Apocalypse, Now?

We're discussing the Revelation of John in this episode. The Revelation is an end-of-the-world prophecy also known as the Revelation of John or the Apocalypse of John. The book is credited to John of Patmos in the first century, though scholars believe this is actually a composite work with many authors.

When reading the Revelation, the content is supplemented from many other books in the Bible, especially the Old Testament Prophets.

What does this prophecy mean for mankind? Should we take it literally or only as a metaphor?

There are six different ways to read the Revelation, and we touch on each of them: historicism, preterism, amillennialism, post-millennialism, futurism and idealism/allegorical. 

We also discuss the symbolism in the book as well as Christian Zionism, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Rapture. Tune in if you want to learn more about the end of the world!

All this and more....

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Learn more on our official website

***

Preston Meyer  00:09

atheist and agnostic of religion, but you're ready for the end of the world.

Katie Dooley  00:13

No, I'm not even a little bit prepared.

Preston Meyer  00:18

As ready as I was five years ago, Allah that

Katie Dooley  00:22

Were you prepared five years ago?

Preston Meyer  00:25

No, no?

Katie Dooley  00:28

Well, yeah, we're about to prepare you for the end of the world on the

Preston Meyer  00:34

holy watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  00:38

So this was a listener request. Thank you, Sarah for requesting the Revelation of John episode, which is why we talked about prophecy two weeks ago to segue into a more specific prophecy. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  00:54

this one's juicy.

Katie Dooley  00:59

That's a really odd way to put it. But I see where you're getting right. I thought it was really fucking weird, right?

Preston Meyer  01:09

I've mentioned before, and I'll bring it up again. It bugs me so much when people call it revelations. Especially since an awful lot of the people who call it revelations are people who are happy to tell you that they have read it. Just not the title. I guess not the title. Revelation,

Katie Dooley  01:35

and the philosophy rock? Sure.

Preston Meyer  01:40

The Revelation of John also sometimes called the Apocalypse of John, which not accurate. I mean, well, we've went and changed the definition of the word apocalypse, which is the real problem. The Greek word apocalypse means Revelation. But because the book describes what feels like the end of the world as we know it, we've

Katie Dooley  02:05

now associated Apocalypse with the end of the world. Yeah. Okay. And

Preston Meyer  02:09

that's, I'm gonna call it cultural illiteracy. Okay, if you hear a word used way too often, and you never actually learn what it means, you start applying it to this new context that you do firmly associated with the word immaculate.

Katie Dooley  02:28

We've done that with the word immaculate. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  02:31

in fact, I mean, that's how languages evolve, broadly speaking in general, but there's, there's a few cases where it's just super annoying. And, I mean, I've gotten used to people describing the end of the world as the apocalypse, fine, whatever, but it is technically wrong.

Katie Dooley  02:55

Okay. If you really want to know my Preston, hop onto our Discord and write revelations over and over again,

Preston Meyer  03:01

yeah, it's like when somebody wants to, quote, a psalm. They'll say Psalms 119, whatever, whatever. Like, no, no, no, no, it's a singular Psalm. It's, if you're referring to just one psalm drop that final s vivid is the book of the Psalms. And maybe that's why people do that with the revelation. Cuz the revelation is sometimes looked at as though it contains several separate revelations. But that's still wrong.

Katie Dooley  03:30

Well, it is kind of multiple we found in our research. I mean, I'm feel like you probably knew this before. But from Britannica, they said that it is a, it is a collection of separate units composed by multiple authors.

Preston Meyer  03:45

Yeah, the scholarship on this book is actually really fascinating. And there's an awful lot of scholars who feel very confident now that it is a large composite work.

Katie Dooley  03:56

I mean, we'll get into this further, but even just how much of the revelation is supplemented by other books of the Bible. I want to say it was grasping at straws, but it really feels like they were pulling from other places. The

Preston Meyer  04:13

revelation really relies heavily on a few of the Old Testament prophets, especially Ezekiel and Daniel. But there's also loads of other little ideas that get pulled from some, some imagery that gets used from Isaiah even as well.

Katie Dooley  04:30

Yeah, well, and I, you'll see, later on, I cited Matthew quite frequently for how to describe the end of the world. Because like, anyway, I went down a rabbit hole and it's terrifying. Do we do do do you know any research on who John was because I found I assumed it was done the impossible. And then I read that there was no indication that it was Jon Postel.

