Letters and Opening Visions
Reverend Elliott considered if John's letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor were in themselves prophetic. He set out a table of different systems which advocated this view and found the discrepancies were so massive as to convince him there could be no prophetic intention in the letters themselves. The letters were a record of the things that are, not of the things that shall be. To this end, he suggested that the opening vision section (beginning Chapter 4) did not impart new information. The idea was to recall familiar prophecies: Isaiah 6:1, Ezekiel 1: 4 & 20, and Exodus 24: 9 & 10.
Read more about this topic: Horae Apocalypticae
Famous quotes containing the words letters, opening and/or visions:
“Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! O no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement, before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)