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<DIV>Martin Luther recommended that the Revelation to John, as it is actually
titled, should be left out of the Bible, because it is neither reliable nor
prophetic. The conference he was addressing had already taken six books out of
the Old Testament, the books known as the Apocrypha which talk about diplomatic
relations between the Hasmonean dynasty and the Roman Senate, among other
trivia. That's why the RC has 72 books in their Bible, and Protestants have 66.
If we only had 65, we wouldn't be one digit short of our Bible forming the
number 666. Coptics have 83, including the outlandish stuff about bullies trying
to hit Jesus when he was a little boy, and dropping dead on the street, the
stuff Anne Rice used for her b-grade
I've-just-been-converted-I'm-not-into-vampires-anymore novel.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A final note on the Apocrypha: since they deal with pre-Jesus stuff, I
asked a rabbi once how they are viewed in Jewish scholarship. He replied "The
Apocrypha are... apocryphal," which basically means he puts no more reliance on
them than Luther, Calvin or Zwingli did.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But The Revelation was left in for some reason. I'm skeptical of it myself,
because Chapter 2 and 3 read like factional polemics within the early church;
John was mad at the Nicolaitanes, whatever they were, and disputed points about
Balaam and Balac with this church or that church. Who knows if G-d had anything
to do with any of it? It could have been the 1st century equivalent of the Nun
Bun (the cinammon roll in Nashville that had a passing resemblance to Mother
Teresa's face).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But moving on the Chapter 6, it has such a remarkable resemblance to the
vision of Black Elk, preserved in John G. Neihardt's classic, <EM>Black Elk
Speaks</EM>, that I think John must have been on a missionary trip to the Black
Hills some ten or twenty years before he had the vision on Patmos.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What does each horse represent? The first represents barbarian conquest.
The second represents feudal tyranny. The third represents the capitalist market
economy. The fourth represents the unsuccessful communist attempt to replace the
capitalist market economy with peace and plenty for all, resulting in even more
destruction. Unfortunately, there is not a fifth horse which would tell us what
is coming next. But the prophecy certainly implies that when Obama is elected,
he will put all the pieces back together after the destruction wreaked by the
four horses, and then Jesus will come check things out and say "Well done, thou
good and faithful servant."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>OK, now I have convinced John that indeed the Revelation is not prophetic
and should be removed from the Bible as Luther advocated. The clincher is that
line about the souls under the altar asking how long they have to wait. As C.S.
Lewis pointed out, time is no limitation on God, so upon quitting their earthly
bodies, the souls would be timeless, not waiting for further events on earth. To
God, its all one timeless NOW.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Siarlys</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>P.S. I am not really anti-Catholic, I just decline to recognize Papal
authority. I have a second cousin from Tennessee who married an RC, and he got a
job as basketball coach at Ole Miss, where I believe he still works. The first
day, another coach told him "We'll be pleased to see you at the First Baptist
Church this Sunday." When he replied "I'm Catholic," the other coach got a look
on his face like "if we knew that, you wouldn't ever have been hired."</DIV>
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