Preston Meyer  04:56

There's an awful lot of scholars who are I'm very confident that there's no possible way that John the Apostle could be John of Patmos, John of Patmos being the the identifier within the text for who wrote the Revelation. And it's kind of weird. They do have some similarities in their language. Both of them continue to use Aramaic words, instead of being smooth Greek. But other than that we have the same first name. And that's really kind of it. I mean, back then everyone was named on the Yohannan was a very popular name among the Hebrews among the, the Juday, and people and the diaspora.

Katie Dooley  05:47

But I actually found sources that said, Jon Postel, was exiled to Patmos and John of Patmos is done the impossible. Yeah. And then I found, like I said, on pretend Britannica says that there's no indication that there's the same person. So some of the more wild interpretations of Revelation, I really feel like they're just making shit up. Oh,

Preston Meyer  06:13

yeah. Identifying John is, is really tricky. There's loads of doubt. And there's some pretty good reasons for that doubt that they're the same person. There are some churches who will say explicitly, this is John, the apostle, is John the Revelator. They're the same person. And there are other churches that are a lot less committed to that idea, because they just tend to stick with the popular scholarly opinion, which makes perfectly good sense.

Katie Dooley  06:44

I mean, I agree with that. Right. So I found on Wikipedia is basically the different ways Christians interpret the revelation and I find this really interesting. So I think we should speak to those. Yeah. So there's six and try to count.

Preston Meyer  07:03

Yes, there are six different categories, six or category.

Katie Dooley  07:06

So number one is historicism, which sees the revelation as a broad view of history.

Preston Meyer  07:18

Basically, just kind of covering things up. We have the Four Horsemen are usually when looked at as historical representations. They're meant to cover the 4000 years leading up to that point in history where this book was written. So the

Katie Dooley  07:33

broad view of history is not a specific event. It's sort of a summary. Yeah. All the stuff that's happened in the world so far, yeah.

Preston Meyer  07:42

It's large loosey goosey. And when we talked about prophecy, a couple of weeks ago, he talked about how it was super obvious that the prophecy of the Pope's was a forgery, because it was super specific, up until the point of publication, and then vague and cryptic afterwards. Here in this text we have vague and cryptic for the history, if we want to go with this historic interpretation of the book. The

Katie Dooley  08:09

second one is Preterism. So this is where you believe revelation refers to the events of the first century, or at the latest, the fall of the Roman Empire is a very specific time in history, as opposed to a broad History of the World History. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  08:28

And that's it, that does fit pretty nicely with the broad use of apocalyptic literature, where it's, Hey, we're an oppressed people, but we're going to overcome our oppressors, and everything's gonna be great. And the fall of Rome, not in a terribly distant future for these people. The

Katie Dooley  08:46

next is a millennialism. So this rejects any sort of literal interpret interpretation of the revelation and is just sees it as symbolic, which I like, because it's gonna get weird. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  09:00

And they, they also reject the idea of there being 1000 year period of peace after all of this happens, which is explicitly mentioned within the text. So it gets a little bit tricky.

Katie Dooley  09:16

But I guess if it's all symbolic, then matter if you say something explicitly,

Preston Meyer  09:20

yeah, you could just say, Millennium hole he just means for a long time. Yeah. Like, anytime we talked about Moses in 40 years, probably was just, Oh,

Katie Dooley  09:32

thank goodness because to be lost in that desert for 40 years is unacceptable. Post millennialism rejects the literal interpretation as well. And sees the world becoming better and better with the entire world, eventually becoming Christianized makes sense well enough, I was gonna say, Where's your commentary Preston? That's, that's okay. I'm satisfied. Okay. futurism believes that the revelation disagree tribes future events, so an actual revelation. So this is also called millennialist.

Preston Meyer  10:06

Yeah, and that's probably most people who are concerned with the book of Revelation. This is where most of them seem to sit. Or they're looking forward to the end of the world as they know it in all of these cataclysmic events. And some of them are very fearful. And, yeah, futurism.

Katie Dooley  10:26

I'm just gonna say there's gonna be a point in this podcast where I don't know if I can be nice anymore. We'll see. We'll see. I'll try. And the last one is idealism or allegorical, which refers to the revelation as not an actual event, but an allegory of your spiritual journey. And this one I can get behind to. Some of them I can't get behind

Preston Meyer  10:49

some of the symbolism in there, it gets really specific alarming for a personal journey.

