Reader: \u201cHey John, remember that book you sent us a while back?\u201d<\/p>\n
John: \u201cThe Book of Revelation? What about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Reader: \u201cWell, you said that if we are wise (and of course, we all seek to be) we should calculate the number of the beast, because it is a human being\u2019s number.\u201d<\/p>\n
John (apprehensively): \u201cYeah, I know. I wrote that in chapter 13 verse 18\u201d (wink).<\/p>\n
Reader: \u201cWell I\u2019m a bit confused. One manuscript I read has 666 which I figured out is Caesar Nero. But a friend of mine said he knows someone who read a version that has 616, and that could fit emperor Gaius \u201cCaligula\u201d as well as Nero. Which is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
John: \u201cYou\u2019re both wrong. It refers to Barack Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reader: \u201cWho?!\u201d<\/p>\n
John: \u201cHe\u2019s going to be a presidential candidate in almost 2,000 years\u2019 time in a country that doesn\u2019t exist yet, on a continent no one on this continent knows exists at the moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Reader: \u201cWhat?! How did you expect us to figure that out?\u201d<\/p>\n
John (rolling on the floor laughing): \u201cJust because I told you wisdom was to figure it out, you thought I meant you actually could? Ha! Suckers!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What is most irritating is that fundamentalists are happy to make God, the authors of Scripture, and anyone else be mean, immoral and dishonest in order for the Bible (or more accurately their interpretation of it) somehow in spite of this be perfectly inerrant.<\/p>\n
Am I the only one who sees a problem here? Is it plausible to view the Book of Revelation as a mean practical joke played by a genuine prophet on his unsuspecting Christian victims?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-5502544276055407358?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")
<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the majority of Christian fundamentalists, the Book of Revelation is about the future (perhaps distant, perhaps near and already begun). Our future, that is, and not merely the future from the perspective of the time in which it was written. Yet they appear not to have thought through the implications of treating the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n