Transcipt

What the Bible Doesn't Say: Revelation

(00:02) our topic this evening is the Book of Revelation and we are beginning a series about what the Bible doesn't say and we thought this would be a good place to start um because few books in the Bible I think are more consistently misread and misunderstood than the Book of Revelation also known as the apocalypse The Apocalypse of John John the Revelator John of Patmos so for example the idea of the Rapture um this is Central to the fundamentalist narratives of the Apocalypse of the end of the world as uh exemplified in the

(00:54) Left Behind series um that idea the idea of a Rapture that uh all of the Christians at the beginning of the end times the Christians on Earth will all be uh swiped away from Earth maybe leaving just their clothes if they were the pilot of an airplane causing the airplane to crash and that kind of thing those ideas that idea of a Rapture would be completely alien to the author of the book of Revelation John of Patmos who never envisioned any such event in fact the idea of the Rapture is quite recent again the the idea of it is in the end

(01:32) times true Christians will be taken up to heaven and everyone else will be left behind that did not exist at any time in historic Christianity you can't go and find a medieval writer who is writing about the Rapture indeed it was invented in the 1830s it seems by an Anglo Irish teacher named John Nelson Derby who is also the founder of a fundamentalist or an Evangelical Christian sect known as The Exclusive Brethren um so how do you do that how do you come up with and actually popularize like a totally new idea out of the Bible that biblical authors themselves never

(02:18) had um and the answer is which is the age-old um fundamentalist game plan for Reis reading the Bible is that you take individual verses out of different books in the Bible you take those verses out of their contexts and then you read them together as if they were meant to go together uh when in fact the biblical authors are not all writing to be part of the same Corpus of books they're writing their own separate individual books and they may not have been aware of many of each other or what each other was writing and certainly not meaning to

(02:54) read um their individual verses out of context together so a key verse for coming up with the idea of the Rapture is found at the end of the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians where Paul describes you know his own ideas about the literal end of the world so Paul is an apocalyptic he believes which is to say he believes the world is going to end literally and he fervently believes it would happen in his own life lifetime so in other words in the first century uh of the Common Era of the Christian era so Paul I think was obsessed with

(03:40) immortality so he did not want to be died and have nothing follow he wanted was very concerned with the afterlife and he along with many people in second te Temple Judaism uh not the sect of the Sadducees but the sect of the Pharisees and the Essen and also the Christians believed in what was originally a zor asrian idea of bodily Resurrection so unlike for example the typical Greek idea that your body um is more or less just a vessel for your spirit your soul to be in and when your spirit is separated from your body it can um potentially be just living on its

(04:31) own somewhere or um maybe be put into a new body or something like that um the zor asrian in the Middle Eastern concept is more inseparability of body and soul and so the idea of it is that in order for you to live again your body would have to be restored as well so Resurrection Paul was a fervent believer and uh he also assured members of the church that he' planted in thessalonia that he would live to see the end of the world so of course many early Christians testified uh that Christ had been resurrected and that that was a

(05:10) sign that uh the end times were happening so that PE people were all beginning to be resurrected um the only problem with Paul's belief in literal apocalypticism is that uh the end had not come yet so he was preaching about it and then he continued to minister and he continued to be an apostle he continued to preach about it and in the time frame from when he fir made his first converts in thessalonia some of them had ended up dying and not in other words not living all the way to the end of the world um

(05:48) and then others that were around then wanded hey what about what gives I thought we were all I thought the end was about to happen I thought we were all going to live to see it so Paul uh writes in this letter his apologetic explanation he says we do not want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about those who have died so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope for since we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so through Jesus God will bring him bring with him those who have died for this we declare to to you by

(06:30) the word of the Lord that we who are alive who are left until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have died for the Lord himself with the Cry of command with the archangels call and with the sound of God's trumpet will descend from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first so there'll be a resurrection immediately of everyone who died in Christ so those Thessalonians who have died uh then we who are alive who are left those of us who are still alive on the end of the world happens in just a few years we will be caught up in the

(07:14) clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air so that we will be with the Lord forever one second I need to okay so Paul is trying to explain his belief uh that he and others would live to see the literal end of the world but if you do end up dying before then that's okay because you'll experience bodily resurrection and we'll all meet up in the clouds so um Paul here shares two key characteristics that are pretty Universal to literal apocalyptic people who believe uh that the end of the world

(08:02) is going to happen he fervently believes that the end of the world will come in his own Lifetime and his belief that that is the case was absolutely false since the end of the world did not come and he died and now it's been 2,000 years almost since then so Paul's ideas about the end times nevertheless so even though he does believe this thing about resurrection and the end of the world and even meeting uh the resurrected in the clouds there's nothing in his letters about people being uh Left Behind the Left Behind part comes from an apocalyptic

(08:46) discourse found in the gospel of Matthew which the author of Matthew adapted from one of his two main sources his sources were the gospel of Mark and a lost collection of Jesus sayings that Scholars call Q and so this is from the Q saying source and so there's a variant of this in Luke as a result of that so in Matthew uh we read Matthew 24 we read for as the days of Noah were so in other words that era before the world was destroyed in the flood so will be the coming of the son of man Jesus's Second Coming In The Clouds for as in the days

(09:29) before the flood they were eating and drinking marrying and giv in marriage until the day Noah entered the Ark and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away so too will be the coming of the son of man two will be in the field one will be taken and one will be left two women will be grinding meal together one will be taken and one will be left okay so that sort of sounds like you can get the idea of a Rapture from that however um because that same saying of Jesus from the Q Source uh is also found in Luke we can

(10:14) see that Matthew has actually put that into a different context to make it so that um anyway to make it confusing from what the original meaning would be we can see what it means to Luke the author of Luke in Luke 17 uh in there Jesus says those who try to make their life secure will lose it but those who lose their life will keep it I tell you on that night there will be two in one bed one will be taken and the other left there will be two uh women grinding meal together one will be taken and the other left then they asked him where Lord and

(10:57) where will they be taken and he said to to them where the corpse is there the vultures will gather so the original sense of this is not that two people will be next to each other and one of them is going to get raptured the idea is that and that as things are ending you know if you're trying to keep your life you'll lose it if you're trying to lose your life you'll save it at the end times uh death is capricious so somebody you know might at any time uh you know be in bed and one person will die they'll be taken and the other person will not they'll live

(11:35) so in the original sense of the saying the ones taken are simply people who die death is uh capricious and where the corpse is the vultures will gather they're not being um raptured up into heaven so um The Rapture was cobbled together in my view by misreading various unrelated Bible verses and um it be becomes the preface for the events that are in the Book of Revelation uh even though these verses aren't actually even from The Book of Revelation um nevertheless I still think that this backstory of how the Rapture

(12:13) um became a thing forms kind of a good preference since the same readers who misinterpret The Book of Revelation misinterpret it in exactly kind of the same way that they misinterpret these verses and and usually speaking is taking them completely out of their context and also uh thinking of them very literally as future events that are supposed to happen in history so let's look at the actual Book of Revelation Revelation is the last book in Order in the New Testament so at the very end of the Bible and it's also the

(12:56) last text to be fully recognized as canonical um so apparently some of the Eastern councils when they're having their lists of what books should be considered scripture um even up until the 400s um certainly through the 4th Century um it's not making it Revelation is not making it on all of the lists although it is on some early lists the Book of Revelation was likely written around the year 95 during the reign of the Roman Emperor demission demission um according to the much later Christian historian uus anyway had

(13:38) ordered a persecution of Jews and Christians and that persecution some persecution of some kind seems to be the setting uh for the time period when Revelation is written the book's title and its author are given by its very first verse where which reads the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place that's going to be very very key and he made it known by sending his Angel to his servant John um like I say the author says the divisions uh must are of things that must soon take place because all

