The events of Revelation begin with a pandemic

I believe a plague from God would leave no doubt and we wouldn’t have to fudge numbers and convince people how bad this is. I personally would think a biblical plague would have a mortality rate higher than .04%.

a reply to: iwanttobelieve70
Revelation just says "power over a quarter of the earth" for all three causes of death (including war and famine) in combination.

It's my belief that the book of Revelation is historical and concerns one Antichrist, Nero. And not a prophecy of things to come.

I have to wonder if the "last days" are not book ended by 2 deadly influenza's the Spanish Flu peaking around 100 years ago and now COVID-19. I believe we are in the final part of the last days. Is it a coincidence that pale horse(plague & death) is last, is there a message in that.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Gotta love doom and gloom porn

a reply to: vance
The last three chapters certainly relate to the future- nobody can say that we are living in the "new Jerusalem" now, in any sense. So I take the view in my thread series and future book that John is addressing two martyred churches at the same time- his own, persecuted by Nero, and a future churcch, persecuted by a ruler mdelled on Nero.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33
My formula is that the first three are causes of death (plague, war and famine), while the fourth (repeating plague, war, and famine, and adding wild beasts) is running along behind them and picking up the dead bodies.

originally posted by: HallowedEarth
S&F , this is very timely read for me, thanks for your insight & breakdown.

There is no doubt around the Pestilence. The more I've seen Trump goad the Chinese with his 'China Flu' remarks in recent days, I do feel there is a strong possibility of something around the corner. Not specifically his goading, but the economic situation and the unrest.

RFID chips have been here for a number of years now. I work in the IT industry, specifically delivering solutions for Corporate organisations, and a real trend over the past year - 18 months has been machine learning & AI. It really is up to a level to replace human workers in many roles across many sectors, and large organisations have begun to notice and capitalise on this. I just thought more organisations would begin to adopt, to realise the ROI & remove the human workforce prior to Revelation events occurnig.

Thanks for sharing.

I actually work in Robtic Process Automation. In the last year we have 30 digit workers doing the work of 100 people, with another 30 planned for this year. RPA doesn't necessarily replace a worker, it eliminates all the repititious tasks a worker does. As an example, say you have a department of 40 people, and there is one task all of them do in a day, that takes 1 hour to perform. Thats 40 hours a week. By automating that one task, you give each worker 1 hour to do something else. Eventually when someone leaves, you still have to replace them, but now the 40 workers are doing more complex tasks then before. Rinse cycle repeat, eventually you augment the tasks the department is doing till the job changes into something more complex.

Camain

a reply to: DISRAELI

By your high standards this is pretty inadequate .

You haven't even mentioned the abomination of desolation , the birds being filled with their flesh , or even the point revelation 18 . 9 . V 11 .

It's a reasonable assumption that most intelligent observers of ancient predictions are going to be reluctant to ascribe real historical events to fulfillments of prophecy , which is where , at least from this end it appears you're of the view that there's a good while yet to the real ' end of days' .

Which is fair in its way but it seems most people , intelligent and careful judges like yourself have really missed the point . It's to have been expected that people had ears to hear but didn't hear etc , but at the end of the day the unfolding of the revelation appears almost complete , not as yet unseen .

After all it's called the apocalypse and things are looking rather apocalyptic , which is why you got stars and flags , for a change is it not .

If anything creates a year of recompense for the wicked , leaving men "rarer than the fine gold of Ophir" , collapses Babylon and frees the world's animals and the remnant of the inheritors ... this 'nice cup of covid' is probably ... very likely in fact, just the ticket .

So it was expected with your in depth knowledge you might have gathered together the general jist of the Bible ? That the casting of judgement was down to simple honest down to earth morality , as strongly advised in every page , and that there's been point to the last 100 or so years of unprecedented upheaval turmoil and change ?

Assuming after this we still have the internet intact , what will be left there would be a clear record of most people's lives , their lives before the outbreak of a natural reality ... And they'd , in general , have denied the possibility of , and waved on the real meaning of what is to prepare and be prepared . They wouldnt be helped , would never have feared The Almighty , would have ignored the realities with which we all live , in preference to the cheap meat of modern life , and were all guilty to some extent , including politicians . A good example is what Fukushima has done , and that " wormwood " which should be well spread across the world by now.

At psalm 91 . 8 It shall not come near you ,
Only with your eyes you shall observe ,
And behold the reward of the wicked .

And from this we should take that to have ' feared God and given him the glory ' and that having and keeping faith was a way out all along. And that in these days they will repent their sins , that would be expected , just about now. There'll be no time to go about doing wrong or having wars when your shopping cart's empty , not any more.

