Revelation and Chronology

The entire time that I was formally a Futurist one of the major pillars of how I interpreted Revelation was a desire to view it as a strict chronology, its events happen in the order the text of Revelation described them.  And I've maintained that bias for much of my time writing this Blog as a Non Premillennial.

However in Inspiring Philosophy's video on how Matthew and Luke do not contradict each other in their account of when Satan Tempted Jesus by listing the Temptations in different orders, he made a point out of how the Greek word usage gave away that the less Chronological one isn’t listing things in order.  And the word that most Revelation verses benign with is that less inherently Chronological word.  Something I ignored the significance for a long time. 

The first place to look towards for considering that different parts of Revelation are describing the same events from different angles would be to compare Revelation 9 with Revelation 20:7-8.  That both these Abyss being opened events are the same and then the Sixth Trumpet is describing the Gog and Magog invasion.  And then following from that the Seventh Trumpet in Revelation 11:15-19 would equate to Revelation 20:11-15 the very which I as non Premillennial now identify with The Parousia. 

Some Non Chronological readings of Revelation believe the timeline restarts exactly once at the start of Chapter 12. Which can line up well with what I just described.

But the Seventh Trumpet isn’t the only place in Revelation other than the End of the Millennium where I see descriptions of characteristics of the Parousia that Jesus and Paul described in the Olivet Discourses and the Thessalonians Epistles. 

However the connection of the Son of Man and Cloud imagery is not actually complete, I was always over stating it.  The agreed upon Parousia passages have the Son of Man in The Clouds while here it’s “one like the Son of Man” riding on a single Cloud.  And the truth is my confidence in a Seventh Trumpet Rapture when I was a Futurist was partly because of the possibility of seeing Revelation 14 still happen fairly soon after with the in between chapter being very events that happen rapidly. 

So in the process of writing this post I’ve become less convinced of the plausibility of a non Chronological Revelation that I was when I started. 

The one thing I do still see as possible is the Two Witnesses narrative being Chronologically separated from the rest. Because Revelation 11:1-10 is definitely the Angel from Chapter 10 still talking, and maybe verses 11-13 are as well though the tense changing there is curious. 

I lost my original train of thought when discussing Revelation 14.  If Revelation 14 isn't the Parousia then it can be before the Millennium.  Including in a way that's consistent with Revelation 12 as a start over point.

As someone who believes Biblical Zion is Bethlehem not Jerusalem, I could argue Revelation 14 is partially fulfilled by Bethlehem being a majority Christian city for most of the last 17 centuries.

So I remain undecided for now. 

Volcano in Revelation 9?

When Revelation 9:2 says that the opening of the Abyss causes smoke like a great furnace to arise and darken the skies I can’t help but see that as a description of a Volcanic Eruption.

Now I know “Smoke of a Furnace” language is also how certain people try to argue Mt Sinai was a Volcano.  But in passages like Exodus 19:18,, Genesis 15:17 or Genesis 19:18 it’s not possible to interpret underground as the source of the Smoke, but that is heavily implied to be the source of the Smoke in Revelation 9. 

And I also can’t help but suspect Ancient Greek readers would have been reminded by this chapter of the mythology surrounding Mt Etna (the largest Volcano in the Mediterranean world), inside of which is imprisoned the monster Typhon and also the forge of Hephaestus a god who was cast down from Olympus.  

The last verse of Chapter 1 sets the stage that sometimes if not always in this book Stars represent Angels, so we have in Revelation 9:1 a Star falling from heaven and being given the Key to the Abyss which houses monsters including a King of those Monsters.

Maybe it wasn’t just Etna, maybe most known Volcanoes had similar mythological frameworks surrounding them and Etna’s is just one most well remembered?

In my desire to place as much of Revelation 6-19 in Late Antiquity as possible the most significant Volcanic Eruption is the one that happened in AD 536 causing the major climate issues of the next few years.  The main culprit for that Eruption is far away from the Biblical World, but other Eruptions seem to have possibly also happened the same year including another Eruption of Mt Vesuvius.

But the Vesuvius Eruption of 472 is one that could be notable being close to 3 ½ years before the Western Roman Empire is popularly viewed to have ended.  

And Mt Etna had one in AD 252 just before the Valerian Persecution happened.

Should Satan’s release from the Abyss after the Millennium be expected to be represented in the visible world by the same kind of events?  Those with less strictly chronological readings of Revelation are inclined to see both releases of a villain from the Abyss as the same event being described in different ways, i.e. Apollyon and Satan are the same.  That's not currently my main view but I'm open to it.

The Kingdom doesn’t end when the Millennium ends, the only event directly correlated to the Millennium ending is Satan being released from his prison.  His attempt to destroy the Camp of the Saints/Beloved City is doomed to fail.  