(14:26) apocalyptic ists are writing for their own time so apocalypticism in our current usage the way I've been using it when I've been calling Paul an apocalyptic for example um refers to a belief that the physical universe will end and actually they all believe it's going to end soon and it will be replaced with a new fully just creation so this idea isn't found in the earliest parts of the Hebrew Bible um it's not a belief in first temple Judaism and the more conservative sect of second temple Jews the uh Sadducees did not believe in it but the idea was

(15:12) very Central to the early Persian world religion of zor asianism um which was which is a dualist religion that is about a uh that solves or answers the problem of evil by um suggesting that the great God the good God hamda his name in Sor asrian religion uh God would is would like to um have everything be good and just in this world but uh God is continually U battling and thwarted being thwarted in that those uh desires by a fully evil cause mic God a cosmic devil more powerful than the devil in uh Christianity and early Judaism or at

(16:07) this time period in Christianity and Judaism but nevertheless um uh who is engaged in this kind of cosmic battle but ultimately uh the evil God angu will be defeated the world will be destroyed and uh a new world will be formed so this uh idea gave many Jewish sects in the temple in the in the second temple period a new way to solve the problem of evil so the original way first temple Judaism the the dominant um explanation for the problem of evil is Disobedience when you disobey the Commandments of the

(16:54) Lord specifically especially when you um worship other gods when you revert to paganism then God punishes you the problem in the second temple period is over the course of the second temple period the people uh really did stop worshiping other gods they became solely focused on the worship of the god of Israel of Yahweh um and nevertheless they continued to have you know suffering after suffering and be conquered and and and so on so how do you solve that well maybe U maybe the solution is is found here in the idea of a a cosmic devil and

(17:39) uh and the other solution of a new world the original meaning though of the word apocalypse and also the word revelation uh is simply to reveal or to unveil and these are simply our English versions of the Greek apocalypsis and the Latin revare and so he gets us the words apocalypse and Revelation which are synonyms in those two languages the modern usage of the word like I say comes from the fact that the visions that are unveiled by John in the Book of Revelation are really about end times and because this was also the focus of other

(18:24) contemporary prophets who wrote their own apocalypses uh in the second temple period both Jewish and Christian in the same way the word Armageddon it's now a generic word for the end of the world sometimes it has a sense that it's the battle at the end of the world like Ragnarok from Norse mythology the word though Armageddon actually has its Origins from a supposed battle where King Josiah of Judah was killed by pharaoh Neco II at the hill of megiddo the har meedo and so this um began to be a generic word for battle you having a

(19:11) battle harto in the same way that we have a phrase like you you met your waterl where waterl uh the battle where Napoleon is finally defeated has become a synonym for just saying a battle or especially a final battle where you're defeated so um that uh is what you so Armageddon would have just meant a battle but now it's uh moved to be synonymous for end of the world so as I've kind of indicated here what I was talking about contemporaries to John of Patmos um from the last books of the Hebrew Bible the last of the prophets

(19:49) there the Christian Old Testament um to till the time period of the Christian New Testament prophecy doesn't stop in fact uh Jewish prophets continue to write books many of which were revered within their own particular communities so for example we have prophetic texts that didn't make it into the Bible that are uh preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls among the what's the Essen Community there uh and there are other um sects that have um that wrote their own texts that read and look very much like uh scripture and that have survived for example because they were copied and

(20:35) collected and copied by monks and so on and they're preserved in books like this the Old Testament pseudepigrapha volumes um the books simply were not included in the final Canon of the Bible either the Hebrew Bible or the various Christian uh lists of cannons because both the councils of the early church and also uh the councils of the early rabbis gave preference to early texts especially and so at a certain point there are too many of these later texts uh and those don't make them into the Bible but that doesn't mean there weren't any of these or that they weren't important um indeed New

(21:19) Testament uh authors quote um some of the texts that didn't make it into the Bible as if their Community considered them to be scripture so um prophecy uh evolved over the course of this time and so the role of prophets and prophetic texts evolve within the Hebrew Bible and it continues to evolve in this um apocryphal period this period uh between the Testaments so in the earliest texts of the Bible God is envisioned in a much less Cosmic way so in the in the J especially of the pentet in the yahwist writer um God was

(22:03) walking around in the Garden of Eden um almost as as if God has a physical form um God speaks words directly to prophets like Moses uh from the burning bush and so on as um though the idea of God became more Cosmic and more remote in the second temple period so as God was viewed less like um the way you might view a God Like Zeus or like baale that you're thinking of as being you're envisioning because you of a statue of him as instead you're really seeing a god that is uh this remote infinite creator of everything um writers cease to want to

(22:53) Envision God like as anthropomorphic in any way um since they ceased to conceive of God that way and they also therefore that remoteness um had the later prophets usually have Revelation through an intermediary source and so this is where all of the um elaborations of angels and all of the hosts of Heaven uh get their names and so um these later prophets tend to attribute the Visions they have um or I'm sorry they received them through Angelic intermediaries and also because there is already starting to

(23:37) become this sense that um earlier texts are more authoritative they tended to write um their own new prophecies as if it was an ancient Authority who was writing him so they more or less claimed to be Adam or Enoch or Abraham and thus they are not really Adam or Enoch or Abraham none of whom were actually historical figures anyway uh and instead become pseudo Adam pseudo Enoch pseudo Abraham and so on so this um tendency to claim ancient Authority um is why these are kind of categorized together as pseudepigrapha even though not every one of the book I mean not every one of the

(24:25) books that is in these collections is actually pseudepigraphic a couple of them are written by people who are aren't claiming to be somebody else but generally speaking um rule of thumb they are pseudepigraphic so we previously explored um two of these apocalypses that were attributed to the anti- Delian Prophet Enoch so Enoch who lived before Noah and the flood um uh and so we had a lecture on both the First Book of Enoch The ethiopic Book of Enoch and we also talked about the second book of Enoch slavonic Enoch there are though many many more apocalypses that survive apocalypses of

(25:05) Adam Abraham Elijah Ezra Zephaniah other apocalyptic texts as I say have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls um most of these again are pseudepigraphic so people writing in the second temple period pretending to be those ancient Patriarchs and Prophets uh few of those like I say made it into the Bible but an exception is the Old Testament book of Daniel so this is written by someone between the year 167 and 164 before the Common Era but they're claiming to be uh the B the Prophet Daniel someone who was active

(25:51) during the Babylonian period the Babylonian captivity many centuries earlier so as with the other this is just otherwise a great example of an apocalypse it could be called The Apocalypse of Daniel even though it isn't because there's another book that is called The Apocalypse of Daniel that didn't make it in the in the Old Testament but this is the Book of Daniel anyway it's an apocalypse um and as with other books in the genre Daniel's Visions are often brought by an intermediary so he's visited by the angel Gabriel who both gives him the

(26:24) vision and also interprets for him and they also predict The World's End which will be very very soon indeed so they um it won't be soon for Daniel from Daniel's perspective since Daniel is um it's not really written by Daniel it's written by pseudo Daniel it's going to happen within you know a few years of 167 or 164 BCE in other words at it very soon from the perspective of the actual author I mean that's also true for the authors of the books of Enoch it's not not the end isn't going to happen soon from Enoch's perspective it's going to happen soon

(27:02) from the perspective of the author and the communities that rever those books of Enoch so the actual author of Daniel gives himself Away by making predictions that are really remarkably accurate all the way up till the year 167 BC so in other words Daniel is able to look into the future and predict things with amazing and accuracy um things that take place in the reign of the cusd King Antiochus I fourth epiphanies um the helenistic king of Syria um so for example epiphanies uh Antiochus uh I fourth uh desecrates the Jerusalem Temple and puts up um some kind of a a

