responding to common objections to bible

[Pannonian]

It's actually really interesting when you read it in it's literary context (Classical literature and dream-visions).

The most interesting thing is that John describes everything in two dimensions, rather than three, which implies he's recounting images he's seen rather than events he's "experienced" for lack of a better word.

Basically though - the world is going to end now that Christ is dead, and then God will decide who goes to heaven and who doesn't. The rest is window dressing.

That's the Book of Revelations, isn't it? I'm wondering what the Book of Revaluations describes, and what its literary, cultural and historical context is. Perhaps it was written after a particularly bad bout of inflation during the late Roman empire, and the government wanted to enlist the church's help in propagating a new currency standard by finding support for it in the bible.

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All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
revaluations 13.8

In that context, the lamb in total relism's quote could refer to the old debased currency that was increasingly adulterated with base metals and was thus purged from the economy ("slain from the creation of the world"), and the beast whom all inhabitants of the earth shall worship could refer to the brand spanking new currency.