God was obviously some sort of halfwit.
Much of this can be clearly answered by pointing to why Revelation was included in the Bible at all. As Ulfreida explained, this is not in and of itself a unique type of work, and it was directed at Christians in the present tense, that is, to those communities of Christians with whom the author could communicate or to whom the work could be passed around. And it was absolutely a dire warning, but of things to come in the near future. It was emphatically not meant for random schmucks who got their ill-educated hands on it two thousands years down the line. To those who codified the Bible, Revelation was a record of prophecies that had already come to pass, and contained wisdom that could be used to educate believers. It has nothing to say specifically about the actual End Times, except perhaps by way of analogy, because it was never intended to talk about such.
Seriously, dude, *everybody/i] got it. That’s how apocalyptic literature works; it’s symbolic. For slow learners, the author says right there in Chapter 1 that everything he writes came to him in an ecstatic vision one Sunday when he was in prison. It’s trippy; how much more clearly could he tell you that? The notion that it’s an actual description of events yet to unfold is a completely modern one.
Only in the sense that everyone who’s not a simplistic literalist is some sort of a halfwit. Which is to say, not at all.
The writer of Revelation was also trying to communicate in ways that were not, strictly speaking, allowed in the Roman Empire of his day? This was very literally, a time and place where Christians were sometimes executed because of the paranoia of the state, or the political needs of its rulers. He was not the only person who couched his message in symbolism. Also, vivid imagery is not exactly an unknown literary device, then or now.
Nitpick. The book in question is as is correctly written in the OP. “Revelation,” in the singular.
Indeed. “What is Revelation?,” the biblical book, was the answer (question) on Jeopardy recently, and one contestant was ruled incorrect for saying, “What is Revelations?”
Like the book’s other name, Apocalypse, which is a singular noun, but maybe confuses people because it ends with an /s/ sound. They mean the same thing. Apo- means take away and calypse means hiding. Take away that which hides. Revelation literally means to pull back the veil.
Exactly. What said isn’t what’s meant, and many read symbols variously. We interpret symbols as we grok or want. Thus do faiths fragment and multiply - one’s metaphor is another’s commandment, and faithful may slaughter those disagreeing. It’s traditional.
Much explicit fiction symbolically substitutes certain groups as others - ET aliens may represent ethnic minorities, evil politico-economic organizations, etc. Such fiction usually makes no pretense to be divine word. Problem comes when folks take the stuff seriously. It’s ancient poetry, folks. Expect poetic license.
Back to the OP: Did the poet John of Patmos specify the mechanism for alleged ascension to an alleged heaven? Apparently not.
John of Patmos doesn’t mention ascension into heaven at all. (Heaven, yes, at least figuratively. Ascension, no.) As pointed out in post #2, that bit is based on a passage in Thessalonians, attributed to Paul of Tarsus.
Already in the text of Genesis there is mention of one Enoch, son of Jared being “taken by God” (it doesn’t say where or how), if one wanted to read into that some “mechanism” for ascending to heaven other than simply dying. Much later, you read about hard-core prophets like Elijah ascending to heaven in a whirlwind of fire.
The Hellevator plays muzak… of course…
Dune Buggies.
We drive Dune Buggies to Heaven.
Next question.
Also Jesus said that some would not die before seeing the kingdom come, Paul talks about some believers will be taken, And the stoning of Stephan in Acts fits the description that Paul provides just from the viewpoint of what Stephan says. That has been going on forever it appears. But those are all ‘a one off’. Revelation seems to talk about perhaps mass ‘rapture’, or perhaps many and as we see it it may look like the holocaust or something like that, but God talks them out, we (like those around Stephan) see unjust deaths.
Sorry for my sloppiness.
“♫ Well I’ve never been to Heaven
But I’ve been to Oklahoma… ♫”
Alas, my California has no Heaven (except Bungalow Heaven); poor Paradise burnt down; and even Hell was abandoned and demolished. But we still have Mecca. Hadj would be easy.
And Doom Buggies to Hell?
That popular children’s camp song, “Oh You Can’t Get To Heaven” enumerates a variety of known ways you can’t get there.
Oh you can’t get to heaven
With Superman
'Cause the great great Lord
Is a Batman fan!
But the thing is that the text of Revelation itself does not talk about a Rapture in the sense it is commonly used today, as mentioned that comes from a (relatively late) interpretation of a Pauline letter. It does talk about a Great Tribulation, which some Christian groups believe to mean a prophesy of a major catastrophic End Times crisis.
Traditionally the mainstream preaching was that the ascension of those still living would happen when Jesus “returns in Glory” in sight of all eyes for the Judgment, when living AND dead are all risen before him to face the music. The variation in the case of what is today commonly called “the Rapture” is called pretribulational dispensation: that the deliverance of the righteous will happen by Jesus taking the already-saved up to Heaven *before *the Great Tribulation happens.
i remember every Sunday a channel would show something called “the world tomorrow” (heres more the world tomorrow - Search ) which was not much other than a slight sermon that showed how 80s politics and society was leading everyone straight to hell via the book of revelation via a rotating cast of preachers
and the rest an infomercial showing how the second coming of god was just around the corner and if you subscribed to the magazine and bought the books and tapes for x amount of dollars you could learn the secrets that the wicked Jewish catholic mooslem (that’s how the rev. cracker pronounced it )(it was assumed atheists were permanently lost) and any other"false" religion that wasn’t good ol fundamentalist American bible stumpin were ignoring and save your soul …