Revelation Tricks You into Not Thinking it is Itself Babylon by Pointing to an Imaginary Babylon

reply to post by jmdewey60


It's obvious you are catholic braise you profess to believe in God but do not believe in the letter he sent to you the bible. Trust in your pope to lead you to your master , the son of perdition.

Cursed is the man who puts his faith in man.

reply to post by pthena

I wasn't going to mention the titles unless someone asked, but right, those are the books and anyone can buy their own copies to see where I get these ideas, and can refute the books, but good luck with that because a doctoral dissertation is basically put on trial where the author has to stand and defend his theses before the faculty members of that university who would be concerned with that area of study. Since it was able to stand up to critical scrutiny by the esteemed members of this prestigious theological college, I am in some doubt as to the members of this sub-forum of ATS to be able to build a strong case against it. Now you could say I am appealing to authority and am committing a logical fallacy, but I would propose that any argument against my premise would be based on exactly that same sort of logical fallacy.

Originally posted by pthena
reply to post by jmdewey60

Feel free to elaborate on those OT allusions.

I thought sk0rpi0n did a pretty good job on his thread Jerusalem- the whore of Babylon?

I may have to go back and look at that thread because I don't think I read the whole thing, being engaged in the Gnosticism thing when the Whore of Babylon thread was really going.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Not true:

Ireneaus talking about what Polycarp told him:

That's all rather vague, and I don't see it as an actual quote.
Now, I don't just sit here and make these things up, but I got this from The Theology of the Gospel of John (New Testament Theology), Dwight Moody Smith, so anyone is able to get a copy of that book and see if you can refute Smith (who goes into all the most ancient sources that are put to use to explain the source of these New Testament books), when he says there is no direct sort of way to link these books (John and Revelation) to the Apostle John, as in the brother of James, son of Zebedee, the John who was one of the original disciples of Jesus.

reply to post by DISRAELI

What you've done, in your over-ingenious way, is that you have created another version of the "Cretan who says all Cretans are liars" logical problem.
If Revelation is dishonest and not to be trusted on the question of Babylon, then you've got no reason to trust its own statements that "mystery Babylon" exists or is a bad thing. This completely undermines your title.

To be nit-picky, "mystery" in in the OP, and not in the title.
You have a point I suppose, where we can't have a convenient way to label Revelation if we discard its definition of the label it created itself.
What I would compare the logic to is the case of two books to the Thessalonians, where the second one says, "ignore the first letter, that one is a fake." The second letter is trying to disarm the reader concerning its legitimacy by calling into question the first letter (which I am assuming is the real one, based on other evidence, things not probably available to the average reader when the second letter appeared on the scene).
Whether Babylon is "bad" should be assessed based on how bad of a thing it was for Babylon to come over and kill the people of Jerusalem and to raze the temple to the ground and to carry off all the priesthood and royalty to Babylon to serve a heathen king.

reply to post by 547000

Mystery Babylon was Jerusalem and may possibly be Jerusalem in the future again. Revelation says it is the city where the Lord was crucified. The Old Testament calls Jerusalem a whore, and we know the Jews started practicing idolatry many times. The Talmud is the tradition of men.

And Jesus was no pacifist. He not only did not tell soldiers to repent and He was violent against money changers.

You probably are referring to Ezekiel 16, where Israel is compared to an unfaithful wife.
I would call into question Ezekiel, as it is a known fact that it is Babylonian in origin and was hotly disputed and argued over when the rabbinical council decided to include it into the canon.

Jesus told soldiers, "Do violence to no man."

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

There are also several similarities between Babylon/ the whore and Jerusalem,

What is being ignored is history.
Jerusalem was destroyed . . HELLO!!
So that means Jerusalem is no longer a factor.
That gives no reason to demonize Jerusalem since it already was thoroughly demonized in the minds of the citizens of the empire (who were not partisans of the temple already).
What was still around and of significance and deserving of being demonized (in the mind of the Babylonians) was Rome.
The biggest thing in the minds of the people at the time of the writing of Revelation was this on-going, centuries-long struggle between the East and the West, between the warring empires of the Romans, and the Parthians (aka. Babylonians).
My speculative theorizing would be that one possible explanation for Revelation was to take the Old Testament imagery of an evil empire (Babylon), and turn it around by describing Rome in those terms, to where they are now the inheritors of the label of the wicked kingdom. Then the authors of this inflammatory propaganda piece go on to bring into it, their own religious belief system (thinly veiled in OT nomenclature, not caring if it completely undermined true Christian doctrine since it was not written by Christians and only wanted to turn Christians against Rome).

reply to post by Azadok

It's obvious you are catholic braise you profess to believe in God but do not believe in the letter he sent to you the bible. Trust in your pope to lead you to your master , the son of perdition.