(27:51) desolation as it called it is either a a statue to Zeus or something like that he desecrates it uh from the perspective Ive of the Jewish religion but then after that year the author or Daniel continues to make predictions past that time and um all of those predictions go wildly or spectacularly wrong so it suggests that Antiochus is going to die um in the area uh around Judea Syria and instead he dies over over on the other side of his Empire um it also so suggests um specifically that all of these events

(28:32) will lead to the immediate end of the world that the world will end within seven years of um this middle part of antiochus's Reign and of course um the world didn't end so we continue to exist so uh the prophecy failed so again the author of Daniel shares a number of characteristics that are common to the genre of apocalyptic prophets of the second temple period you know one they pretend that the text that they write was written by a more ancient Visionary so we don't know who this guy is pseudo Daniel but um he's not who he's not

(29:11) actual Daniel two they Envision God through an intermediary an angel instead of um talking to God directly and this is showing essentially the anachronism because uh this is how God is conceived in this later time period three um they believe um that they themselves are written immediately at the end times so the end of the world will come within just a few years or so of when the actual author is living um they are not predicting that the world is going to end 700 years in the future or 2,000 years in the future and finally

(29:52) like all of these apocalyptic prophets they're totally wrong about their calculations their belief in a literal apocalypse uh is disproved in fact in this case instead of the world ending what actually happened is the temple is reconsecrated um and there's the miracle of the oil that uh results in the Jewish Festival of all of Hanukkah which is celebrated to this day so that wasn't predicted um by Daniel the end of the world was predicted but that's what happened instead so the author of Revelation uh John the Revelator shares

(30:27) all of the characteristics of apocalyptic prophets except for one which is uh he does not pretend to be someone he's not although um traditionally Christians have have also added that one to his um his list but it wasn't something that he did so of himself he says in the beginning of the book of Revelations in chapter 1:9 I John your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the endurance in Jesus was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus so John here Patmos

(31:12) claims to be named somebody named John but he does not claim to be the Apostle John so the Apostle John is a known historic figure that the Apostle Paul says that he himself met that uh the Apostle Paul calls one of the acknowledged pillars of the church and one of the actual historical Disciples of the historical Jesus John the Revelator doesn't claim to be one of the 12 apostles at all in the various Visions he shares um they include imagery of the 12 apostles and there's a vision of seeing the names of the 12 apostles but never does he say

(31:58) that oh and that's me up there I saw my name or something he's not um seeing that in himself he's not seeing himself as one of the 12 in these Visions additionally in the text itself the Greek is so different from the style used by the various authors of the Gospel of John and also the style of the um authors of the Epistles of John that made it into the New Testament um that even many ancient Christians concluded they had to have been written by very different authors um essentially the Greek um according to one of the translators that I read is um in the

(32:43) Book of Revelations is almost like like Street Greek it's slang Greek as opposed to much more formal Greek that is uh found in the in the gospels and this may be one of the reasons why Revelation um why the Greek speaking part of the Christian church was more reluctant to include it since they were always reading both the gospel and Revelation in the original Greek and so they could tell something's going on here whereas the the Western the Latin Christians like Augustine are simply reading these books in Translation and so they're not as aware

(33:19) uh of the difference so we had a previous lecture on the many John's so there was the historic IAL disciple that we mentioned of the historical Jesus that Paul met there is the one of the 12 the 12 apostles that are on a list and also as a character in both the synoptic gospels and acts there is also the unnamed beloved disciple from the fourth gospel who traditionally is thought of as being John there's the author and actually there's probably as many as three authors of the fourth gospel the gospel

(34:00) attributed to John there's the author or authors of the three Epistles of John in the New Testament then there is this wholly different person from any of those the author of the book of Revelation who was on the island of Patmos and then there is um John the Elder who is a teacher and who some people equate with the last living Apostle but may not be that is anyway understood from other early Christian source so what we can say is the name John was a very common name back uh in early Christian times it's a common name still

(34:37) to this day um it's I'm a different John than all these John's John the Revelator is a different John it's a lot of John's so although people throughout time to the present day um think that John the Revelator was writing about events in their own day in particular so people um in the you know in the as the as we were getting to for example the year 1000 there was a frenzy because uh people thought that maybe they reinterpreted the math in the Revelation they thought maybe that oh um John the Revelator was speaking about the year 1000 and then that didn't happen the

(35:18) world didn't end and uh people have been redoing the calculus uh for their own time from the year 1000 all the way up to the present day um assuming that um John the Revelator was speaking specifically to the time when they're alive but John actually himself says that very explicitly that he is writing to his contemporaries he addresses his book to seven churches in Asia that is to say Asia Minor Anatolia Ephesus Smyrna thota Sardis pergamum Philadelphia and leysia and so these are churches that are fairly close to where he was on the

(36:00) island of Patmos The Book of Revelation begins with specific messages to those individual churches so John tells some of them to persevere in the face of persecution others are warned against assimilation with Roman society or too much complacency others are um warned about various uh rival Christian sects that John is against and maybe there may even be um again because the this is perhaps reflecting um uh an an a non-pa um version of Christianity um may be worried about either Pauline Christians or maybe even um maybe even

(36:54) the emergence of uh the kinds of Christians that are going to try are are super Pauline so um the guys who want to purge uh the all of the Jewish Heritage from Christianity anyway there are individual messages he's writing to the churches in his own time none of these messages does he say oh and by the way let me tell you my vision of what will happen 200 years from now in the future it's going to happen in a place you've never heard of in in Canada in the in the year 2023 something like that none of that none of that is uh is what he's doing apocalyptic are concerned about

(37:38) their own time and they foresee these events as happening in their own uh in their own lifetimes um what is he doing he's trying to answer this problem of evil that I was talking about um uh that the zor asrian also are worried about so like all apocalyptic John's Visions are an answer to the problem of evil if God is good why then do the righteous suffer why are the wicked rewarded and the answer uh for literal apocalypsis is this unjust world will soon end there'll be a new world in its place that is just and when that happens

(38:22) the righteous will be rewarded the wicked will also be punished and and because of that portion of it um the punishment of the wicked this gives rise to some of the Book of Revelations most horrific imagery of uh destruction punishment of the wicked unfortunately while this is an answer it's a rather unsatisfactory answer certainly I feel find it an unsatisfactory answer a simple either or solution uh that's some people receive internal salvation and some receive damnation um the simple like that same

(39:06) idea of that U the simple answer of literal apocalypticism can be unsatisfying if we think about it does any amount of evil that a human commits in life you know your own lifetime a mortal time frame which is finite by definition how in any way that does that then justify by infinite punishment they if they put on the scales the infinite cancels out into non-existence the um the finite component of timeline and given that you know Christianity also doesn't um doesn't say that God is actually punishing people for their sins or rewarding people for doing good

(39:50) rather if we're saying that God has predetermined things and he simply uh chooses to reward um some people with eternal salvation uh that no one merits can a good God predetermine that some humans will receive infinite horrific punishment forever so this again is a complaint against these um ideas anyway especially as phrasing them in a very simple way nevertheless the on the other hand the Universalist argument that other Christians are really made all the way back uh from the beginning of this argument that everyone will achieve salvation so that's what your Universal

(40:39) your Universal salvation um you know this tends to assault uh a sense of fairness so it doesn't solve the problem of evil on the other side so will all of the greatest abusers people who committed horrific genocide will they really ultimately be one together with God in eternity alongside all of the victims of their atrocities um you know the philosophical argument is made in theological texts uh the Middle Ages to the present you know will Satan uh be saved so these are problems with literal apocalypticism as an answer to the problem of evil of evil is very

