No, didn’t miss your point. The Bible is one giant warning, and most of the prophetic and historical warnings were aimed at the people living during the time of the great Tribulation. God wants no one to go through that period. Many times in the Bible God uses past events to mirror symbolically what will happen in the future. The flood for example; John said we would be baptized by water (the flood) and by fire(the tribulation)
The destruction of Sodom helps us see what it will be like during the tribulation. People will be called out before the world is judged, like Lot. Like Noah. Like Moses in his little boat in Egypt.
Yes, these events took place in the past as a warning. Daniel’s 3 friends in the fiery furnance- a fire 7 times hotter than normal, symbolizing the pain people will go through on the earth (in the furnace of the tribulation)
and also- 6, being the number of man (man was created ont he 6th day), and three being the number of the Trinity, symbolizes man’s attept to become God, which is what we do all day, pushing Him out of our lives and taking control. The Antichrist will simply reflect that desire to the extreme and demand worship. And he’ll get it too.
“I think you missed my point. 666 translates in Hebrew reference, where each number represents a letter, into Nero Caesar. There is an almost perfect mirror of what was happening in 68-70 AD to the events in Revelation, making it plausible that this was writing about contemporary events.”
Commentators much more researched than I have written millions of pages on this topic, some of it very good, some of it seems strange. What do I know?
I do find it very interesting that a complete prohibition on buying or selling without a mark [the mark could mean an electronic mark or record], presumably implying a total control on even very basic economic trading or commerce, was not even remotely possible in the first century. I also find it very interesting that we are on the verge of such a thing becoming feasible today. For example, cash is being replaced with electronic transfers for, among other things, convenience and recordkeeping.
Just a pure hypothetical: Assume that 10 years from now we no longer use cash for transactions greater than, say, $20. Anything over, say, $100, must be in electronic form. Congress could pass a law, in the interest of public safety, that prohibits electronic transfers for the purchase of “dangerous weapons,” thereby closing down private purchases of firearms. Then a more liberal leaning Supreme Court could rule that such a law does not violate the second amendment because the law does not deal with “keeping or bearing” arms.
Bump for later...