Cursed is the man who puts his faith in man.

Martin Luther, in his translation of the Bible, placed Revelation in the appendix.
He said, "About this book of the Revelation of John...I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic…I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it."

reply to post by jmdewey60

What is being ignored is history.
Jerusalem was destroyed . . HELLO!!
So that means Jerusalem is no longer a factor.

True. Jerusalem was destroyed.
And yet we have, in our time, another city known globally as Jerusalem.
Why???

Perhaps the new Jerusalem is the healed head wound of the beast? After all, it did suffer a deadly wound upon its previous destruction??

Did the re-establishment of A Jerusalem happen by "chance"? Or does it have prophetic significance?
The fact that we have a Jerusalem in (more or less) the same geographical area as the old Jerusalem could mean that Jerusalem is still a factor.

I have also been speculating that modern Israel is a parallel to the anti-christ.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Is the modern state of Israel a false Israel that has appeared ahead of the real Israel and is currently decieving people into thinking that it is the real Israel, as prophecized in the bible?

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Is the modern state of Israel a false Israel that has appeared ahead of the real Israel and is currently decieving people into thinking that it is the real Israel, as prophecized in the bible?

Can't we let the prophecies in the Bible tell us the dates?

Here

reply to post by NOTurTypical


The prophecies in the bible have always been a matter of speculation... for ages. There are no "dates" involved. My guess is as good as yours.

As for the "math" involved in that site you posted... anybody could make dates using the bible and some basic arithmetic....

look up : Harold Camping.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


No, biblical prophecies are absurdly precise for a reason. God promises that they are NOT up to speculation, that no prophecy is of "private interpretation". The entire purpose of prophecy is to tell us things beforehand so that when they come to pass we know they were from God because only someone who exists outside of the 4th dimension can tell us what happens in the future from us.

reply to post by jmdewey60

I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it."

I've been saying that since i came to these forums...

But no one listens to the madcat...

reply to post by NOTurTypical

No, biblical prophecies are absurdly precise for a reason. God promises that they are NOT up to speculation, that no prophecy is of "private interpretation".

They are up to speculation.
Why else do we see christians reading from the same book, but having different predictions about the future?

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


No, I'm not saying people do not ever engage in speculation. I said no prophecy is of private interpretation. Meaning, God gives prophecies specifically for a reason, not all people are in tune with God. Example; Gabriel gave Daniel the exact date the Messiah would present Himself to Israel. And most people missed his coming. Jesus even holds Israel responsible for NOT knowing "the day of their visitation".

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Example; Gabriel gave Daniel the exact date the Messiah would present Himself to Israel. And most people missed his coming.

The "exact" date depends on how you interpret other verses.

If Gabriel gave te exact date, then I demand you tell me what it is?

Can you state it by day, month and year???

reply to post by Azadok

It's obvious you are catholic

It's obvious that you are fairly new to the forum: Registered: 23-2-2012.
Obvious also that you haven't read much of Jmdewey's writings if you conclude that he has any inclination to trust the Pope.

you profess to believe in God but do not believe in the letter he sent to you the bible.

Perhaps the Bible is written, edited, collected, translated, redacted, re-edited, and compiled by men over a long period of time. That doesn't exactly fit the description of a "letter sent by God". The book of Revelation does purport to be such a letter, with horrible curses attached at the end for those who add to or subtract from it.

Cursed is the man who puts his faith in man.

Has your reading of the Bible led you to freely place curses upon others?

If so, then you have fallen for the trap of being in a pit and cursing those who you imagine as being in the pit that you imagine that you are not in. That's the very thesis of this thread by Jmdewey. Interesting!

reply to post by pthena

. . . being in a pit and cursing those who you imagine as being in the pit that you imagine that you are not in.

That makes it simple enough, and succinct.

reply to post by Akragon

I've been saying that since i came to these forums...

One thing that may be relevant to the Luther quote, the book I am reading was written in German.
Luther was German and was at least partly responsible for there being a Germany.
Instead of anyone ever refuting the Chaos and Creation book I am currently reading, the book was just never translated into English until very recently.

jmdewey60 should keep in mind that fresh, original ideas for doctoral dissertations were exhausted many, many years ago. To come up with something, an aspiring Doctor of Theology must go far afield, perhaps too far afield.

Further, ideas are not necessarily true because they appear in a dissertation, or a well-printed book with an index, bibliography, footnotes, and an introduction by a famous scholar.

I suspect our OP is smarting from the last Babylon thread.