Re: 666 Day

----- Original Message -----
From: <drsyme@cablespeed.com>
To: <gmurphy@raex.com>; "Dick Fischer " <dickfischer@verizon.net>; "ASA"
<asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: 666 Day

> What I said was that if you accept that 666 refers to Nero, which of the
> following is more likely, that John wrote Revelation during or before the
> time of Nero, or that he wrote it in the late 90's, and was talking about
> some rumors of Nero's survival or resurrection? I think that an early
> writing of Revelation is more likely.
>
> Of course he could be talking about Domitian, (or any evil Roman emperor)
> which would solve your problem of a pre 70 date of Revelation. But you
> still have a problem (if you hold a futurist eschatology) that this would
> mean a first century fulfillment of the Last Days.
>
> If you accept that 666 refers to Nero, a preterist (either full or
> partial) eschatology is on the whole more coherent, than is a futurist
> eschatology, in my opinion.

I think it very likely that the writer of Revelation expected the end of
world history - at least up to the events described in Chapter 20 - to
happen very soon.
But it didn't. Babylon/Rome didn't fall (Ch.18) until - well, when? 410?
476? 1454? 1807? Anyway, it was long after the 1st century. While
Augustine's understanding of the millennium as the time of the church was
ingenious, it's a stretch. Whatever the expectations of some biblical
writers may have been, the parousia hasn't occurred yet. Revelation is
still meaningful for the church today if we can - & I think we can -
understand the religious aspect of the Roman imperium as a type of all
political entities which demand ultimate loyalty. So while trying to get
666 out of Hitler or Stalin or whoever you may think embodies idolatrous
tendencies in American civil religion is on one level nonsense, on another
level it perceives the meaning of the text correctly. Aquinas said
somewhere that in all tyrants Antichrist lies hidden.

(You can see an interesting example of what may have been a moving back of
biblical predictions of the last days by comparing Daniel 12:11 with the
following verse.)

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Tue Jun 6 15:34:53 2006