I was just reading your article on “No one knows the Day or the Hour”. It is very good. After many years of things that were viewed in the traditional sense that didn’t make sense, I finally realized that the Book of Matt. was all Jewish. Why would Jesus talk about things that were going to be revealed by Paul, anyway? The Church is no where in view in the Gospels.
My question is, after studying Revelation many times I have come to the conclusion that the seven letters to the assemblies are telling the remnant in the Trib., of the history of Israel’s failures and what they need to do to avoid the same failures. Of course God will not let them fail this time. What do you think? I think that Rev. is mainly Jewish as well. As in the first letter, I see that as representing Israel’s espousal, the second letter, Israel’s wanderings and the book of Numbers. The third one the wilderness period and the fourth , Kings etc. It makes more sense that it being Church or Body of Christ requirements. The Body of Christ has already overcome, haven’t they??
I think we can learn from the Book of Revelation but I never thought John represented the Church in 4:1 being taken up. John was called up to watch what was going to take place in the future, on the Day of the Lord. Do you think I might be right on this?
I’m one who believes that the 7 letters chronicle Church history. Notice that in each letter the admonition is to overcome the tendency to get away from total reliance on the Lord for our salvation. In that sense much of the Church has not been over comers.
The fact that you can see similarities between Israel’s experience in the Old Testament and the Church’s experience in the New supports the dispensational view that no matter how God has tried to relate to sinful man the result has always been the same. Man’s failure.
That said, I agree that after chapter 5 the Book of Revelation is meant mostly for the Jewish remnant. Of the book’s 404 verses 278 are adapted from the Old Testament. Some scholars think that from the sentence structure, it appears John might have been translating from Hebrew into Greek as he wrote.