End Times Raffle: Did Istanbul Draw The Beastie Ticket?
Sunday, May 2, 2010 at 1:40PM | by Otter Fun stuff. This came in from a student who wanted to know what I think.
Let's learn a new word: apophenia.
It means the spontaneous perception of connections where there are none.
Prophetic interpretation of this kind depends entirely on it. You can take a prophetic template and, unless it says flat out, "There will be an earthquake that shakes San Diego a year from today," it's not a question of being fulfilled or not. It's a question of interpreting it (authoritatively or otherwise) in such a way that the fulfillment serves your needs and desires.
[Note to San Diego: I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Chill.]
I wrote back to my student, "Count, and jot down, the assumptions." Homeboy gets props for recognizing that Daniel 7 and Daniel 8 had meaning for the original readers and writer(s), but from there he launches into freakland.
Money quote:
But in the End Times, the he-goat symbolizes the Soviet Union. And the two horns on the ram which it defeats are England and America.
For those of you in England and America unaware of the defeat by the Soviet Union, let us press on.
Money quote:
The four horns towards the four winds of heaven in Alexander's case indicate the four generals who succeeded him; but in our own time it refers to the city of Rome and the four wind directions, north, east, south and west, indicate that the entire world will be taken over by the one world communist tyranny.
Rome, it seems, is the source of a one world communist tyranny. And the winds are enumerated clockwise.
Money quote:
Istanbul is a meaningless name. It does not signify anything. It simply means "In the city."
Is any comment necessary about the meaning of a meaningless name?
If you're hungry for more, you're going to hell if you don't know who the 8th Beast is from Revelation. (Note the lovely riparian setting on this one: it's best to be sublimely situated when damning the human race.)
Evidently God can be kind of tetchy about zoology.
Reader Comments (3)
What kills me is the claim that the Bible "very clearly" indicates this. I think he said "very clearly" about all this more than once...
Welcome to the damnation plantation.
This reminds me of something in Aragon (or one of its sequels): There's a witch named Angela or some such whom Aragon is asking for advise. He asked what she think will happen. Her response: "Hmmmm . . . We're all doomed! You're doomed! I'm doomed! The king is doomed! DOOM! (Notice I didn't say what kind of doom, so no matter what happens, I predicted it.)"