Some Christians are deceived, confused and clueless about the Prophetic Word, but they are not unsaved.
So don't quote verses that imply they are stubbornly rejecting Jesus claims about himself! Those "wisdom of the world" verses are NOT achieving what you think they are for your purposes - as you just
contradicted those verses in your sentence above. The whole point of those verses is that if you cannot identify and trust in who Jesus is - you're God's enemy.
What I quote is what is Written,
Anyone can quote what is written. EG: The devil himself quotes scripture at Jesus when tempting him. (NOT calling you that - just showing an example.) Understanding what it means and applying it in a gospel focussed way - well that's a different matter.
NOT as I have seen you do; call scripture 'highly symbolic'
Scripture? That's a very broad word. The bible? Same.
See - even parts of the one book can switch genre.
The gospel of John is not as symbolic as the book of Revelation.
But even that opening chapter calls Jesus the Word, and the light.
But we're not talking about some neon light that says "Logos" that we're going to stick up on our churches - because we know when to read certain verses as metaphors and when to read others as literal. Jesus also used all sorts of parables.
It's about understanding the genres of literature in the bible so that we can understand their meaning.
If someone never reads outside their narrowly defined comfort zone - they'll never be able to recognise what's staring them in the face!
EG: Have you ever read or listened to the OTHER Apocalyptic works of the time?
If you have not - how is it you pretend to have a clue what Revelation itself is all about?
Here's Britannica's brief introduction to it all. It's quite fascinating that the early church fathers saw NO TIMETABLE or hints as to when the Lord was going to return. (I've made that bit bold.) But the bottom line? If you've read any of the other apocalypses - you would recognise that they are all about dressing up the geopolitical forces against God's people of THEIR DAY into cosmic language and symbols of good versus evil. They were about presenting their enemies as devils, and their hope in God and his judgement, and NOT about any sort of End Times Table.
In Judaism
The earliest
apocalypses are Jewish works that date from about 200 bce to about 165 bce. Whereas earlier Jewish writers, the Prophets, had foretold the coming of disasters, often in esoteric language, they neither placed these disasters in a narrative framework nor conceived of them in eschatological terms. During the time of the Hellenistic domination of Palestine and the
revolt of the Maccabees, however, a pessimistic view of the present became coupled with an expectation of an apocalyptic scenario, which is characterized by an imminent crisis, a universal judgment, and a supernatural resolution.
The most famous and influential of the early Jewish apocalypses is the last part of the biblical
Book of Daniel (chapters 7–12), written about 167 bce and attributed to a revered wise man who supposedly lived some four centuries earlier at the time of the
Babylonian captivity. “Daniel” recounts a series of visions, the first of which (chapter 7) is the most
succinct. He sees a succession of four terrible beasts, evidently representing a succession of earthly persecutors culminating in the contemporary Hellenistic tyrant
Antiochus IV Epiphanes (the “eleventh horn” of the fourth beast). Daniel then sees the destruction of the last beast by the “Ancient of Days” and the coming of “one like the Son of Man,” to whom is given “everlasting dominion that shall not pass away” and whose kingdom will be inhabited by “the people of the saints,” who will forever serve and obey him.
The other Jewish apocalypses—the first
Book of Enoch (
c. 200 bce), the fourth
Book of Ezra (
c. 100 ce), and the second and third
Books of Baruch (
c. 100 ce)—are “apocryphal” insofar as they do not belong to the
canonical Hebrew Bible. They are
extant in Ethiopic, Syriac, Greek, and Latin translations made by Christians rather than in their original Hebrew or Aramaic forms. The reason that the apocalypses survived in this manner seems to be that, after the failure of a series of Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire (i.e., after about 135 ce), the rabbis who began the process of codifying the Jewish tradition turned away from
apocalypticism to an emphasis on upholding and interpreting the law of the Pentateuch. Fatefully, however, while Jewish apocalypticism was still flourishing, it was taken up by Christians.
In Christianity
Most authorities regard early
Christianity as a fervently apocalyptic
religion, intent on the
imminent “
Second Coming” of Christ to preside over the
Last Judgment and the end of the world. Early Christian apocalypticism is evident in the
Gospels, which are permeated with language taken from Daniel. The so-called Little Apocalypse, a sermon by Jesus found in
Matthew (24–25) with parallels in
Mark (13) and
Luke (21), foretells the imminence of
collective tribulation and chastisement before the coming of the “Son of Man” who will “sit upon the throne of his glory” and separate “the sheep from the goats.” Some Pauline
epistles also contain apocalyptic content.
The last book of the
New Testament, the
Revelation to John, also known as the
Apocalypse of
St. John (the Greek term
apokalypsis literally means revelation), concludes canonical Christian
scripture in a ringingly apocalyptic key. Written in
Asia Minor about 95 ce by a Christian named John (the fact that the author gives his true name is the one major exception to the rule of pseudonymity), the Revelation offers a vibrant, sometimes lurid, account of imminent crisis, judgment, and salvation. Evidently obsessed by the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, which he refers to as “Babylon,” John recounts a series of visions that foretell a
crescendo of persecutions and martyrdoms followed by universal judgment,
retribution for the forces of evil, and rewards for the faithful. Details are often impenetrable because of esoteric allusive language (e.g., “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet…being with child [and] travailing in birth”). Moreover, the narrative is bewildering because it repeats itself frequently. Nevertheless, the psychedelic imagery is easily etched in the mind, and the mysteries found in the text have proved endlessly fascinating. Nor can there be any doubt of their ultimate message: the world, which is already suffering, will soon be washed in blood, but the “King of Kings” will come to “tread the winepress of the
wrath of God,” and everlasting rewards will be given to those who have “washed their robes in the blood of the lamb.” (Revelation 14:19)
A number of other Christian apocalypses were written during the period between 100 ce and 400 ce, including the
Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of Paul, the
Ascension of Isaiah, and the Testament of Abraham. Although these works adhere to apocalyptic form in recounting supernatural visions pseudonymously in esoteric language, they refer to an individual’s
salvation and lack the characteristic apocalyptic content of treating collective history and collective salvation. The trend toward concentrating on individual salvation was reinforced in the theology of the leading
Church Fathers, preeminently
St. Augustine. The Fathers were eschatological insofar as they believed in the Last Judgment but
non-apocalyptic in that they insisted that the time of the last act of history was utterly uncertain. Yet beliefs inherited from Daniel and the New Testament permitted the survival of apocalyptic thinking in the
Middle Ages and led to the creation of new apocalyptic works, such as the Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius (mid-7th century) and the Vision of Brother John (late 13th century). Many
medieval authors also wrote pseudonymous prophecies that did not take the form of narrative visions but foresaw imminent crisis, judgment, and salvation.
Apocalyptic literature is a literary genre that foretells supernaturally inspired cataclysmic events that will transpire at the end of the world. A product of the Judeo-Christian tradition, apocalyptic literature characteristically takes narrative form, employs esoteric language, expresses a...
www.britannica.com
