Originally posted by Patmosman_sga
You make a self-contradictory statement. "Our perspective" is 21st century Western post-modernism. That is hardly the perspective of the first century Jew who wrote the book and the first century Near Easterners to whom he originally wrote. The events described in Revelation were of immediate concern to its original audience. But those events in the temporal realm (the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, etc.) were God's means of pointing to the deeper reality of the eternal realm. What may have seemed through the eyes of the world to be nothing more than the overthrow of an insignificant Middle Eastern city is revealed, from God's perspective, to be absolute, final and decisive retribution upon God's own people for their rejection of his Anointed One. The eternal truth conveyed through the apocalyptic language of Revelation is every bit as relevant and applicable today as it was in the first century. For the same fate which befell first century Jerusalem awaits anyone and everyone who likewise rejects God's decisive revelation of himself in Jesus Christ; and the same vindication which finally came for the first century believers will be likewise shared by anyone and everyone who, in the face of tribulation and persecution at the hands of a hostile world, perseveres in faith to the end.
