<div>Here's an interesting article <a href="http://www.equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2770387/k.BA6E/JAA666_Who_is_the_Antichrist.htm">http://www.equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2770387/k.BA6E/JAA666_Who_is_the_Antichrist.htm</a></div>
<div>~Lance<br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net">gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<div>Siarlys</div>
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<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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