Religion Shitpost #5: The book of Daniel and Revelation/Apocalypse

May 21, 2021

I finally finished my first serious reading of Revelation, after reading the book of Daniel for context.... and my impression is dubious. Either Revelation is a version of the same genuine far-future geopolitical prophesy as Daniel 7-12 revealed again, centuries later, to John the Evangelist... or it's a rehash of the OT prophesies (or false history dressed up as prophecy) which it quotes and references extensively, or it's a total fabrication by a later author falsely writing in John's name.

Revelation 1-3 is a mundane anti-gnostic/heretic message from God delivered in a dream to John, who is living on the Island of Patmos (off the west coast of Anatolia) to the angels (messengers) of 7 Christian churches (communities) in 7 Greek cities of western Anatolia. He condemns Nicholas (an early Christian minister named in Act 6:5, not Saint Nick), Balaam, Balak, Jezebel, and the "synagogue of Satan" (false Jews) for leading these Christians into fornication and eating meat sacrificed to idols. He says Satan lives in one of these cities, Pergamum.

Revelation and Daniel use the same concepts of 4 beasts, 10 horns, etc, representing kings and nations. Both use the same numbers - God's 100-million man army; 4's and 7's and 10's; periods of 3.5 years (42 months, or 1260 days assuming 360 days in a year). Both include many dream interpretations provided by angels within the dreams.

Daniel 7:14 is apparently a prophecy of Jesus; many such cases are mentioned in the gospels. OTOH, Daniel 7-8 seem to prophesy the fall of Babylon (where Daniel was a royal captive) and the rise of Cyrus's Persian empire, Alexander's Greek empire, and/or the Roman empire.

TIMELINE: Daniel 9, Matthew 24, and Revelation 11 all seem to predict the events leading up to the Romans' destruction of the Temple of Solomon 70 AD. Maybe Revelation was written shortly before that (it does say "the time is near" in the last chapter) and not 2 decades later as generally believed. Revelation 20 said an angel would bind Satan for 1000 years and lock him in the Abyss. Hence, in the first millenium, the apocalypse was widely believed to be coming in 1000 or 1070.

I'm noticing some red flags... Rev 7:3 says "our God" not THE God; it's based on the OT book of Isaiah. Rev 10:4 is [REDACTED] - the angel told John not to write down what he'd just heard. I thought there were no secrets in Christianity. Rev 14, God's 144,000 virgin incels, is one of the rare mentions of celibacy as a requirement for salvation in the Christian canon. Rev 21 describes the new holy city as a cube over 1300 miles wide with 216-foot-thick walls - what is this, a Star Trek Borg ship?

The popular prophecies are Rev 13, the Mark of the Beast, 666; and Rev 17-18, the ruin of the Whore of Babylon, which is explicitly a metaphor for the "great city" (Rome? DC?). She's brought down by her own degeneracy and excesses, like all great empires. Global trade grinds to a halt because nobody wants to buy the merchants' crap anymore. Then there's a big war between God's and Satan's armies and God wins. Trust the plan!!!!!

Anyway, if Revelation is legit, we're all going to Hell and there's nothing we can do about it.

But I don't think it's legit. It doesn't really fit with the core gospels. It's suspiciously similar to some of the heretical 'gnostic' 2nd-century literal incel doom cult scriptures. Maybe it was only added to the Bible to justify stuff like clerical celibacy and fearmongering.