searching history for the fulfillment of prophecy.  Numbers do not require interpretation.  Forget about numbers being symbolic.  If it says seven, count ’em, it means seven.  If it says a thousand years, look for a thousand years.  It’s real easy, there was only one empire that lasted that long and guess what, it was a Christian one where they reigned with Christ.  If you are looking for the reign of Christ, you won’t find it in history and you won’t find it in the bible either.

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

that goes beyond home bible studies.  It uses private interpretation of ambiguous phases in prophecy to support a particular agenda.  It ignores two thousand years of history simply because it doesn’t fit with preconceived interpretations.  History is the only advantage we have over the early fathers of the Church so why not use it?  How can we use prophecy to search history without first interpreting it?  Numbers.  Numbers and possibly colors don’t require interpretation.  Start with numbers.  Big numbers like a thousand.

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

Google “reign of Christ” and you will get more than 5 million hits in less than a half second.  Search the bible for “reign of Christ” and you will get 0 Bible results for “”reign of Christ”.”  How do you explain this?  Interpretation run amuck.

is who can say “five are fallen” or “the beast that was, and is not”?  John Chrysostom could.  He was in Ephesus at the time replacing seven corrupt bishops.  At the time Jerome was finishing up his translation of the Bible.  At the time there was a question as to whether or not the Apocalypse belonged in the Bible.  It is in the bible because Jerome and others believed John the Apostle wrote it in spite of a  great deal of evidence to the contrary.

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

at sea greeted John Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, at the beginning of the fifth century when he was on his way to Ephesus to replace seven corrupt bishops.  Morozov, a Russian astronomer dated the Apocalypse to be in the year 395, based on astronomy, in his book “REVELATION IN THUNDERSTORM AND TEMPEST” and suggested John Chrysostom was the only one around at that time who could have written it.  For some strange reason R. H. Charles decided to include this in his “Studies in the Apocalypse”. Go figure.

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

commented on the Apocalypse.  How did he get a copy?  Tertullian produced the only record we have on  Antipas and the churches prior to the fourth century.  He didn’t say much about the Apocalypse but somehow it included Antipas and three of the churches.  Victorinus and Eusebius, who was obsessed with martyrs, had plenty to say about the Apocalypse but failed to mention either.  What were they looking at?

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

who wrote to the seven churches.  This John knew the Baptist, a man sent from God.  He also knew the followers of the Baptist in Ephesus spoken of in Acts 19.  He was told to prophesy again by adding Jesus, the churches, and Antipas to the original written by the Baptist

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

has this to say about the Apocalypse.  “We cannot conclude without mentioning the theory advanced by the German scholar Vischer. He holds the Apocalypse to have been originally a purely Jewish composition, and to have been changed into a Christian work by the insertion of those sections that deal with Christian subjects. From a doctrinal point of view, we think, it cannot be objected to. There are other instances where inspired writers have availed themselves of non-canonical literature. Intrinsically considered it is not improbable. The Apocalypse abounds in passages which bear no specific Christian character but, on the contrary, show a decidedly Jewish complexion. Yet on the whole the theory is but a conjecture.”

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

worthy of your time if you are really interested in what the Apocalypse is all about.  “Studies in the Apocalypse” by R. H. Charles is based on his lectures delivered before the University of London.  It is free, online, and searchable.  If you read just one book on the Apocalypse, it should be this one.

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.

posed by Josephine Massyngbaerde Ford was that John the Baptist wrote the first version.  It was not well received even though many scholars have held that the Apocalypse was the work of more than one author.  It has also been held that the Apocalypse was first written in Hebrew and later translated into Greek.

Watch for more pieces that fit.  Blessed is the one who looks.