As a new Bible scholar, you generally start with what you already know about – whether through a church upbringing, popular culture, other religions or other sources of information about what scripture says.
Those are the assumptions that you automatically bring with you when you start to read God’s word, and the frame, lens or model through which you interpret everything that is written therein.
Thus, when it comes to New Testament prophecies, and especially the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which used to be called the Apocalypse, Greek for unveiling, we assume, because of much popular culture and most church teachings, that it is all still to come at some point in the future.
Films like Left Behind, TV shows like Revelation Road and The Rapture Chronicles, and even in the truth movement, Alex Jones’ 2007 interview with TV and film producer Aaron Russo, give us the impression that everything is still to come and play out.
Further, almost every preacher and teacher on Biblical end-times prophecy (also known as ‘eschatology’) while differing on what the symbols, places and details mean, concur that all is to come from where are today in the third decade of the 21st century, almost 2,000 years after Jesus Christ was crucified by the Romans at the request of the Jews in AD 30-31.
So the rulers’ very real plans for a digital identity to include all of your biometric information and its attendant monitoring cameras everywhere, plus a blockchain-ledger-based univeral credit currency system, would seem to us like Biblical prophecy, and it cannot be avoided.
It was one of the few chapter and verses I memorised because it seemed so important and relevant to today: Revelation 13:16 ‘and no man could buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name or the number of the beast’. Sounds exactly like the restrictive, permission-based currency system the powers that currently rule the world are implementing, doesn’t it?
But fear not apparently, because it will only last 3.5 years, and then Jesus will return to smash the one world government, religion, currency and evil and we will all be free, with believers being raptured to heaven, etc. etc.
This is the common view among most truthseekers, believers, observers and commentators, it would seem.
The preterist view, that all of Revelation has already taken place, seems odd as it does not seem to be addressing the very real events and agenda of today.
Clearly, Revelation is playing out right now and we’re all going to have to take the mark of the beast (digital currency system and ID) or be excluded from the economy – no supermarket entry, no job, no transport, no nothing - no buying or selling of any kind. And they knew about this 2,000 years ago!
But what if the evil genius rulers are simply replaying and reinterpreting Revelation so that you believe it is cast iron prophecy and therefore inevitable? Biblical backup is a very strong persuader, whether you believe in God or not. Prophecies that come true or seem to be coming true from thousands of years ago are the evidence.
However, if we examine both the scriptures themselves and known, written, recorded history, we can begin to unravel the huge deception at play which has otherwise very astute political, economic and geopolitical observers believing the ‘received wisdom’ that there are still as-yet, unfulfilled Biblical events.
Audience relevance is crucial here, as well as noting all of the time references in all of the New Testament prophecies about Jesus’s return and the beginning of His reign of peace and prosperity.
Who were Jesus, Paul and John (mainly) addressing when they were talking about the Son of God’s return to Earth? And what time reference, if any, was associated with them?
Who else could they have been referring to when Jesus said, ‘some standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God…’ but those standing right in front of him? Would it make sense for Him to be addressing us today far off in the future?
It is normally much easier to organise and read as a list, but if I have missed any, please feel free to point them out:
Rev 1:1 – ‘things which must come to pass quickly’.
Rev 1:3 – ‘for the time is near’.
Rev 22:12 – ‘I am coming quickly’.
Rev 22: 20 ‘Yes I am coming quickly’.
Matthew 16:28 ‘Some standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God’.
Matthew 24:34 ‘Behold this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened’.
1 Thess 4, 15-17: ‘…after that, we, the living left remaining, together with them will be caught away..’
Paul makes clear that some who he is addressing will be alive when Jesus’s return, after the dead in Christ rise first. Paul was clearly talking to his contemporaries.
Now we can try and explain these away, as many do, by changing the plain, received meaning of the word ‘soon’ to ‘could come at any time but not necessarily in our lifetimes’, or ‘i’m coming quickly’ to mean that WHEN He comes, it will happen fast, but it might not be for many centuries hence. This is a prime example of changing what is written to fit in with what we already believe. The speed of His return is neither relevant nor being talked about; it is the timing, when one does not hold preconceptions and therefore ignore the plainly-written text.
