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I am also curious whether you comprehend the message, or are you just pissed off at the message and therefore want everyone else to ignore whaq triggers you?

I comprehend the message. Many of my fellow Christians insist on reading into Revelation a blueprint to current events. Despite one failed predication after another, they continue on with treating Revelation like it's the I Te Ching book of divinations. Hey, to each their own. No harm, no foul I always say.

In times past I viewed this as a sort of harmless hobby that some find amusing. Rather like the eccentrics in England who pursue the esoteric pleasures of train spotting. To each their own. No harm, no foul I always say.

But I've come to see that it's not at all harmless. First, using Revelation and other scripture for purposes of (what amounts to) divination comes pretty close to violating the Biblical injunction against soothsayers. It evinces a spiritually unhealthy interest in foreseeing the future and profiting thereby. It seems to me that this approaches idolatry. Second, the cavalcade of failed predictions of the End Times (beginning especially with the Millerite movement in the 1840s) is the cause of scandal to all Christians. These people embarrass the rest of us, but most especially they embarrass themselves.

And besides, the entire thing comes from a terrible misunderstanding of the nature of the last book in the Christian Bible. Revelation is not a cryptic guide to avoiding the worst of Armageddon, as my Dispensationalist friends would have it. It is rather the "revelation" (i.e. the "unveiling") of the sacred mysteries underlying the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Scott Hahn has a great book on this, if you're interested.

I believe that the evil one uses this terrible error to keep my fellow Christians distracted with ludicrous (truly, pagan) attempts to divine what chicken entrails portend for the world and thereby to bring scandal to the rest of us.

I beg of all of you to think again and to put aside this ridiculous nonsense.

Sadly, there are millions with the same attitude you so willingly exhibit. They too make unfounded accusations and try to give the assertions a veneer of humor. The subject is not humorous.

You call yourself a Christian yet you are quick and arrogant to insult a Christian man who is dead who made the -in your calculus- mistake of addressing the end times. Are you familiar with the concept of imminence, as in the gathering to the Lord in the clouds is and has been imminent since Paul wrote of the notion?

But I've come to see that it's not at all harmless. First, using Revelation and other scripture for purposes of (what amounts to) divination comes pretty close to violating the Biblical injunction against soothsayers. It evinces a spiritually unhealthy interest in foreseeing the future and profiting thereby. It seems to me that this approaches idolatry. Second, the cavalcade of failed predictions of the End Times (beginning especially with the Millerite movement in the 1840s) is the cause of scandal to all Christians. These people embarrass the rest of us, but most especially they embarrass themselves.

Are you unfamiliar with how God used prophecy to prove to people He was who he said He was - the only true God? He told them:

Jeremiah 33:3 "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

John 16:13 "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come."

John 13:19 "I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am."

Isaiah 43:9-11 "All the nations gather together and the peoples assemble. Who among them can declare this, and proclaim to us the former things? Let them present their witnesses to vindicate them, so that others may hear and say, “It is true.” “You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may consider and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, and after Me none will come. I, yes I, am the LORD, and there is no Savior but Me."

Isaiah 42:8,9 "I am the LORD; that is My name! I will not yield My glory to another or My praise to idols. Behold, the former things have happened, and now I declare new things. Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.”

Isaiah 44:6,7 "Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me. Who then is like Me? Let him say so! Let him declare his case before Me, since I established an ancient people. Let him foretell the things to come, and what is to take place."

Isaiah 45:21 "Speak up and present your case--yes, let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago? Who announced it from ancient times? Was it not I, the LORD? There is no other God but Me, a righteous God and Savior; there is none but Me."

There are things yet to come to pass as HE said they would. The Revelation of John puts the capstone on the whole of revealed truth. It takes us through to eternity with God when finally:

Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

But I've come to see that it's not at all harmless. First, using Revelation and other scripture for purposes of (what amounts to) divination comes pretty close to violating the Biblical injunction against soothsayers. It evinces a spiritually unhealthy interest in foreseeing the future and profiting thereby. It seems to me that this approaches idolatry.

I guess the you would also have had problems with those who were looking at Scripture for Jesus’ first coming.

1 Peter 1:10-11 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.