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Would one of you gentlemen open us up with a word of prayer?
I will. Okay.
Father God, we come to you now, we thank you for this day, we pray that this time be edifying, and I pray that you be with Brother Mike, that you clear his mind, and that you help him to remember all the facts that he has for us, I pray that he be tied to the stake of truth, in Christ's name, amen.
All right, last week we were doing the dating, and we'll finish it today, Lord willing. We are going to look at the late date after I answer your question, which was, hey man, how am I getting what you're saying?
Okay?
Whose translation has the number, and whose translation has the writing?
What scripture are we in?
Revelation 13, 18. 13, 18. This is where we left off. I don't want to do any review, because my reviews may take longer than they should. I think the New King James, if I remember correctly, the New King James and the King James probably says 603 score, and say, what does it say, Mike?
603 score and six.
Okay. Does the New King James say that as well, Andy?
I didn't get that yet.
Oh, all right, never mind. It probably does.
Okay.
Reason being, it is the manuscript in which they used. Somebody did say that their Bible had a footnote that said 616. It actually should be 616. And the question was, well, how did they come up with that being Nero?
That was the question, is that basically?
What it is, is these numbers, it's really not, did I say this last week? It's not 666 or 616. That's not how we should understand it. If you go up just a couple more verses, it says the number of his name is the number of a man, and his number is 666.
So, it actually would look better. Let me get rid of this so this doesn't confuse anybody. And then I'm going to show you the equivalent. It actually should be 666. That's how it actually should be. That's why the, 60, yes ma 'am.
And it actually would be 610 and 6.
This is a textual variant. Only three copies.
But they are the earliest. They are the earliest. This number would be the majority, but not as early. Now, you have to get in. I'm not going to get into all the how you do, you weigh manuscripts and all of that.
I am no Greek or Hebrew scholar, so I have to lean on those who are.
Dan Wallace, F .F. Bruce, Bruce Metzger, three of the best in the world, all agree that these are both valid. Based on the person in view. Now, here's how you come up to it. You take the 666. You have to calculate the number of his name.
So what is that going to take? What's the scripture say it's going to take? Somebody read what it says.
The number of a man.
Yeah, but it specifically says let him. Who has what?
Understanding.
Understanding or wisdom. Calculate the name. So we know this is in code.
The understanding is this. And I'm not going to write Hebrew because I can't go right and left and it looks funny. So we're going to transliterate it. You say, where's the vowels? Well, there's no vowels in Hebrew.
It's got vowel points.
So that's how it would come out. If you were just going to pronounce that, that would say Neron Kaiser. Transliterated from Greek into Hebrew. Let him who has understanding. If John would have said, hey, it's Neron.
What probably would have happened to John?
He would have been killed. He would have been killed.
He would have been killed.
So he says let him who has understanding calculate the number of his name. We'll spread this out a little bit more. Add those up. What does it come to? 666. That's what it comes up to. That's the transliteration.
You say, well, what about this guy?
Well, that's actually in Latin. So when you take that Latin and you transliterate it into the Hebrew, that's what it comes to. The Latin doesn't use the N. It uses the OO. Hey, this is actually in Hebrew is a Vav.
And it actually can be pronounced, you say, well, that would be near V.
No, no, no, no.
It can be pronounced W, OO, V, and V. So depending on where that vowel point is is going to depend on how you understand it. But that's why this is called a Vav. Explained enough or no?
Yeah, just what is the numbers? Like is that written? I'm trying to figure out what the numbers are.
It's called Gematria, okay? I apologize. It's called Gematria. Each number. I thought I said this right before we closed up last week. Each letter has a number equivalency.
So when it says calculate the number of this name, what does that mean you have to do? You've got to do some math.
So that would be kind of like Roman numerals in a sense.
In a sense, but it's not Roman. Roman's Latin.
Gotcha.
And you say, okay, well, what would this have looked like in Greek?
Don't laugh at me, Bert.
I've got a C minus on my Greek writing instead. In Greek, it would be this, this, and then is that better? That's better, brother.