But if, knowing the deceptions of man and those that rule and want to rule forever, we simply take what is written there and build up our view without preconception, then it is clear that the prophets were talking about a time soon to happen after they had prophesied - years or decades, but certainly not centuries and millenia!
Contrast those clear, plain time-reference statements with what we would expect to read should God have meant to let all those being addressed either in the flesh by Jesus or in letters by some of His apostles know that His return would not be until well into the 21st century or beyond, more than 2,000 years later: there aren’t any; but if you can find one without twisting the meanings of plain English words, then I can stand corrected.
And so on to known history. First, it is clear that when John wrote the book of Revelation, the temple in Jerusalem was still standing. Just as Ezekiel’s ‘third’ temple in chapter 48 was prophesied while the Israelites were in Babylon and the first temple had been destroyed, and so was describing the second temple which Jesus visited at some point in the future, so the temple described in Revelation 11 was the same one Ezekiel described, or John would have mentioned that this was some other temple, because the second one had also been destroyed.
The idea that Revelation was written after AD70 therefore becomes impossible. The temple was the centre of all Jewish life and religion. If it had already been destroyed, there would have been no need for John to measure it in his vision, and he certainly would have made reference to it!
Second, all of the prophecies in Revelation are about Jerusalem and apostate Israel that rejected the long-promised Messiah of the Old Testament.
Mystery Babylon is Jerusalem – clearly so, for it states it is the city and people that murdered most of the prophets God sent; they weren’t killed in Rome, London or the United States, or even Babylon for that matter – Jerusalem killed them, as it killed God’s ultimate prophet, Jesus Christ. No other city can possibly fit the bill.
Also, the prophecies of Revelation were not regarding the whole world or even the end of the world: the Greek word ‘aion’ means eon, epoch - a long time period, an age. It has nothing to with place, space or Earth, which would be ‘kosmos’.
‘Eretz’ means land, and it could be referring to all of the land of Earth, but in context, it is referring to Israel, and especially Jerusalem, which was besieged and then destroyed completely by the Roman army. Did another people pierce Jesus who would then see His return and moan? Was Jesus pierced/crucified more than once, or in recent years? The plain text and a plain reading of it gives us the whole , unvarnished truth.
Even the prophecy of Rome’s breaking off the siege of 66-70AD for a short while (giving those with the seal of God, i.e., Christians, the chance to escape to the hills again as prophesied/instructed by Jesus in Matthew 24/the Olivet prophecy) is recorded history. Due to the political situation in Rome, Vespasian broke off from Jerusalem to return there and sent Titus to finish the job once Vespasian had become emperor himself.
If you try to read that Biblical prophecy today, you’re left with the question, ‘what difference does it make whether it will be the sabbath or not?’
Sitting alongside that is the Seventh Day Adventists’ misinterpretation of the mark of the beast as Sunday worship instead of Saturday worship – as if the world is completely Christian and this is the most important matter today for everyone.
In a world which has rejected Christ, religion, God or any purpose to life and existence, you could not be further wrong if you tried. Even Paul says it doesn’t matter which day you celebrate sabbath, or whether you do at all. Jesus Himself told the Pharisees that the sabbath was made for man and not as a religious observance to browbeat the people with.
Audience relevance is critical. Everything that was said and written was directed to those at that time, and nowhere does the Bible say there are multiple fulfilments of prophecy - again, a modern, dispensationalist reinterpretation that is not backed by scripture itself. It is used to fit in with our preconceptions.
Because all Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the New Testament, and all New Testament prophecies were fulfilled by 70AD, exactly one Biblical generation after Jesus said they would. Nothing is left to chance, God is perfect and His (untranslated, unreinterpreted) word is perfect. It is only our modern minds which try to fit scripture into what we have been led to believe by pastors, movies and truth movement received wisdom.
