[GCFL-discuss] Revelations 6 - the 4 Horsemen of the Apocaplypse

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

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.

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.

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).

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, Black Elk
Speaks, 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.

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."

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.

Siarlys

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."
____________________________________________________________
FTD.com
Shop now and save $15 on Flowers and Gifts from FTD!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/u4MuScM2CQZY8ThQxwIGiKtNvebTysr49xoIQiXJ739T2ZcxYchJa/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gcfl.net/pipermail/gcfl-discuss/attachments/20090128/b4f15f2a/attachment.htm>