(41:29) complicated uh and that's another lecture so no value um there's no value anyway in Mis in in in recalculating the math and miscalculating the math so to the extent that the Book of Revelation proposes that the world's literal end will reward John and his righteous contemporaries you know that's a failed prophecy so the world didn't end in John's Lifetime and there still still hasn't ended now so his belief that it would failed any value therefore today in my opinion is not redoing the math or fixing the math or actually breaking the math and pretending that the signs in this text predict the world will end in

(42:16) our day because they don't they speak to John's day and so you know this fellow here was probably very had a very fervent conviction uh that the Judgment day would be May 21st 2011 has misread The Book of Revelations and done a calculation that was also proved false nevertheless that doesn't mean there's no value to this text so while their literal interpretation has no value John's Visions can still be read allegorically spiritually meaningfully and indeed this is kind of what we try to do with all of the biblical Canon and

(42:57) when we look at it this way the Book of Revelation and its Visions uh are really a feast of imagery because after that introduction to uh and the little words of advice to the seven churches the text is filled with visions that are made rich with evocative and symbolic imagery all of which has inspired a great deal of Christian artwork like these amazing Engravings you may have seen by alberch jur in the 16th century it's also uh the text inspires lyrics of hymns and all sorts of uh artwork so the book can be broken into

(43:42) 12 sections so it begins with John of Patmos is call to be a prophet call to give Revelation then John sends messages to the seven churches an Asia Minor in Anatolia John First Vision is of the Throne of God and he has a vision of a scroll with Seven Seals that are opened then he has this vision of seven trumpets being sounded and all of the cosmic things that happened uh with that that has a vision of seven uh spiritual figures that do important things seven Bulls are poured out then there is the destruction of the new

(44:26) Babylon the marriage supper of the Lamb of God the Judgment of the two beasts and finally a vision of a New Jerusalem and the text's conclusion so we'll look at just a few of these to get a sense of the book and I'll try to draw out from that various ways that I think anyway the book is misread and misinterpreted so John's Visions begin with the imagery of God's Throne so we read in Revelation 4 at one once I was in the spirit and there in heaven stood a throne one with one seated on the throne and the one seated on the throne looks like Jasper and Carnelian and around the

(45:12) throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald around the throne are 24 Thrones and seated on the Thrones are 24 Elders dressed in white robes with golden crowns on their heads coming from the Thrones sorry the throne are flat flashes of lightning and Rumblings and peels of thunder and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches which are the seven spirits of God and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass like Crystal so it's a crazy um only Now with uh sci-fi all of our all the computer generated effects can we get anything like this so around the throne on each side of the

(45:55) throne are four living creatures full of eyes in front and back the first living creature is like a lion the second living creature is like an ox the third living creature with the face like a human and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle and the four living creatures each of them with six wings are full of eyes all around inside and inside day and night and without ceasing they sing Holy Holy Holy the Lord God the almighty who was and is and is to come so if you have any background in Christianity all of these images I think should already stting ringing Bells is both uh hymns and imagery so for example

(46:45) those four living creatures provide the imagery for the four evangelists of the canonical gospels and so you'll see these kinds of images and stained glass windows and on the sides of old Cathedrals and things like that where you have essentially a winged man who is by interpretation now in Tradition represents Matthew um an eagle which is John a winged Ox which is Luke and the winged lion which is Mark additionally um holy holy holy Lord God alight Mighty a hymn written in 1826 by Reginald Heber it's actually in our

(47:33) hymn no in my church 50m number 52 um it's just one of many examples where Revelations Visions especially things poems that the um the different angels and creatures and so on are singing in heaven um uh provide lyrics for Christian hymns so next to the throne has he seen that Vision John has a vision of a scroll which is by the hand of the one who is sitting on the throne and the scroll is sealed with Seven Seals which means it's closed you know with u seals so it can't be read John wants to read it so badly that he weeps then one of the elders these 24 Elders that are in

(48:19) these Thrones around the one in the great Throne say to him do not weep see the lion of the tribe of Judah the root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and the Seven Seals so the lion is the um is the symbol for on the 12 tribes it's a symbol for the tribe of Judah um the davidic Royal House the kings of Jerusalem um are the kings of Judah and so here the lion of Javid uh is is has uh conquered and so therefore um you can now read the scroll so this is one of the places in Book of Revelation where

(49:08) the elders here the Elders of Israel make pronouncements that aren't entirely right or at least it's not what what you actually if you're going to expect to see a conquering lion uh that's not what happens because John immediately turns and he doesn't see a lion he says then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures among the elders a lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered with seven orns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the Earth so the Elders of Israel had expected the root of David the

(49:48) Messiah to appear as the lion of Judah instead he appears as a lamb that was slaughtered so this is obviously a Christian apocalypse the lamb went down and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was Seated on the throne and when he had taken the scroll the four living creatures and the 24 Elders fell before the lamb each was holding a harp and golden Bulls full of incense which are the prayers of the Saints the early Christians they the elders sing a new song they say you are worthy to take the scroll you o lamb you the Messiah you

(50:32) Christ are willing to take are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God Saints from every tribe and language and people and Nation so universally not just any anybody in particular you have made them a kingdom and Priests serving our God and they will reign on Earth so the breaking of the Seven Seals uh has all kinds of imagery happened and result but one of the things is it looses The Four Horsemen uh one of the most enduring images from The Book of Revelation these are figures Cosmic figures riding a

(51:16) white horse a red horse a black horse and a Pale Horse and the rider on The Pale Horse anyway is uh is death the others are very iously interpreted during this Vision before the last seventh seal is broken an angel instructs his companions do not damage the Earth until we have marked the Servants of our god with a seal on their foreheads so then John as that's happening as the angels are doing that John hears the number of those Servants of God who were having seals put on their foreheads and they are numbered

(52:01) 144,000 sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel from the tribe of Judah 12,000 sealed from the tribe of Reuben 12,000 sealed from the tribe of GAD 12,000 sealed from the tribe of naftali 12,000 sealed and so on all all 12 are listed off and so the implication again is that um the people that are being sealed are just 44,000 uh from the tribes of Israel um that number becomes very important um and indeed it's in the in the uh black spiritual uh traditional uh song When the Saints Go Marching In uh the song goes oh Lord I want to be in

(52:48) that number they want to be one of 144,000 When the Saints Go Marching In to the New Jerusalem at the end of the Book of Revelation so fundamentalists have frequently read this number very literally and have maybe well some of them have proposed that the total number of humans in all of history that will be saved uh is only going to be 144,000 and uh this is something that the Jehovah's Witnesses especially in the early 20th century um very literally um had as one of their doctrines which became a little problematic when they got more than 144,000 members um as

(53:29) their Church continued to grow um nevertheless even though they're taking that number very literally they are simultaneously not um taking literally the fact that 12,000 are coming from the tribe of for example naph Tali which nobody um nobody in the jov's witnesses is from that tribe because we they're all Gentiles in other words they're not members of uh of the the tribes of Israel anyway the text itself doesn't support um this interpretation because immediately after hearing that 144,000 Israelites are

(54:10) sealed is hearing the angel saying that then John turns and looks and he says after this I looked and there was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation from all the tribes and peoples and languages standing Before the Throne and before the land robed in white with palm branches in their hands and they cried out in a loud voice saying salvation Belongs To Our God who is Seated on the throne and to the lamb so rather than having an exclusive religion that is going to be made up of only uh 144,000 saved

(54:48) Israelites it's a countless multitude who saved this is a um a scripture that supports this Universal list idea or it can be used to support a Universalist conception so there's a countless multitude uh that are saved in they're from every every nation so John the Revelator is attempting to console members of the Christian Community his people who are living on the margins of the Roman Empire facing persecution and really the heart of his vision is about overturning forces of Oppression in the unjust world that he lived in we still live in a world that is filled

