Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
You make a claim that, the "stars are the old testament saints OF THE 12 TRIBES of Israel."
However, when I search the whole Bible for the Greek word ἀστήρ (astēr) in every case but one it means the literal stars up in the sky at night, not old testament saints, as you claim.
And this guy John saying that stars fall to earth reveals that his book is not inspired by God. As God knows, and knew, as well as we today, that if even one star fell to earth, the earth, sun, and whole solar system, would be completely obliterated. And that would mean the end of John's make believe drama.
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A,
You are really going off the reservation here. Of all the things that might create some doubt about the authenticity of John's Apocalypse, this isn't it.
While it may be true that no one can simply say that the stars are the OT saints of any kind, you also cannot just find that a particular word never was used as a metaphor anywhere else and declare it to be literal when written into book of metaphors. Especially when the literal meaning would be, as you point out, completely destructive to the remaining drama of the writing.
I think that one of your problems when you get into things like this is a kind of tunnel vision. You seem to have a goal in mind and are busy blindering-off the possibility of anything standing in the way of that, including the obviously contradictory positions contained within your own reasoning.
It places you squarely into the "not from God at all costs retard" camp. And I don't think you are a retard. And I bet you don't either.
I will confess that if the importance of Revelation is all the strange stuff that so many "stuck in the end times" kind of people come up with, I would tend to doubt its authenticity too.
So what does blood flowing through the valley as deep as a horse's bridle mean? A virtually every person on earth gathered to the Kidron Valley and slaughtered there? Some kind of bizarre flood through the valley visually altered by nuclear blast of some sort? (I've heard one like that.) Or that there will be a lot of dead people? A really large number of dead people.
And this is probably where the Preterists get their start. With the complete destruction of Jerusalem such that you couldn't recognize the previous existence of a city, coupled with the huge number of people who died, it is easy to see how that could be the source of such thinking. And they would assert that we are simply somewhere between the start and the finish now. And that gap is of uncertain length. And if 1 day is as a thousand years (metaphorically, not literally), then how long is it all? Are we near the end? Only a little way in?
But in any case, here we are.
I am convinced that most who think they have figured out much of the meaning of Revelation are the most deluded of us all. No matter which side they are on. But at some level, I can see both signs of something to come, and evidence that a lot is going on. Death, War, Famine, and the Gospel are still advancing throughout the earth. Don't need to wait for the "end times." That has been true since the beginning of this era.
Is Revelation "over the top"? What do we do with it? Maybe the answer is to be warned. And that is enough. It does not seem that we have much part in it other than as participants with parts based on our position with God.
And there is the real issue. Where are we with God? That is the determiner of our ultimate existence. Not the claimed understanding of the details of the warning. Now if the warning was at least partly to the Jews in Jerusalem, then it was important that some get out before the destruction in 70AD. But it seems to go so much beyond that.
And you really don't need to understand all of the picture you see before you to "get the picture." And the picture is that it really matters which side of the Christ issue you are on. Are you a true follower and believer. Or are you one who thinks little or nothing about Him. Or putting the following off until later.
Will there be a later for any of us? We don't know.