Katie Dooley  10:59

I just think it's an acid trip at some point. I don't even know if I call it alarming. Czar, like they did a few tabs of acid and we're like dragons.

Preston Meyer  11:11

All right. So what I think is really fascinating is the dragons that everybody draws in connection with this story. of Neil, we're talking like four limbs and an extra set of wings breathing fire. And that's, that's a much newer idea of what a dragon is. The dragon, as we have written in the biblical text, the word DragCon is a Greek word that means serpent. I usually a big sea serpent, something large that lives in the water, but and serpentine. But yeah, I feel very confident that its use here, though it may meant it may be meant to evoke images of the old Leviathan, I feel more like it's meant to evoke images of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, especially as this this adversary of humanity,

Katie Dooley  12:09

and it toys it all nicely back to the beginning. Right. I like that one of the theories that I read again, from our resource from the botanic website is that that is actually a contemporary piece for the first century that is supposed to help Christians get through the persecution from Rome at the time.

Preston Meyer  12:29

Yeah, absolutely. So the moral of the story is when you've read the whole letter, because it's it's written in an epistolary format, mostly, at the end of it, you're supposed to come out of it, having hope, with this message that we're going to overcome this Roman persecution. So yeah, absolutely. Supposed to help with that crisis of faith in a time when the Roman Empire is like, No, you need to worship our God Emperor is the only supreme god. And of course, Christians say, hey, we really don't want to do that.

Katie Dooley  13:04

As someone who has studied the Bible, this is a little off script. But is the revelation so we we believe it's written by multiple authors, or any of those authors, the same authors as other books of the Bible? Or is this like a total? I haven't made it this far. If anyone's listening, I haven't. One Samuel why every

Preston Meyer  13:21

scholar who believes that the book of Revelation was written by multiple authors will reject that any of them had anything to do with writing the base text to anything else in the New Testament, though editor's could certainly have been involved with multiple projects, including the Revelation of John.

Katie Dooley  13:45

Interesting. Yeah, it just feels like again, I haven't read the whole Bible yet. But it feels like such an out there, book, content and structure wise.

Preston Meyer  13:55

It's wildly different from everything else in the New Testament. But familiar enough if you've gone through some of the cooler parts of the Old Testament.

Katie Dooley  14:05

By getting to the cooler parts of the Old Testament, it'd be a little while.

Preston Meyer  14:08

You got to get through history before you get to the prophecy books.

Katie Dooley  14:14

Alright, I see you have some notes on Joel Osteen.

Preston Meyer  14:18

His name? Yes, I do. Name? Yes. So the interesting thing about the Revelation of John, and we've talked about how there's loads of doubt about the author, it was never in editing. Any time in human history. It was never popular in the lists of what counts as the Christian canon. And an awful lot of people have put an awful lot of time arguing against it for as long as it's been circulated. Also, I wanted to define the word canon because it comes up a fair bit in the discussion of this book. So canon means measuring stick or the standard against which other things are measured. So for Star Wars fans, none of the books ever are canon. At no point in history were the books canon. The films are the Canon against which you could judge if the books were truly part of the same continuity. In the same way, the huge amounts of Christian literature that have been created in the last 2000 years, like the words of Polycarp, and CS Lewis, and Joel Osteen. They're evaluated for their content relative to what is in the scriptural canon, which is selected by committees over the course of centuries, eventually bringing us the New Testament as we have it today. And so, centuries of arguing about what is really the foundational texts of our religion, it was super easy to adopt the four gospels that are sitting at the front of the New Testament, it was super easy to adopt the writings of Paul, broadly speaking, but it took a lot of work to figure out which ones were genuine Pauline epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews is still a mystery text. It was ascribed to Paul for a while by a bunch of people. And now it's generally rejected that definitely wasn't Paula wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, that kind of thing. So the history of this book of Revelation is flip flop back and forth, mostly. Dionysius, in the mid third century rejected the apostolic opera authorship of the book, but did admit that its author was inspired anything

Katie Dooley  16:38

so it was a revelation just not done the apostle. Right. Okay. And

Preston Meyer  16:42

then, about 100 years later, used to be as included the book in his list of accepted books, but also included in his list of rejected books. He waffled on this? Yeah, and we're not talking like decades apart or books apart, but like, in the same text,

Katie Dooley  17:04

so he had a stack of accepted and a stack of rejecting just switch back and forth

Preston Meyer  17:07

for it was an old stack simultaneously for this guy.