(55:31) with Injustice so um those injustices are symbolically represented in the text in the Visions by a series of terrible beasts uh beginning with and led by a seven headed dragon uh the dragon appears with a woman another Cosmic figure in the heart of the text um this portion where John is envisioning seven spiritual or Cosmic figures so we read in Revelation 12 a great portant appeared in the heaven a woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 Stars she was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs in the

(56:21) agony of giving birth then another portant appeared in heaven a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and seven diadems on those heads his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the Earth then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to deliver a child so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born and she gave birth to a son a male child who was to rule all of the nations with a scepter of iron but her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his his throne and the woman fled Into the Wilderness

(57:00) where she has a place prepared by God so that she can be nourished for 1,260 days so um again this idea is that the time frame is is short um and and John is interweaving in um some his own kind of cosmic math that is one of the reasons why people re jiggle the math to try to make it work out to their time their day and time uh anyway since the child here uh seems to symbolize Christ and we'll see that later in the text that it's really is Christ the woman is sometimes understood then as Mary the mother of Jesus um but because we don't have any story of Mary the mother of Jesus

(57:43) fleeing Into the Wilderness uh and she certainly the historic Mary would have been long dead by the time of uh John the Revelator is around this Cosmic woman is uh sometimes seen as the church so that's another interpretation uh it's open to interpretation whoever the woman is um John the Revelator is explicit in the text that the dragon is Satan and he connects the ancient serpent as he says uh from The Book of Genesis from the story of the Garden of Eden he connects also the the Satan which is the word for

(58:23) accuser in Hebrew from The Book of Job and he connects the cosmic devil um originally different characters we've had a um whole lecture a brief bio of the devil that explains uh how all of these different characters are woven together by the end of the second temple period in early Christianity to create um this Cosmic idea of the cosmic devil Satan so we read in Revelation chapter 7 or following on what we were just reading a war broke out in heaven Michael and his angels fought against the dragon the dragon and his angels fought back but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them

(59:10) in heaven the Great Dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan the deceiver of the whole world he was thrown down to the Earth and his angels were thrown down with him uh I'm missing something there let's see anyway the Satan or the accuser um oh anyway so he's he's Satan is thrown out and so then the text I'm missing a little part of it a middle slide here but we'll just conclude that reading Rejoice then you heavens and those who dwell in them but woe to the earth and the Sea for the devil has come down to you with great wrath because he knows that his time is

(59:56) short short so the Satan the accuser as presented in the Book of Job who is nothing like a cosmic jevil he was able to become part I'm sorry he was able to be part of the Heavenly Court somebody that God says Where Have You Been and he's saying I've been looking around God says have you noticed my servant job and so on he makes a a bet with uh with the Satan in John's Vision however um he's cast out of the Heavenly Court after the woman gives birth to her male child so presumably after um the time of

(1:00:34) Jesus uh in this new kind of Christian era and so Satan is no longer able to be in the um in the heavens and if Injustice what John is sort of saying here I think is if injustices on earth now seem worse than ever but that's only because Satan uh knows that the end of Injustice is so close so he is not allowed to be in heaven he's here on Earth but his wrath is so great because he knows that this is the end times there's only a few years left so um the dragon is only the first of these Cosmic beasts and he gives his throne and his great Authority as John

(1:01:14) says to a beast that rises out of the sea with seven heads and 10 crowns this next Beast was allowed to wage war on the Saints so on the early Christian Christians and to conquer them it was given authority over every tribe and people and language and N Nation all of the inhabitants of the earth will worship it everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the Book of Life uh of the Lamb that was slaughtered so for John and his audience the Saints the early Christians who were facing persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire the clear font of

(1:01:53) all oppression is the Roman Empire that needs to be overthrown and almost certainly we're seeing Rome in this Beast as we'll see with the further imagery and connections so the beast's ex identification with the Roman Empire becomes even more clear when another Beast comes so after the dragon and this first Beast that comes from the sea now there's a beast that rises out of the earth it has two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon it exercises all of the authority of the first beast beast on its behalf so this new Beast

(1:02:31) exercises the authority of the Roman Empire and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first Beast the Roman Empire also it causes all both small and great both rich and poor both free and slave to be given a brand on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the brand that is is the name of the Beast or the number for its name this is call this calls for wisdom okay he's telling think now I'm going to give you a code so this calls for wisdom let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the Beast for it is the number

(1:03:15) for a person so it's a number which is the same as a name it's number is 666 so as readers in the first century we're able to easily calculate and people have calculated uh up until the present if you take the name Nero Caesar naron kaisar in Greek or neuron Kaiser in Hebrew if you take all of those Hebrew letters which are have numerical equivalents the same way that you know the Roman numerals the the letter i is A1 the letter uh V is five the letter X is 10 in the same exact way if you take you know NR w n neuron qsr

(1:04:04) in Hebrew and you take the um uh numerical equivalents 50 + 200 + 6 plus 50 + 100 + 60 + 200 the total equals 666 so it's pretty clear um this is not a very hidden thing what he's talking about here is the Roman Emperor Nero so Nero was the final emperor of the Roman Empire's founding Dynasty the Julio claudian Dynasty Roman sources tell us that he scapegoated Christians for the great fire of Rome in the year 64 that destroyed more than 70,000 I'm sorry 70% of uh the buildings in Rome um and many Romans um blamed Nero for doing it there's the myth that Nero fiddled while

(1:04:57) Rome burned there fiddles hadn't been invented yet so that's definitely a myth nevertheless um um in order to uh put the blame someplace else Nero scapegoated Christians for the fire and afterwards organized what may have been the first local persecutions of Christians in the city of Rome itself was not an empire-wide persecution um Nero was very unpopular with the senator Al Elite and when a couple selors started a rebellion and tried him in absentia and uh tried to uh take the throne from him uh Nero

(1:05:37) actually committed suicide in the face of that uh Rebellion so although um our historical sources are very viciously partisan against Nero so we can't we have to read them with that anti- neonian partisanship um in mind he may have been very unpopular certainly with a bunch of people he must have been popular with other people because in the years after um including immediately after his death um three different individuals LED uprisings claiming to be Nero so he was dead but they didn't have his body and so we would go to somebody would say I'm Nero and they'd raise a popular

(1:06:22) following to try to overthrow uh whoever is Emperor at the time that they're doing that so there are pseudo neros um and after several of those um uh actual rebellions of people claiming to be Nero there became also a belief that Nero had been Spirited Away and at some point he would be reborn by the by the gods or something and according even to Augustine uh writing so many centuries later the belief among um superstitious p in Romans that Nero would someday uh be reborn and would come back sort of like King Arthur will come back and save save England and needs to do it soon

(1:07:07) because Britain's in trouble anyway so the um you know there's still a little Wonder um uh that that the idea of Nero is still um animating uh an apocalyptic like like John of Patmos so here's this guy who who uh was a great persecutor of the Christians who um many people foresee as coming back um this is worked into uh the visions of the of the Roman Empire and the beasts um the seven-headed Beast the one that the devil had given all authority to the dragon had given authority to uh that I've been identifying with the Roman Empire is further revealed by John the Revelator

(1:07:54) to be uh identified with the Roman Empire by its association with one more great Cosmic figure uh the great who John calls Babylon the great the mother of and of Earth's Abominations so although um the great is given the name of ancient judah's conqueror so Babylon the Babylonian Empire is what uh destroyed uh the first temple conquered Jerusalem took the Exiles to Babylon nevertheless um they're not talking about contemporary Babylon this is a code name uh that John is using for imagery in John's present the giveaway um for sure comes uh when the angel tells John that

