Peace to you Marco,
marco wrote:
tam wrote:
I have always been terrible at understanding and interpreting symbolism... always hated poetry in high school for that reason. I could never figure out what anyone was talking about!)
Perhaps you read the wrong poetry. It has much to teach us. It can be done beautifully as in the KJV of David's lament for Jonathan but read the NIV and beauty has vanished and not just from Gath.
Oh, I am not going to do the same as Martin Luther and blame the poetry, lol. It was not the poetry, it was me.
One of my favourite poems mourns with nostalgia and sadness:
"Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again."
Well now, I might get a sense of that one... perhaps because you have spoken of your lost faith with similar nostalgia and sadness.
Thank you for sharing it.
But I lose patience with Revelation while you have the patience of Job, so you have mined meaning from it.
I lost patience also (with my lack of understanding), had to take a break, and realize it was not up to me to interpret it... and that no matter how wide I opened my eyes or how forcefully I read each and every word, I was not going to force the meaning clear.
Had to leave it to Christ, let Him reveal it.
Some things are straightforward of course (and surely you can recognize His manner of speaking in the seven letters to the seven congregations), but others are more symoblic (such as the beast that comes out of the sea or the beast that comes out of the earth).
One thing to keep in mind is that John was
shown many things from the future, even two thousand years into the future. He then had to describe those things, and how else would he have described them except in terms that HE knew? So some things are not symbolic so much as they are descriptions from a man who saw things that would not be invented or even conceived of, until upwards of two thousand years (or more) into his future.
Take a plane (just as an example). We would describe a plane as something metal that flies via an engine (producing smoke behind the plane), with pilots and cockpits and computer controls, etc. (okay that is obviously a 21st century LAY person description of a plane, lol. An engineer or pilot or mechanic would do MUCH better than that). But planes did not exist two thousand years ago, those very general words that I just used did not exist two thousand years ago either.
That is good. You will note that Jesus never used that kind of language.
Depends upon which parts you are referring to. But
visions had always worked that way. Daniel and John both saw the same beast(s) in their visions, then had to describe those things. Daniel described 4 beasts (still with seven heads and ten horns). John described one beast that had elements of those 4 beasts (but also with the seven heads and ten horns).
Daniel and John received the same vision.
Then Christ is the One who came and
explained that vision to Daniel. We can see that this person who came was Christ because the description Daniel gave of Him is the same as the description John gave of Christ in HIS vision. (Revelation 1:12-18 and Daniel 10:4-6)
Peace again to you, Marco,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy