I was an excellent (but bored) computer programmer analyst (I say things such as this, please forgive me, not to try to elevate myself, but so that people might take me seriously with regard to my studies) who had the desire to study Bible and do ministry. We moved to Abilene and went into a masters program at ACU where I picked up Greek and some Hebrew and had a lot of training in biblical studies and interpretation. Eventually I wound up in a situation where I had a lot of time on my hands and the desire to learn more. I began to work toward reading the Scriptures in the original languages and the more I did, the more I began to see things behind the translations and understand the Scriptures better. I owe a lot to a teacher at Abilene who encouraged us to study discourse analysis. This helped me so much in interpreting Scripture. I never thought I would be able to understand Revelation, but I wanted to. I kept putting it off, but finally I began to study it, using also my nerdy computer programmer skills and discipline. I took it apart, vision by vision and began to study the components of all of the visions. I soon realized that one of the reasons we havent been able to understand Revelation is because it is not given to us in chronological order. Yet this is how many read it and try to understand it. Another confusing issue in Rev. is in ch. 20 with its thousand years mentioned some six times in 1-7. One of the things I began to see is that there are two endings being described throughout Revelation (compare them for yourselves), one having to do with a Babylon and the other ending never mentioning it. The ending that I see that does not mention Babylon, is described in chs. 4-11. Interestingly, this section is also quite climactic, perhaps the most climactic in the book with the most information concerning Heaven and the throne of God. There are also clues of finality (e.g., 10:7) in it. Notice especially 11:18 that says (NIV), The time has come for judging the dead... This does not happen until 20:11. It does in fact appear to me that the entire section of 4-11 is chronologically in the wrong place and actually should be the final ending, the ending after the thousand years (however one wants to interpret that--past, present or future), and should be placed in the middle of 20:9. Anyway, Im in the middle of writing a couple of books about Revelation. The first one is basically complete and contains over 200 8.5 x 11 pages and hundreds of footnotes, unlocking some of the chronology of Revelation and giving keys that I believe are necessary for understanding it. Interestingly, the view of Revelation that I found, I later discovered to be a/the major view of the rabbis and first Christians.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 14:25:09 +0000
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