This, each one of these has equivalent. And that's why some of them that are written actually spell the, these are actual numbers, okay? The equivalent in Greek are the numbers. And it's spelled out, I think, in, like I said, I think in the, everything that uses the TR, the Texas Receptus, they use that.
All the Alexandrian texts use this, just the equivalents. So, when you have the 616, it would have been this, Yoda, uh-oh, would have been a Yoda and then a stigma. Key, Yoda stigma. Still would have come up to being the same.
They're just transliterated from the Latin to the Hebrew, from the Greek to the Hebrew. Some people believe, I'm not that guy, that the original writing was 616, 616, okay? But you don't build a whole doctrine around three manuscripts.
You have to take the weight of those, although they are the earliest, okay? All right, are we done? Is that clarified enough?
Mike?
Do you all need to clarify? Hey, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was just clarifying where 666 came from, because you had an extra letter at the end of the Hebrew there.
I took it off, because this comes to 616. 616. We shouldn't think of it as 666. Remember, I know I said something great, like, Iron Maiden was the number of the beast.
It's not it.
It's 660 and 6. That's how it should be understood.
But isn't that how it's written, too?
What?
It's written in the Bible. Like, it's worded out instead of just numbers.
In some, depending on what translation you're looking at. I mean, if you read it in Greek, one will have what I just had there, and the other one will have, Hex, Hexakonta, Hex. I think that's, if I remember correctly, that's what it would say.
It's spelled out in the Greek. The words are spelled out. But then the other, the Alexandrian text, uses just the letters which represent those numbers. Now, all I'm giving you is facts. That's a little exegesis.
I don't have any plans on doing any exegesis until we start going through the book.
All right?
And the reason being is I just want you.
Yes, sir?
I just wanted to ask again, what was the name of that site you were talking about where every letter had a.
Gematria? Yeah. And it's in Latin. It's in Greek. It's in Hebrew. There are other. We don't really have that type of. Okay. All right. It's like you do the Super Bowl, you know.
Our English is boring.
Our Super Bowl letters are done in Latin because they have a. Hey, just to let you know, I painted gigantic Super Bowl letters two years standing on top of 40-foot letters, you know, X's and all that.
Yeah, so they use those to tell you this is Super Bowl 58 or whatever.
Before I move forward with the late day part, any questions?
That was the how scholars date the early date. Internally, there's more weight to doing the early date than there is the late date. The late date, there's not much. Most of it's speculation. And they use.
When I say speculation, it's because they're assuming. Let's go back to the same passage we used last week in chapter 11, verses 1 and 2, where John's told to, hey, take a measuring rod like a staff and go and measure the temple of God and the altar.
You know what the early date says? I mean, the late date says? He's really telling John to go measure the temple, which means what has to take place for John to measure the temple? There's got to be a temple rebuild.
If it's a late date, why? Because the late date says it's 95.
What happened? If we don't know what happened here, we've not been here for six months. The temple was destroyed. So if he's telling John to go measure something, that's not erect, what has to be there?
It's got to be rebuilt.
I think that's conjecture. You're assuming, presupposition, that this has to be. Once again, just like I said last week, if you're going to use the early date, the fact of the matter is he is telling him to go measure it, but it's in a vision.
It's in a vision. I'm not doing any exegesis right now. I'm just telling you that's the facts.
How you understand temple, how it's understood in the book, how John uses the word temple, then the Pauline corpus, meaning Paul the apostle, how he uses it, we can look at that, but that's going to be when we get to chapter 11.
Now, the other parts to a late date is you take the seven churches. Ephesus is the first letter addressed. It was established in Paul's second missionary journey. Second missionary.
You're doing that tonight, aren't you?
Do you have a date that you place that in? I'll use your date.
Early 50s.
Okay. Oh, okay.
Well, good, because I was going to say 52.
So, if 52 A .D. is when it was established in Paul's second missionary journey, and then if this is saying that that church is doing all of these things, it's hating the Nicolaitans, all these things, okay, false teachings and all this stuff,.
And they're doing good.
Except they left their first love, the response to the majority,.
Not all, okay,.
The majority of people that place it in a late date say, well, man, that's not long enough for them to leave their first love. I say, that's really not valid.