Katie Dooley  17:12

Can't decide today, like

Preston Meyer  17:14

when he wrote on, these are books that are good. And these are books that are bad in the same content lists. Like huge hand you up piece of paper, and on both sides of this piece of paper, one side, good, one side bad. It's on both sides. Because it's, it's, it's a problem for people. Yeah. The Council of Laodicea in 363, omitted the book from the canon, Council of Rome included it only 20 years later. And the Eastern Orthodox Council in trullo, in 692, omitted the book from the Canon as well. It's still rejected by many Christian groups today. When we say the Christian New Testament, it's, it's a lot more monolithic than the Old Testament. But there's, there's still some issues there. We have smaller Christian groups that don't use the same New Testament either. Well,

Katie Dooley  18:13

and then there's just like, how much stock you put in to the revelation, right? There's churches that are entirely based. There's one in the West Ed. It's called The End of Days church. Like it's entirely right, we get these fire and brimstone preachers that base their entire doctrine on the revelation. And then there's Summerlin, kids allegorical. Yeah, right. So

Preston Meyer  18:38

there's, there's an awful lot of freedom when deciding how you're going to use a book. And sure that makes sense.

Katie Dooley  18:46

I guess so.

Preston Meyer  18:49

i The problem comes when you start doing things that hurt people are ruined people's lives with this book that was written so long ago.

Katie Dooley  19:00

Like I said, we'll get into it. And we're tight a little bit before we pressed record. How much people like, put time and energy into this? And I mean, I know I'm coming at it from an atheist perspective, but it's kind of terrifying.

Preston Meyer  19:18

Yeah, there's some weird ways and using this book. Yeah,

Katie Dooley  19:21

there and at some we're gonna talk about Christian Zionism. Some dangerous ways people have used this book. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  19:27

One of my books there's, there's a lot of things I do like pointing out that are in this book to people who aren't as familiar with the faith that they like to lay it out on other people lay it on. And one of these I mentioned a month or two back when we were talking about Satanism, that the idea that Lucifer has to be this evil figure and anytime you ever talk about Lucifer, as a good thing, you're automatically a Satan worshiper. Nonsense. People like to throw that at Freemasons because there was a couple of Freemason authors a couple of centuries ago, that really liked to describe the philosophy of Freemasonry as Luciferian. And Lucifer means light bearer. And Lucifer is the poetic name of the Morning Star. In Latin, referring to Venus or occasionally mercury. Apparently, some people get that confused, I guess, mostly Venus. And the morning star. That symbol of us a five pointed star, whether inverted or not, in old is Christianity, referred to Jesus. And this is actually illustrated in the Revelation of John.

Katie Dooley  20:53

Well, it's it was interesting to me, because like Morningstar is not used a lot in the Bible, it's just twice and once it's for Lucifer, king of Babylon, and once it's for Jesus, yeah, like those are polar opposites. So I thought that was a really interesting choice of language of all the things and I mean, the revelation goes on to calm the lamb and the lion and whatever of all the things the only other reference in the Bible is to the devil, and you're calling him the morning star. And I know Lucifer is not the devil, but common perception is that Lucifer is a bad dude. Or a sexy Tom Ellis, if you're listening, I'd love to interview. That's sorry, I didn't hear you. Yeah, no, I,

Preston Meyer  21:36

I have to deny that Lucifer was ever used in the Bible to describe the adversary of God, except for the one situation where he describes the king of Babylon, and his self styled title, that is equivalent to the morning star. So that's, that's my little thing.

Katie Dooley  21:58

What other fun facts do you like to throw at people about the revelation?

