Is the book of Revelation a false prophesy? (Why is it canon?) EDITED TITLE

[JamesATyler]

Good Morning,

I left the TV on last night and woke up to a Christian show that was going step by step over the Book of Revelation. In Chapter 6, there are these verses:

12 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;

**13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. **

14 The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;

16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;

17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"

It is clear to me that this prophesy is written upon the knowledge of the man, not upon the knowledge of Jehovah. To the author, the stars appeared small and were something that could fall to the Earth. However, God would not prophesy such a thing, for God knows what the stars actually are. There is nothing figurative or metaphorical about verse 13. He does not say asteroids or meteors; He says stars. The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

 

[Razanir]

The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

They also might not have had the scientific knowledge to know they weren’t stars. The author, not knowing better scientifically, might have used “stars” as a catch-all term for anything in the sky that’s not the sun, the moon, or a planet.

 

[NextElement]

They also might not have had the scientific knowledge to know they weren’t stars. The author, not knowing better scientifically, might have used “stars” as a catch-all term for anything in the sky that’s not the sun, the moon, or a planet.

+1. What the OP is saying is a very bold an dangerous claim: That the Bible was not assembled under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If this were true and Revelation was false prophecy, then we would have to throw the whole Bible out.

 

[JamesATyler]

No, I do not think I will disbelieve the entire bible but I do not personally believe in this prophesy. The only “end of times” prophesy that is needed is in the original gospels, for example Luke 21.

5 Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said,

6 “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”

7 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”

8 He replied: "Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them.

9 When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away."

10 Then he said to them: "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

12 "But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name.

13 This will result in your being witnesses to them.

14 But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves.

15 For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.

16 You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.

17 All men will hate you because of me.

18 But not a hair of your head will perish.

19 By standing firm you will gain life.

20 "When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.

21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city.

22 For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written.

23 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people.

24 They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

25 "There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.

26 Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

29 He told them this parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees.

30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.

31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.

32 "I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

34 "Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.

35 For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.

36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man."

37 Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives,

38 and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.

 

[JamesATyler]

They also might not have had the scientific knowledge to know they weren’t stars. The author, not knowing better scientifically, might have used “stars” as a catch-all term for anything in the sky that’s not the sun, the moon, or a planet.

Although you could be right. Revelation 8

10 The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.

11 The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.

Could be an asteroid. But, if this man was lead by God, why wouldn’t it become known to him that these were not stars?

 

[whoisdiss]

The ancients called asteroids stars…

 

[josephback]

Good Morning,
It is clear to me that this prophesy is written upon the knowledge of the man, not upon the knowledge of Jehovah. To the author, the stars appeared small and were something that could fall to the Earth. However, God would not prophesy such a thing, for God knows what the stars actually are. There is nothing figurative or metaphorical about verse 13. He does not say asteroids or meteors; He says stars. The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

If you read the book in total you will begin to see that it largely speaks in symbols. Jesus is called a Lamb, the city of either Rome(imperial Rome) or Jerusalem is compared to a harlot, etc. Much of the language in Revelation is borrowed from the OT prophets and given a Christ centered orientation.

 

[PNEUMA]

Good Morning,

I left the TV on last night and woke up to a Christian show that was going step by step over the Book of Revelation. In Chapter 6, there are these verses:

12 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;

**13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. **

14 The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;

16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;

17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"

It is clear to me that this prophesy is written upon the knowledge of the man, not upon the knowledge of Jehovah. To the author, the stars appeared small and were something that could fall to the Earth. However, God would not prophesy such a thing, for God knows what the stars actually are. There is nothing figurative or metaphorical about verse 13. He does not say asteroids or meteors; He says stars. The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

You sound like Nicodemus, when he said “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

Nicodemus thought the word was about physical birth, like you think this is about physical stars, when it’s all just spiritual images.

 

[Razanir]

Could be an asteroid. But, if this man was lead by God, why wouldn’t it become known to him that these were not stars?

Pretty much because of this.

The ancients called asteroids stars…

Word boundaries don’t have to line up between languages. Greek has 4 words for “love”, where English has one. And it leads to some ambiguity and translation issues in John 21. Jesus keeps asking, “Do you love (agape) me?” To which Peter keeps replying “Yes, I love (filia) you.”

