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:
“American thinking, when it concerns itself with beautiful letters as when it concerns itself with religious dogma or political theory, is extraordinarily timid and superficial ... [I]t evades the genuinely serious problems of art and life as if they were stringently taboo ... [T]he outward virtues it undoubtedly shows are always the virtues, not of profundity, not of courage, not of originality, but merely those of an emasculated and often very trashy dilettantism.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
—Bible: Hebrew Proverbs, 6:6.
The words were rendered by Samuel Johnson in the opening lines of The Ant: “Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, sluggard, and be wise.”
“Our visions begin with our desires.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)