waiting on a couple important phone calls, so figured may as well make some use of this time. i'm going to try and catalogue every error in this book, hopefully can be done before the end of the day. i'm sure a lot of folks have already disected this and nothing new to see. for me though, i always read this stuff and felt like it held some deep meaning....realizing now it's pretty plain in what it is. i'm already up to 6 errors and only on chapter 4. one thing that is interesting also , when you read revelation with the proper context, you get a chance to see it for what it really is.
these guys had died off, if i'm not mistaken john the writer of revelation was like 100 years of age, and preparing to die himself. try and get into john's mind at that time. (atleast accepting the premise any of it is real to begin with). john had seen all his people die off, he was the last one correct? ofcourse these congregations that had formed were still going...getting ready to be 2nd generation and even 3rd generation adherents. john must be looking around like damn, everybody is dead heh...well what should i do? (what everyone does when all else fails)...try to scare the living $%%t out of everyone, to keep them in order.
hence you see his flailing at the 7 congregations. and the spectacular language, used again as a scare tactic to keep people believing, once none of the original crew was left. (which was obviously imminent in 96 ce). look at revelation 2, he is already trying to aggrandise his message by putting undue importance (scare tactics, among other things) on the congregation of ephesus...then on the other 6 congregations.....why? he's aggrandising them to the point where they are now involved in the "grand climax"? these congregations were meaningless, they would be gone shortly after john's death. isn't it pretty obvious what he was doing? he was trying to scare them into not fading....why didn't god just pick a new prophet (lol spelled it proft, freudian slip) ...? would this falling back on scare tactics be the mark of someone with true faith?
he is giving them basic counsel ( all 7 congregations) same ole story...stop following riches, stop fornicatin, etc etc. and yet it's getting mixed into this "grand climax" message...was really the grand climax just a scare tactic? because john knew he was about to die and the rest were dead already? like the final move, speak the most insane grandiose things possible, to keep the congregations scared straight as long as possible.
then he's done at revelation 4. gee go figure what's next "a voice saying come on up here"......you have scared them straight, now their reward the angelic voice saying come on up here....
i'll throw this question out there, and then go back to my reading. why were these meaningless 7 congregations aggrandised to the point of being connected to the "grand climax"? these were just a bunch of meaningless people , like the rest of them. getting the same old counsel like the rest of them. up until revelation 4, revelation is really no different than any other greek book of the bible, except that john aggrandises it for what? my thought is, he knows he's dying...and there wont be anyone left to write these people letters or show up as big shepherd in chief...so he's trying to go out with a bang...sort of like a nuclear blast...even long after the explosion, the death dealing poison is still quite prevalent.