The Book of Revelation and the Bible

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Lindis, Dec 16, 2021.

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Should the Book of Revelation be thrown out of the Bible?

  1. yes

    5 vote(s)
    19.2%
  2. no

    18 vote(s)
    69.2%
  3. no comment

    3 vote(s)
    11.5%
  1. Lindis

    Lindis Banned

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    The Book of Revelation and the Bible

    This book should be thrown out of the Bible.
     
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  2. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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  3. Lindis

    Lindis Banned

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    Not all should be thrown out.
    But the "Book of Revelation" is mad and perverse enough to be thrown out.

    What on earth is Christian about it?
     
  4. Lindis

    Lindis Banned

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    One Yes-vote so far ...
     
  5. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    How do you determine what to throw out and what not to throw out then? Who decides what's mad and perverse, and how do you draw that line? If the contents of the Bible can be out, don't you lose one of the apologetic corner stones of having morals/truths that aren't subject to personal opinion?

    There are other books that are mad and perverse, do we edit the books to not be perverse, or do we simply say that the books are mad and perverse?

    If you have some other understanding of what Christianity is (that you seem to compare Revelations to), what on earth is Christian about that understanding?
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2021
  6. Lindis

    Lindis Banned

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    In the case of that "Book of Revelation" the case is clear.
    That it must have been written by a perverse and sadistic brain.

    What do you find good about that book?
     
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  7. Pants

    Pants Well-Known Member

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    I don't think you can pick and choose with the Bible - it isn't a take out menu. You're in or you're out.
     
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  8. Swensson

    Swensson Devil's advocate

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    It is not at all clear to me. There are many other books that contain mad or perverse stuff, but we don't retroactively change them, we just say that they contain mad or perverse stuff.

    And I'm not asking you only about the case of Revelations, I'm asking you how you determine what to throw out and what not to throw out. The main reason I'm asking is to find out why you don't throw out the rest of the Bible, and for those purposes, answering only about the case of Revelations is kinda dodging the issue.

    Nothing that I can think of. Maybe if I gave it another read I could find something I thought good, but I don't think I have suggested that there is anything particularly good in it.
     
  9. Ramjet

    Ramjet Newly Registered Donor

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  10. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    Revelations 3:
    19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

    20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.


    What is mad and perverse about this? It is as Christian as it gets. If you are building a house. All along the way, it must be inspected before the next phase. The inspector will say what is good and what must be changed to meet the safety code. This goes on till the end when it is blessed for presentation. Jesus Christ is inspecting his Churchs. It is wonderful to have a Father who loves you and is mindful of you. Instruction is a salve in more than the particulars of conduct because it endures in charity. These first three chapters from John are a great blessing to the Church's then, and to us now, to overhear our Fathers voice, near to our hearts in this world filled with darkness and storm of unbelief. Heartbreak begets sincerity. And sincerity, ones betterment to Gods pleasure. But it is not so much for him as for us, as it is we in the making. If there is wickedness in the matter, it is not Gods, but ours. It is better to discard the wickedness than to ban our God. It is great to be scolded by God and pared to purity.
     
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  11. Phil

    Phil Well-Known Member

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    The prophecy of future events synchronize well with things Jesus said and Daniel predicted.
    There are references that go back to Genesis and other prophets and imagery found throughout.
    The 7 letters were very relevant to those who received them if not to us.
    It still tells us to not sin.
    Since it is a vision we can ignore some things we don't like. Feel free not to understand it all.
     
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  12. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    Its main points are that Jesus demands that a certain magic of number of believers MUST BE KILLED before he returns. When he returns he will be a harsh dictator. Then everyone will be tortured and oppressed to the point where they curse God. After a while, all lifeforms will be killed and the planet destroyed. At that time a new Earth and heaven will appear. All of the dead will be resurrected and judged according to their works. A giant 1,500 mile sided gaudy bejeweled golden cube will land on a waterless planet that doesn't have any darkness. The good souls, from the twelve tribes of Israel, will be able to enter the golden cube through one of the gates dedicated for each tribe. Hell and death will be tossed into the lake of fire along with all of the bad souls. The souls inside of the golden cube will live with all kinds of weird animals and they will get a piece of fruit per month and water from under God's throne.

    That's a great story, don't you think?

    Which part irks you? The part about the necessity of getting killed? The part about being tortured? The part about the world being destroyed? The part about there being no marriages or sex in the golden cube? The fact that there's no mention of children or Gentiles getting into the golden cube called New Jerusalem? Or is it the part about getting tossed into the lake of fire?

    Well, you get to curse God so there's that.

    edit typo
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2021
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  13. Lindis

    Lindis Banned

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    It is a terrible story.
    Un-worthy of Jesus.
    It is nothing that Jesus ever said.
    It is the fantasy of a perverse and evil brain.
     
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  14. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    It always reminds of the song South of Heaven from Slayer.


    An unforseen future nestled somewhere in time.
    Unsuspecting victims no warnings, no signs.
    Judgment day the second coming arrives.
    Before you see the light you must diiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeie!!!
     
