Revelation 7

[farla]

3"Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God." 4Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.
5From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed,
from the tribe of Reuben 12,000,
from the tribe of Gad 12,000,
6from the tribe of Asher 12,000,
from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000,
from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,
7from the tribe of Simeon 12,000,
from the tribe of Levi 12,000,
from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,
8from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000,
from the tribe of Joseph 12,000,
from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.

So a literalist reading of the bible means
A) Only 144,000 seals will be handed out.
b) Only to Jews.

I'd been assuming most of the Rapture crazies were just interpreting things in absurd ways and calling it obvious, but if I may say, this passage really looks blindingly, staggeringly obvious. According to Revelation, millions of Christians or any Gentiles getting sealed is not happening. I can't imagine any other way to read the passage. You've got like an inch of wiggle room if you assume the numbers are symbolic for "a ton of people", but I don't think anyone could manage the contortions to make "Tribes of Israel, listed off" = "Gentile non-Jewish guys not related to any tribe"

It's like every time I double-check things, it's even more wrong than I first thought.

(When Tsion Ben-Judah, or Jewy Jew McJewson the Jew, gives his OH HAY GUYS JEBUS IS MESSIAH LOL speech, he explains that his rabbinical Jewish group trying to figure out who the Jewish messiah is by using the Jewish messianic prophesies did so by checking based on the prophesies compiled by a guy WHO WAS A CHRISTIAN WHAT THE FUCK LAHAYE? SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK? I shouldn't even be surprised that shit got past their editor, considering the guy also missed the whole "Jews recoil from the word Jesus hissing and spitting like vampires" bit.)

Comments

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that somewhere, recently, I heard someone say something to the effect of, "Obviously, the different tribes of Israel stand for different denominations of Christianity."

I kid you not.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Because God, being all-powerful, is obviously unable to communicate clearly.

DAMMIT IT'S LIKE EVERY TIME I MAKE A MOCKING ASIDE ABOUT HOW NOT EVEN THESE GUYS WOULD THINK THAT, THEY GO AND PROVE ME WRONG.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

And, of course, the pre-Trib Rapture crowd can easily explain it away by saying that as RTCs they won't need seals, being as how they'll be in Heaven by then. Which doesn't solve the problem of the Rapture not being in the Bible, but that's a separate issue.

Because God, being all-powerful, is obviously unable to communicate clearly.

I've been in that argument too. They say something about expecting "all-powerful" to mean "able to be completely unambiguous when using an imperfect, human-created language, even after translation" being "as ridiculous as asking whether He can create a stone too big for Him to lift." So I'm all, "Yeah, about that stone..." And they proceed to explain that there are several possible kinds of "omnipotence," and which one applies to God. It's a decent explanation for the more minor cases of Biblical wonkiness, but there are other instances where it just doesn't cut it. This is one of them.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Couldn't God have just told them to write it in a bunch of languages? He could've spelled it out letter by letter for them. I mean, he's God, are you going to argue with what he says to write? Or, I dunno, explained the concept of vowels to the Jews, because that'd have helped the translation business juuuust a bit. Or, and this is just kind of a thought, but maybe that whole tower of Babel thing, he could use his omnipotence to figure out YOU CAN'T TECHNICALLY BUILD A TOWER TO HEAVEN AND ANYWAY HE COULD'VE JUST THUNDERBOLTED IT OR SOMETHING RATHER THAN REWRITE ALL OF LANGUAGE JUST MAYBE AND THEN IT WOULDN'T BE AN ISSUE.

GAH!

[wonsab.livejournal.com]

I pretty much gave up trying to make sense of it when I found the physical dimensions of heaven listed in a Discworld footnote. *shrug*

[farla.livejournal.com]

Making you a hell of the lot smarter than me.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Not to mention 10 of the tribes have been missing for a couple thousand years and though there're a few "lost tribes" hanging around still practicing recognizable Judaism that's not most of them.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, that's where they get the idea the English are one of the lost tribes and stuff.

That's what genetic testing's for, though.

(You know what would be really weird? If Hitler accidentally ended up killing the last remnants of one of those tribes, short-circuiting the apocalypse because there aren't any left to make up the twelve thousand converts. And that's why everything's so weird about rapture theology. God is currently engaged in a massive retcon of the universe.)