(1:08:45) the great  um who's sitting on the Beast with the seven heads uh we hear that those heads are actually Seven Mountains on which the woman is seated so the ancient city of Rome was famously founded on Seven Hills of which um two of the Hills at least are still very famous the capitaline hill which gives us the name capital and the Palatine Hill which gives us the name Palace so those are the two of the Seven Hills of ancient Rome so the is sitting on Seven Mountains the angel predicts that the lamb Christ will soon within just a few years of John's writing overthrow the

(1:09:32) Roman Empire um something that did not happen but in fact actually very unexpectedly uh many centuries later Christianity do uh uh overthrow the Roman Empire um and with all of the resulting history that has happened since then it's not something that John envisioned or at least he didn't Envision in that that way he thought it would happen very much sooner um Rome's envisioned fall I mean he also thought it would H lead immediately to the end of the world Rome's Invision fall is accompanied by Heavenly rejoicing so an angel with a mighty voice cries Fallen Fallen is

(1:10:16) Babylon the great we read in Revelation 18 then I heard another voice from Heaven saying come out of her come out of Rome my people people so that you do not take part in her sins so that you not share in her plagues for her sins are heaped high as heaven and God has remembered her iniquities render to her as she has herself rendered and repay her double for her Deeds mix a double dose for her in the cup she mixed there a quotation from Jesus Render unto Caesar as uh you know what is Caesar so anyway that's maybe maybe quoting that in there or play on that so one of the

(1:10:59) ways that the Roman Empire Justified itself was by claiming to bring an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity to the Known World this the PX Romana so John here ultimately and Jesus I think as well had done ultimately rejects this piece as unjust since it is built by Roman military violence it's built by the threat of military violence and the oppression of subject peoples including uh the Christians who were facing persecution including uh the Jewish people who had several rebellions and saw for example their Temple destroyed for John the Revelator the answer and

(1:11:44) early Christians the answer is God's kingdom is the only just Kingdom not not the temporal Kingdom of this world the Empire of Rome so the text continues um we getting towards now the final battle against all of these Cosmic injustices the dragon has gathered uh all of these uh beasts that represent the Roman Empire um both the Empire itself Nero and Rome um and the dragon also gathers Wicked Kings to Armageddon Rome's fall is accompanied by this final battle where the forces of righteousness are led by another Cosmic figure the rider on the white

(1:12:29) horse in Revelation 19 we read then I saw heaven opened and there was a white horse its Rider is called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and wages War his eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself he's clothed with a robe dipped in Blood and he name is called the word of God the logos and AR the armies of Heaven wearing fine linen white and pure were following him on white horses from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to

(1:13:11) strike down the Nations and he will rule them with a scepter of iron he will tread The Wine Press of Fury of the wrath of God the almighty on his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed King of Kings Lord of lords okay so we'd already heard that the male child that the cosmic uh woman that was crowned uh robed with the sun and so forth that she that fled Into the Wilderness that she was giving birth to that that uh child was to rule the nations with the scepter of iron and now he's emerged again here to rule the

(1:13:48) nations with a scepter of iron riding on the White Horse and he returns and he's given names you know there's one that no one knows except him but the and God the others are faithful True Word of God King of Kings Lord of lords so that makes it clear that we are in a Christian text here envisioning Christ but this battle um that takes place is very clearly not a literal conventional battle since the sword that Christ wields comes out of his mouth that is the weapon that's going to overthrow the Empire and all injustices

(1:14:28) is the gospel the good news uh of Jesus so after Satan's final overthrow and the Judgment of the Dead The Book of Revelation finally envisions the world without Injustice there'll be a new Earth a new Heaven A New Jerusalem so we read in Revelation 21 then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away and the sea was no more and I saw the holy city the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband and I heard a loud voice from

(1:15:11) the throne saying see the home of God is among Mortals he will dwell with them they will be his peoples and God himself will be with them and be their God he will wipe every tear from their eyes death will be no more mourning and crying and pain will be no more for the first things have passed away so this is this Cosmic um new world that um is at the heart of um apocalypticism so finally John shares a vision of the New Jerusalem glowing with Divine Radiance it has no Temple because uh God is its Temple it has the glory of God and Radiance like a very rare Jewel like

(1:15:56) Jasper clear as Crystal it has a great high wall with 12 gates and at the gates are 12 angels and on the gates are inscribed the names that are the names of the 12 tribes of Israel on three East Gates on the three North Gates on the south three gates and on the west three gates and the wall of the city has 12 foundations and on them are the 12 names of the TW Apostles of the Lamb so a city but despite uh um having those kinds of conventions of a wall and Gates the city is not cut off from the new Earth or all of the Nations because we read its Gates will never be shut by day

(1:16:40) and there will be no night there people will bring into it the glory and the honor of the Nations so everybody is in and out is is not the walls that divide their Gates that open um these are just a couple beautiful medieval images of it we've been using some of these uh on the left images from medieval Spanish apocalypses and uh I think the right one is a map of the um medieval map of the New Jerusalem as as seen in a a probably a French manuscript so although Revelation has been misread and continues to be res misread in my view by people who imagine that's predicting

(1:17:24) events in their lives in the present um and they're doing this because of what I call Chronos centrism the same reason why um John the Revelator and all apocalyptic ists who are writing apocalyptic texts are writing it believing that the end will come in their own time is because everyone thinks of their time as being Central that's their own perspective they have a chronocentric personal uh it's like egocentric a chronocentric perspective of their own time you know when um when doctor who goes around in

(1:18:01) time he often visits you know England in the 1970s or 80s because that's where um the audience was or now nowadays visiting England in the in the 2020s uh and so on the Star Trek they often visit they recently um visited Toronto Toronto in the 2020s because the the show is being filmed in Toronto so anyway that's the the same way um the same way that the authors are writing about their own times so too the readers think that they're writing about their own times because we are all chronocentric in that way nevertheless despite that error um and that comes

(1:18:39) with apocalyptic literalism the text Vision I think is primarily the theological when we read these Visions so rather than predicting literal events like a battle that has a nuclear war or something like that John is describing a vis Vision that is informed by his own sort of dualistic worldview of a cosmic battle between evil and good we're evil and suffering will all one day his view very soon be vanquished John's message to first century Christians was to separate themselves from The Temptations of Roman

(1:19:19) society and to try to form a community that was truly just and he shares um visions of what he thinks that Community will look like um when it would happen and also explains that the transformation you know has to be accompanied not by it has to be accomplished not by an armed Revolution but by spreading the word by spreading the gospel uh message and that even more so than Divine violence for even the uh the battle led by Christ is fought with the word not uh not with Divine violence U and so that's my take on uh

(1:20:03) the book of the apocalypse and um how it could be read if we looked at it a little differently let me get a glass of water as Leandra is giving me um these uh your questions so I want to thank um Y2K vaporware uh who it says would love to see uh lectures from you on Eastern Orthodoxy and traditions of the Eastern Orthodox okay that's interesting U it's a good thing to explore darl Scott said uh thank you and thank you uh to Vineyard worker and thank you also for your support uh Dan Howard Brian Lane asks um do we know

(1:20:51) much about the reasoning for including uh Revelation in the early Cannon so I think at a certain point um um some of the church fathers did think that it's written by uh John the Apostle and so I think that because of that you know there so I'm saying that there's disputes about it and some of the some of them are suggesting that it wasn't um they're saying that because other people think it is and so uh I think that that's the reason probably that it makes it in so is early um it's written in the first century so earlier

