[awareness]

Originally Posted by OBW

awareness,

I think that you still get a little nutsy on some of these issues, but overall we agree on the jest of it, even if not on all the details.

For one, I don't think you have to insist on tossing Revelation to realize that there is a lot in there that you don't understand yet do recognize your need for action in this life.

And for me it always comes back to this life. Those who are too interested in the afterlife often ignore this life. And it makes for pretty pathetic versions of "salt and light." Somehow people that just go around railing on sinners and pining to see the new Left Behind movies don't have anything like the impact on the world that they think they do.

Thanks Mike for tolerating my nuttiness.

Pretty much since diapers I've had much to do with the book of Rev. From my Southern Baptist days, to my own reading, to many sermons on it, including in the LC, and afterwards. For a long time I was spellbound by the book. And during that time I was into prophecy, Hal (Harold) Lindsey style. That's when I was nutty as far as I'm concerned now.

Of course all prophecies have failed, including those of the esteemed Lindsey. But it was seeing Christians that were/are into the Left Behind series that soured me on prophecy and the book of Rev. even more. I saw how crazy it made them, and their attitudes towards those that didn't believe, that God's wrath was coming to get them (not loving them as Jesus taught in the gospels). The Christians I knew went loony for those novels, like they were/are real ... ending up not loving their neighbors but harboring the wish of wrath upon them ... that's so not the Jesus of the gospels ... actually antithetical to Jesus of the gospels.

So I read up on the book some time ago, and found out about the early disagreement with it, questions of authorship, and even accusations of forgery, and the like.

As a result I no longer think of the book as I once did.

And ... I no longer trust in modern day prophets, such as Jonathan Cahn. I think their whole basis is off base.

And that 'bout sums it up.

I realize, like Nell pointed out, that some may be stumbled by my claims about the book. But as I see it, billions over the centuries have been stumbled away from the love spoken of by both Jesus and Paul, into craziness by the book.