The YLT of Revelation 20:7 says “when the thousand years may be finished” which, along with looking at the Greek word for “Finished” or “Expired” used here, has me considering that during the 1000th could also be a viable reading.

I have been preparing to consider an Idealist model where the Millennium begins with The Resurrection of Jesus or the following Pentecost which I lean towards placing in AD 30 and that Satan was imprisoned in the Abyss about that same time when or after Judas died (who Satan was indwelling within). In which case it’s fascinating that a Mt Etna Eruption happened in AD 1030.

Other models for The Millennium I’m considering could make worth noting for it’s end the possible Etna Eruptions of 1169 or 1329 or 1381, the Mystery Eruptions of 1452/1453 and 1458, the Nuovo Eruption of 1538 or Etna Eruptions of 1536-37, the Vesuvius Eruption of 1631 and the Etna Eruption of 1669.

Mt Etna specifically is believed to have probably had Eruptions between 252 and 1030 that we simply don’t have the exact dates documented for.  Maybe one of them was among the Eruptions of 536?  But Geologists seem to have concluded that about 300-450 was one of its more active periods.  Also 1669 was not its first 17th Century Eruption, an Eruption has been dated to 1634 and in my Heraclius model 634 is a viable year to start the Millennium.  And a possible Eruption of 590-604 could fit one happening before the rise of Heraclius.

An Idealist could also, depending on how they view the relationship between Apollyon and The Beast, want to associate the Revelation 9 release of Apollyon BC with something soon before the Roman Empire “begins” as First Century Jews understood it.  

The Etna Eruptions of 140, 135, 126 and 122 BC can be seen as correlating to a time when the strife that would end the Republic and create the Caesars was beginning.  The 49 BC Eruption preceded Caesar becoming Dictator, the 44 BC Eruption was the year Caesar was killed and the reign of Antony and Octavian began. The 36-35 and 32 BC Eruptions could be seen as heralding Octavian’s Victory at Actium.  Octavian aka Augustus’s deification of himself was largely as an incarnation of Apollo, a name Apollyon can be easily linked to.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=d825d5be337c890b5c7d05d52e313e403769dcc8

Restraint in II Thessalonians 2

When I was a Futurist my position on the removal of Restraint in II Thessalonians 2:6-7 was that it corresponds to Revelation 9.  

Now in the context of my Post-Millennial Partial Preterism I’m thinking it refers to Revelation 20:7. Views that argue Revelation Chronologically starts over at least once could make both these Abyss releases the same event, but I don’t want to get into the complexity of something like that right now.

The assumption of Futurists and sometimes Full Preterists that II Thessalonians 2’s “Man of Sin” is the same as the Abomination of Desolation of Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14 is refuted by the observation that the Abomination of the Olivet Discourse passages Stands where it ought not while in II Thessalonians 2 the Man of Sin “sits” in the Temple of God.

I have for a while now come to agree with the Historicist reading that this “Temple of God” is The Church, The Body of Christ.  I have however resisted making that specifically about the Papacy to instead make it more broadly all Episcopal Polity and Christian Monarchy.  But for this post I shall be different.

In Paul’s Epistles “Naos of God” is only used of The Church.  Other places where English Bibles use the exact three word phrase “Temple of God” are Matthew 21:12 where the word for Temple is Hieron, Matthew 26:61 where it’s Jesus’s false accusers misquoting what he said in John 2. And Revelation 11 where it appears twice and its Revelation 10 context verifies the Temple in Heaven is the Temple being referred to, which is thematically tied to the Church-Temple in my view.

An important sub-doctrine of Papism is Papal Infallibility, and a concept heavily tied to that is Ex Cathedra (From the Chair) referring to the so-called Chair of St Peter in St Peter’s Basilica.  

This doctrine first truly begins to form with a document attributed to Pope Gregory VII 1073-1085.  Then came some ideas of Peter John Olivi in the late 1200s. And controversies from the time of Pope John XXII 1316-1334 who himself opposed the doctrine actually as well as the Beatific Vision.

In 1336 Pope Benedict XII affirmed the Beatific Vision in a pronouncement considered to be Ex Cathedra.

The Romanus Pontifex of 1455 is perhaps also worth noting.

However the Doctrine really took on its current form during the 17th Century Post-Counter-Reformation, largely from Dominican Scholars at the University of St Thomas Aquinas. They made arguments that because Jesus said He would Pray for Peter that this Authority was uniquely for Peter not all the Apostles or all Believers, which is silly because Jesus also clearly Prays for all of us.

This Doctrine makes the person of the Pope effectively equivalent with Jesus and God.  And it looks like over a thousand years after when I think the Millennium started is when it really takes off. 

As far as how this ties into my last post on Revelation 20, it could make verses 8 and 9 the later phase of the 30 years war, and maybe extend into the 7 years war and Napoleonic Wars or even WWI.