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What will we take to heaven....?

I am a bit wary of Revelation as I study on my own,
These things have not come to pass so it is speculation or would be on my sole lonesome.
I would say I am somewhat familar with the various schools but I follow along without going beyond the Creed

So, I do have but don't have an end time point of view.

I am more concerned what the Bible means and how to apply it in the present.
 
So, I do have but don't have an end time point of view.
Thank you for the answer to the question asked.
I am more concerned what the Bible means and how to apply it in the present.
That is not evident in this conversation. Several pairs of posts contradict one another, questions have to be asked multiple times before they get answered, and the use of hyperbole is denied (see HERE and HERE also) The Bible did not teach you to contradict yourself, delay inquiries or obfuscate answers, and it most definitely did not teach you to deny its content.


The reason I chose the word "near" in Revelation 1:13 is because if the word is read literally then most of the prophetic content in Revelation would have to occur near in time to when John wrote the book. That would be the literal reading of the verse. That would be the literal reading of the word using its denotative meaning. If you do not read the verse that way then you have a lot of company, but you have also contradicted yourself. The meaning of the word has to be changed radically if it is going to be made to man far. Near is not far. Near is never far. It does not matter what the metrics of measure are, near is never far. Furthermore, if you examine God's use of the word "near" in the New Testament, He never uses the word "near" to mean far. Never. So, reading the word "near" to mean far is not just a radically different meaning of the word, it is also a radically different meaning of the word that is in direct contradiction to the way God always used the word in the New Testament.

If and when you read commentaries on Revelation, you will notice most authors ignore the verse (or they make "near" mean something other than near). Therefore, if you are going to apply the Bible, and not the opinions of theologians, you're going to have to be consistent with your reading of the Bible.
 
The reason I chose the word "near" in Revelation 1:13 is because if the word is read literally then most of the prophetic content in Revelation would have to occur near in time to when John wrote the book. That would be the literal reading of the verse. That would be the literal reading of the word using its denotative meaning.
You do not read or understand my posts.
2 Peter 3: 8-9 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
"Near" is a relative term, literally. It means the proximity in time and/or space of two points.
It could be any amount of the time and space depending on the relative position of the two objects and the postion of the observer.

John's position as observer is human waiting for the steak timer to go off (5 min is an eternity)
Gods position as observer is all of eternity.

Then you are saying that God lies
If God exaggerates maybe about the battle at Gideon and the sun didn't really stand still
Then what about the three days in the tomb?
Is that an exaggeration or hyperbole. Maybe Jesus wasn't really dead?

When you take those tools such as hyperbole, metaphor, allegory I have to ask why you don't go cut up Darwin's Theory of Evolution, labeling every paragraph as hyperbole, metaphor, allegory, simili sort out the entire book as literary devices and figures of speech that are the tools of dissecting literary fiction.
Better yet, if you like those tools for dissecting fiction, go analyze the Betty Crocker Cook Book for hyperbole or allegory
Why Not? Because you accept Darwin and Betty as the Absolute Literal Truth
Shows what you actually think of the Bible, aye?

The Bible is the literal truth. And I have fought these useless battles with my parents for years.
The dragon in Revelation is allegory, Says Mom.
Ok mom, literary device, I can see that
AH HAH Says Mom, you just admitted that the dragon is allegory, therefore Satan is also and Christ right along with them. In fact, the entire book is allegory, Useful fiction."

Now don't AH HAh me as you ain't half near quick or clever as mom.
 
You do not read or understand my posts.
You do not get to tell me about me.

Let me express my regret because I meant to communicate we're done with this conversation because it's reached its conclusion. The conversation was off topic from its inception, but I thought perhaps you might recognize some of your own inconsistencies if given the opportunity to post further. That did not happen. It is my hope that the next time we trade posts that, at a minimum, questions asked will be answered in a direct and timely manner and comments about other posters' faculties will be kept to oneself. Do pick up some resources on examining scripture. I want you to be better at it.
 
but I thought perhaps you might recognize some of your own inconsistencies
I have wondered for while exactly what the point of the conversation was from your point of view.
If it is merely to "recognize your own inconsistencies" it is only about telling me about me.
I thought perhaps you would expand on your assertion that the end times were gradual or about the current state of the signs of those times.
My hopes are dashed.
Perhaps in the future we can trade views on scripture without tangenitals into literary devices and what literal literally means.
See you around the forum...
 
I have wondered for while exactly what the point of the conversation was from your point of view.
You started it. Only you can answer that question. Ask yourself, "What did I hope to achieve by questioning God's use of hyperbole?"
 