It’s the same problem, but in reverse. Even if God showed him asteroids in the revelation, the author wouldn’t have thought of them any differently from stars. And even if God made it known to him that they were not, in fact, stars, the language at the time might not have had a distinct word for asteroids. Should he have made some sort of complicated phrase just to express an oddly specific type of “star”? Even if he did know it was different from a star, it would have been easier to call it one.

 

[John_Lazarus]

Could be an asteroid. But, if this man was lead by God, why wouldn’t it become known to him that these were not stars?

Meteors are called “shooting stars” in English. “Asteroid” is from Greek, meaning “like a star” (literally “star”+“form”). Venus is the “morning star” and “evening star”.

I would speculate that in 1st-century Greek they used the term “star” to mean “shiny thing up in the sky”: stars proper, the aforementioned shooting and evening/morning stars, battlestars, Death Stars, etc.

One needs to look at the language as it was used. God did not dictate the Bible to its writers. I believed He inspired them to write: at various points in history, the Spirit moved them to think, “Hmmm. Think I better write this down,” and then try to write it down in language that oftentimes did not have a word to pedantically describe what they saw.

I hear the same one-word-has-one-meaning-only reasoning to put forth the thesis that Mary must have had other children because of Jesus’ adelphoi – “brothers” in the strictest sense, but in a looser sense, cousins, step-siblings, etc.

 

[boldlygo]

Revelation is an apocalyptic book, not a prophetic one…many non-Catholic Christians [and some uninformed Catholic Christians] look at it as prophetic, but that is not the case…apocalyptic literature is written during trying times to give the people hope…Revelation was written during times of great persecution, and told the early[Catholic] Christians that no matter how bad things looked, God was in control…Jesus had been raised from the dead…God was, and is, victorious!

 

[CalCatholic]

This is just a little slice of commentary from the Navarre Bible:

'During the two centuries before and after Christ there was quite a crop of Jewish and Christian writings entitled Apocalypse (Revelation), with a content and a style of a type now called “apocalyptic writing”-- for example, the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Moses (which heretics attributed to St. Paul) and others, …
These books all had two basic features: (a) they dealt with the subject of the last age of the world, when good would triumph and evil would be annihilated; (b) they made much use of symbolism taken from the animal kingdom, astrology, numbers and so forth, to depict past and present history and to prophesy the future.

A ‘snippet’ from the Jerusalem Bible commentary (about apocalyptic writing):

‘The language of apocalyptic writing is richly symbolic, and the importance of the visions which are described is never in their immediate literal meaning. It can be taken as a rule that every element in this kind of writing has symbolic value–persons, places, animals, actions, objects, parts of the body, numbers and measurements, stars, constellations, colors and garments-- and if we are not to misunderstand or distort the writer’s message, we must appreciate the imagery at its true value and do our best to translate the symbols back into the ideas which he intended them to convey. There are parts of the text in which this will involve our distinguishing a direct allegorical interpretation of the images that are used. There are other parts, however, in which no single interpretation can be confidently adopted, since a single group of images will be found to draw its meaning from various different associations.’

 

[Todd977]

One interpretation I’ve seen understands “the stars of the sky” in Revelation as representing the people of God (faithful Christians) and “the stars of the sky falling to earth” as representing Christians who commit apostasy. Previously, in the Old Testament, the people of God (the Jewish patriarch Jacob, his wives, and his sons) were represented in the prophetic dream of Jacob’s son Joseph as the sun, moon, and eleven stars. (Genesis 37:9-10)

 

[without]

+1. What the OP is saying is a very bold an dangerous claim: That the Bible was not assembled under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If this were true and Revelation was false prophecy, then we would have to throw the whole Bible out.

This…

 

[spina1953]

Apocalyptic writing is symbolic and was popular between something like 200 BC and 200 AD and those who either read or heard such writings understood its meanings. However, that being said, as time went by its meanings were not as well understood since that type of writing lost popularity. But there is a theological and ethical theme to Revelation that was made manifest in this conflict between pagan Rome and the Christian community. Pagan Rome says “we are the greatest” the emperor says, “build a temple and worship me” I am the power of the world. I am the power of the universe. Rome is the justice of the universe. Without Rome, there is no universe." Rome spells it out very clearly. “If you do not agree with this, you will die.” This was especially true during the reign of the emperor Domititian, and thousands died because they did not accept pagan Rome’s point of view. Christianity says, in revelation, that power and justice belong to Jesus Christ, not Rome. The only power and justice in the universe lie in the risen Lord. They do not rest with any group of men or with any government. Jesus is Leader. He has conquered; He is conquering; and He will continue to conquer. Not Caesar but Jesus Christ it Victor. That is the theological theme of this Book. The entire Book of Revelation elaborates on this theme. The risen Christ is Victor. The entire world belongs to Jesus for all eternity.

