The key that unlocks the meaning of the Bible.
Keys to understanding the Book of Revelation
by Doug Mason 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Hanged Man
Thomas Paine said this:
"The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun."
If you take that on board that Jesus is the sun/principle of light.....Jesus does die on a cross...the cross made by the two equinoxes and two solstices.
If you plot the equinoxes and solstices on the circle of the year,you get this.
Jesus and the cross he dies on....he gave his life/light/rays for us and asked nothing in return.
Jesus (the sun) really is the light of this world.....Jesus is our risen saviour...the sun rises every day for us.
Jesus the sun does turn water into wine during the grape growing season....he multiplies the grain and life on earth during the spring/summer months......but at the scales of Libra....the scales of justice (the autumnal equinox)....the sun is on the wane and is about to be judged.....the darkness now has the upper hand....the only way for sunny boy the saviour is down...down to the winter solstice where the old jesus dies....the new jesus born 3 days later.....goes into exile until the spring equinox where he is in his prime...at primus (spring equinox) he overcomes the darkness and sets off on his journey through Galilee (which means circuit...the circuit/cycle of the year). Rinse and repeat.
It is the greatest story ever told......and it happens every day....every year.....and every great year....it is the story of natures cycles in amazing story form.
In the cycle....the new light/newborn jesus is always born at the darkest time.
In the cycle of the day.....the new day starts at midnight.....the new year starts at the winter solstice.....darkness always births the light.
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Half banana
I agree with you Hanged Man, there is such a full correspondence of the folk explanation for the movements of the heavenly bodies with stories elaborated from them in the Bible that in my mind there can be no doubt that this is the foundational myth at the real source of 'scripture'.
A key to interpreting the origins of the Bible is to understand that whereas the heavenly 'book' of stars is without exception cyclical; that is daily, monthly or annual; the stories derived from them in scripture are told as one off events.
A simple example would be the Lord of the Night dispels the Sun God of the day daily as the Earth rotates but the Bible dresses this up as a final showdown between darkness and light alias good and evil at Armageddon.
The more you investigate this subject the more convincing it is. Itis a rich ifield of inquiry but Christians, sensitive flowers that they are, steer clear of things resembling astrology. The truth is that these stories preceded Christianity and were universal where the ancients of most continents marked the changing of the seasons accurately by the sun and stars.
I would just like to add that the Persian christ cult known as Mithraism contributed the solar cross at the equinox to Christianity. The 'cross' being the crossing of the sun at the spring equinox (The path of the ecliptic crossing the line of the Equator) known from about 400BCE.
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Hanged Man
Hi HB,thanks for your comments.
I concur....if we take the stories out of the literal into the amazing stories of the natural male and female forces in nature...the positive and negative,the light and dark and the interplay between them. It explains much of the bible and other holy books.
As you say the more you investigate,the more it all fits.
Another example of using the zodiac to interpret scripture would be the sheep and goats allegory.
Capricorn (the goat) is the sign at the winter solstice that kicks off the 3 winter months......darkness and death/desolation.
Whereas the spring equinox is the time of expanding light and life and happiness/work and arrives in the sign of Aries (the ram/lamb/sheep).
The sheep go off into life and the goats....death. (of course they do...its the cycle of the zodiac)
Every zodiac sign is in the bible....from the two fish of Pisces to the water bearer of Aquarius.....the unicorn of Cancer to the horse and rider (Sagittarius) pitched into the sea as the light months take hold and the winter constellations disappear below the horizon.The scales of Libra are there...seen in the writing on the wall of the sky,weighing kings in the balance.Lions of Leo are there,Virgins of Virgo are there,Castor and Pollux (Gemini) are mentioned in the bible along with bulls,rams all telling stories of events that happen in all of the cycles you mention.Scorpions are let loose for 5 months....all because 5 zodiac signs after Scorpio,bring you to the spring equinox...the end of darkness and the return of the light of the world as he reigns once again....all hail Jesus Christ....the sun,light of this world and conqueror of the dark forces of winter and night.....and conqueror of the dark forces inside of us...bringing us out of polarity and extremism....into unity/balance and the single eye....the Christ/truth/light frees us from the winter/darkness of ignorance....we all had that accepting Christ moment when we were faced with uncomfortable truths that destroyed our beliefs....yet when we did accept that Christ/truth into our lives...it raised us up from our blindness....just as Jesus did to the blind before.We now look back and wonder to ourselves...."How did we ever believe all of that nonsense"...... as we see the darkness in the watchtower even clearer.
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Doug Mason
The opening (Rev. 1:4) and closing (22:21) of the biblical Book of Revelation show that it is a letter. It is written to a series of communities along a road running from Ephesus to Laodicea by a man who is very familiar with them and who is deeply concerned for them. So he writes a circular letter that is to be read out aloud (1:3) in each community. His overriding concern is for them to survive, to be saved despite the inordinate pressures they are experiencing.
To achieve this, John employs the vehicle of apocalyptic and revelatory treatises. It was a style of writing they were familiar with. Several such treatises have survived, including: The Apocalypse of Peter, The Apocalypse of Paul, The Shepherd of Hermas; The Secret Book of John, and so on. The book of 1 Enoch figures prominently throughout the New Testament writings. In writing his messages to his beloved communities, John drew on imagery from within Judaism and beyond.
Mark 13, Matthew 24, 25 and Luke 21 are known as the “little apocalypses”. They supposedly predict the future destruction of Jerusalem’s temple and the fate of Jesus’ followers. These too, were not intended as prophecies, but were intended to provide assurance to those who remained faithful. Each of these chapters was written after Jerusalem’s destruction. In this way they repeated the actions of the second-century BCE Jews who wrote the Book of Daniel to provide comfort to their community at the time it was being persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes. They wrote Daniel as if predicting the regions’ dominant nations whereas in fact they wrote it after the fact.
Being concerned for his communities’ salvation, John encourages them to persevere, to overcome, and to keep the commandments. He tells them they will survive, even if they are killed. They will be victorious, and most importantly he repeats that it will be over “very soon”, for Jesus is “coming quickly”, even within 1,260 days.
“Salvation” for John and for those communities meant: obedience, perseverance, and overcoming. John’s concept of “salvation” is different from the ideas created by Paul’s imaginative mind. Paul’s form of following Jesus was not the only one. Each Jewish sect claimed to follow Jesus and his directives, yet they did not fully agree with one another. Nothing has changed.
These writers had no more predictive insights than anyone else. Throughout the centuries, the abject failure of fulfilments has generated any number of explanations and interpretations. All have failed miserably, yet people continue to create contemporary solutions.
The lesson that history teaches is that people do not learn the lesson that history teaches, and they keep on repeating the same mistake over and over again.
John, the writer of the biblical Book of Revelation, employed the apocalyptic style of writing in order to create and sustain strength and commitment within the communities he deeply cared about and was committed to. He was not predicting the course of Western civilization’s history.
Doug