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No, I give up. You win: the historical context in which John lived when he wrote Revelation is meaningless, just a bizarre convoluted irrelevancy. The last vestige of the independance of the Jews was wiped out, one and 1/2 million of the Jewish people were massacred, the survivors were so desperate for food that they cooked and ate their own children, the Temple of the Most High God was burnt to the ground and then desecrated with idolatrous worship, and much of the Holy City of the Jewish people was flattened ... and 50 years later, all of it would be flattened and Jews prohibited from even looking at it, much less living in it.

However, all of this meant nothing to John: he was fixated on a vision of 21st century talking statues, "Roman One-World Churches," Zionist socialist states founded by UN decrees, and the "Rapture". Can we work implanted microchips into this somehow?

I now see the deep reverence toward God's Holy Word implied by the stunning clarity of your insights.

(Thank you, God, for the Catholic Church.)

Well campion, the reason I ask you the question in #127 is...

Notice this passage in The Gospel of Mark... Jesus is speaking.

Mar 13:7 "When you hear of WARS and rumors of WARS, do not be frightened; those things must take place; but that is not yet the end. Mar 13:8 "For nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be EARTHQUAKES in various places; there will also be famines. These things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.

Notice how God is able to use two completely different words to mean "WAR"... and ... "EARTHQUAKE". When God wants to talk about military action, see how He uses the word "WAR"?

Now skip down a few words in the verse... see how when God wants to talk about the ground shaking, (as opposed to, say, a military action) He uses the word "EARTHQUAKE"?

This is what causes many students of the Bible to conclude that the word in Revelation 11:13 that goes "EARTHQUAKE" actually means a real-life "EARTHQUAKE"... and since no such EARTHQUAKE occured in Jerusalem in the First century, and since ALL of Jerusalem was utterly wiped out in 70AD... This leads us to believe that Revelation is prophesying about a FUTURE earthquake that will destroy a tenth of the FUTURE city of Jerusalem and kill seven thousand, just as God says in His book "revelation".

We are emboldened in this thinking by the fact that by a lucky co-incidence, Jerusalem NOW EXISTS!! So an earthquake really could occur just as prophesied in the book of Revelation. That's all I'm saying.