Eschatology 6 - DLF
"Revelation, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by commentators, who know nothing." _The Devil's Dictionary_, Ambrose Bierce, 19th century American priest, Dover, 1958.
In Revelation, the "four living creatures" first appear in Rev. 4, positioned at cardinal points around the throne. These creatures are identifiable to anyone familiar with the Tanakh (TNK - law, prophets, poetry in Hebrew), otherwise called by Christians the Old Testament (OT). The four creatures appear in Ezekiel 1 where they are described as having "a human likeness" and each had a face, but they were different; they were that of a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Compare this description of the four living creatures with Israel encamped (Numbers 2). Each tribe raised a banner - a coat-of-arms symbolizing that tribe - so that among thousands of people, you could see where your tribe was. Each of these "logo" designators is known: The banner of Judah, on the east side of the tabernacle, was that of a rampant lion; Reuben on the south had the face of a man or alternatively, waves of water (representing instability); Ephraim on the west, an ox (or sometimes later depicted as a gazelle or unicorn); and on the north side, Dan, with an eagle banner or alternatively, a sidewinder snake. (Sometimes the symbol was like that on the flag of Mexico, an eagle with a snake in its talons.) These are the same as the "four living creatures" in Revelation; they represent Israel under Yahweh, with their center being the tabernacle of Yahweh. This was God-centered Israel.
The living creatures in Ezekiel also had six wings. Six is a number associated with the creation, especially humanity, and wings allow the creatures to fly or become upward-bound. The rest of Ezekiel's description reads like it is futurist technology. Wheels that roll in two dimensions exist and have been used on early mobile robots at the Carnegie-Mellon University Field Robotics Center. Eyes all around are a plentiful use of cameras. A few decades ago, cameras were not an incidental commodity as they are today, though it did not take long to have "eyes everywhere". Cameras are now found on cars, in homes, in pocket-phones, on streets - eyes everywhere. The motion of the creatures is described as being what roboticists or mechanical engineers would call Cartesian or rectilinear motion. In the 3-space (height, width, breadth) of the physical world there are also three other "degrees of freedom" of motion: three rotational degrees (pitch, yaw, roll for aircraft). But these "creatures" are constrained to linear motion, without rotation. Robots have been designed that way; IBM once built a robot product that was only rectilinear.
It is also no surprise to us that Israel - the West, mainly - has aviation and space technology, allowing the "living creatures" to take to the skies. Rockets with cameras can visually home in on targets with precision strikes, enabled by satellite surveillance and drone reconnaissance technology, plus intelligence-gathering on the ground. This seems to fit in a broad way Ezekiel's ancient description of technology at the end of the age.
More difficult to unravel (in deference to the truth of Bierce's definition) are the locusts of Revelation 9, the first of three "woes" of the last three trumpets. These are described as insects - locusts - but do not fit the description of any locust or other organic form of life. The description seems to better fit some kind of robotic drone. They originate from "the abyss". In ancient times, the empty quarter of the Arabian peninsula was referred to as the Abyss. This first woe presents a challenge to unravel. It is not impossible, given the advancement of genetics technology, for an organic drone to be developed with these characteristics of teeth and hair, and with the sting of a scorpion. How they distinguish between the people "who have the seal of God on their foreheads" and those who do not must involve some kind of technological identification on the bodies of the others that these "robo-locusts" can detect. And why people integrated into the globalist order would be afflicted and not the renegade people of God is not explained. The time of affliction is given as 5 months. The time scale is not given; it might simply be 5 months or in Daniel's chronology where a day is a year, it is 5 times 30 days or 150 years. The locusts present for me a "loose end". (The second woe is easier to unravel.)
The Adventists identified the locusts with the Muslims. Historically, they did afflict apostates in the spread of Islam and came out of the Arabian Peninsula like a swarm of locusts. During the golden era of Islam, with headquarters in Baghdad (from which came tales of Sinbad and the Arabian Nights), church historian Benjamin G. Wilkinson, in his largely ignored history of the church not under the authority of Rome, _Truth Triumphant: The Church in the Wilderness_, describes the Christian church after the fall of Jerusalem as moving east to Decapolis, a Judahite center, then farther east as the Roman empire expanded to confront the Parthian Israelites, until the Syrian church was headquartered in Ctesiphon, a suburb of Baghdad and not far from what once was Babylon. The Eastern Church migrated east from its early Christian presence in Syrian Antioch to Ctesiphon. Earlier, during the apostolic era, Peter wrote one of his letters from "Babylon". Some assert that he meant Rome metaphorically because Rome was a second Babylon. However, the telltale clues of the Greek dialect of Peter's writing is that of the East, not Rome. As apostle to the Judeans, Peter went where they were, and a concentration of them was in the East. (Another was in Galatia in Asia Minor, in what now is Turkiye, to which Zarahites of the tribe of Judah migrated centuries before from Galicia, west of Catalonia and north of Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula.)
When the caliphs were ruling Baghdad, Muslims and Christians lived in peace together. The only disadvantage for Christians was that because they were not members of the Islamic state, they paid an additional tax which was not onerous. Otherwise, they were accorded all the legal rights of other citizens. True Christians, true Muslims, and also true Judaists have never been in any real conflict with each other; they share too large of an overlap of beliefs of the biblical worldview.
Consequently, if the locusts of the first "woe" of the fifth trumpet is of Islam, how the locusts differentiate between the people of God and apostates is in the judgement of Islamists. Historically, Islam brought judgement upon the pagan world and that of apostate Christianity in its battles against Vatican Crusades. Islam today has been attacking the apostate governments of the West. This might explain the locusts but the descriptive meaning of their parts remains an unfinished task.
