Ohio just said something that reminded me that I had to come back to this. That OBW has said some wrong things in response to me, that have to be corrected.
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Originally Posted by OBW
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.
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Oh I agree that it's not checkmate evidence. But it is evidence that John's idea that the stars could fall to earth was taken not from God but from what was commonly thought back then. They didn't have telescopes. Ya can't blame 'em ... or John ... for believing what today is known to be a ridiculous notion. And we known for certain that the creator of the whole universe would know how ridiculous that idea was ... and wouldn't have written such a thing.
That conundrum, or cognitive dissonance of Bible inerrantists, has been solved, by saying John was speaking symbolically. That's why Carol could say: "THE FIG TREE IS ISRAEL. The untimely figs [stars] being cast down from heaven are the OT saints."
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Originally Posted by OBW
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.
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Agreed.
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Originally Posted by OBW
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.
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Well I don't belong to their camp. Not since Witness Lee. But I am a retard. I'm human. Not divine.
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Originally Posted by OBW
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.
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Now you see why I say that Rev. would be okay for 1st century Christian sort of reading, but doesn't belong in the canon. More often than not the fruit of the book is craziness.
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Originally Posted by OBW
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?
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The *time thing* is a hard question. But when John opens the book with "things which must shortly come to pass," I don't think he meant 2000 yrs, or more, was shortly.
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Originally Posted by OBW
I am convinced that most who think they have figured out much of the meaning of Revelation are the most deluded of us all.
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Again, the book makes for crazy ... and doesn't belong in our Bible.
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Originally Posted by OBW
Is Revelation "over the top"? What do we do with it? Maybe the answer is to be warned. And that is enough.
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So just consider my ranting about Rev. as a warning.
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Originally Posted by OBW
And there is the real issue. Where are we with God? That is the determiner of our ultimate existence.
. . . 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.
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Yes. Not whether or not we accept Rev.