The ethical theme, is the moral point of view and was addressed to the early Christian community and to us today, which summons us to stamp out evil in our own community and to personally commit ourselves to wipe out all evil, never compromising with it. one must practice loyal resistance, though the power of our risen Lord, to the unchristian values which surround us on every side. There is no room to compromise, and it calls for a moral commitment to resist evil. Revelation exhorts the faithful to loyally resist any temptation to compromise with the world and is pagan values. It also spells out the censures reserved for those who fail in this regard. The Book of Revelation is calling the entire world to repentance and commitment, that Jesus is not just Lord of the Christian world, He is Lord over the entire universe.

 

[Razanir]

I would speculate that in 1st-century Greek they used the term “star” to mean “shiny thing up in the sky”: … Death Stars

So clearly, the passage is referring to the destruction of Alderaan.

One needs to look at the language as it was used. God did not dictate the Bible to its writers. I believed He inspired them to write: at various points in history, the Spirit moved them to think, “Hmmm. Think I better write this down,” and then try to write it down in language that oftentimes did not have a word to pedantically describe what they saw.

 

[Aloysium]

. . .To the author, the stars appeared small and were something that could fall to the Earth. However, God would not prophesy such a thing, for God knows what the stars actually are. There is nothing figurative or metaphorical about verse 13. He does not say asteroids or meteors; He says stars. The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

Huh? I’m definitely not saying it will happen the same way, but I think the dinosaurs saw just what is quoted, before they all perished.
Revelation does take a lot of work and additional reading to appreciate. It is written so that we, in any era, can understand. If we got rid of every part that someone didn’t understand, there would be no Bible.

 

[spina1953]

Good Morning,

I left the TV on last night and woke up to a Christian show that was going step by step over the Book of Revelation. In Chapter 6, there are these verses:

12 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;

**13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. **

14 The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;

16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;

17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"

It is clear to me that this prophesy is written upon the knowledge of the man, not upon the knowledge of Jehovah. To the author, the stars appeared small and were something that could fall to the Earth. However, God would not prophesy such a thing, for God knows what the stars actually are. There is nothing figurative or metaphorical about verse 13. He does not say asteroids or meteors; He says stars. The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

Hi James: This is how I understand Verses 12-17 of the Book of Revelation These verses that follow on the breaking of the sixth seal are symbolic rather than a literal description of what will happen on the day of the Lord. They are extremely vivid; the earth quakes, the sun turns black, the moon glows red as blood, the sky disappears, and every mountain and island is uprooted. They are symbolize social evils.

After the cosmic upheavals described, all the people on earth hide themselves “from the wrath of the Lamb.” Why? because they realize their sinfulness. Adam and Eve also hid from God after the first sin.
One should keep in mind that the vivid description of the agony of the unjust is always followed by the ecstasy of the just. Perhaps John, like many a reporter, became. so carried away by the evil he saw that he wrote more of the bad than the good news.

 

[ericc]

It is clear to me that this prophesy is written upon the knowledge of the man, not upon the knowledge of Jehovah. To the author, the stars appeared small and were something that could fall to the Earth. However, God would not prophesy such a thing, for God knows what the stars actually are. There is nothing figurative or metaphorical about verse 13. He does not say asteroids or meteors; He says stars. The men who canonized this book did not have the scientific knowledge to know that this is not possible and if they had known what the stars were, I do not think they would have canonized this book.

The author is writing based upon what he saw. We have the sun that rises in the east and sets in the west yet we know that is not so. It only appears so.

The Bible is not a science book. Period.

 

[chero23]

Sobebody propbably posted this, but the book of Revelation is not about an apocalyptic end to our World, but it has more to do with Holy Mass. Fundamentalist, read Revelations and begin to shoot off end of times dates but they go against the words of Jesus when he said, no one knows when the end of the world will be but my father.