"Revelation, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by commentators, who know nothing." _The Devil's Dictionary_, Ambrose Bierce, 19th century American priest, Dover, 1958.
In Revelation, the "four living creatures" first appear in Rev. 4, positioned at cardinal points around the throne. These creatures are identifiable to anyone familiar with the Tanakh (TNK - law, prophets, poetry in Hebrew), otherwise called by Christians the Old Testament (OT). The four creatures appear in Ezekiel 1 where they are described as having "a human likeness" and each had a face, but they were different; they were that of a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Compare this description of the four living creatures with Israel encamped (Numbers 2). Each tribe raised a banner - a coat-of-arms symbolizing that tribe - so that among thousands of people, you could see where your tribe was. Each of these "logo" designators is known: The banner of Judah, on the east side of the tabernacle, was that of a rampant lion; Reuben on the south had the face of a man or alternatively, waves of water (representing instability); Ephraim on the west, an ox (or sometimes later depicted as a gazelle or unicorn); and on the north side, Dan, with an eagle banner or alternatively, a sidewinder snake. (Sometimes the symbol was like that on the flag of Mexico, an eagle with a snake in its talons.) These are the same as the "four living creatures" in Revelation; they represent Israel under Yahweh, with their center being the tabernacle of Yahweh. This was God-centered Israel.
The living creatures in Ezekiel also had six wings. Six is a number associated with the creation, especially humanity, and wings allow the creatures to fly or become upward-bound. The rest of Ezekiel's description reads like it is futurist technology. Wheels that roll in two dimensions exist and have been used on early mobile robots at the Carnegie-Mellon University Field Robotics Center. Eyes all around are a plentiful use of cameras. A few decades ago, cameras were not an incidental commodity as they are today, though it did not take long to have "eyes everywhere". Cameras are now found on cars, in homes, in pocket-phones, on streets - eyes everywhere. The motion of the creatures is described as being what roboticists or mechanical engineers would call Cartesian or rectilinear motion. In the 3-space (height, width, breadth) of the physical world there are also three other "degrees of freedom" of motion: three rotational degrees (pitch, yaw, roll for aircraft). But these "creatures" are constrained to linear motion, without rotation. Robots have been designed that way; IBM once built a robot product that was only rectilinear.
It is also no surprise to us that Israel - the West, mainly - has aviation and space technology, allowing the "living creatures" to take to the skies. Rockets with cameras can visually home in on targets with precision strikes, enabled by satellite surveillance and drone reconnaissance technology, plus intelligence-gathering on the ground. This seems to fit in a broad way Ezekiel's ancient description of technology at the end of the age.
More difficult to unravel (in deference to the truth of Bierce's definition) are the locusts of Revelation 9, the first of three "woes" of the last three trumpets. These are described as insects - locusts - but do not fit the description of any locust or other organic form of life. The description seems to better fit some kind of robotic drone. They originate from "the abyss". In ancient times, the empty quarter of the Arabian peninsula was referred to as the Abyss. This first woe presents a challenge to unravel. It is not impossible, given the advancement of genetics technology, for an organic drone to be developed with these characteristics of teeth and hair, and with the sting of a scorpion. How they distinguish between the people "who have the seal of God on their foreheads" and those who do not must involve some kind of technological identification on the bodies of the others that these "robo-locusts" can detect. And why people integrated into the globalist order would be afflicted and not the renegade people of God is not explained. The time of affliction is given as 5 months. The time scale is not given; it might simply be 5 months or in Daniel's chronology where a day is a year, it is 5 times 30 days or 150 years. The locusts present for me a "loose end". (The second woe is easier to unravel.)
The Adventists identified the locusts with the Muslims. Historically, they did afflict apostates in the spread of Islam and came out of the Arabian Peninsula like a swarm of locusts. During the golden era of Islam, with headquarters in Baghdad (from which came tales of Sinbad and the Arabian Nights), church historian Benjamin G. Wilkinson, in his largely ignored history of the church not under the authority of Rome, _Truth Triumphant: The Church in the Wilderness_, describes the Christian church after the fall of Jerusalem as moving east to Decapolis, a Judahite center, then farther east as the Roman empire expanded to confront the Parthian Israelites, until the Syrian church was headquartered in Ctesiphon, a suburb of Baghdad and not far from what once was Babylon. The Eastern Church migrated east from its early Christian presence in Syrian Antioch to Ctesiphon. Earlier, during the apostolic era, Peter wrote one of his letters from "Babylon". Some assert that he meant Rome metaphorically because Rome was a second Babylon. However, the telltale clues of the Greek dialect of Peter's writing is that of the East, not Rome. As apostle to the Judeans, Peter went where they were, and a concentration of them was in the East. (Another was in Galatia in Asia Minor, in what now is Turkiye, to which Zarahites of the tribe of Judah migrated centuries before from Galicia, west of Catalonia and north of Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula.)
When the caliphs were ruling Baghdad, Muslims and Christians lived in peace together. The only disadvantage for Christians was that because they were not members of the Islamic state, they paid an additional tax which was not onerous. Otherwise, they were accorded all the legal rights of other citizens. True Christians, true Muslims, and also true Judaists have never been in any real conflict with each other; they share too large of an overlap of beliefs of the biblical worldview.
Consequently, if the locusts of the first "woe" of the fifth trumpet is of Islam, how the locusts differentiate between the people of God and apostates is in the judgement of Islamists. Historically, Islam brought judgement upon the pagan world and that of apostate Christianity in its battles against Vatican Crusades. Islam today has been attacking the apostate governments of the West. This might explain the locusts but the descriptive meaning of their parts remains an unfinished task.
