Behold, the black horse of Revelation!, page 5

reply to post by spy66

Great questions! I'll try to answer them as best I can, as seems right to my way of thinking. If I were God, I could give you a better answer, but then again the Universe would probably spin sideways and wipe itself out of existence too.

In other words, I don't want that job. I'd rather drive a truck.

I do believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I also believe God is a spirit as opposed to flesh. So it follows in my logic that any information we receive would have to come one of two ways: either through direct spiritual contact between our spirit and God's spirit, or by a similar contact between God and another human, and them passed down through physical means.

Throughout the OT, God communicated (after the garden of Eden) through prophets. The early Hebrews were even ruled not by kings, but by prophets, who were believed to receive the will of God through their contact with Him and disseminate that will to the people. Apparently something (which I attribute to sin due to human frailty and lust) prevented God from speaking directly to each and every person.

Jesus changed all of that, and the writings of the NT appear to mark the ending of this 'chosen one' era.

It is stated many times in both the OT and the NT that God does not change. That doesn't mean He cannot listen to prayers and requests, nor that He cannot be convinced of things, but rather that His core values, the things that make Him God, do not change. Just as on this forum, one may (as I have occasionally done) change their views on a specific issue due to information and argument form another, but that does not mean their outlook on life has changed. I may love animals; but I may also shoot and kill a vicious dog that I believe is going to attack one of my children. That does not mean I suddenly hate animals, only that in that instance I had to make a decision that appeared to go against my core belief, when in fact it did not.

So if we accept that 1) the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and that 2) the core principles of God do not change, then it would follow that everything taught before Jesus is still from the same God worshiped today, and still indicative of His principles. Arguments can be made as to 'why God did this' or 'why God did that', but really, all we know is what one man wrote when he was connected to the spirit of God. faith that an omnipotent God would not allow His message to be destroyed is why I (and many others) believe the Bible is true as written.

But even if what is written is true, it is written by a man. Men tend to state things in reference to the times they live in. I am sure of John were to have been shown a Stealth Bomber, he would have described it not as an 'airplane', for no such thing was in his knowledge base, but rather as a 'hideous black bird, of huge proportions and deadly'... or something to that effect. He would have described the things he saw in ways he could understand.

We should also remember that this was a vision, not a series of thoughts that he put to parchment. A vision is more sensory-oriented than a thought, so he would have written the vision in the same way one would write about a roller coaster ride or a beautiful sunset. He would have described the information coming to him, as opposed to copying it.

So yes, I believe it is essential to understand as much as possible of the Hebrew customs and traditions as possible in order to read the writings form the same perspective in which they were written. Perhaps that is a shortcoming of the prophecy itself, but how else could the information be passed down? Cultures change over time, since men change over time. technology changes, ideas change, social arrangements change, and every time one of those change, the context under which men describe their situation changes.

Take the following hypothetical example: Imagine someone from the 1800s suddenly being transported to modern day times. He would be amazed at the man-made mountains (buildings) and moving rooms (elevators) and horseless carriages (cars) we all take for granted. He could walk up to someone and ask "Where am I?" and get the following response:

"You are on Broad Street across from the Food Stamp office. The Unemployment Office is down two blocks on the right."

Now, being totally unfamiliar with what life today is like, he could easily think he is being told the following:

"You are on a wide road, and across from you is where they make stamps out of food. There is a place where they take people's jobs away, and the right side of it only has two blocks left; the rest fell down."

You see the problem?

TheRedneck