Anybody want to say why that's not valid? I mean, let's just think about the book of Ephesians.
Go ahead.
Well, I was just going to say from our practical experience,.
We fall. Me and Bert were talking about this last week.
What was waiting at the back door.
When Paul wrote Ephesians? He said, the wolves are going to come in here. When I go out the front back door, they're coming in the front door. So, I don't think that this is a good way of dating the book, okay?
What's that?
I was going to say, like, I mean, Peter, like, he was faithful one minute, then the next minute. Just giving you an example.
Yeah, so to say that, hey, a church can't fall away or have issues with a first love but still be doctrinally sound within 15 years or whatever, and I'll tell you in a few minutes where I place it and all that, is not valid either.
Then you have Smyrna, and we don't know much about Smyrna, okay? Extrabiblical writings is where we would have to go. It's a misnomer, a misreading of the book of the, I'm sorry, the epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians when he says, and you can look that up, you can find that on CCEL.
I've already said that once before. If you want to read Polycarp's epistles, they're still available. I mean, this is what's cool.
About some of these guys, man.
Their stuff's still available in English. And it was basically saying he had not come to Smyrna at the time, and it was believed to be that the Lord had not come, and that's not how it should be understood.
It was basically Paul had not come yet to the Philippians, okay? Just if you want to look it up. But either way, okay, either way, to then assume that the Lord had not come to Smyrna in the early day is then to say, well, it had to be later because we don't know what happened in Smyrna.
That's just erroneous to me. You're assuming you're building a case on silence. You have no evidence to back any of that up. So in the case of Smyrna, I wouldn't use that either. Now, I think Laodicea is a little closer, okay?
I'd say at least they have a decent argument with Laodicea. If I say it was the early day, they're saying it's the late. The reason why they say it's late is because Laodicea is, anybody remember where they're the church of?
Blech!
He's going to vomit, Jesus, and I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth,.
Not spit.
They were the lukewarm.
In 61 A .D., there was a major earthquake that happened in Laodicea. It basically leveled the city, okay? Once again, the argument is there's no way Laodicea could have been rebuilt by 68. If by early day, remember, it had to be before Nero killed himself.
Follow me? Anybody remember that? It has to be written before Nero killed himself because if Nero's the one in view in chapter 13, they're saying there's no way it could have been rebuilt. Church had been thriving again and then become lukewarm.
No way.
Well, once again, practically experienced. That's not true. And what we do know about this date is in Tacitus, the Greek historian said in 61, they were offered the money to rebuild the church, I mean to rebuild the city.
And because they were so wealthy, Laodicea said, keep your money, we're good. We've got enough money to rebuild and we'll build quickly and fast. Now if we read what it is about Laodicea, what does Laodicea say about themselves?
We're rich. And they were. And I don't like getting into all the department. Man, they were very wealthy, very good commerce. There's a lot. We often use a lot about the lukewarm because you had the Hierapolis and you had Colossus stuff coming in.
But man, once we start talking about why Jesus is saying, hey man, you're blind, you should buy ISAF for me, and you say you're rich, and now you're going to be naked. Those are all specific things pointing to the failures and to the inability of Laodicea to see that what they had gotten had been given to them by God.
And we'll get into that. It is, to me, as far as the equivalence of what's going on within the cities and the churches, there, to me, that's the most.
To me.
So, it's all conjecture. There's no way they could have, and that's how they come to the conclusion. So, I would say, internally, dating the book for a late date is not nearly as good. Because you're assuming.
Nothing you can point to.
But,.
Church fathers.
Point to late date. So, externally,.
There's a lot of weight.
Remember what I said about.
Internal and external last week? Well, if you're ever one you land on, that's going to be, that's your deal. As a biblical teacher, and my job is to educate you.
To present a case. Internal evidence weighs the most.
Because internal evidence tells what does the Bible say about itself. And if other scholars before us have said that, hey, these were, that this was the consistent pattern for understanding it up until after the church fathers,.
Then,.
I would just say, you know, that argument about Laodicea, you know, saying that there's no way it could be rebuilt. In the early days in Acts, you know, when they're waiting for the spirit, you know, the church grew by thousands in a month.
