I would like for EVERYONE to comment and give their opinion based off of what you know about the Book of Revelation and a few verses in particular. Please don’t look something up and copy and paste, or suddenly change your opinion. I’m just curious to know what people think about these things from their own point of view.
Revelation 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
Revelation 20:25 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
Also, the 144,000 spoken of in Revelation.
Hi Truth Seeker. The Antichrist’s number/name is somehow associated with the infamous 666. It is not readily apparent from the passage in what way those who live during this time will understand, but it seems that it would have been/will be for those who refuse to receive the mark of the beast. I am open to mutliple interpretations that allow for both future and past fulfillments. I lean towards the future.
“Him that hath understanding” will be able to identify the beast, and so doing, will refuse to take the mark and will be excluded from public trade.
It has been a long time and I would need to consult other books to be able to thoroughly explain why I lean towards amillenialism. I don’t think about this stuff much at all anymore. But I take a thousand years very loosely to mean a long time. The Lord “owns the cattle on a thousand hills”…and also the 1001st. There is a precedent in Scripture for non-literal understandings of “a thousand” to mean much or many.
I tend toward allegorical as opposed to literal interpretations of most of the apocalyptic literature. For example, I believe it is Is. 13 or somewhere near to it that it speaks of the stars and the heavens being shaken, but the literal fulfillment was the fall of ancient Babylon or maybe it was Assyria. Angels have been associated with the nations, the prince of Persia who resisted Daniel’s (ch. 11?) angel comes to mind. So, I don’t think these are stars made up of hydrogen and helium and firey gases, but rather perhaps the angels assigned to those nations, and a falling star can represent the fall of a government. An event which would seem to be compatible with the advent of the anti-Christ.
But I wouldn’t argue about it. Other than forms of milennarianism condemned by the Church, I am very open-minded. I could be preterist or futurist or both. It isn’t quite clear at this time. A good argument in favor finding ways to interpret these events of being at least partially fulfilled is found in the first verse of the first chapter where it says this vision of St. John is of things which “must shortly come to pass”. And verse 3, where it says “the time is at hand”.
However, no one in my opinion can successfully place the entire book in the past. The descriptions of the first resurrection, the lake of fire, and the second death, the great judgment seem to argue for future fulfillments as well.
Rory
) and not worry about it.