I really hate the book of Revelation

Ripheus27 said:

If the Son doesn't know the day or the hour, how less likely is it that anyone else is going to know the week or month or year? For if the Son was God Incarnate and still fully man, then there is no way for a man to know when the end will come. Isn't this why there is a comparison between the end and a thief coming in the night? Isn't the entire enterprise of trying to match one or another historical event to prophecy not just futile but sinful?

An exception can be made for Christ's (apparent) prediction of Jerusalem's destruction. But this, I think, follows from the unique horror of that destruction. If we use modern scholars' estimates as the low end of the range, and the figure from Josephus as the higher end, then the 600,000 from Tacitus is the "centrist" estimate. Even so, this is twice the Rape of Nanking (300,000 probably murdered) and only the dubious statistics from the times of Mongolian horde atrocities indicate that khans had a million or more people massacred in one or another city, so by quite a few indications, the Roman Empire was responsible for the ultimate citywide mass murder in history. (Even if we allow that Genghis Khan oversaw numerically greater slaughter in at least one urban environment, consider how much less the overall population of the Earth was in Rome's time versus Genghis Khan's.) Christ, as divine and therefore morally perfect, would be "in tune" with the moral sequence of history, and His anticipation of the abomination of desolation might very well reflect that fact.

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Quite so. AND, it was not confined to Jerusalum. The Roman plan was nothing less than the absolute extermination of the Jews. They were 98% succesful. I am not trying to insult the Jewish religion, but other than archaeology, very little is known about the various original Jewish religions. The version shown in the New Testament is but a parody of what existed. The Judaism that exists today is based on the imperfect understanding of the survivors. Digs have revealed intricate mosaic patterns in the floors of the synogogues, astrological signs laid into the tiles, a multiplicity of divine figures whose names and significance are completely unknown to us now.

I have absolutely no belief in prophesy, soothsaying, Tarot, or fortunetelling--- but to quote Dylan, "you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". Rome had a history of putting down insurrection by extermination, and at the time Jesus walked, Israel was a hotbed of rebellion. His travels throughout the land brought Him into contacts with the sentiment of the masses; He wasn't a idiot.

hiscosmicgoldfish said:

If the Son doesn't know the day or the hour, how less likely is it that anyone else is going to know the week or month or year?

That’s why there is v. probably not going to be a final seven year tribulation, broken in the middle by 3 1/2 years, as you’d be able to work out the day and the hour, from the time the supposed antichrist enters the new temple to make the claim that he’s divine. So the great tribulation was the Roman attack on Jerusalem in 70 AD.

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Revelation Time must surely be when the 'secret meaning' in Chapter1 verse20 is discovered so that would depend on human actions in seeking the truth. It must be the key because we are being asked to find out what it is. When we decode the message in the 7 churches which has now happened it must be Revelation Time.

Soulgazer said:

I have absolutely no belief in prophesy, soothsaying, Tarot, or fortunetelling--- but to quote Dylan, "you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". Rome had a history of putting down insurrection by extermination, and at the time Jesus walked, Israel was a hotbed of rebellion. His travels throughout the land brought Him into contacts with the sentiment of the masses; He wasn't a idiot.

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I know, right? He hung out with Peter and the rest of the apostolic crew for one to three years. Unless you're the densest dude on the Earth, I'm sure you're gonna pick up on which of your friends really have your back, and which don't. It wouldn't have taken an out-and-out miracle to know that Judas would turn You into the authorities or that Peter would be too cowardly for a while to stand up for You. I mean, I lived with a girl for less than two years and knew just from that time period that she would stab me in the back if she could.

mike stewart said:

Revelation Time must surely be when the 'secret meaning' in Chapter1 verse20 is discovered so that would depend on human actions in seeking the truth. It must be the key because we are being asked to find out what it is. When we decode the message in the 7 churches which has now happened it must be Revelation Time.

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DID YOU KNOW: the Joachimite eschatological heresy began almost 1,000 years after the end of the Diocletianic persecution, which marked the effective defeat of Christianity's enemies (from then to now, no one has ever stood a real chance of wiping Christianity off the face of the Earth, except for countries who can nuke the $^@#@&! planet). The RCC used to keep Christian scriptures in Latin so that the masses couldn't read 'em unaided, yeah? Well, Dante wrote his Christian poetry in the common language of his country, and those poems convey the glory of Christ more or less to a T. Dante also anticipated Protestantism by confessing that the papacy of his era had betrayed the truth of the Lord. After Dante came the plague with the highest body count in history (I think there's some evidence that 100,000,000 people died from the flu during the WWI era, but that's at the higher end of the statistical spectrum). And Dante lived in the Joachimite era (even was influenced by the guy, or so I've read). From a historicist perspective on prophecy, then, Dante's time corresponds, arguably, to the "end times," at least in the same sense as full preterists interpret all eschatology in terms of the destruction of Jerusalem: Dante was the Catholic forerunner to the Protestant revolution (which started making Christ personally known to the European masses through a democracy of scripture, and this in conjunction with Anselm's paradigm shift in debates on the Atonement: the Second Coming, maybe? Consider Justin Martyr's faith that natural reason could move one to faith in a Christomimetic figure).

My point is, there is insufficient reason to regard the modern generation alone as the generation of the apocalypse because many, many others throughout history could argue from the uniquely moral and Christian, while also uniquely horrific, nature of their time period to historicist or idealist conclusions regarding eschatological prophecies. Why assume that the events in the Book of Revelation are not eternally repeating patterns? Could every generation have its tribulation, rapture, bowl judgments, etc.?

The seven Asian Churches provide the key to understanding the Revelation The coordinates of the 7 churches are messengers that form 21 vectors that point to all the good things foretold, like a starguide..

hiscosmicgoldfish said:

Revelation of John, the original Jewish version. Apocalypse composition, dating & authorship

worth a read.

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Interesting. I had heard that it was a Christianized version of an earlier text before. I would date it later though, to the persecutions under Emp. Domitian, say 90AD. Actually two seperate persecutions would not seem out of order--- the first around 67AD.

The death of James the Just in Jerusalem was said to have started the riots; I don't remember the specific date, but I think Josephus wrote that that was when the trouble started.

Dangerous theory you have here. Rebuking books you don't understand, discrediting Gods Word. Poisonous indeed.

Search for yourself the truth. The first sign of understanding is understanding that through our own understanding we cannot understand.

J August said:

Search for yourself the truth. The first sign of understanding is understanding that through our own understanding we cannot understand.

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To that I would have to say negative. In my opinion, to understand the evolution of religious history is to have a deeper understanding of God; eternity is too long to trust to traditions and mysticism based on false interpretations of bronze-age texts.

Religious history is the history of man. The Bible is of God, understanding God only comes from God.

J August said:

Religious history is the history of man. The Bible is of God, understanding God only comes from God.

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The Bible is of man, it is ONE record of man's attempt to understand God.

Have you ever read the Bible? Done a study in it on your own?

Study the Bible hard, read it from cover to cover for yourself. Prove it wrong.

J August said:

Study the Bible hard, read it from cover to cover for yourself. Prove it wrong.

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I have. Many times. Study the bible along with the current events and superstitions of the time along with the politics and social trends; find out who wrote what when where and why. It is very revealing.

Keep searching for truth.

Truth continuously unfolds. He who believes he is at the top, glues his feet to his belief while the Truth barrels on into the distance.