Preston Meyer  22:03

The one of the things that came up last time I talked about this in Sunday school, cuz I'm a Sunday school teacher as well, is this business about the 144,000. Some churches, including the Jehovah's Witnesses, will say this is how many people get into heaven. Jehovah's Witnesses, cosmology and theology is super complicated. And it's, the problem I have with it is that's not a thing that can be fairly pulled out of this text. We have 144,000 elders, who go and do a particular work for the Lord in this text. And that's got nothing to do with who's going to heaven. That's not what this chapter addresses even where this 144,000 are mentioned. What's interesting to me, though, is that the 144,000 is 12,000, from each of 12 tribes in Israel. But that list, it gives us the 12 tribes of Israel is obviously written by either somebody who's not familiar with Israel, or has a specific reason to exclude one particular group. And that is still mysterious to me, because we have the list of the 12 tribes. And usually Levi is left out of any list of 12 tribes, because Levi's descendants never received any city inheritance really apart from where they had their altars, so they could perform priestly duties among all of the people of Israel across all of the tribes. But this list in Revelation includes Levi and excludes Dan for some reason. It includes Joseph, but excludes Ephraim but does have Manasa it's that's a weird replacement thing. And maybe the name Manasa is thrown in where Dan is supposed to belong. It's, it's all really fuzzy. But what's really weird is that people use this exclusion of Dan in this list to say the Danish people are evil.

Katie Dooley  24:30

I believe that

Preston Meyer  24:31

I'm Danish. So problems only for you. And the entire nation of Denmark out there atheist anyway, not all predominantly more than a lot of the way. But the idea of identifying this one little group out of the nation of Israel to equivalent to another nation. Then on the other end of Europe, that is also kind of little is nonsense

Katie Dooley  25:07

also because it didn't exist, presumably, when the Bible was written. I

Preston Meyer  25:12

don't know when the Kingdom of Denmark was organized, but I feel like the Danish people were probably up people around this. I mean, yeah,

Katie Dooley  25:21

but they were would have been all small tribes like we didn't really start to say weren't organized.

Preston Meyer  25:27

Yeah, yeah. Especially

Katie Dooley  25:29

in that part of Europe into like, the 1200s is when what we would call countries now start to farm. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  25:39

Did stretch all the way? Around this Europe pretty much

Katie Dooley  25:44

doesn't feel like you're back then. Is that weird to say?

Preston Meyer  25:48

It's not Europe as we know it. I mean, we had the Roman Empire along basically, everything in Europe, except for the northern bits, which was the Germanic tribes. And honestly, I feel like they were probably more organized than we give them credit for to

Katie Dooley  26:02

probably, let's skip Christian Zionism now and come back. All right, that shouldn't be there. But let's talk about the content, the actual guts of this book. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but I listened to it one and a half times. And he didn't make it through the second recording. And then I mean, obviously did a whole bunch of research. And I watched some wild videos on the revelation. And from what I listened to read audiobook, versus the interpretations, I felt like, there was not a plot in the book, of which people would interpret into crazy things. Sorry, into elaborate things. So for example, like I know the Raptors from Revelation. I was like key. So where does it describe people being sucked up in their clubs being left behind and everyone else's suffer? And there's like two sentences. And it doesn't refer to any of those, like, how do we get this imagery of

Preston Meyer  27:12

Let Me Google that real quick. I

Katie Dooley  27:13

have it in my notes. Do chapter three, verse 10, is a revelation. Since you have kept My command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have that no one will take your crown. That's the rapture. That's what the entire Left Behind series is based on. Is those two sentences. No, that's not it at all. Okay, am I reading the wrong thing? No, that's what I read was we're actress chapter three.

Preston Meyer  27:48

So Matthew 24. That's not the revelation. Right. But that idea, it comes from Matthew 24. The whole left behind. titular idea. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  28:03

Right there. Yeah. The

Preston Meyer  28:05

book series expands and implements a lot of things taken from the revelation. But that idea that one person can be taken up and the person right next to him not, is from Matthew 24.

Katie Dooley  28:16

Okay, so then how does this work in like a Bible study context?

