dgregory

Now to get into what I really want to talk about, which is the prophetic books of the Bible, namely Daniel and Revelation. I am bold to say that there are some principles that I learned thirty years ago (acually 35) that very significantly affect how one approaches both books, but especially Revelation, principles that seem to have escaped most modern students.

I know that sounds presumptuous but if you hand in there with me I fully intend to prove it.

Here are the principles:
Number 1, the action indicated in Revelation started way back when the book was written, and is not awaiting some future day to begin. Let me alert you right up front that if you go to nearly any supposed good Christian bookstore and look for books on this subject you will not find a single one that accepts this premise.

Number 2. The book of Revelation is not intended to be taken literally. The word in verse one at the very beginning is the English transliteration of our word semaphore, which the older ones among you will know is that type of flag waving that was used on board aircraft carriers to land plands before the days of radio communication. In other words, the book of Revelation is inspired sign language. In one very real aspect this separates the 'men' from the 'boys' in the process of interpreting, because it takes a lot of real study to wade through all the terms (symbols) used in the book and come up with the meaning of those symbols. Fortunately using the old illustration of not having to re-invent the wheel, other very able scholars have already done that for us, the only problem being finding their books, which as I said are NOT on the shelves of the Christan bookstores, for reasons I will explain later.

Number 3. Even the time elements are not intended to be taken literally, but rather using the year-for-a-day principle, meaning that it is not 1260 literal days (and other verses use time, times, etc, or months) but rather 1260 years, and when one sees the correlation between passages thus interpreted with the known facts of church history it is a little akin to having goose pimples on your flesh it is so awesome.

I close this post with the positive affirmation that I by no means understand the whole book. What I do understand, AND THAT WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, is that the book is not about events yet in the future, but rather about what has already transpired in what is now nearly two millenia since the book was written.

This is a considerable paradigm shift from the customary interpretations of today, so it will take some time to get used to, but something very sobering will happen in your spirit when it grabs hold.