Seventh Day Adventist Beliefs

[CoreIssue]

Your stubbornness does you no service!
There are better approaches than lumping people into categories.

You lumped yourself.

 

[Enoch111]

Numbers are symbolic in Revelation. You miss the message completely by forcing a literal interpretation on to the symbols.

No one *forces* a literal interpretation after God makes it crystal clear that numbers are to be taken as the numbers given. And to prove that you are totally wrong, the number 7 occurs over and over again in Revelation. Only a fool would assume that it means 8, or 70, or 700 or something bizarre.

 

[Dave L]

No one *forces* a literal interpretation after God makes it crystal clear that numbers are to be taken as the numbers given. And to prove that you are totally wrong, the number 7 occurs over and over again in Revelation. Only a fool would assume that it means 8, or 70, or 700 or something bizarre.

This is forced literalism. Revelation is based on symbols. Are you expecting to see a red dragon and green horses in the future?

 

[quietthinker]

If Christ cannot be the better interpretation, then what do you suggest, might be?

Yes, Jesus is the central theme of Revelation, that is clear from every page and being that central theme John tells us in the first verse of the book that its objective to reveal the things that must soon take place.
Retaining this context, those time prophecies are not a side show but rather the unfolding of, for our benefit, the events to transpire before his promised glorious return.
At the end of the book there is a dire warning that if the messages are tampered with, it results in a forfeiture of ones inheritance.

Tampered means not only the literal removal of sections of what has been revealed but also the removal by treating them indifferently or without equal gravity let alone misinterpreting them.

The message was given to John for the purpose of understanding what is written therein. All of it. It tells us this in the first chapter, verse three....why? because the time is near.

It is not unreasonable then to seek to understand specifically the time prophecies. Not only is it not unreasonable but it is encouraged so that a people are made ready for the revealing of the greatest rescue in the history of the universe.