the four Gospels;

The Gospel writers are represented in countless works or art. But it wasn't until the close of the fourth century, hundreds of years after Revelation, that their iconography was fixed. Their symbols were derived from Ezekiel's Old Testament vision of the four winged cherubim, each of which had four facial aspects. This vision occurred when Ezekiel was an exile from Judea, in Babylon, when its message was to reform the Hebrew community in Babylon. As described in Revelation the vision has been transformed into four separate creatures. This group came to be described as 'the tetramorph' and symbolic of the four evangelists, Christianity's main carriers of the gospel. This symbolism seems to date from the fifth century when each of the four evangelists was allocated one of creatures to be a symbol of the opening passage of their Gospel. Mathew's symbol is a winged man, because he traces Christ's genealogy; Mark's is a lion, because he begins by likening John the Baptist's message to a lion's roar. Luke's is an ox, which recalls Zechariah's sacrifice at the Lord's altar. John is shown as an eagle, a reference to the soaring inspiration of his prose. In Sutherland's tapestry, the ribbon linking the four boxes, which together define 'the tetramorph', trails away through the mandorla into the dark cosmos, may be taken as a reminder of the ancient link of these symbols with the work of the visionary Hebrew prophets such as Ezekiel.

The time of the Crucifix marks the adoption of Christianity as an official state religion. Centuries after the death of Jesus, Christians sought to keep some direct contact with the physical remains of Jesus' life or that of the martyrs. As early as the second century, the veneration of relics became popular.

For the first three centuries after the Crucifixion the cross was rarely used openly in public devotion. In the fourth century, Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity, and used the cross on his coinage. His devotion is said to have come from a vision before a successful battle of the entwined letters Chi and Rho (CH R ist).

By the fourth century it was widely accepted that the cross on which Jesus had died had been found in Jerusalem. Three legends of early Christianity tell how Constantine's mother, St Helena found the True Cross and crucifixion nails at Golgotha and identified the Cross by restoring a corpse to life by its touch. Another relates how Empress Protonica found it in the first century after seeing St Peter perform miracles. These stories strengthened the cross as both a religious and political symbol. Throughout the Empire the cross promulgated devotion to the risen Christ as a state religion. The Roman Empire and its successors inevitably became the authorised source, and, in the name of Christianity, the transmitter, of human and moral meanings throughout Europe.