Thanks again for proving my point about you cherry-pickers.
Here's a funny thing about picking cherries (or any fruit really). Something I know from garden/farm work.
So, if you expect to get paid, you take as much fruit as possible. But the master isn't going to look fondly on you wasting paid time picking
rotten fruit. Nor
unripened fruit.
Prophecies are unripened fruit. We ignore them until they seem like they are likely to come to pass. And as I know from figs, some never do. They were unripe near the end of the season, so before they come to fruit, they die. These are like prophecies where they miss the window of opportunity. They just can't work anymore because there no longer are any Hittites. Some have enough time to fruit, in which case, we pick them when they start to ripen. We don't do like those damned food industry people and put it on a truck to gas ripen. In the same way, there is no sense worrying about predicted things that haven't happened yet. The prophecies of several books in the Bible either came to fruit, died on the vine, or still haven't happened. If it hasn't happened, unless there is good cause why it should, there is no sense stressing over it. Revelation is filled with prophecy, and unfortunately, the writing is so vague that much like the garbage of Nostradamus, it could be true or complete crap. There are people who are convinced Nostradamus accurately predicted 2020, and will know exactly how the Earth will turn out. Rubbish.
Next we have rotten fruit. These are works of scripture that do not speak to the Bible. The Bible actually contains a curse against scripture that is against the gospel. And guess what? Revelation meets all standards.
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!
1. Against the teachings of the gospel
2. John actually mentions that an angel from heaven gave these prophecies
Rotten fruit is fruit that you shouldn't pick because it potentially rots the core teaching. Just as "one bad apple can ruin the entire bunch" (this isn't just a cute expression, rotting apples have ripening agents), including faulty scripture creates a canon that is bad overall. Revelation disregards the Resurrection of Jesus when it instead talks of the Second Coming. It disregards the idea in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God, when it tries to tell people that if you have some sorta tattoo or mark on your body, this will somehow brand you as not God's. It disregards the doctrine of grace, when it over and over again teaches that bad works will result in you being tossed in a lake of fire. And in fact, nowhere in the gospel is there mention of this lake of fire until you get to Revelation. It's also one of the most violent and destructive books in the Bible, made to sound happy only by virtue of 1000 years of peace (but let's talk about that; this peace is a bunch of licentious behavior, effectively the equivalent of if I said free love was suddenly gonna be okay, even though before all that everyone got AIDS if they slept around alot) and this pretty sounding Eden-like place for the worthy (just one problem: there are no worthy, by the Bible's own standards, as only with Jesus's grace freely provided do we have salvation).
How did this rotten fruit make the cut?
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/13997/what-historical-reasons-resulted-in-revelation-being-included-in-most-christianAs a source, the book of Revelation is something of an outlier for a book of the Bible that got accepted into the canonical New Testament of most branches of Christianity: it is the only explicitly eschatological work in the New Testament, its date of composition is generally taken to be far later than the other books, its content is dramatic, and its author is not certain.
Of the authorship, they say...
However, scholars debate the exact identity of the John who wrote the Apocalypse. Briefly, they give four possibilities: 1) John the Apostle; 2) John the Elder; 3) John Mark; 4) an unknown/pseudonymous John. As Revelation displays no similarities with Mark's gospel in style or grammar the third option has never been a serious consideration.3 Likewise, an unknown or pseudonymous John would be unlikely to gain major acceptance in the churches. Indeed, a pseudonymous work had little chance of becoming canonical.
Are you sure about that? It was not included in the canon until 419 AD, long after any of the authors who might have written it were dead. We have no idea who wrote the Gospel of John (it does not sound like John, somewhat arrogant brother of James, "son of thunder", as this "John" won't even mention his name). You see, writing styles can be analyzed. The book of Revelation has several expressions that linguists and historians connect with Egyptian Jews, not with Christians under Roman occupation who Further, this Patmos story only exists in Revelation and in writings outside the Bible. There are a number of works that didn't make it into the Bible. These are called Apocrypha (extra stuff) and Pseudepigrapha (false writings). So yes, it is that damned important that text actually be properly authored, or we can't call it the word of God. That would make a forged text, written by people who didn't know Jesus, didn't like Jesus, and didn't want the message of the gospel to actually be understood.
And so, we have what is called a canon. A canon is a group of accepted books. How were these texts made canon? Divine light from heaven? Sorry, no. A bunch of people basically said it is. Forgive me, but I think I'll stay skeptical.
Some indeed of those before our time rejected and altogether impugned the book, examining it chapter by chapter and declaring it to be unintelligible and illogical, and its title fake. For they say that it is not John's, no, nor yet an apocalypse, since it is veiled by its heavy, thick curtain of unintelligibility; and that the author of this book was not only not one of the apostles, nor even one of the saints or those belonging to the Church, but Cerinthus, the same who created the sect called ‘Cerinthian’ after him, since he desired to affix to his own forgery a name worthy of credit. . . . But for my part I should not dare to reject the book, since many brethren hold that the interpretation of each several passages in some way hidden and more wonderful.
We see in the comments of Dionysius that some Church Fathers were reluctant to reject the book, simply because they did not understand it. Not understanding it, they feared that it might contain hidden mysteries that should not be lost. For others, the fact that the book was signed by a man named John meant that this otherwise unknown author might be the apostle John, in which case they dared not reject the book.
I dare. I dare to reject this book, even though its author says that anyone who adds or removes from the Bible is damned. "John" cannot damn me, only God can. As to this "John", nothing about the way he writes is at all similar either to the Gospel of John, nor 1/2/3 John. That you accept it as canon is not reassuring, since your vested interest is not in following the gospel but in accusing the Bible. So yeah, I dare to reject this book. And you should too. Anyone who follows the contents of this book desires a war where everyone is killed, then revived, and people who don't believe the right way are enslaved. This is a prophecy written as a sort of wet dream by Satan. Rotten fruit.
You okay with me picking this cherry out of the finished bunch? Or you wanna keep it?