Yeah, I'll pray for you too, because I think you need to see that Scripture is about realities that go quite a bit deeper than the current headlines out of the Middle East. You remind me of the Jews of Jesus' time, who thought he was a political leader who would fight a war to get the Romans out of Palestine. God is more profound than that by far.
I've noticed (in this thread and previous ones) that it's imperitive for RC's on these threads to disbelieve that Revelation was written in 95 AD.
Nonsense. The Church has never authoritatively said one way or another. However, what it is imperative for Catholics to believe is that your dispensationalist point of view is false and must be rejected. Specifically, the New Israel is the Church of Christ, not any political entity in the Middle East. Paul says so very clearly in Romans 11.
However, there's a significant community of Bible scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, who hold to some form of the preterist view of Revelation, which argues that the primary fulfillment of Revelation occurred in 70 AD. (Some Protestants hold to the "full preterist" view, which denies a future Second Coming of Christ, but Catholics aren't allowed to hold that.) Have you never heard of David Chilton? Here's a good page run by Protestant preterists presenting the case against dispensationalism.
As if the earth shaking plagues and mark of the beast and such happened in the 1st century but never got reported or something.
You're kidding, right? You've never heard of Josephus' Jewish Wars? Did you know that it was considered an almost indispensible aid to Scripture interpretation by your Calvinist spiritual ancestors not 200 years ago?
You are willing to go against virtually all Bible scholarship to cling to the idea that Revelation does not speak of distant future events.
No, only futurist Bible scholarship, and then only to deny that Revelation speaks only of distant future events.
It makes me think that simply by accepting the overwhelming concensus of scholarship that Revelation was written 95AD would make many of your RCC beliefs crash and burn.
So the words of men not one of whom were actually there are supposed to make me doubt the clear, God-breathed words of Holy Scripture? Not on your life!
So by WHOSE WORDS do you cling to your misbelief that Revelation was written BEFORE the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple? Whose scholarship do you accept in order to believe that? By whose words do you believe that the following...
Rev 13:15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
Rev 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
Rev 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Rev 13:18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six.
...all these mind-blowing events happened between the years 32 AD and 70 AD??????
In any event, as I said, it's been a fascinating insight into the Roman Catholic mind. I know Campion, that it is terribly important for you to "win" this argument. So, as Bill O'Reilly always says...
I'll give you the last word...