You started it. Only you can answer that question. Ask yourself, "What did I hope to achieve by questioning God's use of hyperbole?"
Here we go again...Let us leave hyperbole and literal off the table. The meaning of "literal" to me, I posted in #114
Meanwhile, you started it...because
What I am wondering is, the word "near"
I am a bit intrigued by what I thought you said about the End Time being gradual
And that discussion got lost in arguing about semantics, the literal definition of "near."

I can see there is an argument to be made the End Time starting at the time of that verse...."near"
If the End Time started "near" in the meaning you are giving the word, then would it really make a difference because the time between the writing of that verse and the 2nd Coming is not near to anyone who is watching the earthly clock
Would it make any material difference?

Am I correct in interpreting your earlier post as a "gradual." It seems a bit odd as we normally associate end time with a bang or a short span of terrible tribulation.
 
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Here we go again...Let us leave hyperbole and literal off the table. The meaning of "literal" to me, I posted in #114
Meanwhile, you started it...because
What I am wondering is, the word "near"
I am a bit intrigued by what I thought you said about the End Time being gradual
And that discussion got lost in arguing about semantics, the literal definition of "near."

I can see there is an argument to be made the End Time starting at the time of that verse...."near"
If the End Time started "near" in the meaning you are giving the word, then would it really make a difference because the time between the writing of that verse and the 2nd Coming is not near to anyone who is watching the earthly clock
Would it make any material difference?

Am I correct in interpreting your earlier post as a "gradual." It seems a bit odd as we normally associate end time with a bang or a short span of terrible tribulation.
Not interested.
 
Only you can answer that question. Ask yourself, "What did I hope to achieve by questioning God's use of hyperbole?"
The claim that God uses hyperbole and the Bible is allegorical is a favorite tool of the atheist.
If an atheist can get a person to admit the dragon in Revelations is a representation of an idea, allegory then Satan is an allegory, merely a representation of an idea rather than a literal being. Then the Bible is allegorical, useful fiction.
If God uses hyperbole in the Battle of Gibean, the sun stood still then the entire Bible is open to the same scrutiny.
I have explained that a bit more forcefully in earlier post

My answer is that every Word of the Bible is the literal truth.
I wasn't at Gibean so I leave it alone.
The Battle of Crecy, I have always questioned the reported casualties as hyperbole, exaggeration, boastfulness, gloating or out right lies.
But I wasn't at Crecy, and frankly not interested, so I leave it alone.

Now that is the answer to the question.
Hereafter I am not interested
 
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Are you familiar with any literary devices? There are more than two dozen of them. Alliteration, allusion, allegory, analogy, irony, paradox, hyperbole, metaphor, simile are some of the most commonly used ones. Are you familiar with them. Are you aware one of the things that makes the Bible unique is its use of all the literary devices before they were common occurrences in human literature? Do you know the definition of hyperbole? Hyperbole is, by definition, an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally. That is how and why hyperbole is not a lie. A lie is the knowing or intentional misrepresentation of fact for the purpose of deceit.

Note I did not claim Isaiah 65:17 was hyperbole, I simply asked if @fastfredy0 considered it to have been said with a degree of hyperbole.

The phrase "heaven and earth" is imagery used in various ways throughout the Bible. Logically speaking, God cannot literally mean he is replacing creation with an alternative, new creation in the physical sense because that would require God to take all the plants and animals on the planet and put them some place during the interim of replacement. Notice the language of Isaiah 65:17 and its tenses. God AM creating new heavens and earth. The verse does not say He will create new heavens and earth some yet unidentified time in the future. He am doing it right then and there at the time He spoke to Isaiah and Isaiah spoke to a rebellious covenant-breaking Jewish people. The conjugation is present tense ongoing, not fixed future. Notice also that this creating a new heavens and earth in Isaiah 65 is couched in a time when God will "bring forth offspring from Jacob, and an heir of My mountains from Judah." That would be during the period of time during the incarnation, not the second coming. That was when the offspring of Jacob (Jesus) was brought forth. The passage is messianic, not apocalyptic. Isaiah 65 17's new heavens and earth occur when Jerusalem is created for rejoicing and God also rejoices in it (vss 18-19 ).

What does the NT have to say about the new Jerusalem? The NT has two avenues of commentary. The first is that the redeemed have already come to the new Jerusalem, the city of peace (jeru = city; salem = peace) built by God.

Hebrews 12:22-23
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all....

According to the author of Hebrews Isaiah 65:17 has happened! But we all also know and believe there is still a future coming. Unless a person is a full-preterist we all look forward to the day when...

Revelation 21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

In between Hebrews and Revelation we have this...

