Define 'primitive'.
It actually seems that there is some pretty advanced writing styles in the Bible. While it was written many years ago, it does not fit with what I would expect to read if the authors were that primitive or uneducated.
"The only evidence we have for the author of the Bible, or any book for that matter, is that, so far, only humans create text. This evidence leads me to believe that the Bible was written by a primitive nontechnical society and can not be used as an authority in anything other than that society."
Howdy there b_sharp;
What other book do you know of that could look 2000 years into the future and tell us what would be happening in our day?
Rev 13
16 He required everyone—great and small, rich and poor, slave and free—to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead.
17 And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name.
***A cashless society would have been un-heard of in just the last 50 years, but yet God told us it was coming.
We don't even blink a eye at the thought of having a chip inserted into us with which we can do all our banking & traveling. Or all of our medicial history contained in a chip.***
The Mark of [Your] Beast
Already, high-tech chips are being implanted in pets and other animals (usually by subcutaneous injections) so lost animals can be scanned when they are brought into shelters. The pet information is kept in a national database. What works for animals obviously works for humans.
Appearing under the dubious title of Digital AngelTM in June, a new implantable digital chip was announced in testing phase among humans. Digital AngelTM combines advanced biosensor technology with "web-enabled wireless telecommunications with Global Positioning Satellite Systems (GPS)." Digital AngelTM is capable of monitoring key body functions, such as temperature and pulse, and transmitting that data, along with accurate location information, to a ground station or monitoring facility. Already the technology exists to store a person's entire data on a single chip. The Digital AngelTM chip is powered by muscle action in the host animal or person.
While such technology has great promise - monitoring the location and medical condition of high-risk patients, locating missing pets or people, managing livestock, etc. -the dark side of this technology is immediately clear to anyone who understands what totalitarian governments of the past have attempted to do: protect themselves from their own people by monitoring and controlling everything they do.
http://www.khouse.org/articles/2001/360/
18 Wisdom is needed to understand this. Let the one who has understanding solve the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.
The Two Witnesses
Revelation 11
1 Then I was given a measuring stick, and I was told, “Go and measure the Temple of God and the altar, and count the number of worshipers.
2 But do not measure the outer courtyard, for it has been turned over to the nations. They will trample the holy city for 42 months.
3 And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will be clothed in sackcloth and will prophesy during those 1,260 days.”
4 These two prophets are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of all the earth.
5 If anyone tries to harm them, fire flashes from the mouths of the prophets and consumes their enemies. This is how anyone who tries to harm them must die.
6 They have power to shut the skies so that no rain will fall for as long as they prophesy. And they have the power to turn the rivers and oceans into blood, and to send every kind of plague upon the earth as often as they wish.
7 When they complete their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the bottomless pit will declare war against them. He will conquer them and kill them.
8 And their bodies will lie in the main street of Jerusalem, the city which is called “Sodom” and “Egypt,” the city where their Lord was crucified.
***9 And for three and a half days, all peoples, tribes, languages, and nations will come to stare at their bodies. No one will be allowed to bury them.
Who would have thought about CNN....Fox News...MSNBC being able to have their cameras trained on two dead bodies laying in the streets so the whole world can watch 2,000 years ago?***
10 All the people who belong to this world will give presents to each other to celebrate the death of the two prophets who had tormented them.
***It's not hard to picture all of our God haters jumping up & down for joy (just picture all the DU folks) that finally these two have been killed and won't be preaching to them anymore about God.***
11 But after three and a half days, the spirit of life from God entered them, and they stood up! And terror struck all who were staring at them.
12 Then a loud voice shouted from heaven, “Come up here!” And they rose to heaven in a cloud as their enemies watched.