The River of Life (v. 1-5)
The river of life will flow through the streets and the tree of life will grow on either side with 12 kinds of fruit that grow every month. The leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations. There will be no night, the light of God will be your light instead of lamps or the sun.
I'm not really sure what the leaves part means, the rest of it sounds pretty good. I'm guessing that getting enough food was a problem back then, so having food year round coming off of these trees would sound like paradise. I'm also not really sure I understand the thing about light.
According to Guzik, the Greek word that is being translated into "healing" can also mean "health-giving" or "therapeutic". I'm still not sure I really understand what that means.
Jesus Is Coming (v. 6-21)
Jesus is coming very soon, it says so 5 times in this short section.
It's hard to imagine that by soon he meant thousands of years. This is nothing new, we've been over this point a bunch of times.
We see the same justification for this, that the Greek word means suddenly not soon. Given the message here and the apparent urgency being used, I think this is a pretty unreasonable reading of the text.
Let the evildoer still do evil, the filthy be filthy, the righteous do right, and the holy be holy.
What do you mean "let the evildoer do evil"? I thought we were in the business of saving souls? In fact, this might be another time that demonstrates how close we are supposed to be to the end, it is so close you shouldn't even bother converting people any more.
There are some who are not allowed to enter the city gates and get to the tree of life: "the dogs and sorcerers, the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehoods."
This is pretty much the same list we saw before. One thing I find interesting, is that these people are even around on our new earth. If they didn't make it to heaven, shouldn't they be burning in the lake of fire? Are they on the new earth but just not in the city? This doesn't seem to match up too well to our picture of the afterlife.
But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers: What about those outside? We shouldn’t think that outside the walls of heaven multitudes will throng, longing to get in. “The verse does not intend to teach that in the eternal state all manner of wicked men will be living just outside the heavenly city. It simply describes the future with the imagery of the present.” (Mounce)I'm sorry, but this is completely idiotic. It is clearly talking about the city gates of new Jerusalem.
The words in this book are true, if anyone adds anything to it or takes anything away from it, you will take part in the plagues and be denied the tree of life.
A last ditch effort to tell people not to edit the book, seems like a reasonable request.
Finished!
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| Picture from run-nyc.com |
Well, that marks the end of the new testament. I can't believe I've now read the whole thing. Now I just have to tackle the old testament =D
--Apocalypse--
Revelation 22:6,7,10,12,20 Jesus is coming back soon
"what must soon take place...I am coming soon...the time is near...I am coming soon...Surely I am coming soon"
--Lists--
Revelation 22:15 list of things that will keep you out of new Jerusalem
"Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."
Congratulations! You're going to have fun doing the old testament, I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteThanks :) I'm glad you are looking forward to it as well. It's honestly a little bit intimidating, this one took me a year and the old testament seems to be about 3 times as long. Not that I shy away from long term projects or anything. I was actually thinking that once I finish that, why not move on to the book of mormon or the koran.
DeleteI second the congrats. This was a joy to read over the past year Haus. I learned a ton. I am really looking forward to your tackling the OT. This is going to be a great journey for you take us on. I realize we may be a few years away from your next book, but I vote for the Koran...lol.
DeleteThanks John,
DeleteI would probably lean toward the Koran as well. It was the next one that was written. Although the Book of Mormon is supposedly a continuation of the bible right? So there is some logic to doing that one next. Ultimately I figure it's far enough away that I don't have to decide yet :)
"... the tree of life will grow on either side with 12 kinds of fruit that grow every month ... There will be no night, the light of God will be your light instead of lamps or the sun."
ReplyDeleteThis sounds even worse that having all the buildings and streets made of gold! First, I love nighttime. I like stars, moonlight, ambience, and sleep, and I'd miss them in an eternally-lit heaven. Second, the twelve kinds of fruit quote points to ancient human authors rather than a divine author. I can get twelve kinds of APPLES at Wegman's, not counting other types of fruit. Couldn't the creator of the cosmos think of something better than a tree with only twelve fruits? Yawn.
Yeah, the whole constant light from God thing is confusing to me as well. If there are no lamps and things are made of transparent gold, are the walls of everything transparent too? Does that mean no privacy? Does it mean we never get darkness at all? I didn't even think of stars, but yeah, never being able to look up at a night sky would suck.
DeleteYou make a great point about the fruit too. It made me wonder if they were usually fighting as a result of a lack of food. You can imagine someone in that situation thinking that an abundance of food would lead to no fighting, when in reality people just find other things to fight about.
Congrats Hausdorrf! It's been fun reading along with you!
ReplyDelete