Revelation versus "2012"; The great divide

reply to post by On the Edge

I will definitely be in trouble, then, because I can't dance.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Me,too,because I can't deny Jesus Christ!

Thank you for this post. I've read many claims on this, and whenever it may seem plausible, and thn the brin up the bible, I stop reading.
No disrespect to anyone who may believe, but I'm not a very religious person, I don't go by the word of the bible.

reply to post by novemberecho

Thank you for those comments.
You don't say whether you are a "2012" believer yourself, agreeing with me that the two approaches (Bible and "2012") don't mix, or whether you believe in neither.

I never got aound to saying what I think about the prophecies and how they converge with the "2012" phenomenon.....
For one,I think much of it may be concocted to deliberately keep us from looking at other things we ought to be looking at.
(Whatever that may be?)

And two,I think we may spend too much time thinking about what happens in the future that we overlook the importance of Today!

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
~Matthew 6:34

Micah 6:8 is good advice for Today:

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

Didn't mean to sidetrack your thread,Disraeli.

There are many powers vying for control in the world,it seems. Jesus says we can know them by their fruit.

reply to post by On the Edge

I think one aspect of it is that these theories are pointing towards causes of events other than the Biblical God, and to non-Biblical outcomes.

It seems to me that the New Age movement are shooting themselves in the foot over this.
If nothing happens on the chosen date, it makes the whole movement look foolish.
Even if one of the myriad theories did come true, the best they could hope for, then most of the others would be proved wrong.
It looks to me like they've got a lose/lose situation.

reply to post by DISRAELI


I think it is just as bad for the Christians looking for a "rapture". (This is always hotly debated,but I personally believe it to be on the "last day",not some magic "get out of tribulation free" clause.)

I think many people are being lulled into false beliefs that will leave many psyches wounded and not knowing what to put faith in.

After that happens,then what? Some new belief that will take the place of them all?

reply to post by On the Edge

I certainly agree with you about the "rapture".
Revelation is a message of encouragement addressed to the church, because the church is going to need it.
Much of the enthusiasm for a quick ending comes from impatience, a reluctance to settle down for the long haul.
There seems to be an element of boredom as well, among the younger contributors, a sense that something cataclysmic would be welcome because it would make life more interesting.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Age is a part of it. Patience is a virtue that doesn't get much support these days,I don't reckon.

On the other hand,I'm old enough to be really sick of the direction things are headed also. This "waiting for the other shoe to drop" gets exhausting!

However,with what the future is looking like,I'm not in any hurry for it to get here.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Ah, apologies.
I don't exactly BELIEVE in either. Will "something big" happen "soon?" I believe so. Do I believe that it will happen because of religion/the bible? No.
But I do agree the the mixing of the two topics is a bit far-fetched for me to believe. If anything, I wouldn't doubt if the merging of the two is suggested by churches to make money.
I would like people to note: I'm not saying all churches are only out for money, but if you're an opportunist...

reply to post by novemberecho

I don't think churches are involved in mixing the two. As far as I can tell, they're largely keeping clear of the 2012 business, for reasons much the same as the ones I suggested at the beginning.

I think what is happening is that individuals get caught up in the "2012" enthusiasm in the surrounding culture, and feel there must be some kind of link with the Biblical expectations they've already learned about.

Also the other way round, from the "2012" side. I see on these forums believers in generalised "prophecies" who don't appreciate the difference between prophecies coming from a Biblical God and those that don't. They believe "prophecies" are leading them to belief in that date, so they try to involve Revelation amongst the others.

Well said DISRAELI, i agree entirely. Very separate events that can't be mixed up, no matter how they try.

What does concern me though is that some of "them" are working very hard to imitate certain incidents mentioned in the bible, if only to confuse the most of us. It's becoming a lot more important to know what is real and what is show.

reply to post by harryhaller

However, if we're looking at Revelation, some of the crucial events are simply too big to imitate.
And once they start executing Christians, the difference between reality and imitation disappears.

