A Mystery Revealed: Gospel of Mark tracks the 7 Churches in the Book of Revelation

[gregglaser]

I know you are sincerely sharing what you think you are seeing, Greg. The source is my concern. And it saddens me to see the Aramaic Scriptures being used for this type of thing, which has long been done with other NT language texts. To me, it is abuse and mis-interpreting what the Holy Text is all about, and forcing it into something it isn't about at all.

People have been trying to make the Bible say all kinds of things, and they have convinced some to believe they are on to something. Harold Camping comes to mind as a recent example. I spoke with him personally one day, and tried to tell him he was wrong about his timeline. Of course he didn't listen.

Speaking of timelines, Greg. You have 2024-3024 as the timeframe for the "millennial reign", then later on in your article, you have 2020-2030 as the timeframe.

This graph/chart timeline making stuff has been going on for many decades now, and there are many examples you can see posted online.

As time goes by...they dates always change. I was once involved with a group who came up with a timeline. I told them they were wrong about it, and that pretty much ended our fellowship with them. Their end date for the return of Christ was 2006.

Then they revised it to 2009, then they were looking at the Red Moons that John Hagee was blowing his horn about. Each time I was telling them it was all bogus. And they continue not to repent of this activity, as they try to find the timeframe for the end of the world, always with God not helping them.

Harold Camping wrote a number of long books pointing to 1994, then 1995, 1996, and lastly 2011. And before him it was other guys with 1988 being the time of Christ's return. You can find all kinds of this type thing in each generation, Greg, as you might know. And I don't see any value at all in any of it. A total waste of time.

Is it ego? Is it deception? Is it misguided soulish desire to know when Christ will return?

The Scriptures are clear that no man knows the time when it will be, and that it will be when we are not expecting it to be, so we are called to be ready at all times.

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Christianity has a long tradition of explaining how prophecies have already been fulfilled.  My post here explains that many of the prophecies in Revelation have already been fulfilled – that six of the seven churches/lampstands have already come and gone.   

And then based on that pattern, this methodology predicts the end of the Laodicea church in 2018AD.

At that point, theoretically, the great tribulation would begin (because the woman is no longer provided safety in the wilderness).  How long is that great tribulation? I don’t know.  When will the Messiah arrive like lightning? I don’t know.  When does the lamb appear on Mt. Zion? I don’t know.  When does the thief appear?  I don’t know. 

My insight is specifically with regard to the churches, not the Messiah’s arrival.


So my theory predicts neither the day nor the hour of the Messiah’s arrival.  It does forecast the season though (i.e., range of years), which reminds me of these verses:

• Matthew 16:13, “And in the morning you say, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is gloomily red.' Respecters of persons! You know how to observe the appearance of the sky; do you not know how to distinguish the signs of this time?”
  
  
• Mark 13:28, "And learn an allegory from the fig tree: whenever its branches are tender and its leaves bud, you know that summer has arrived."
  

Imagine that a man lived in the time of the Messiah’s first coming and was counting 7s from Daniel 9:25-26, and this man found that the season had arrived for the Messiah’s coming -- what should he do?  Should he hide the findings within himself, or share his research?   Just because countless others around this man have made faulty interpretations, should this man be silenced because of the errors of others?  Indeed, even if this man himself had made errors in the past, does he lose the right to research and share his zeal for counting 7s toward the coming of the Messiah?

Thanks also for catching that error in the image re 2020-3020AD (that was an early draft image).   I just fixed that image to match my current theory, so it now reads 2024AD?-3024AD? 

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Consider the possibility that the oil these 5 virgins need is a witness, and that witness is the Book of Revelation...

Consider the possibility that the bridegroom was late because he was trying to sort out contradictions between Revelation and Paul's letters... 

The fuzziness of Rêvelation enables churches to bestow their own propaganda with biblical authority and an apostolic stamp of approval, by exegeting their own desires and legalism from the fertile soil that is the apocalyptic genre. There are two possible solutions that I know of:
1. omit it from layman's canon, and
2. Greg writes a commentary that is so attractive that it will mostly replace the churches' own commentaries

The bridegroom has indeed delayed His coming.  It’s been almost 2,000 years since Yahshua left earth!  And every year has since then seen Christians expecting and predicting His imminent apocalyptic return!  Personally, I think Revelation works like 'wheels within wheels', where there are multiple layers of fulfillment.  So the overthrow of the 2nd temple was a layer of fulfillment, and that example will be repeated with a 3rd temple.

Mark 13:30 “Amen, I say to you, this ܫܪܒܬܐ (“tribe”) will not pass until all of these things will occur.”

The Messiah refers to  ܫܪܒܬܐ (“tribe”)  in the same manner that the prophet Jeremiah referred to all of Israel as one “tribe/staff”.   Jer. 51:19.

Key point: the gospel of Mark only provides a prophecy up to the sixth seal, at which point (per Revelation) the ܫܪܒܬܐ (“tribe”) receives the mark of Alha between their eyes for protection in the coming plagues.

Historically, churches may not have technically “needed” the Book of Revelation because they did not need to meet the bridegroom in the middle of the night.   But today we are likely living at the end of the age.  And so it will be helpful for awake members of the body of Yahshua to navigate beyond the sixth seal when that time comes. 

In the Aramaic, the word ܐܬܐ (“sign”) is key here to understand the gospel prophecy: 

In Mark 13:4, four apostles (including Andrew, who is symbolic of the Church of the East) ask Yahshua privately what is the ܐܬܐ (“sign”) when these things are near to being fulfilled.  Notice that in Mark the apostles did not ask what date the Messiah will arrive for a second coming.   They asked for the sign of His coming.  That sign is provided in the sixth seal with the face of the lamb.  Indeed, that is why Yahshua stops providing the prophecy by Mark 13:27 as the angels gather the elect from the four winds (which is synchronized with Revelation 7 as the angels gather from the four winds the 144,000 from the ܫܪܒܬܐ (“tribe”) of Israel.  In other words, the reason Mark has the Messiah stop the prophecy there is because it answered the original question in Mark about the ܐܬܐ (“sign”).

Matthew 24 is similar to Mark 13, but in Matthew we read ܕܡܐܬܝܬܟ ܐܬܐ (“sign of your coming”), so in Matthew we learn a little more to answer the question.  We learn that the Messiah does not arrive immediately after the sixth seal, but rather the sixth seal only contains his ܐܬܐ (“sign”).  And indeed, in Matthew we learn to expect something similar to the days of Noah around that time (which I equate this with fallen angels taking women), and that we can expect great deception to continue after the sixth seal.  Knowing that, how should a church plan to find the bridegroom amidst this deception/darkness?

Sestir, you want to know why should the Book of Revelation be canonized if men are prone to misinterpreting it… well, what about the Book of Daniel?
 
Let’s go back to our example of the 10 virgins in darkness in Matthew 25.  They all had lamps (churches) with oil in them originally (synoptic gospels I think), but only 5 of the virgins had the additional oil (Book of Revelation) to successfully navigate the long night when the bridegroom called, even as all the churches slept.

I think the five virgins are symbolic for the five churches that constitute the shepherd’s staff (Pergamus, Thyatira, Smyrna, Philadelphia, and Laodicea). 

This reply is just what you were hoping for, right?, yet another commentary from me