So not only is every prophecy relating to Revelation referenced with a short time period, with the longest being a generation (in the Bible, a generation is 40 years – a period that crops up several times but most notably when the Israelites were punished for their apostasy and made to wander the wilderness for 40 years before their children were led into the promised land by Joshua), and not one of them being a long time period (compare with Daniel’s – shut up the prophecy because it is not for many days, and it was indeed around 600 years before Jesus was born and began His ministry), but actual recorded history – notably by Josephus the Jewish historian (The Jewish Wars) and Tacitus the Roman, two groups who would have no reason to support a lie about Jesus – shows us that Jerusalem was besieged for 3.5 years, from AD 66 to AD 70, which included all the horrors of the plagues of Revelation including starvation, disease and many horrible deaths, and then the city was burned to the ground with every stone of the temple being thrown down so that nothing of it was left.
We always cling to our first-learned information. That is why the rulers try to completely control childrens’ education, so that they carry in their heads what the rulers want them to believe and argue against those who have figured out nearly all of it is lies and misdirection.
The symbol of education across the world is the globe, but there are now many who have realised the impossibility of that model and its direct opposition to everything our senses tell us is true every single day of our lives, but the idea that the ‘science is settled’ is as erroneous and unscientific as it was with believing a new killer virus was on the loose and we should all get injected with an unknown substance that has since given people all kinds of severe injuries, disabilities and caused an unknown number of ‘sudden and unexpected’ deaths.
Everything must be up for debate, but simply defending what you have already heard without actually examining it is the height of ignorance, and what those that rule and want to being in a total slavery system are relying on.
There are those who are at a near half-way house with this; they believe most of Revelation has happened up to Rev 20:8; i.e., that we are in satan’s little season. Again, the Greek word means short time period, but even sticking with ‘little’ it cannot possibly indicate a century or even longer. The book of Revelation repeats itself, so that you get the same picture from many different angles; the enemy’s short season was in fact, the 3.5 years of Jerusalem’s tribulation.
The final question for believers then, is if it’s all happened then where is Jesus’s reign of peace – why is there still suffering, misery and death on the Earth?
Because nowhere in the Bible does it say the Kingdom of God will be on Earth. We might pray for God’s will to be done on Earth, but New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven though it doesn’t land on Earth. Similarly, nowhere does it say Jesus Himself actually returns – Matt 24:29-30 says the SIGN of the son of man will appear in the sky, and ( ) says He will send His angels to gather the elect from the four corners of heaven.
“My kingdom is not of this world…but now my kingdom is not from here.” John 18:36
Does that sound like it is an Earthly kingdom which Jesus has in mind?
When we read what the text actually says, rather than what we believe it says, the truth begins to appear, different from when we read it with preconception so that we are fitting the words into what we already believe in our heads, and a quite different picture begins to emerge.
So if Jesus has already set up His kingdom in heaven sitting at the right hand of God with the saints judging and ruling with Him, where does that leave us still alive today?
In essence, absolutely no different to before – our faith and hope is still in Him and the path He made for us to live together forever with God in His eternal heavenly Kingdom, but rather than it either happening at any time out of the blue (as some believe) or at a predetermined point in the future after the tribulation of the mark of the beast etc., it will be when your natural Earthly life is over.
Our hope is still the same. All that has changed with this new understanding is that everything that the rulers are doing in trying to set up their kingdom over the whole Earth is completely off their own backs, and nothing to do with Biblical prophecy and therefore not at all an inevitable and foregone conclusion.
They will try, but if you now know they are trying it on, and the idea is as untenable as it is deranged, then that should give you even more optimism and spirit to resist and refuse to comply.
You can search any Biblical reference easily (using general search engines) or from biblehub.com which has the lexicons, all the different English versions and the Greek and Hebrew words so you can check what they actually mean.
Discussion and debate are more than welcome, and even if you’re not interested in the Bible but you are about freedom and the agenda to take it away permanently, this is important stuff, because, if even subconsciously, it informs your expectations of what is about to happen.
Peace xxx
Thank you for this sane and sensible post. Means we can get real and keep fighting in the here and now!
I am puzzled. If the Mark of the Beast in Revelation has already occurred, when did that happen? Did it happen when Jerusalem was under siege?