You know, and then our practical experience tells us that when there's a calamity, we all seek to, you know, find a source of peace.
Oh, sure.
So, an earthquake that destroyed the city.
Well, think about this,.
And that's a valid point from a practical thing. Look, if your city revolves around some type of medicinal stuff, whether it be the springs, the eye salve that they were making there, or, well, actually it's all three, and that was a very industrious place for black wool.
It was one of the biggest places to get black wool. So, you've got all those things. Hey, if you want to continue to have income, what are you going to have to do? We're going to have to set apart our differences, and we've got to get this place up, and we've got to be able to get merchandise coming in and out of here again so that we can be a thriving city again.
So, that would have been setting apart.
A side of the differences. You were going to say something.
Yeah, on this late date, how did the fathers really kind of come about that. Well, the majority of them, Bert can correct me. He's been teaching longer than I have. The majority of them come, from my understanding, is part of it was Eusebius quoting Irenaeus.
Irenaeus said that it was, if you read it the way that he, how he under, how most of the people on his side understand it, and I say people because that's where he, when he taught, they understand it as it was seen.
Y 'all remember that part last week? It was seen, meaning it, what was seen? The vision was seen in the time of who?
Domitian. Domitian.
When was Domitian?
In the 90s. In the 90s.
Do I need to put all the procedures up here again with all the numbers so we can,.
I'll do it.
If you need me to do it again, I'll do it.
That's why.
Now, there is a, they also used, late dates used in 13 where the emperor worship. Emperor worship had to be going on.
Because it says,.
The image of the beast, chapter 13, okay, he's gonna make an image of himself. That has to be talking about emperor worship.
Yes, ma 'am.
Were you fixing to say something?
No.
I've seen this.
Oh, okay.
I was like, okay.
I made a statement a few weeks ago. Didn't sit well with some people.
They took it as if I said there was no such thing.
As emperor worship until 249 A .D.
That's not what I said.
That's not what came out of my mouth. That might have been how some people heard that, but that's not what I said. What I said was, it was not imposed by the Roman Empire to seek out and kill Christians till 249 A .D.
Was emperor worship alive and well in the first century? You better believe it was because Caesar Augustus, after Julius Caesar died, who really wasn't a Caesar at all at that point, he was not a full-blown, there was still a triumvirate that was going on at that time because Octavian, who became Caesar Augustus, was part of that second triumvirate.
What he did do is he deified Julius Caesar and made a temple to him. So yes, now they're worshipping not a live emperor. What were they doing? They were worshipping dead emperors. So was it known? And were people doing that?
Well, of course they were. When we get to going through the cities, there was temples in Pergamos for people. There was one built to Trahan after the fact, after 117 A .D. That was built to him, and there's still parts of it today you can still go see.
So emperor worship was alive and well. Was it empire-wide?
No. No.
And as we go through, try not to do any exegesis, but it's hard, when you start going through the churches, all the churches weren't being persecuted by Romans. Two of them were being persecuted by the synagogue of Satan, who claimed to be Jews, but they're not.
And we can talk about what that means when we get there in five months. Okay, so understand that that is leading, you're begging the question, did Domitian demand worship of himself? Late-daters.
I'm not speaking for Bert.
And how he has heard it and taught it, whatever, in seminary. I'm saying how many of you in here have heard, if you've done any study at all, that Domitian demanded emperor worship? That is sped out as being a historical fact.
That is not a historical fact. And if you want to write these men's names down,.
You can go.
Did he want to be called my Lord and my God? Yes, he did.
He did.
He wanted to be flattered. Pliny, and if you look him up, it will be the younger, not the elder. Suetonius and Tacitus. All Greek historians. Oh, he actually was in the cabinet of Hadrian. He was at the time of Domitian.
Was there an empire-wide persecution of Christians.
In the 90s?
There was not. There was not.
You're asking about Christians being persecuted in the 90s?
I used specific words. I didn't say, well, Christians not being persecuted in the 90s. I said, was there empire-wide persecution from Christians? Did Domitian demand an empire-wide persecution from Christians?
