Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: kilroy@mimsy.UUCP (Darren, Nancy's fiance) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Scripture ends? Message-ID: Date: 4 Jul 89 08:22:51 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 Lines: 60 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [In article bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) quoted Rev 22:18 as saying that the Bible is the only source of divine truth, and warning of grave consequences to those who rely on anything additional. He applies these words to the entire Bible, although noting that many people have attempted to say that it applied only to Rev itself. --clh] Speaking as one of those many people, I wish to point out that assuming the Apostle John is speaking of the Bible as a whole has the problem that the Bible didn't exist yet. The position that God put those verses in on purpose is pretty irrefutable, but it then suggests that John wrote Revelation and didn't understand what most of it meant -- and for that matter, nobody else did for a few centuries until the Bible was finally assembled. Remembering that Revelation is essentially a letter to other Christians, I find it odd that God would send them a letter full of apocryphal imagery and at the same time mislead them into thinking that the closing verses only referred to the one book instead of to the Bible as a whole. (Since, in the absence of a Bible, the only book the early Christians could have applied those verses to is Revelation itself.) >There are other Scriptures which support the fact that the "book" does >indeed refer to the entire Bible, and none that contradict it. If you are referring to passages in any of the letters of Paul or Peter, you would do well to remember that both men died before any of the Gospels had been written. If you wish to assume that either of them is denying future revelation, then you have to throw out the Gospels (since they came after the letters). >I have avoided Scripture references in this article to keep its length >down. If anyone believes that I have said something that the Bible >does not say, let me know. Don't worry, the moderator likes long-winded articles. 8-) Seriously, I think it is a mistake to assume that God inspired the Bible writers to defend the entire book, when the book didn't exist yet (I also reject the notion that the Epistles constitute prophesy, since the writers are not saying "There will be a completed book"). Since they only considered the Old Testament to be Scripture (barring a single hihgly disputed passage in 2 Peter), they could only apply "closed canon" verses to the OT -- and yet we use the NT anyway... kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu Darren F. Provine ...uunet!mimsy!kilroy "It's one of those groups that likes to read Daniel and Revelation and make charts out of them..." -- Nancy L. Tinkham [Actually, we don't know the dates of any of the books reliably. Rev., along with the other Johannine literature, is normally dated fairly late. It is quite likely that Paul's letters are before any of the gospels, but I'd bet that Rev. is after all the gospels except possibly John's. --clh]