Bible Prophecies

[Theland]

The Bible is full of prophecies, and those dealing with the end times describe with uncanny accuracy events in our present day world.
This cannot be mere coincidence.
Ignoring it must be a choice to indulge a personal bias.

[SirOracle]

Thank you Jomifl for your response but I wish to correct you when you state that the author of The Apocalypse was "some unknown guy ".

For your information St.John the Evangelist was one of the twelve Apostles who in addition wrote four other books of the New Testament : the fourth Gospel, and the Three Epistles 1 2 and 3 John.

His teaching is the final Apostolic summation of the mission and doctrine of Christ.

You will gather from this that he a person of some considerable importance in Christianity. AMDG

[Hypognosis]

Thanks for the clarification, Sir Oracle.

For some reason, I had not previously seen the need to properly distinguish between the two words 'disciple' and 'apostle', foolishly thinking that the former was descriptive of them following Jesus around and the latter was what they were labelled after they'd written their memoirs of him.

Now that you've set the time frame of 96AD, it suddenly became clear to me that it was acceptable, to the Roman church, to add writings to the Bible from authors who had never so much as set eyes on Christ.

This certainly explains why there is the insistence that the human writers of biblical texts were "channeling God", to put it in modern parlance.

Religious precepts based on the utterings of handfuls of psychics and mediums though? Strange how spiritualism, divination and so on, came to be outlawed by the church in the centuries that followed, given their importance in the early stages.

[SirOracle]

Hypognosis .....Exact time frames are difficult,but St.John the Evangelist was the son of Salome and perhaps the cousin of Jesus,his mother likely being the sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He was one of the three whom Jesus chose to be with him on special occasions i.e. the Transfiguration and he occupied the place next to Jesus at the Last Supper.He was also at hand during the entire course of Jesus' trial.

So it is clear to me that St. John the Evangelist is not one of the authors that you refer to as being acceptable to the Roman Church as a writer who had never set eyes on Christ.

[Jackdaw33]

The trouble is that he is referred to in the Book of Revelations as St John the Divine, not Evangelist. Might it not be a different bloke?

[SirOracle]

I wondered when you would enter the fray Jackdaw. :-)

The last book in the Bible is far from being what I consider to be of interest to me so I cannot comment on your thoughts about Divine/Evangelist.

Maybe depends on which version of the Bible we are each using,although in our case they are pretty much the same I think.

[Jackdaw33]

In the King James version the book is entitled The Revelations of St John the Divine. I know that the Roman Bible calls it The Apocalypse. I just thought it might possibly be someone else.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Has anybody who's making comments on this thread read the New Testament?

[vetuste_ennemi]

The book is The Revelation of John. Singular, not plural. Help me out here, Peter Pedant.

[Jackdaw33]

I have, though I am no biblical scholar. The bit that interests me about Revelations is the bit which describes the Lady of Babylon (AB filter will not allow me to give the actual word used). It is very difficult not to see it as a description of the Church of Rome.

[vetuste_ennemi]

The *** of Babylon didn't witter on about climate change.

[Jackdaw33]

No need for Peter. You are correct. The tile is The Revelation of &c but in common parlance it is referred to as Revelations.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Think the usual title is The Revelation of John the Divine.

[Jackdaw33]

Correct, but a priest prefacing his sermon will either say, "My text today is taken from the book of the Revelation etc", or,"my text is taken from Revelations, ch, v."

[vetuste_ennemi]

Chacun a son gout

[vetuste_ennemi]

Apologies for missing diacritics.

[SirOracle]

I use the Douay version which pre-dates the King James one.

The final book is known as The Apocalypse.

The Douay Bible also has 7 more books than the king James version and also 2 of the books in the K J version are partly omitted (Esther and Daniel).

Long gone are the days when Romans were allegedly denied access to the Bible. :-)

[Jackdaw33]

Correct SirO. C of E Revelations, RC Apocalypse. The extra books you refer to are the Apocrypha. These are not recognised by the C of E as being canonical as though they may be read for instruction they are not considered to contain any doctrine of faith. The sole scriptural justification for the Roman doctrine of Purgatory is to be found in a book of the Apocrypha, Maccabees, I believe.

[SirOracle]

Jackdaw Re purgatory try Mathew 5: 25-26 ,and Mathew 12:32.

You are correct in Machabee 2nd Mach 12:46. As you may not be able to access this I quote " It is therefor a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead,that they may be loosed from sins ".

The Church to my regret is appearing to "forget" about purgatory nowadays, which seems a pity to me,as it is such a logical doctrine,but such is progress!!