Bull crap. Revelations predicted Nostradamus. He’s the dude with seven horns. Or is it ten?
Nah. He’s the dude with seven or ten interpretations of every single one of his predictions.
Also have to say that “Beasts of Rev. 13” is my favorite Warren Zevon song.
Ok guys… enough mocking the poor “doom predictor”. 
With all due respect… don’t you feel that you had to stretch the revelations in order to fit them with the Middle East ? That was my impression. Nothing you said seemed straight forward or a strong match. The same babble could be fit to Rome, the US and especially Israel:
Israel or the Jews are a strong and small people…
**ephraim ** has left the building. I doubt he’ll be back. I’ve seen this a hundred times if I’ve seen it once–they hit our Board, post once or twice, are shocked that we not only do not defer to their beliefs, but are even more shocked to discover that we point out the intolerable weaknesses in them.
Terrified of confronting the truth, that the beliefs they cultivate cannot stand up to the critical analysis that an educated & reasoning adult can direct on them, the evangel-whoozits flee for the far horizon.
We’ll not see **ephraim ** again. But we’ll see many others like him, briefly.
I haven’t left the building. I just sit back and look at all the ignorant posts and in the event that there is one person who asks a legitimate question that isn’t laced with ridicule, I will usually answer back. You my friend deserve nothing more from me…
Whoop-de-do. Was Freyr’s question too full of ridicule or did you just conveniently ignore it?
ephraim, I ask a legitimate question with no ridicule intended:
Do you present any convincing reason or evidence, other than your say-so, why we should disregard the standard theological interpretation of Revelation given by Diogenes?
Well whoop-de-do! 
I have a similar view of your jabber, my friend.
Have you heard tell of the BBQ Pit?
So let me get this straight. You post this nonsense in the anticipation that out of the five-hundred people who reply (four-hundred and ninety-nine of whom inevitably mock you) at least one person will ask a “serious” question?
Well, he is new here.
But he has received several serious questions and, unlike most of out drive-by friends, not only answered one but claims he did not steal his original post from somebody else. Of course, some of the questions he hasn’t answered are the same one over again (“Why are you right and every other theologian is wrong?”) but we have to give him points for answering one.
No I do not have any convincing evidence other than my observance and interpretation of prophecy. Diogenes did not live in our time. His interpretation was based on his best idea of what was going to happen. You and I are living it and the events that I describe have happened. My question to you is how can you believe in a God that you have never seen but dismiss the things that are happening right before your eyes. So yes the question to me is ridicule. It requires your faith. If you don’t believe me that is alright just put it in the back of your mind and when the time comes remember this post. If you are wanting me to run off a litany of resources and individuals that believe my position, that I cannot do. I am just delivering the message, you do with it as you will…The Watchman of Ephraim Hosea 9:8
Uh, Ephriam, the Diogenes referred to here, I believe, is our very own Diogenes the Cynic, who, from all indications, most assuredly does live in this time, having replied to you earlier in this thread.
Anyway, sorry, but lots of folks come through here claiming to have a cast-iron interpretation of one prophecy or another. While a generalized faith in God or the Biblical prophecies may be required for either concept to have any meaning, you, so far as I can tell, are not God, nor His authorized representative, so I have no obligation to place any faith at all in what you might have to say.
While you rightly selected this forum as the one for witnessing, it also happens to be one where arguments or claims must have some sort of supporting facts to be taken seriously. So far all you’ve done is assert that a prophecy made some 2000 years ago, describing a mythical monster and lacking any specifics of time or place, is somehow related to a political figure of the 21st century in a specific location, without being able to advance a coherent explanation as to how you might have reached your conclusions. If you’ve got no evidence, or even a notion of the logical process involved, you’ve got no case. Cheers.
Where did the idea that the bible predicted future events like some cheesy astrologer come from?
No kidding. . .
Oh, bless you, oh wise one - cuz I was just so worried about what might happen if I thought your interpretation was absolute bullshit.
And when the time doesn’t come, will you come to SD and admit you were wrong?
Yeah, you’ve made that abundantly clear.
Ephraim, I have a question. Do you believe in a literal interpretation of the bible? If so, how do you reconcile the fact that Revelations has to be interpreted as symbolic in order to point to specific people and events? Why is that one book not “word for word truth,” but rather a code or metaphor?
If not, then why must Revelations refer to events heralding armageddon, and not events (and people) who might have been politically important and opponents of early Christianity?
I’d really like to hear your answer.
Let me postulate, just for the sake of the debate, that the Beast of Revelations is not the First Century Roman Empire or Anwar Arafat, but rather is, or was, Gertrude Cook, an otherwise harmless spinster lady who taught Algebra at West Liberty, Ohio, from some time in the Neolithic Age until 1958. It makes as much sense as any thing else posted here. I have no idea why John of Patmos would have anticipated Miss Cook but he sure got her dead to rights.
And Bosta, would you please give serious consideration to abandoning your signature–you may well think it is just the neatest thing ever crafted by the hand and mind of man but in my judgment it is just flat annoying.
Keep waiting. :rolleyes:
And there was me counting the letters and thinking the beast was RONALD WILSON REAGAN.
D’oh.
Hmmm, OK, in the spirit of not mocking you, hard though it is, here’s a serious question or two:
Please explain why this is so.
How did Islam rise out of the sea?
What “wonders” does Abu Mazen perform?
This is Abu Mazen again, right? He’s pretty versatile, this guy, isn’t he? How will he make this happen?
Final question: why have you only selected a few of the many bizarre images in Revelation to interpret, and neglected the others?