Absolutely no. This man actually was an advocate for him, meaning lawyer. You know what he writes? These guys knew Domitian was a madman, okay? They knew that. They knew that he was a nut. But he said, at every Christians that had been charged with a crime that stood before the courts, Domitian never appeared one time.
That's very telling. They're drug off to Rome, okay? They're drug off to Rome. And when they're drug off to Rome, they're going to stand before, who ultimately makes the decision? Were there protreators and all that stuff, judges and judiciary?
Yeah, but ultimately, who makes the decision? The emperor. Not one time was Domitian stood in front of the council when a Christian was on trial. Matter of fact, what Pliny does say is when he felt like he had been, Domitian said he had been overbearing to some of the Christians, those whom he banished, he let go.
Was Domitian a madman? Yes, he was. Did Domitian persecute Christians?
Yes.
Did Domitian persecute anybody that disagreed with anything that he said?
As a matter of fact, he killed family members. He killed anybody that got in his way that was going to hold up what he was doing to try to keep power. He would go kill rich people and seize their property to put in the coffers because he was spending money like he was balling, okay?
That's what he was.
Yes, sir.
What is it now?
Tacitus. Yeah, that's the T-U-S. Is that what you're asking?
He was a madman.
He was such a madman that when Nero died, there was a thing that came up called the Nero redivivus myth. So they thought when Nero died, because he was such a madman as well, hey, man, this guy's going to come back to life.
We're going to have some Michael Jackson Elvis sightings, okay? They got Nero on ice. He's going to come back to life. Hey, this is real. This is like what they really thought. Domitian comes to power after what they believe poisoned his brother Titus who destroyed the temple, okay?
They believe he poisoned his brother because there was a huge conflict between Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian because Domitian was a homosexual. He was a pervert. Boys, girls, it did not matter. And, dude, he was just an absolute nut, okay?
Same things that Nero did. Remember, Nero castrated a man and married him because he wanted him to be a woman. This is what the people that we're dealing with. So when Domitian does start his reign of terror, the immediate thought was Nero has come back to life, which leads to the myth its mortal wound has been healed and he is living again, which is in Revelation 13.
And it says that that mortal wound, he had died and he has risen. The problem with that is you're interjecting something that the text does not say. It says he has a mortal wound, but the mortal wound was healed.
The beast never died. The beast continued to live. The beast doesn't die. That's what we have to understand as we go through the book. The beast doesn't die. It doesn't die until it's cast into the lake of fire.
And we'll talk about who the beast is when we get to chapter 13.
All right.
So, Mike, what do you say the book was written? Because this will determine, I believe, the book was written between 67 and 68. I'll even go so far as even saying a whole New Testament was written before this date.
Right here.
You might as well confirm. So all the Greek historians like Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus, what do they say about that Domitian?
Domitian was a madman. There was not an empire. Why? Persecution of Christians.
Okay, that's important.
And let me just go back because I think this is important because some of your Bibles may say this or if you have a study Bible. It says that because most of your study Bibles will hold a late date. Right now, that's just the common.
Look, if you were born 200 years ago, you know what date we'd be talking about? We certainly wouldn't be talking about a late date. Everybody believed just after the fathers, the reformers, and all that.
Man, they believed in an early date. It's almost as if fads and patterns. Because as long as you can't prove that there's no late date, just like if you can't prove there's no early date, I can't prove there's no late date, we have to say both of them at least hold some valid point.
The problem is as you start doing your exegesis and you're walking through the text, if it's a late date, then that makes everything from Revelation 3 forward irrelevant to the generation in which it was written.
I'm just telling you. There's even going to be some men that argued for that. I'll get into that here shortly. I've got some time. I'll do that. So, I say the whole Bible was written before 68. The canon was closed by 68.
The reason being because if it was a prophecy concerning Nero, which I tried to lay my case out for that, then that means it had to be written before 68 because what happened in 68? Nero was deemed enemy of the council, enemy of the state by the Senate in Rome.
Rome wanted him killed. He killed himself. And then, hey man, in 68 when Nero killed himself, the Roman Empire spiraled out of control. Civil wars everywhere. Everywhere. So, I say early date. Now, you say, well then, you're saying that everything that was written in Revelation was all in the past.
No, I do not.
I do not say that everything that was in Revelation was in the past. I believe that some of that is still future. I believe there's parts of that that can still be applied today. I think we can go through almost every church as we go through the letters, we go through the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and we're going to be able to make application.
This book is very applicable to every generation, regardless of what position you come to. It's very applicable. Why? Because the beast has never died. And if the beast is still alive and well today, what is the beast going to continue to do?
Beastly things, which is punish God's people, oppress God's people, use governmental structures to then persecute those people. But we're in an anomaly in the United States. Could you raise your hand back there?
We're in an anomaly. This is not normal. North Korea, China, Afghanistan, those places over there, that's normal.
That's normal.
Seeing men ride up in here, well, it would have been camels and horses back then, riding up with tanks and Toyota Tacomas with AK -47s and M50 cows on the back, bolted down with zip ties, pulling up here.
That's what happens in Uganda and all those other places over there. You've got to remember, this ain't the world. We're in a vacuum still, and that could quickly erode.
Now, the name of the book was the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Apocalypse. Apoka, apa, meaning the removal, kolopsis, the veil. The unveiling, which later translations came to be the revelation. This is the unveiling of who and what Jesus Christ is to his enemies.
That's what it is. He has promised to put his enemies under his footstool. So that is the correct name, is the Apocalypse. If you looked it up in Greek, that's what it would say. Apocalypse would be the first word.
And that, what's that? Say something? Fixing to?
Yeah, normally you go before you fix something.
Now, what type of literature is this? Because we have to, as we interpret it, we have to interpret it in light of the genre in which it's written in. Epistle, Prophecy, Apocalyptic. All three of those will be in here.
But this is the only book in the New Testament that claims to be this.
The only book.
This is a book of prophecy. Are there other prophecies in the book, in the New Testament?
You have the Olivet Discourse. You have other passages that were prophetic, telling what was going to take place. I mean, when Jesus says, hey, we're going to Jerusalem, and I'm going to be delivered over to sinful man, and the Gentiles are going to crucify me, that's pretty prophetic, okay?
That's prophecy. But this whole book is prophecy. What's an epistle?
It's a letter.
What do letters do? I agree with you.
Instruct.
It conveys a message from the person sending it, their concerns, whatever they are, whether that be a concern of love, compassion, warning. And we're going to see that all of those do come into play in the seven epistles to the churches.
So it's epistolary. So when we look at the first part of the book, it's going to be in epistolary language, so therefore we have to interpret it like an epistle. Are there going to be passages in the epistles where you go, is this a literal thing or is this symbolic?
Some of it will be symbolic. We'll just take, for instance, when he says you're going to suffer tribulation for ten days. Do we actually think it's only going to be ten days?
Oh, just by way of another fact, that's the only place in Scripture where the word tribulation is connected to an actual time. So anybody says, hey, you've got seven years of tribulation, the Bible says ten days.
If you're going to say, hey, the Bible talks about any type of tribulation connected to a time frame, that's the only place in the Bible that talks about tribulation and it says ten days. So as we go through it, we'll see the epistles, what their meaning was.
Remember, he was writing to real churches, seven churches in Asia Minor with real concerns at that time. If that be the case and he wasn't writing to seven real churches, what relevance would the letters have been?
Irrelevant. It's a book of prophecy. Is it foretelling things that will come to play?
Yeah.
I mean, it's bookend. The book is bookend. Chapter 1, verse 1. These things must shortly come to pass. Some translations say quickly.
Some say soon.
But the word that's used there in the Greek means quickness. Then you go to the end of the book, chapter 22. I think it's verse 6 and 8 or 8 and 9, one of those.
I know. 6.
These things must shortly come to pass. Those were the words of Jesus at the end of the book. This is about to take place. Which means, if this is about to take place, this is concerning a time and a group of people in view primarily that were still alive.
Not some distant generation later. It's apocalyptic. What does apocalyptic literature do? Somebody just said it? Who said it?
Symbolism?
Yeah, symbolism. We saw a lot of that symbolism when we were going through Daniel. When we got a shaggy goat with one gigantic unicorn goat flying, was that apocalyptic literature? Yes, it was a vision trying to convey a message.
