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Give it up, he isn't rational, he reads like a Jack Chick tract, very entertaining, but very idiotic at the same time.... Refering to ET, not OP. 429 posted on 11/30/2003 1:48 PM PST by NWU Army ROTC

I completely understood your reference.

Frankly, ET illustrates why a correct understanding of Revelation -- and specifically the correct identification of the Whore of Babylon with Apostate Jerusalem -- is so important. I know, because I've been there myself, not so very many years ago -- as long as a Protestant conceives of Revelation as a futuristic book (never mind John's insistence on "things which must shortly come to pass) and conceives of Roman Catholicism as the Whore of Babylon, he's going to fall victim to the temptation of eisegetically interpolating any stitch of "evidence" he can find into the service of his pet theories regarding Romanism as the Mother of Harlots, etc. etc. etc.

By contrast, the correct indentification of the Whore of Babylon with Apostate Jerusalem enjoys two cardinal (hah! pun!!) virtues:

It's True -- always a desirable trait.
It frees Protestant eschatology from the deceptive shackles of false "Babylon = Rome" understandings -- in favor of good, solid Biblical exegesis.

Tantumergo and I disagree on the precise dating of Revelation (I say AD 65, about a year before the "time, times, and half a time" of the 3.5-year Jewish Wars; he favors AD 69, within a year of the Destruction of the Temple itself), but I suspect he'd agree with me on those points.

"as long as a Protestant conceives of Revelation as a futuristic book (never mind John's insistence on "things which must shortly come to pass) and conceives of Roman Catholicism as the Whore of Babylon, he's going to fall victim to the temptation of eisegetically interpolating any stitch of "evidence" he can find into the service of his pet theories regarding Romanism as the Mother of Harlots, etc. etc. etc."

Yes I've been there too! ;)

Having said that, while I think that the preterist understanding is true for much of the book - just like the "mini-Apocalypses" in each of the synoptics - there is still validity in a futurist interpretation AS WELL.

The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is in itself a prefigurement of the fate of the world and the end of times. Consequently the Apocalypse speaks to both scenarios. The Jews understood (as other semitic peoples did) the temple to be a micro-cosmos (iconography) and the cosmos to be a macro-temple.

We see this prophetic admixture of the demise of Jerusalem and the end of the world in Jesus' final discourses in all of the synoptics (John doesn't include it because he incorporates an expanded version into a separate book). Where people run into problems is when they try and apply Christ's prophecies to EITHER the destruction of Jerusalem OR the end of the world, rather than BOTH. To the semitic mind they were the same thing!

This is why Jesus could truly say that "This generation will not pass away before all of this is fulfilled."

"but I suspect he'd agree with me on those points."

Yes very much so - and while I favour AD 69 for the date of authorship, I do keep an open mind on this issue and am prepared to be persuaded of earlier dates if the internal evidence warrants it. The likelihood of post AD 70 authorship is practically nil IMHO. There is absolutely no internal evidence to support a later date unless you come from the "I don't believe in the supernatural" camp.