  15. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    delete
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2021
  16. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    Actually, the book of Revelation does and excellent job of summing up the biblical fairytale. It has all of the elements to close out all of the threats in Zephaniah chapter 1 and the answer to Ezra's whine in 2 Esdras 6:55-59 (CEB) = 55 “I have said all these things before you, Lord, because you have said that you created the oldest age[a] for our sake. 56 You have said that the other nations born of Adam are nothing, that they are like spit, and you have compared their abundance to a drop from a pitcher. 57 But look now, Lord! These nations that are valued as nothing rule over us and devour us, 58 while we, your people, whom you have called your oldest offspring, your one and only child, those who are zealous for you, your dearest ones, are handed over to them. 59 If the world was created for our sake, why don’t we possess our world as an inheritance? How long will this situation last?”

    In the book of Revelation the answer to Ezra's question about how long this situation will last is given: a certain number of believers must be killed before Jesus returns (Revelation 6:9-11 CEB) = “9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar those who had been slaughtered on account of the word of God and the witness they had given. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, Holy and true Master, how long will you wait before you pass judgment? How long before you require justice for our blood, which was shed by those who live on earth?” 11 Each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to rest a little longer, until their fellow servants and brothers and sisters—who were about to be killed as they were—were finished.“

    In Zephaniah chapter 1 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=zephaniah+1&version=CEB) God promises to kill everything and everyone and to abuse people with all kinds of horrible tortures. Read it for yourself.

    So, in the book of Revelation the God character carries out his earlier promises to kill everything and everyone and to answer Ezra's whine by giving the Jews their own golden and bejeweled world, New Jerusalem, on a waterless planet that has no darkness (maybe a metaphor for sin). All of the Gentiles are excluded unless they end up as slaves to satisfy Isaiah 14:1-2 (CEB) = “14 The Lord will have compassion on Jacob, will again choose Israel, and will give them rest in their own land. Immigrants will join them, and attach themselves to the house of Jacob. 2 The peoples will take them and will bring them to their own place. The house of Israel will possess them as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land, making captives of their captors and ruling their oppressors.“

    Therefore, when you read the book of Revelation bear in mind all of the earlier promises and threats and you might see how they are answered in the book of Revelation. It is a great example of complex story-telling and essential to understanding the fairytale.
     
  17. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    Is it any less x-tian than Jesus teaching us how to be good slaves, his worship of dictatorship and his treatment of women as 2nd class citizens?

    Then you must also toss all of the prophecies from the Old Testament that revel in the claim that Jesus will slaughter Millions and destroy Earth.

    The entire text from Genesis to Revelation is a fantasy that is perverse and evil.
     
  18. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    Oh, yes they do.

    Obviously you're ignorant about the number of conferences Catholics had to determine what texts should or shouldn't be part of the "bible."

    No, it doesn't.

    Very obviously you don't understand it.

    Which part of the Greek word "tachos" confounds you?

    Revelation 1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must happen at once Greek =Τάχος = tachos.

    Revelation 22:6 Then the angel said to me, “These words are reliable and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must happen soon.” Again, we see the Greek = Τάχος = tachos.

    The Greek word Τάχος (tachos) means "quickly, without delay, soon, at once."

    Twenty centuries, two millennia or 2,000 years, however you want to call it is not "quickly, without delay, soon, at once."

    Revelation 22:10 Then he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy contained in this book, because the time is near.


    That's the last nail in the coffin. In case you just don't understand....

    “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy…”

    Unsealed prophecies happen now, soon, quickly, immediately, at once, without delay, within days, weeks or months.

    Prophecies that are "sealed" are intended to happen in the far distant future, meaning they do not begin to unfold for centuries.

    That is not my opinion or interpretation; rather that is what the texts actually say.

    Daniel 8:26 The vision of the evenings and mornings that was told to you is correct. But you should seal up the vision, for it refers to a time many days from now.”

    Daniel 12:4 “But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end.”

    Daniel 12:8 (b) So I said, “Sir, what will happen after these things?” 12:9 He said, “Go, Daniel. For these matters are closed and sealed until the time of the end.

    Isaiah 29:11 To you this entire prophetic revelation is like words in a sealed scroll. When they hand it to one who can read and say, “Read this,” he responds, “I can’t, because it is sealed.”


    These events were "sealed" because they weren't intended to happen until centuries later.

    Revelation is an unsealed prophecy and was intended to occur within the same generation or the 2nd generation, but no later than 4 generations.

    Face it chum....Your god-thing failed because there's nothing special or remarkable about him.

    He's just some guy who died, and like the restivus, he ain't ever coming back.
     
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  19. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm not wasting my time in this thread. The whole discussion has gone off topic, for one thing.

    The opening post is so short and lacks any explanation or argument that it would be deleted in many other forums.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2021
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  20. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, if you're a Jew and even then only if you're a Jew and happen to be one the 144,000.

    A lot of prophecies aren't actually prophecies, rather they're plagiarized works. You can tell by the use of Sumerian-Akkadian loan-words.

    Two words, or I guess phrases, in particular are "day of the Lord" and and "the lord of Hosts."

