A Bible
a different interpretation. Would you believe 60 different English interpretations? They can’t agree on the Word of God. Who or what can you trust? Numbers? Numbers in the bible somehow survived all the translations. All the versions. All the interpretations. Numbers can help us connect history to the prophecies.
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A Reliable Word
a consistent interpretation. Numbers are one of the few things all 60 English versions of the bible agree on. They all agree on “a thousand years”, 666, “ten horns”, and “seven heads” . Can we find historical events that have all these numbers in a meaningful way? Start with the biggest number. A thousand years.
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A Canon
a redaction at the turn of the fifth century. Jerome defined the bible when he finished the Vulgate which would become the official bible of the Church. It contains the oldest existing copy of the Apocalypse. We can only speculate on what it looked like before that time based on other older existing documents.
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A Head
a dynasty. Five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come. The Roman Empire had seven dynasties. Chrysostom is the only significant John during the sixth dynasty and he was in Ephesus when Jerome was finishing the Vulgate. Someone had to verify that John the Apostle wrote the Apocalypse to get it in the bible.
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A Bible
a version of each translation. Before the printer, no two bibles were alike. Now no two translations are alike. And there are way too many. About 60 English translations. Each translation has more than one version. So the “Word of God” is subject to translations, revisions, and interpretation. For the most part they agree on numbers.
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A Bible
you can trust. That was Jerome’s job. It is safe to say no two bibles were alike before Jerome so it was his job to first find reliable copies of the books that belonged in the Bible before he could produce a reliable translation. At that time it was not clear which ones belonged and that was especially true with the Apocalypse. Before Jerome we don’t know what it looked like.
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A Major Player
in the 4th century and we have the letters to prove it. Pope Damasus I asked Jerome for a new translation of the Bible and Augustine was upset about that. There were already way too many versions of the Bible with way too many errors and according to Augustine the last thing they needed was another version of the Bible. Jerome was not intimidated. His Vulgate would become the official Bible of the Church when they needed it the most.
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A Message
to all seven churches. No interpretation required here but that doesn’t stop some. All they need is a wolf in sheep’s clothing to tell them that the message wasn’t meant for them. We were warned about wolves but that does require some interpretation. So does testing their fruit. Test? Is that word in your bible? It should be.
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A Folly
according to Newton. What is your interpretation based on? The bible? Which translation? There are 59 different English translations plus revisions. They don’t agree. The differences are significant. Many are uncomfortable with the word interpretation because somehow they understand the original intent of the written word. Who or what can you believe?