Preston Meyer  28:19

Oh, you have to lean heavily on what we call intertextuality. Where you go flip back and forth between several different books and string together all these different ideas can make up whatever story you want, if you're not extremely careful, yes. Okay. That's the wonderful thing about people who study books, I guess is, they will connect all kinds of ideas. I took a whole course on intertextuality with just different philosophic literature and books that people thought were supposed to be like deep philosophical dives, that when you read this book, and also read Kant or Freud, then this changes the way you understand the book. Yeah. And that is basically how most people read the Bible, because you've got a bunch of different prophets who say, little bits of information here and there. You have to string them together if you want a solid image and some people are really bad at that job and string together terrifying or awfully destructive images. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  29:37

I was I was like, expecting this but you know, having you know, heard of left behind and a season tonight. I was expecting, like revelation to be this big, scary book. And I was like, no. It talks about a really weird animal with bear paws, which we'll get to, but that's about it. But I'm like, oh, and then Nero, which we'll also talk about But like other than that, I was like, this is not nearly the traumatizing book I was expecting. So

Preston Meyer  30:09

cool. Yeah. It's there's an awful lot of ideas that because we're they're connected to the end of the world, we connect to the revelation. And some of it is just not there. And that includes the whole the the nitty gritty of the details of the rapture, the rapture, which is such a weird word. But yeah, it's intertextuality allows us to point to where in the timeline in Revelation, like it does give us a spot where if you understand that this thing is that thing, then that thing happens here in the story,

Katie Dooley  30:49

which is why when I told you I was reading the Bible, in order, you're like, that's not how it's dead.

Preston Meyer  30:56

In chronological order, yeah, that's, that's just not the way it happened. No, people put effort into it, but

Katie Dooley  31:05

oh, well, that's fine. I do. But so is the rapture, the rapture is linked to the Second Coming. Yes. Let's talk about the second Kami, do all Christians believe in the Second Coming?

Preston Meyer  31:17

Not all Christians, do you? Do I believe that Jesus is going to come back in a physical form, and people are actually gonna be able to notice that that is part of what I believe? Yes. Interesting.

Katie Dooley  31:28

All right, let's talk.

Preston Meyer  31:30

So the, the earliest point at which it was taught explicitly, was immediately after he left, and before the epistles were sent out to all the people by Paul before John wrote to his seven churches, anything like that. the Acts of the Apostles, written by a fellow named Lucas or Luke, as we commonly nominate lish, he tells the story of how, after Jesus spent 40 days after he died, hanging out with people showing them yeah, I'm alive again. Check out my holes, whatnot. And

Katie Dooley  32:14

phrasing, press

Preston Meyer  32:16

the holes in his hands, the holes in his side, okay, those five holes, seven, an odd number of holes. Phrasing. So he spent more than a month showing people and testifying that he truly was dead, buried, risen again. And then he ascends up into the sky. And Lucas tells us there was loads of witnesses. And the fact that the book is still around means that there's a lot of people who were like, yeah, no, I was I was there. I'm one of those witnesses. And we have no idea how many that would have taken to establish that, but we have it. And there's in that story, it tells us that there were also a couple of angels, messengers from heaven, who said, the same way you watch them go up, he's gonna come down the same way. And then that idea has persisted pretty strongly among the vast majority of Christians ever since.

Katie Dooley  33:28

Is, I feel like the Second Coming. And I guess this kind of falls in line with just how you take revelations, but I feel like revelation. This depends on how you take the revelation. I feel like some people take the second coming like super seriously. Yes. That's probably a spectrum thing as well. Yeah, I

Preston Meyer  33:52

think so. Like, I

Katie Dooley  33:53

remember going to my friend's youth group. And I remember them like talking about how they like can't wait for Jesus to come back. And like that they have to be prepared because it could happen at any time. And I'm like, does everyone live their life like this? Like is like is that in the forefront of your mind? No, all the time that like Jesus could come back tomorrow, no cakes. That's how they were talking. They're like, I hope Jesus comes back. So in my lifetime, but I have to admit that he might not

Preston Meyer  34:26

like we talked about in our last episode with prophets and a lot of people saying Jesus is coming right away. No warning, but also right away.

Katie Dooley  34:37

The rebel in laws kind

Preston Meyer  34:39

of all the time. So the Revelation of John actually lays out the this promise that you're going to have plenty of warning before Jesus shows up. Like we've got a seven year war. It's gonna be absolutely awful. And in Christ, we got weird animals. Yeah. And Jesus shows up after the seven You're so anybody says Jesus could show up any minute. I guess they believe that this seven year war is already happening. But you've also got loads of other warning signs. Like we have to have Christian prophets in Jerusalem for three and a half years. And then they die in the streets. And then you've still got a few years warning. So anybody like the fellow who said the world was going to end may 21 2011. The guy was seriously out to lunch.