(1:21:28) texts usually get more priority um and it's also um it also had the potential of being um Apostolic and so those two things um helped get you in and so because uh the latter of that which was in question it did make it in just like the way the U epistle to the Hebrews made it in not because it claims to be by Paul but because some people thought it was by Paul or argued that it was by Paul even though uh it's not uh Winston Barz says um what areas in the Book of Revelation are influenced by intertestamental literature so it's very influenced by it

(1:22:13) um you can see you know like as I was starting to even read some of those um descriptions of the throne I was also raing a little of the descriptions of Jerusalem and we're talking about it being um you they're talking about like like being like of Amber and all of these different jewels and and and fire and all of all all those kind of things if you remember um descriptions I read out of the books of Enoch you know this kind of um glittery uh gemstone like fiery like you know that kind of imagery for Heavenly stuff is is very much like all

(1:22:50) the rest of those kind of Visions in intertestamental literature um same thing um um being taken up in the spirit and shown these Visions by angels and being able to ask questions of the angels we also saw that in in other inter testamental books like Enoch so it's it's very much um influenced by those that that genre of which it is um fully a part and so that genre had existed for centuries before um John's apocalypse John is simply just a very good example of one of these apocalypses um Raymond Ortiz says was Joseph Smith

(1:23:28) uh the founder of Mormonism an a literalist apocalyptic literalist and did he believed the world would end in his lifetime yes so um especially early on when um Joseph Smith was founding the restoration tradition the Latter-Day Saint tradition um um one of the reasons why it's called Latter-Day Saints is that they are the Saints like we were talking about uh that John the Revelator here is calling the early Christians the Saints but these are now the saints that are in the latter days right before the end of the world and so um the latterday

(1:24:04) Saints um initially believed that uh that the end of the world is going to happen in the 1830s um and they want to know where the New Jerusalem is going to be and they decide it's going to be in Missouri and so they um want to move and make a settlement and start building the New Jerusalem in the city of Zion um in Independence Missouri although um they don't get along with their neighbors there and they get kicked out and so they don't get to stay there but uh but that's what they're trying to do and they and they think uh very much that

(1:24:40) it's going to happen just within a few years and then later as it doesn't happen um jph Smith extends out the time he thinks well it's still going to happen you know very soon but maybe maybe in 20 30 years from now um and so from some of his pronouncements um people in the Mormon Church especially believed that uh that the end of the world would have to happen by like 1891 and so that's um because they were at that point facing um very serious persecution by the US federal government that was trying to eliminate the illegal

(1:25:16) practice of polygamy um uh the president of the Mormon church at the time Wilfred Woodruff issued a declaration where he pretended did that they were giving it up he told everybody and we're not doing it anymore but that was a in fact a lie but he did that to um uh he did that to put the pressure off because he knew the world was going to end within a year or so so it didn't matter they just needed to get rid of that pressure for a little bit of time because the world was right about to end and of course it didn't so Kerman uh Wingfield

(1:25:46) says why not destroy shaton Satan and getting over with knowing how much uh turmoil he would cause in the future yeah so um so yeah there is like a you know there are allot kinds of um reasons why uh the cosmic answer you know to the um the of the the of of a to the problem of evil this um this dualism of having a cosmic Satan that where it's necessary to uh eventually fight him off so that we can get finally to the just world that has has no uh in Injustice um why why does that why do we have to wait so long for that then that would be you know again one of the

(1:26:32) counter arguments to why um that answer to the problem of evil doesn't always satisfying um so there would have to be you know somebody have to make if if asked they'd have to make up an apologetic answer to why that would be uh Mr Randy Thor thank you for your support um we'll get to your question shortly um darl Scott uh how did did Rapture the idea of the Rapture become so widespread so quickly so um U the the guy who was credited with inventing it was also uh popularized um kind of a new type of millennialism or apocalypticism uh that was about dispensationalism and so by

(1:27:15) breaking um Biblical history to our own present day Christian history into various dispensations that became a very just a very popular idea and it became um adopted into especially Evangelical Christianity where it just you know has spread to the present and so I think that um I mean I think the reason why uh that it's uh the the Left Behind series you know had such a big audience is because that that's just the general Evangelical understanding for um interpreting Revelation so it um it it was a it was connected with an apocalyptic

(1:27:59) calculations and fervor at the time um and there was a lot of apocalyptic further I mentioned the Mormons there's other there were other groups that were um uh doing the calculations and thinking that the end of the world was going to happen uh also in the 1840s the millerites that ultimately uh you know gave birth to the uh Jehovah's Witnesses the Adventists and so forth so the these it's just became popular during that round of um of the apocalypticism and when that and then when the next people calculated it again they continue to um use those

(1:28:37) ideas uh leonberg what are the one or two top most simple responses uh to express that Revelation should not be used to refer to the last days or a second uh coming yet to come um well so my you know my simplest one is that the author clearly believed that it would happen in his own time uh because he's talking about um you know All the Troubles in his own day it's it's entirely he's talking to the people in his own time the seven churches and he's talking about uh the oppressor of his time Rome um and it's

(1:29:23) not I mean that the simple that would be one way of saying it and the second way is that all all apocalyptic prophets are always talking about their own time they're they're not talking about a far future time and so that's just consistent when you look at all of these apocalypses they're referring to um the time period when uh when the author himself is writing and we did a I I didn't go through the calculations here but we have a lecture on on the book of Daniel as Pious fraud where we go through how the author of Daniel is re is really expecting um the end of the

(1:30:02) world to happen within just a few years uh of of Antiochus the fourth Epiphany Reign um and yet obviously uh it gets recalculated again and again so I guess those would be my my two simplest it's still maybe not simple enough um part of the problem with the nuanced way we approach scripture is you have to it doesn't it doesn't isn't just about simple black and white readings and that kind of thing it's uh requires a lot of um you know background and context uh K Tempest Bradford asks do you have a sense of why the idea of

(1:30:39) symbology or understanding of symbols waned in the west and thus the way people read like books like Revelation changed so I think that the u sense of this the reason for it is is kind of twofold so um it happens with um the democratization ironically I think of of literacy and writing and especially of the Bible and so uh in Antiquity in the Middle Ages scripture was primarily the province of you know a highly trained scribal class the the clerics um who were also you often having to read in a language different from the language

(1:31:29) they spoke they might have been speaking uh you know medieval French medieval Middle English or something like that and then they're reading and writing in Latin you know and so it is a highly technical thing to do and so then you're also trained um in The Fairly sophisticated um um medieval and ancient uh interpretation of texts however when um when the printing press gets invented uh simultaneously there is a um a rupture in Western Christianity where uh the Reformation um insists that uh the Bible has to be the first focus of the

(1:32:12) religion and simultaneously it's translated into the vernacular languages that people actually speak and it's uh printed in mass and then given to people directly so just regular people now have it without any intermediary a text now they have in front of themselves a text uh that is very ancient very alien that they are not equipped at all to interpret and they read it um quite naturally very literally uh and and very erroneously um and so I think that that's a huge part of it and then um on top of that uh the um West really

(1:32:52) develops the modern academic discipline of history and so um and and starts to fetishize history and starts to think of uh of history as true when they say is that a true story they mean did that historically happen as opposed to um truth being equated with something meaningful is that a true story does it tell a lesson that's true maybe it would be another way we phrase it um but we we by default when we ask is that a true story we're talking about historicity did it actually happen so I think that um uh the ironically good thing of

(1:33:29) democratizing literacy and scripture led to um a collapse in uh responsible use of scripture and then two um a fetishizing of History um made people uh think you know think that texts were literally historic when they are not or have historicity when they don't um Mr Randy Thor asks uh does the multiple mentions of the 12 tribes suggests that the Book of origal Revelations was originally a Jewish apocalyptic text that was then redacted by the author um I don't think so although um although the author is presumably steeped in lots of apocalypses that go before it that are