Talking of imitations, that's one way to understand the "2012" movement, as an imitation of Biblical eschatology.
My concern is to avert the possibility that the date turns out to be a damp squib, and the Christian faith gets associated with the fiasco in people's minds. Yes. we do have Harold Camping and the like, but 21/12/2012 is nothing to do with us.

reply to post by Anthony2

On the subject of the New World Order, let's put it this way.
One line of speculation on ATS revolves around the evolution of a dominant world-power.
Another line is about the prospect of calamitous events.
My reading of the sequence of events in Revelation is that calamities come first (represented by the plague, war, and famine of ch6) followed by the rise of the dominant world-power (represented by the Beast).
In fact I've surmised that the Beast is able to rise to power and popularity on the back of leading the world into recovery from the previous near-fatal crisis.
Twentieth-century parallels would be the popularity of Hitler and Mussolini after the chaos of previous regimes.
The Emperor Diocletian, who pulled the Roman Empire back together after it nearly collapsed in the middle of the third century, is an even better parallel, because he was a persecutor and a mini-Beast in his own right.
In New World Order theory, this sequence of collapse-and-recovery would be an orchestrated one.
As a student of history, I can see how events could work out that way, as they have done in the past, without anyone needing to plan them (but partly foreseeable because of the way humans behave)
Anyway, I do wonder how much New World Order theory is another form of non-Biblical religion- obviously based on fear of the object rather than adoration.

The unsuitability of Revelation as a source of prediction for 2012 is one aspect of the theme in the attached link;

Revelation prophecy;The futility of date-setting

While I'm attaching links, an overall survey of what Revelation does say can be found at this location;

Revelation thread index

reply to post by DISRAELI


Not saying that the New World Order is "It", but also I don't see why it wouldn't fit with the Revelation scenario. As the theorists suggest, as a would-be-but-not-yet world power it could orchestrate the catastrophes, then rise to actual power afterwards based on the promise of resolving them. Would it matter - Revelation-wise - whether or not the scenario was partly orchestrated?

I agree that it's all to easy for a theory to come to be treated like a religion - what I like to call "professor syndrome", where a person concentrates on something in depth to the exclusion of other things so that a huge amount of the rest of the world either gets lost to their awareness or appears to them to revolve around or relate to their chosen subject in some way. To list things that people do it with in science and other places would make this thread veer off into another topic, but it does appear that some people do this with the New World Order, making anything with the word "global" in it look like something more than it is. "Professor syndrome" is at its most useful when studying something that the world really does revolve around, but even there, it can reduce clarity and balance.

reply to post by Anthony2

OK, I'm willing to concede it could happen that way.
Perhaps my approach has been biased by studying history in the conventional way, and being able to find causes for most things in a combination of multiple factors, which can come together without anyone planning them.

reply to post by DISRAELI


IMHO of the "rapture" GODS timing is not our timeing . So we are living in our time, which is not GODS time. When we die and get to heaven we will be getting their in milli-seconds of each other. So I believe the "rapture" is happening as we speak.

2 Peter 3:8
But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Just saying I am no expert by any means. Blessings

reply to post by judydawg

I'm inclined to agree with you on "people who die getting to heaven at the same time".
That makes sense in terms of "time" being part of the universe God made.
(Also, according to Ephesians, we are "seated in the heavenly places" even now).

Another thread had a poll on what people were expecting from that date.
According to the report, nine of the replies were expecting something Bible/rapture related, putting that option in tenth place.
It's good that the number was not higher, if I'm right in thinking the date has no Bible connection, but the fact that some were thinking along those lines shows why the warning seemed necessary.

Previously I looked through the last ten pages of the Prophecy and 2012 forums, to see how much people were making connections between "2012" and the Bible. I could see no specific threads on the subject- which demonstrates, indirectly, how little evidence there is for the connection. "Nibiru could Wormwood" had been a casual comment on somebody else's thread.