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To: zot; rzman21
"John's Revelation and what it would mean to us if we had just received a copy of it."

I guess it depends on where you would have been. The Syrian Christians (who i'm guessing were a large chunk of the Christian world flat out rejected it. Even today the Eastern Orthodox do not read Revelation in the Divine Liturgy. in fact many of the Early Christians rejected it again as it seemed too closely tied to Gnostics and Montanists

Ireneus and Origen did not include it in their canons

Clement of Alexandria in 200 also did not include it as canon.

So, if in 100 you received this book, most like you would have rejected it.

133 posted on 12/23/2011 9:19:51 AM PST by Cronos (Nuke Mecca and Medina now..)
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To: Cronos

Martin Luther had strong words about it. I’d like to know the history of Protestants admitting it to their canon, let alone turn it into the center of their religion, as is the case with the Dispensationalists and the Pentecostals. William Tyndale similarly questioned its validity.

Martin Luther’s Preface to the Revelation of St. John (1522)
About this Book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.

First and foremost, the apostles do not deal with visions, but prophesy in clear and plain words, as do Peter and Paul, and Christ in the gospel. For it befits the apostolic office to speak clearly of Christ and his deeds, without images and visions. Moreover there is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the New, who deals so exclusively with visions and images. For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.

Moreover he seems to me to be going much too far when he commends his own book so highly [Revelation 22]—indeed, more than any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important—and threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from him, etc. Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep.

Many of the fathers also rejected this book a long time ago; although St. Jerome, to be sure, refers to it in exalted terms and says that it is above all praise and that there are as many mysteries in it as words. Still, Jerome cannot prove this at all, and his praise at numerous places is too generous.

Finally, let everyone think of it as his own spirit leads him. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it. But to teach Christ, this is the thing which an apostle is bound above all else to do; as Christ says in Acts 1[:8], “You shall be my witnesses.” Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.

The 1522 “Preface to the Revelation of St. John” in Luther’s translation of the New Testament. Pages 398-399 in Luther’s Works Volume 35: Word and Sacrament I (ed. E. Theodore Bachmann; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960).


138 posted on 12/23/2011 10:38:25 AM PST by rzman21
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