(1:34:22) um that are Jewish you know and so certainly um John the Revelator is very aware of the Apocalypse that I mentioned uh from the Hebrew Bible The Book of Daniel which uh has lots of the same kind of uh visions and things like that and then some of those are even updated and brought into Revelation so um the fact that uh that there is already um in the Jesus movement very early on this idea um that Jesus symbolically calls 12 of the Apostles uh to group make this group of 12 who symbolically represent kind of a

(1:35:05) new Israel um you know the because that's so early intertwined um talking a lot about the 12 tribes of Israel I think is very very natural in early Christianity because the they're already symbolically equating um Christianity as kind of New Israel symbolically led by 12 Apostles in the same way that there had been an ancient Israel that um May maybe was led by 12 Elders of 12 tribes so I don't think it is a Jewish text that was redacted into becoming a Christian text although that does happen as well there are other texts we have that have have

(1:35:44) Jewish sources that become christianized and then we also have cases where um there are regular Pagan philosophical sources that Christians rewrite as if um as if Jesus had said those and so on uh Migel Angel says what why are Revelation and similar books written in Visions riddles and codes and not explained uh directly were they seen as poetry were they uh avoiding censorship or something else um so so so they're definitely there's poetry there and so much of the uh so a lot of times especially when we're getting around the Thrones and uh

(1:36:29) and Elders or Angels or people are singing that those are actually composed in um uh as as kind of a poem uh I I identified for you you know two places where there are riddles and in in both of those cases the author of Revelation John says hey now this is going to take some wisdom which is his s uh his idea that you need to put your your um thinking cap on and decode uh the number for the name 666 so you're going to have to do the math on that one to figure out what he means and same thing here here think

(1:37:08) about it here I'm calling Babylon the  of Babylon uh here's wisdom now I'm giving you a code she's actually sitting on Seven Hills who am I talking about you know so it's a riddle but it's not really a um it's not a hard riddle anyway or code um th in those cases you know there might be an idea that um you don't want Roman authorities to have additional um fuel as they're persecuting Christians uh you don't want them to say oh here here the Christians have as one of their main holy texts uh a book that is absolutely directly um calling the city of Rome you know the

(1:37:54) great  uh iic calling the one of the past Emperors uh an an you know he doesn't say Antichrist but anyway one of the the one of the agents calling him an agent of uh of the devil um so maybe you don't want to have that so maybe it is avoiding um a a direct um direct fuel to fuel the persecution um in terms of uh wanting to have it in symbols and visions um I think that there's in this time period in the whole second temple period there is this um um growing sense of awe of the Divine and imagining um the Eternal realm as being very um unimaginable and very

(1:38:42) otherworldly and so it's just um visioned in these kinds of you know very very highly symbolic ways and um if I feel like that that is also U Just Happening uh also in you know in contemporary um you know contemporary Pagan thoughts I mean I know that um uh Plato sometimes is describing uh describing Cosmic operations by by creating myths and Parables and things like that as well in order to in order to get you to think and so um um in part uh the author of Revelation you know John Patmos here is not in any sense

(1:39:29) creating this genre um it's simply it's a shre that has been growing for many centuries and kind of building on it and so once the ball sort of gets rolling they become more and more elaborated it becomes a um U becomes an established genre um uh 322 messenger says which came first the Resurrection story or the conception story um so in in Christianity the resurrection of Jesus story uh is older than the story of Jesus Immaculate Conception so um Christians already very early after Jesus death um have testimonies that Jesus has been raised

(1:40:20) and is at the right hand of God um and there's also ideas um early testimonies that um first the disciples have seen Jesus in visions and then and then there's claims that they've seen him resurrected and that's also happening very very early uh the idea that um that does not immediately mean that all of these early Christians see Jesus as God uh in any way and so many of them will have an idea that Jesus is um an adoptionist IDE aidea that Jesus uh was a a great prophet who has been uh through his um sacrifice his

(1:41:01) perfect life and sacrifice he has been perfected and adopted as the Son of God so they're adoptionist and so that would have been very present and so um a concept the conception story that um that Jesus uh um that Mary conceived you know by the Holy Spirit comes much later than that and it's a an apologetic answer to people who let's say are adoptionist this is the um the Proto Orthodox way of saying no uh Jesus is um is fully Divine in addition to being fully human so um John Phelps I heard uh about a big Cube building in Jerusalem where all the people on Earth were living do you know anything that concept where

(1:41:49) that comes from so that is the um that is the apocalypse that's in the Book of Ezekiel so that is another even earlier apocalypse so Ezekiel is actually a um a prophet that is around the time of the Babylonian captivity who is envisioning um a New Jerusalem and a new Temple and there's a big Cube um Temple and so that's that's where that is coming from so that's a very early Apocalypse in the Book of Ezekiel um WM Consulting Service uh says Deuteronomy uh 1810 through2 speaks about interpreting Omens does the Book of Revelation or any Vision fall under the categories of

(1:42:35) Omens so we want to read in uh Deuteronomy it says no one shall be found among you who makes a son or a daughter pass through fire practices divination or is a souser or an augur or a sorcerer or one who casts spells or consults with ghosts or visions or seeks oracles from the dead whoever does these things is abhor to the Lord okay so so that is um those are you know different uh spiritual practices that for example are common in Roman traditional religion or Canaanite traditional religion so um before the Romans would go into battle they would

(1:43:13) you do auguy through Reading entrails of uh of of geese or watching birds fly there's all kinds of different kinds of augury uh casting spells Consulting Spirits you know seances that kind of thing this doesn't count as that no so having a um having a revelation where an angel of the Lord um takes you up in the spirit and shows you a vision of something that's not an omen this is allowed and so the um all of the apocalyptic prophets of second temple Judaism and early Christianity um are are having these

(1:43:52) kind of visionary experiences is that um are also a spiritual practice that uh doesn't count as Omens under the deuteronomic uh prohibition Tyson how do um Christian fundamentalists explain uh the unrealized prophecies in Daniel so they say that that's not what it's referring to at all so they'll say you you're saying that this very clearly when I decode it that this is referring to Antiochus I 4th epiphanies um they prefer to you know re jiggle the whole thing so that so that the prophecies are relating if possible you know to the present day and not to um certainly not

(1:44:35) anyway to uh the makabe period so um Everybody apocalyptic is always um always simply reinterpret the failed apocalyptic Pro prophecies um Ari writer says do you think John is is just pulling from Old Testament prophecies and older Mesopotamian myths so so John is updating Bunches of Visions from earlier prophecies including from the Old Testament from Daniel so some of these things are there and again Daniel's prophecies didn't didn't work you know and so apocalyptic you know Continue to update those things there's other um uh there's other Christian attempts

(1:45:23) to do the same same thing uh the prophecy of the son of man appearing in the clouds that occurs in the little apocalypse from the gospel of Mark is also an update of Daniel trying to um trying to make it so that what Daniel's prophecy was about was not about something that happened in pseudo Daniel's Day In the mcabe period instead it's happening right now in when the go the author of Mark is writing right when the Romans are destroying Jerusalem uh and so in that same way um you know it's been another couple decades um Jerusalem's long destroyed now there's a pers persecution of the Christians John

(1:45:59) the Revelator is now also drawing upon um kind of those uh Old Testament prophecies and there may be um other imagery that is floating around that could have come from you know other Canaanite or or madanan sources okay well that's it ready to close don't forget to like and share the video subscribe to the channel if you're able we appreciate donations we appreciate thank you everybody who's been supporting us tonight you can also do that directly at our website Centerplace doca donate you know everybody of your support helps us bring more lectures to you next week we're going to talk about

(1:46:44) the Muslim view of Jesus thank you and thanks to everybody uh who's been with us