The Whore of Babylon

[Rhyfelwyr]

superior in all ways there's a Catholics contribution.

Bah! I care not for the wordly splenodour of the Vatican, since just about every aspect of its 'holiness' directly contradicts Biblical teachings. Oh, how great and splendid are their bishops (check Mat 23:5-6)! Look how piously the bow before God (check Mat 6:6)! Look how they chant 'Ave Maria' till they're blue in the face (check Mat 6:7)! Look at how their monks remove themselves from the world and live with such discipline (check Mark 7:8-9)!

I wonder how popular that interpretation was before the mid 1900s. I can see it being forgotten pretty quickly after 2018. Everyone likes to keep 2nd coming revelations in the immediate future, and have been doing their best to keep them that way for the last two millennia. I'll stick to the 'coming like a thief in the night' idea. I expect my personal '2nd coming' to happen when I die. That, to me, is a much more immediate possibility, and requires just as much readiness on my part. The very idea of the 2nd coming seems almost like a diversion from the fact that we need to be doing our best to be moral in the here and now. Whether Christ returns tomorrow or 50,000 years from now doesn't make a shred of difference in how we should live today. I don't think trying to eke a meaning out of opaque prophecies intended for a long-dead audience will help too much, either.

Ajax

Thanks for your good posts btw.

But as I said to PVC, remember, this thread isn't actually about a literal reading of the end of the world scenario with the antichrist, rather it is about the historicist position that the Church of Rome is the whore of Babylon. I understand what you're saying about us always thinking its the end of the world, but I would point out that ever since 1948 this is the first time we are seeing the situation prophecied as being able to have a literal fulfilment. Back in the Reformation days which everything else seemed to fit the bill, they glossed over the issue of Israel. Often, they adopted the idea that national Israel was symbolism for spiritual Israel, or the church of all believers. So when the Puritans in England thought the end was near, they tried to finish the puzzle themselves by making England the Israel spoken of, by resettling all the Jews that had been exiled to the Netherlands, and giving the Barebones Parliament 70 members to model the Jewish Sanhedrin. I just think it's intersting that today we have the scenario for a more literal fulfillment.