I've recently taken more interest in the Book of Daniel, and have been doing a lot more research on how it relates to the Book of Revelation. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on which take on these two books fits best. Has Jesus come already, or is he still to come? Are these books to be taken literally, or is it simply symbolic of the current state of the world at that time?

I agree completely. I think too many of these "scholars" get so obsessed with trying to interpret Daniel's or others' visions that they lose sight of the whole reason they had the vision in the first place. God made it simple for us. Love God, love others, believe in Jesus. Life should be so simple.

Aggie521 said:

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I agree completely. I think too many of these "scholars" get so obsessed with trying to interpret Daniel's or others' visions that they lose sight of the whole reason they had the vision in the first place. God made it simple for us. Love God, love others, believe in Jesus. Life should be so simple.

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For some, and I may be in error simply by suggesting this, it's income source. The Blood Moon thing is a great example of this. Not saying that everyone who tries to understand these prophecies is doing so for profit, but it certainly appears to be the case for some. I hope I'm wrong though.

I used to believe in preterism. it's the only way, imo, to reconcile Jesus' statements of an impending return and the disciples obvious expectation as a result.

So how do you take Rev 1:3 - Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

If those other books (except Israel, never heard of that one) were so plain, there would only be one religion.

Who said not to read it? The beginning is also pretty straight-forward in regards to message to specific churches, and those messages are easily generalized to congregations yesterday and today. It's the wild conjecture regarding the apocalyptic imagery that is not fruitful. People get really dug in on certain interpretations, and you can really start a fight with many Christians by disagreeing with their select interpretation.

The verse states to heed as well. If you don't read to understand, how can you heed it?

Maybe you can be more clear with your question? When I read Daniel I don't understand any of it until Daniel interprets the imagery. In Revelation we are given only the imagery with no interpretation.

How exactly I am supposed to read to understand: "and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind."? How am I supposed to "heed" those words?

The question is how can you heed something that you don't know to heed? If you are not understanding what the text says you cannot heed. John says to heed, therefore it is possible to understand. Yes, Revelation, just like the a good portion of the Gospel of John is written on the sod level. That doesn't mean we cannot understand it.

Any observant Jew could read Revelation and understand it with very little trouble. In fact, there is Jewish literature that refers to Revelation. Some consider it a Jewish book...I know imagine that. It is mainly about Yom Kippur.

It is about understanding the Torah and the Prophets. Isaiah has many passages that Revelation mirrors. I know you don't go to the Talmud, Midrash, or Zohar much, but they help explain all this as well (specially the Zohar). The sages have discuss, hammered out these type of topics many times over.

What Jewish literature? Who considers it a Jewish book?

schmendeler said:

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I used to believe in preterism. it's the only way, imo, to reconcile Jesus' statements of an impending return and the disciples obvious expectation as a result.

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I have heard it described that every prophesy has up to three meanings:

1) What is going to happen on the physical earth very soon

2) What is going to happen on the physical earth sometime in the future; and / or

3) What is going to happen during the end times and eternity.

So, a prophesy about a virgin birth could relate to an impending war, a future messiah much later, and an end-time challenge / encouragement.


Generally, on these issues, I am an eventualist.

I believe that eventually, these things will work themselves out.

Always happy to read. Know where I can find that?

The Zohar Volume 1 comments:

Zohar

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation are all prophet books written with dream imagery. Daniel never took any of his dreams "literally", but he was given inspiration to recognize the symbolism of his dreams and those of others (Joseph had the same gift). Unless you have a specific gift from God, I think trying to interpret even prophetic dreams is a fool's errand.

Now some of the imagery is used in other places. For instance, Revelation mirrors Ezekiel in a lot of ways. Comparing and contrasting can be very interesting. But I sort of chuckle when people spend way too much time studying "eschatology". If God wanted us to know plainly, He would have told us plainly like with Isaiah and Israel or Jeremiah and Judah. As is, people might as well be reading tea leaves.

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Daniel 9 is a chapter that many prophecy scholars believe have to do with Jesus first and second coming. It is not relaying a dream to the reader. A straight reading of chapter 9, is that the angel is telling him what his earlier vision meant. This is the 70 7's passage. It is immediately preceded by Daniel's own interpretation of a passage in Jeremiah where God promised Jeremiah that the Jews would be captive in Babylon for 70 years and Daniel, interpreting that passage literally is praying and asking for God send the captive Jews back to Jerusalem. While I think Chapter 9 and the 70 7's is a difficult passage, it does not read as something that should be interpreted as "dream imagery" that we'll never know for sure what it means. It me be a fools errand to assign specific future dates to all these things, but it is not a fools errand to spend time in his word.

It is certainly not to be treated as "tea leaves."