    Those are uniquely Sumerian. There's nothing Hebrew about them. They're taken from texts written 1,000s of years earlier and they reference a celestial phenomenon, which is more than obvious when you read the Hebrew texts:

    No doubt the Yahweh-thing and Isaiah have a thing about women:

    Isaiah 3:16 Because that daughters of Zion have been haughty, And they walk stretching out the neck, And deceiving with the eyes, Walking and mincing they go, And with their feet they make a tinkling,...

    Isaiah mistakenly equates the Yahweh-thing to the "Lord of Hosts" and the "house of Israel"....

    Isaiah 5:7 Because the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel,...


    We know Isaiah steals some of his stuff from the Ugarits....

    Isaiah 8:18 From the Lord of Hosts, who is dwelling in Mount Zion.

    The Ugaritic text which predates the Hebrew texts says Mount Zaphon.

    Most of Isaiah's diatribe is to cast aspersions on Ephraim -- the true heir of Israel -- and make Judah -- the pretender to the House of Israel-- look good.

    Isaiah 9:21 Manasseh -- Ephraim, and Ephraim -- Manasseh, Together they are against Judah, With all this not turned back hath His anger. And still His hand is stretched out!

    Anyway, Isaiah borrows heavily from Sumerian texts:


    Isaiah 13:4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, as of a great people! the noise of a tumult of the kingdoms of the nations gathered together! the Lord of Hosts is mustering the host for the battle.13:5 They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens, the Lord and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole earth.


    Isaiah 13:9 Look, the day of the Lord is coming cruel, with rage and burning anger to make the earth a desolation and to destroy its sinners. 13:10 Indeed the stars in the sky and their constellations no longer give out their light; the sun is darkened as soon as it rises, and the moon does not shine.

    Isaiah 13:13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.


    Later, he goes into more detail...

    Isaiah 24:19 The earth is completely devastated; the earth is split open; the earth is violently shaken. 24:20 The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard and it totters like a shack, for its transgression is heavy upon it, and it will fall, never to rise again.

    Others echo the same sentiments for the day of the Lord:

    Amos 8:9 "And on that day," says the Lord GOD, "I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.

    Joel 2:31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

    Zechariah 14:1 Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, And your spoil will be divided in your midst.

    Zechariah 14:6 On that day there will be no light; the sunlight and moonlight will diminish.


    They're all referencing the same event, but I don't see how Revelation is worse than that.
     
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  21. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    The biblical fairytale is loaded with psychotic stories. They all illustrate aspects of the First Commandment (Exodus 34:11-16) in action.
     
  22. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    It's truly astonishing people worship a foul being like that.
     
  23. Dirty Rotten Imbecile

    Dirty Rotten Imbecile Well-Known Member

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    The way I see it, the bible is a series of religions grafted onto one another. The original Pentateuch comes from 3-4 sources which at sometime in ancient antiquity, probably during or just after the Babylonian exile, were stitched together into one set of holy books. Then the prophets are tacked onto that, the psalms onto that etc. look how the book of Job stands out like a sore thumb from the rest.

    The same thing happened in the New Testament. The first original parchments are from 80-100 years after the historical Christ was said to have lived so these stories had a lot of time to circulate and get refined into books that effectively graft Christianity onto the trunk of the Jewish holy books. Some of the stories didn’t quite fit so they were relegated to the apocrypha. There is an evolution to how these books became what they are today.
     
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  24. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    During ancient times the biblical God was simply the series of emperors and chief priests of the dominant Middle Eastern empires. One or two were sane and the others were completely nuts. Most people need some sort of deity to make it through the day, after all, it is estimated that people have worshipped about 330,000,000 assorted deities throughout human existence. Since all deities are highly ethnocentric i character it seems silly for non-Jews and non-Arabs to worship Jewish and Arabian deities because they don't have the cultural ties to fully understand the religions. Can you imagine an Eskimo in 1920 believing in the Arabian Allah and Mohammed? Yet Christians forced primitive people to adopt the biblical fairytale about a Jewish lich who would give them eternal life.

    Religion is 100% brainwashing propaganda with no basis in reality.
     
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  25. The Wyrd of Gawd

    The Wyrd of Gawd Well-Known Member

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    I see the book of Job as a counterpoint to the Adam & Eve story. Unlike Adam & Eve, Job never abandoned his belief in his God, even when he had good reason to. The story is just a long way to illustrate the First Commandment about not worshiping other gods (Exodus 34:14). Remember, when God loves you he will beat the crap out of you. The Job story is also a counterpoint to all of the stories about the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews abandoning God and being punished for it (not an act of love in that case).

    Job and Noah are very similar characters. Noah is the only main character who did exactly as he was told to do without whining. Job was abused but he never lost his faith. In that regard he is like the family in 2 Maccabees chapter 7, who suffer horrible tortures but never renounced their faith.
    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+maccabees+7&version=CEB

    As the Jesus character said in Matthew 5:33-37, never swear an oath but let your "Yes be Yes" and your "No, No."
     

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