He talked about the beasts in chapter 7 of Daniel. Matter of fact, those beasts actually get overrun by the next kingdom to the next kingdom, and then it says, and then that final one will be a beastly one that had iron teeth, face like a lion, and all these things.
Remember that hybrid that comes at the end, which comes into view in chapter 13 of Revelation. So apocalyptic is revealing stuff in signs and symbols. Now, apocalyptic, we're saying apocalyptic literature in signs and images is somewhat acronistic because we're reading back into what that means.
A lot of late daters said, hey, we really didn't have apocalyptic literature to, late daters being some of the after-the-church fathers, didn't have anything to compare this to because this is weird.
Remember, the reason why it didn't end up in the canon for so long is, dude, it was weird. Well, when they found Dead Sea Scrolls and some of these other stuff, well, certainly the Dead Sea Scrolls affirm things that had happened a thousand years before.
There was other writings in the time of the Jews, in the intertestamental time, that used apocalyptic literature. Matter of fact, the Catholic Bible still has it in there today. If you were to go look up the Catholic Bible, you would look up Esther.
You would have a prologue. This is not inspired, okay? This is something that was put in there after the fact. You have the prologue to the Book of Esther right at the beginning when it talks about Haman and Mordecai.
It's Mordecai's vision, the guy claiming to be Mordecai. And he talks about two dragons, and the dragons are going to fight, and there's going to be this cosmic battle, and he's using stars falling from the sky, and you're like, oh, wow, this was written a few hundred years before the Revelation, and it has the same symbolisms, okay?
So, apocalyptic literature was common to Jewish people. It was used. When we hear in Daniel that the stars were falling from the sky, were the stars really going to fall from the sky?
Hey, what we know today about a star, if it says that the stars will fall to the earth, do you realize the smallest star would obliterate the earth? So it has to be symbolic. And so as we read through that, we're going to look at what the symbolism is, we're going to look at what it means and how it applies.
And we've got to get ready to wrap up. So, next week, I will go through the four approaches to the book. I remember a guy, I knew him very well. He taught at a church. He's like, man, my favorite book is Revelation.
I'm like, okay. Well, you know, what approach do you take? He goes, oh, I'm premillennial. I was like, that's only one approach to one chapter. He's like, well, I'm pre-Tribble. I was like, that's only one variant of three views to the futurist view.
And he finally said, all right, I just don't want to talk about it anymore. I said, so it's not your favorite book. There are four ways of seeing the book. We will look at each one of those next week and tell you how they draw their conclusions.
We'll talk about which ones can still have some good merit today. I think each one of these needs to be looked at, though, and say, okay, how did they come to their conclusion? Is their conclusion valid in the time in which they came to their conclusion?
And I would say this is right here. I'm going to be honest. I'm less sympathetic to this group. And the reason being is that once I show you, they run out of time. No matter what time frame you use, their model for interpreting Scripture or interpreting the book of Revelation, they run out of time in the sense of you run out of history.
And the futurists still have very good points. The preterists still has good points. And we'll wrap up. This has the heretical view, and you have the orthodox view. And we'll talk about both of those.
In the futurist view, you have three different types of futurist view. Is parts of the book in the past?
Is parts of the book still in the future?
Can parts of the book still be applied today?
That is the proper way of understanding the book. And as I lay these out, I'll show you where I make my exegetical shifts. And we'll do some examples so that you can see that. And even at this, and we'll go through this, when we do the historicist view, I'm not saying that those men that held to that position didn't understand and that their position at the time in which they were holding that wasn't legit.
It was. I mean, we'll just take for instance, they thought the Pope was the Antichrist. I see how they came to that conclusion, but I think they're wrong. Was he an Antichrist?
Was he the?
That's coming at the end of the age, and we'll talk about that. Andy, will you pray for us?
Yes. Oh, thank you for our time today. Enabling us to study it, to look at it, to consider it. We pray, Lord, please, not man's truth. Be with us as we worship you in spirit and truth. And may all things be done in the glory of Christ, in his name.
Amen.