2 Peter. 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be discovered.

And, sadly, there is no end of the ways that verse gets abused because, for example, many Christians think there is only one single, specific "day of the LORD/Lord," when scripture uses that phrase to describes several different events (all of which have a two common themes, not one: redemption and judgment).

More to the point of hyperbole, it is that phrase, "the elements will be destroyed," that causes confusion and error because if the verse is taken literally then it means everything is literally destroyed literally at an atomic level. If that happens then ALL life ceases to exist. That nonsensical literal interpretation means all life is destroyed when God is in the business of making alive those previously dead in sin. If the heavens and the earth is literally destroyed at the elemental level then neither the heavens or the earth exist and neither do any of the creatures existing therein. You, @Two-Edged Sword, will cease to exist if the verse is read literally. The same goes for me and @fastfredy0. We cease to exist because our elements are destroyed. We're not born a new from above - we are destroyed at an elemental level, the atoms of our constitution undone and we're made anew in entirety. That's not consistent with the whole of scripture.


Here' a more obvious example of figurative language that cannot logically be taken literally.

Revelation 12:4a
And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and hurled them to the earth.

Most Christians do not take that sentence literally, but I have crossed paths with a few who do. I hope you're not one of them because if a literal third of the literal stars were literally to "fall" from heaven and literally fall to earth then the earth would literally be destroyed. The closest star to earth is Proxima Centauri. It's about 4.24 light years from earth. That means if that star were to start "falling" toward earth at the speed of light it would take four years to impact this planet. We'd see it coming long before it got here. If it literally crashed into this planet moving at the speed of light, then the earth would be smashed into sub-atomic particles faster than we could measure the event, and no life on the planet would or could possibly survive. Not only would that be the case, but Alpha Centauri, the second closest star would have no earth to fall to. Neither would the rest of the third of the stars. The first star to literally fall to earth would make earth non-existent. Furthermore, just one star leaving its gravitational point in the cosmos would change the movement of all the other stars. A third of the stars would be more than 60 billion stars! If 60 billion stars left their orbits, then radical changes would occur with all the other heavenly orbs. The entire heavens would be changed, if not also destroyed.

Revelation 12:4 (in its entirety)
His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born.

If just one star left its place in the heavens and fell to earth, then Satan would have nothing to stand on and the woman giving birth (assuming she survived the cataclysm) would be birthing a child into nothing - no earth on which to live.


So Revelation 12:4 falling stars is a figure of speech, a hyperbolic one. God is exaggerating the imagery in order to make a point, and He does not intend His readers to take the sentence literally. He is not lying. Something cataclysmic did/will happen but it is not a literal star literally falling to earth and literally crashing into it.
Thanks Josheb, although I would consider this examples as signs, other understandings, and symbolism of spiritual things which prevalent throughout the Bible, I would not consider them hyperbole, but I have studied the matter further and now agree with you that hyperbole IS occasionally used in the Bible.

I see obvious hyperbole in the fictious parables that Jesus uses such as “swallow a camel” in Matthew 23:24, “beam that is in thine own eye” in Matthew 7:3, and when God talks of a number of people beyond numbering as the "sands of the seas" or "stars of heaven".

I apologize for coming off dogmatic prior. (I didn’t read further posts in this thread but wanted to respond to you here since you took the time to write it and thank you for teaching me something I hadn't considered prior).
 
The claim that God uses hyperbole and the Bible is allegorical is a favorite tool of the atheist.
If an atheist can get a person to admit the dragon in Revelations is a representation of an idea, allegory then Satan is an allegory, merely a representation of an idea rather than a literal being. Then the Bible is allegorical, useful fiction.
If God uses hyperbole in the Battle of Gibean, the sun stood still then the entire Bible is open to the same scrutiny.
I have explained that a bit more forcefully in earlier post

My answer is that every Word of the Bible is the literal truth.
I wasn't at Gibean so I leave it alone.
The Battle of Crecy, I have always questioned the reported casualties as hyperbole, exaggeration, boastfulness, gloating or out right lies.
But I wasn't at Crecy, and frankly not interested, so I leave it alone.

Now that is the answer to the question.
Hereafter I am not interested
Well, as regard to Revelation, Rev 1:1 says it Jesus "signified it by his angel unto his servant John:” so we know that things in Revelation are meanings expressed by a sign (which is the definition of "signified"). We also know that Jesus spoke in parables which are true but not literal such as a beam in your eye (Matt 7:3), or swallowing a camel in (Matt 23:24) so while we know the Bible is pure truth, the truth is often expressed allegorically and not always literally literal.