Being fair to you , you do in depth analyses and don't deliver sermons , but here's one to yourself saying ' pull it all together '. When there's a final end in sight , all that list of historical fulfillments , signs and wonders which went before, does , or should , contribute . We want to see a macro perspective at this point in time right now, not the minutiae of pedance.

a reply to: DoctorBluechip
The short answer is; I've done all that on other occasions.
In the first place, here is my thread on What is an Abominaation of desolation?, which covers the Daniel version, necessarily including comment on what a future version would look like. Also in my 1 Corinthians thread on the Lord's Supper, a connection which is explained in that thread.. In my Drafts folder, for use on some convenient occasion this year, is a thread on how the events of A.D. 70 don't match what Jesus predicts in Matthew ch24.

Also here is an entire, twelve-month long, thread series on Revelation.

If you are familiar enough with my work to know what my usual standards are, you must have noticed my "one piece of the jigsaw at a time" approach.
This thread was designed, back in October 2014, for the specific purpose of spelling out the Revelation implications of a pandemic, and so of course it was limited to that purpose.

originally posted by: DoctorBluechip
So it was expected with your in depth knowledge you might have gathered together the general jist of the Bible ?

Have you examined the third and fourth pages of the attached thread?
Bible thread Index

I particularly commend to your attention the New Testament Salvation thread series, the most important thing I have ever done.

a reply to: DISRAELI

The links will be read from your veritable library but surely now the one piece of the jigsaw at a time approach must reveal a clear picture ? That the last pieces are easier to fit than the first ?
Deliver us a sermon thread for once , and then warning upon warning won't be wasted . For once that old nut with a clapper board might not be wrong , and today could be a last chance to confess your faith. Let rip for once , abandon your reservedness , traditional as it may be .

a reply to: DoctorBluechip
God has not called me to that particular function. I'm doing the job that i was given.
If you think you know what needs to be said, nothing stops you from writing the thread yourself.

a reply to: DoctorBluechip

I read this thread in the sense of a warning more than a rock solid prediction. The OP is making a warning that in his opinion it is exactly this kind of event which could rip off the other three seals in rapid succession leading us down the road toward the end.

I don't think he has said himself whether or not he feels this actually may be it.

Remember, we've walked down this road on a worldwide basis before and not gone into the end times. For example, it happened with the Spanish Flu almost exactly 100 years ago and there was a world war ongoing at the time.

I'd also like to add (and turn everyone's attention to) Matthew 24:6-8:

"And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."

Here, we can clearly see Christ describing part of the four horsemen, in chronological order -- in the same order as they're written and described in Revelation 6. War, famine, and pestilence.

originally posted by: DISRAELI
a reply to: JON666

At the very least, the first half of the rule of the Beast- we know the Beast rules for "one hour" (whatever that means), and this pause is or includes the "half an hour" mentioned in ch8 v1

I think I can assist you in understanding what is meant by one hour or half an hour.

Its philosopher speak to keep hidden the true number... you will find in many eastern philosophies the mention of hours in reference to days or even months and sometimes years...

in this case it could be anywhere from half a year to just a single day... and in the rare case of tricking oneself into overthinking... it oculd just be 1 hour as the crow flies.

The Beast could be a reference for human nature... as in our very savagery in an "Hour and a Half of Global Rioting"
thus the "Beast" (in man) will Have ONE HOUR of chaotic play... could you imagine how much evil and violence could be done in one hour?

that will be one long hour.

just floating ideas

a reply to: Rave3n
Going back to my very first thread on these boards ten years ago, I identified the Beast's "hour" as the equivalent of Daniel's "week"; which makes the "half an hour" the first, non-tribulation, half of the week. Hence "silence in heaven", which means "God's wrath not active on earth".

originally posted by: iwanttobelieve70
This is not biblical. This isn’t even in the neighborhood of biblical. Do some of the math with the numbers they are giving.

I am saying right now. The death toll will be less than the flu and the books will be cooked to get to what they report.

So you're saying Corona will cause less death than seasonal flu, but if it doesn't then the official numbers are a lie.

I like your style. Basically you're saying, I'm right, but even if I'm wrong, I'm still right. That's a good tactic for being right all the time.

Of course, there's always the possibility that you are wrong. Never forget that.

a reply to: Kromlech

Yes good point, when did we have a massive war & huge pestilence in human history at the same time to start the "Beginning" of Matthew 24?
The Spanish flu and WW1. We are now 100 years beyond that.

40 Million people died in WW1
50 Million died from the Spanish Flu.
500 million were infected 1/3 of the earths population.

a reply to: camain

Yes that is correct. It is being sold in as a 'virtual buddy' to perform the repetitive tasks of a human. But let's be real here, and we have implemented this solution in the NHS & large Councils, how many humans and jobs only involve repetitive processing? ESPECIALLY in the public sector. 30 robots working 100 human tasks is good but sounds a little light in comparison to some of the solutions that we have sold, the number we quote are 1 robot to 12 workers, this with the new Intelligent Automation (acting as the supervisor) layer that effectively sits on top of a number of RPA bots, able to feed different skills and processes and change workload to meet business demands across all areas of a business as opposed to being confined for example to only the Finance dpt - thus eliminating the requirement for (as much) human intervention.