Revelation prophecy; the futility of date-setting

Originally posted by defcon5

Originally posted by DISRAELI
the way you're reading the symbols at the moment is that the United States is potentially putting Christians to death for refusing to worship the Papacy.

I never said that, and I don't believe that the bible says this either.

To be more accurate,I should have written "amounts to saying that".
That is, in Revelation ch13 the second beast puts Christians to death for refusing to worship the first beast.
If you identify the first beast as the Papacy and the second beast as the United States, those substitutions produce the result I described.

Originally posted by defcon5
I think that the problem here is that you're taking this too literally.

Most of the time, my general approach to this book Revelation is nowhere near literal enough to satisfy a lot of the enthusiasts.
However, the picture you're painting doesn't come close enough to the graphic description of ch13 to make me feel that they correspond.
Your view of the key figures doesn't fit my view of the relationship between them

reply to post by defcon5
I remember getting "fingerprinted" in the first grade,the teachers and an over friendly cop lined us all up and told us we were going somewhere to have fun and then we were all led down the hall single file and into a room to do what we were told was "fingerpainting"

reply to post by blocula

reply to post by defcon5
While wondering about america and its tax system (legalized extortion,imo) i was thinking about how people use to say "the sun never sets on the british empire" and it still never sets on their empire, because i believe they are the ones who actually own and control america and the rest of the world.I think the american revolutionary war 1775-83 was designed and started by an elite group,who wanted to make overt control of america covert,by creating situations where open rebellion would occur,such as the boston massacre.Which resulted in control being handed over to a group of british plants,who served britain while appearing to serve the united states...

reply to post by blocula

reply to post by defcon5
Every civilization who ever attained some sort of world domination,are all definitely inter-connected and they can be traced backwards in time and history down through the ages,eventually leading to? the royal bloodline elites? the ancient egyptians? the ancient babylonians? the ancient sumerians? the atlanteans? with whom and from where does all this actually originate? where does it end,meaning where does is begin? the annunaki?

reply to post by blocula

Originally posted by defcon5
reply to post by blocula

 

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

That's because each ingested the system of the one preceding it.

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

Like america more or less did with nazi germany? such as operation peperclip and the nazi scientists made exempt from punishment,how nasa/nazi is no coincidence,american state police dressed too similarly to the nazi ss,america having a large percentage of its own people in prison,more than any other country in the world,america imposing its iron will and military power wherever they please, whenever they want...

reply to post by blocula

Originally posted by defcon5
Think about this for a second.
When you give up freedom to the government for security, besides the obvious, what else are you doing? Your putting your faith in your protection in your government not in your God. If that is not worshiping your government as an idol, I don't know what is. You're allowing your God given freedom to be stripped in exchange for a safer and more worldly life.

Who owns you? Own = control. In my case it's clearly the government. They give orders and i follow them, because otherwise life gets ugly. God gave orders too, and we don't follow them, because we're successfully distracted by both government and society.

It's very disheartening to see how quickly society falls into tune with the state.

Originally posted by SeedofAbraham
Hosea 6:2 After two days He will revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight

Surely the traditional Christian application of this prophecy is the resurrection of Christ "on the third day".
That text is only being given an end-times application at the moment because it fits in with the current date.
In 1260, the year that Joachim of Fiore was focussing on, they would not have used it, and by the time we reach A.D. 4000 they won't be using it that way.

The problem with all these date calculations, like the 666 Gematria calculations, is that they're really starting with the intended result and then working backwards to make it all fit.

Originally posted by SeedofAbraham

Daniel 9:27 and he shall strengthen the covenant with many for one week
... does not say anything about a new treaty being signed or made by the anti-christ

On this point I agree with you, for different or additional reasons.
Covenants in the Old Testament (and surrounding cultures) were normally two-party agreements.
In the covenant between God and Israel, Israel has to be regarded as a single party.
So I do not think the verse means that he makes a multi-party covenant on one occasion.
I think it means he makes a two-party covenant on many occasions.
I also link this verse with Revelation ch17 v13, where the ten kings of the earth give their authority to the beast.
To me, these verses are talking about the same thing.
This is the ruler building up a network of subordinate allies, making covenant with each one in turn (Daniel) and accepting their allegiance (Revelation).

reply to post by SeedofAbraham

This interpretation of the ten horns is a little strained.
You had to work quite hard to provide ten.
It seems to me that the "little horn", like the much-speaking second beast in Revelation ch13, is meant to represent an individual, which works against your interpretation of it.
Obviously this line of interpretation will go flat once Obama goes out of office.

reply to post by defcon5

I'm normally willing to find symbols in quite a lot of the information found in Revelation.
I can understand symbolism in the "mortal wound", and "causing the image to speak", and the nature and placing of the "number". But I do see a need to take some aspects of it more literally, and for some reason your take on what the second beast was doing was falling, for me, on the wrong side of the dividing line. I was already in bed by the time i worked out exactly why this was.

It goes back to what I was saying to the date-calculators at the very beginning of this thread;
"Revelation is not a general, all-purpose, "prediction of the future". The prophecy in Revelation is not an end in itself, but the means to an end."
I see Revelation as a manual of encouragement for a church which is under persecution for failing to abandon the Biblical God.
That is the central question of the book; do we, or do we not, hold with the Biblical God and his Christ?.
That's the essence of the book, the reason why the book was written.

That's what I'm missing from your scenario. In your description of what the American government is doing or might be doing, I don't see an explicit demand to abandon loyalty to the Biblical God. If that demand isn't there, and people are not suffering death because of it, then we haven't got the situation that Revelation was designed to deal with.

The liberties of the American people could be ground under foot entirely, but that would not, in itself, be an attack on the Biblical God, because the liberties of the American people are not the same thing as God..
The conflict needs to be much more explicit, if it's going to match what Revelation is talking about.

reply to post by DISRAELI


relevant snip

That's what I'm missing from your scenario. In your description of what the American government is doing or might be doing, I don't see an explicit demand to abandon loyalty to the Biblical God. If that demand isn't there, and people are not suffering death because of it, then we haven't got the situation that Revelation was designed to deal with.

Americans and much of the rest of the world is steadily abandoning 'God' in favor of material things, Money, IT devices and are merely paying social lip-service to their belief in God ...
foods stamps are more real than a belief or faith that their savior (God) will provide


i find your view is glossing over the whole fabric of falling away... or abandoning 'loyaly' to the Biblical God


just my personal observation...not meant as a slam, ok?

reply to post by St Udio

But that isn't a falling away being demanded by authority, so that's where I miss the element of conflict.
Hey, how did I suddenly get to be the one insisting on literal interpretation?