(on a side note; the book is Revelation, not Revelations (I used to call it Revelations too until someone called me out on it);)
 
so while we know the Bible is pure truth, the truth is often expressed allegorically and not always literally literal.
And exactly how, in our vast wisdom, are we to declare that the whale swallowing Jonah is not hyperbole and allegory?
Jesus fed 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes. Is that allegory? Symbolism? Hyperbole?
Hyperbole is exaggeration for effect. Then, acutally, 50 were fed and the number inflated to dramatize the event, to emphasize a point?
What I said was those literary devices are tools to examine English Literature.

It is the knife of the atheist.
The atheist use those labels on Bible verses, especially ones such as Jonah, 3 days in the belly of the Big Fish. Is that Hyperbole?
To the atheist, the entire Bible is allegory, symbolism , hyperbole where the words such as God and Satan merely represent ideas and are not literal beings
Category English Literature Genre Useful Fiction
 
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And exactly how, in our vast wisdom, are we to declare that the whale swallowing Jonah is not hyperbole and allegory?
Jesus fed 5,000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes. Is that allegory? Symbolism? Hyperbole?
Hyperbole is exaggeration for effect. Then, acutally, 50 were fed and the number inflated to dramatize the event, to emphasize a point?
What I said was those literary devices are tools to examine English Literature.

It is the knife of the atheist.
The atheist use those labels on Bible verses, especially ones such as Jonah, 3 days in the belly of the Big Fish. Is that Hyperbole?
To the atheist, the entire Bible is allegory, symbolism , hyperbole where the words such as God and Satan merely represent ideas and are not literal beings
Category English Literature Genre Useful Fiction

Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses obvious exaggeration for emphasis or effect, it is not a lie:

For instance when Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees "Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel" in Matt 23:24, were they literally blind, did they literally swallow a camel? No, Jesus used fictional parables to teach truth "without a parable spake he not unto them" (Mark 4:34)

As to symbolism and allegory:

John 1:29 reads "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." - Is Jesus literally a lamb? or is he called a lamb because it allegorically link him to the lamb used for the Passover sacrifice, burnt offering, and the sin offering?

You above referred to Satan as the "dragon" in Revelation. Is he literally a dragon? or is that a symbol that allures back to the dragon he worked through when deceiving Eve?

We read everything literal that is not obliviously otherwise, so we understand that the whale swallowing Jonah and Jesus feeding many with little are literal.

But additionally, the Bible is a spiritual book and the majority of its literal stories are also allegorical. We see spiritual pictures throughout the actual historical events of the Bible, such as Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac but God provides the sacrifice, Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt picturing Jesus leading his people out of bondage of sin. We come to the correct spiritual truth pictured in the literal stories by using the Bible as it's own dictionary, examining how terms are used throughout the Bible which does not contradict itself.

 
As to symbolism and allegory:
Analogy and Allegory are two entirely different things.
"An allegory uses a narrative to explain an abstract concept, while an analogy is a comparison of two objects or ideas that depicts one in terms
"People commonly confuse allegory and analogy because they are similar in that they both use comparison to explain an idea. An allegory uses a narrative to explain an abstract concept, while an analogy is a comparison of two objects or ideas that depicts one in terms of the other."
 
Analogy and Allegory are two entirely different things.
"An allegory uses a narrative to explain an abstract concept, while an analogy is a comparison of two objects or ideas that depicts one in terms
"People commonly confuse allegory and analogy because they are similar in that they both use comparison to explain an idea. An allegory uses a narrative to explain an abstract concept, while an analogy is a comparison of two objects or ideas that depicts one in terms of the other."
Thanks for the info, I'll have to remember this. :)
 
Yes, my apologies, I looked at hyperbole in the Bible closer and you are correct. Thanks for straightening me out.
(y) LOL! I hadn't recalled you were the one questioning the truthfulness of hyperbole.

I will say that I do not read a verse someone else broached early on, John 15:5, to be hyperbole when taken in context. We can do nothing salvifically apart from Jesus. That "nothing" means nothing. We can do nothing for the kingdom apart from the King. This is important and very relevant to the op because of passages like this...

1 Corinthians 3:11-15
For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

I suspect a great many people, perhaps including myself, will exit God's testing charred, covered in soot, and empty-handed. Yet still saved :cool:. Alternatively, the purpose for our being created in Christ is to do good works God had planned for us to perform prior to His saving us (Eph. 2:10. Presumably, one of the things we'll take to heaven is the works God planned, inspired, and empowered for us to do in Christ Jesus 😇.
Did I miss something?
Maybe. At the beginning of this discussion someone cited Isaiah 16:17 and I asked about whether the verse could/should be read with a degree of hyperbole. That question prompted a digression that lasted several pages. Some, like @Two-Edged Sword, but not all, either agreed or were persuaded to my position, and/or the premise God actually uses the literary device hyperbole in His word.

That's all.
 
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