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“I’m a Catholic. I never understood why anybody would think that this is going to happen in the future when it was already fulfilled in antiquity. It also goes with Christ’s own prediction of the same events. Daniel and Jesus predict the same event that happened in about 70 AD. That’s amazing, and it’s a cause for great wonder. Why in the world do we need to project that into some imaginary future when we have the glory of the historical proof of prophecy?”

Because that would mean the millenial reign began in 70 AD. Thus, after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jesus would defeat all the armies of the earth without raising a sweat on the plains of Meggido, Christ would then rule the Earth for the 1,000 years along with the martyrs—during which period Satan will be bound up (a lot of Catholics held that view in 1,000 AD). Look around you for the past 2,000 Years or so. Anything you see look remotely like a Meggido or the millenial reign or the absence of Satan?

I understand the argument that, really, Revelation was written before the destruction of the temple and that John was referring to that event and that Nero was the Antichrist. With no evidence of the next 2,000 years, I think it has a decent case to be made for it. But that still leaves the plains of Meggido, the Millenial reign with no Satan, judgment, and the creation of the new earth to happen after 70 A.D.

But either we throw out Revelation entirely by discarding it as a meaningless metaphor, decide we have no idea whatsoever what John meant, or we have to square it’s prophecy against reality. The tribulation happened in 70 AD position doesn’t do a very good job of squaring with post-70 AD reality.

I’m not ready to toss much of Revelation as a meaningless metaphor—prophecy that has no impact if you will. So that leaves as a significant possibility that we do not understand Revelation at all. Both pre and post millenial positions may turn out to be as wrong as the Jewish interpretion of scripture about how things were going to go when the Messiah showed up.

So we do the best we can and await His return.

Because that would mean the millenial reign began in 70 AD. Thus, after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD . . .

You're reading Revelation far too literally. Revelation is the "unveiling" - i.e. it shows the spiritual reality of the things that were manifested in time. It draws the veil of time and space away from the events that led up to Christ and His ministry and how all of that relates to our salvation. Now, the spirit world exists outside of time. So, in Revelation, Satan is always cast out of Heaven into hell by Michael the Archangel, Christ the King is always victorious over His enemies, and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb is celebrated every day in the traditional Christian churches as the Eucharist.

The prophetic books of the Bible use allegorical and symbolic languages to explain the ineffable. Michelangelo does the same thing - God, Who Jesus says is "pure spirit" - is depicted as an old man with a beard. Does that mean that Catholics believe that God really is an old man with a beard? Of course not. In the same way, the authors of these books, inspired by the Spirit, had to explain to us who are bound in time and space things that exist wholly outside our experience.

Revelation is not some encoded blueprint for the future. It describes in human language the eternal world that always has existed, always does exist, and will exist forevermore.

I don't mean to be unkind, but the whole Rapture thing is really an adolescent's reading of inspired texts. It would be akin to letting a bright junior high student read Shakespeare without some guidance. You're coming to patently absurd conclusions. And you're discrediting the cause of our Lord by making this silliness a centerpiece of Christian theology.

I will say no more, except that when will one of these end times preachers get something right? Hal Lindsay has been felling entire forests publishing his particular brand of drivel for the past 40 years or so. I read the Late Great Planet Earth when I was a kid back in the 70s. The founding of Israel in 1948 kicked off the Big End Times Countdown, you see. Armageddon was upon us - it's "clearly" set forth in Scripture. And the end time players were discernible - the Soviet Union was symbolized by some animal that appears in Revelation. The strange insects were Soviet helicopters, for Pete's sake. I mean really. What Christian could take this stuff seriously? And note well that none of it - and I mean zero - cam true.

Here's the point: if that's not false prophecy, then I don't know what is.

Indeed, given how often the whole Rapture crowd has been wrong, and in view of how they soldier on despite being wrong time after time after time, aren't they making themselves candidates for Revelation's church of the False Prophet?

Maybe it's time for the reset of Christendom, like the slain prophets in Revelation, to shout at the church of Hagee, Lindsay, et al "come out of her, my people."