Katie Dooley  35:41

Yeah, this is where your belief is founded. And then, yeah. Now, I was meant to talk about this later. But I feel like this is a good segue into Christian Zionism, which I think is terrible. Yeah. But that these Zionists are trying to force the second coming by making these things happen. I mean, it feels really yucky to me. And I feel like Jesus went like that. I feel like Jesus doesn't want to come back that bad that we can kill a whole bunch of people in Palestine to force the Second Coming to have right Am I Am I wrong?

Preston Meyer  36:18

See, I agree completely. Because the way that any good Christian should be preparing for the Second Coming would be the exact same way they prepare for the eventualities of their death of don't be a dick. And things are gonna be okay. Yeah, because you could get hit by a truck tomorrow, a lot more likely than Jesus coming in tomorrow. If we're committed to the seven year timeframe that the revelation gives us, as an awful lot of Christians are the be more worried about dying by surprise, then being caught by surprise by Jesus? Yeah.

Katie Dooley  36:56

So a lot of Christians believe that the Second Coming is about to happen because the Jews took control of Israel in 1968. So they took control of Israel a 96. Year, but there

Preston Meyer  37:10

was a British nation of Israel started

Katie Dooley  37:13

to form in the 40s, after the war, as a place for all the refugees to go. The United States is a huge funder and supporter of Israel, because they're trying to force the Second Coming. Which again, that's just like,

Preston Meyer  37:30

I mean, it's not only that, but it's definitely including that, well. I have a lot of faithful Jews, hoping to absolute from the nation as well. But it's not just one thing. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  37:42

One of the one of the stats I read is that Trump had voted that Israel was like the like Jerusalem for life to Israel to Palestine, in a un vote, and only nine other countries agreed with him. And the vast majority disagreed with him. And then of course, there were some non non committal country vote so well,

Preston Meyer  38:04

for the most part, the UN, while recognizing the plight of Palestine don't recognize Palestine as a nation. No, it's not an official nation. It's just like, there's no country in the world that officially recognizes that there are two Koreas every country in the world officially sees one Korea and a rebel state. And depending on which country and it depends which, which is the favorite, whether North or South. It's a similar but also wildly different thing. In the Near East.

Katie Dooley  38:49

Yeah, and you can do you can do tours of Jerusalem, and they'll take you and like show you where all the battles will happen.

Preston Meyer  38:58

It's a really weird thing.

Katie Dooley  39:00

Like, I feel like this is really weird and Christian, like Christian Zionism is like the best way I can describe it, like creepy, like the fact that you're willing to like kill people. And we'll get into other parts of revelations on like, this is just weird. And the fact that you're willing to kill people for or aid in the killing of people for it is super weird to me. Brian's sister, so they share a debt but not a mom. Her mom and her new husband like literally went to Israel to fight the crusade. Wow. Yeah. That's like to make it happen. alarming. Yeah. His sister was like, How do I get them back? Like she was like, trying to, you know, that they had like, gone too far. In, in their belief, and he's like, I'd need to get them back to Canada, but they wanted to be there. So I don't know you do. Anyway, that's an anecdote. I don't know if I want to leave that in.

Preston Meyer  39:56

Like so generally. And I don't feel like the contradicts it. But it complicates it. religion doesn't make people hurt other people. But an episode we're going to talk about but extremism and absolutism, which are more common in Christianity than in Buddhism. Absolutely cause people to hurt other people. And this is an excellent example of that.

Katie Dooley  40:31

Yeah, it just like feels super yucky. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for that. That was me bringing up the downer topic of Christian Zionism. We have a lot of other imagery and symbolism and visuals and in Revelation that just like, blew my mind.

Preston Meyer  40:53

Yeah, there's there's a lot of symbols and images in the book that it's weird how much the author or authors use Hebrew words instead of Greek words, like the idea that the author uses Har Megiddo. Instead of Orose mosquito. That's a little bit weird.

Katie Dooley  41:19

Can you elaborate for our listeners,

Preston Meyer  41:22

har is the Hebrew for Aramaic for mountain, or mount and otros being the Greek. It's just, there's a lot of little things in there that maybe they're deliberate evidence that the author was an Israelite, or a Jew rather than a Roman. Who knows, we can't say with any real certainty anymore. But there's also a lot of imagery that is really kind of obviously informed by the Greek and Roman traditions. We've got these terrifying angels that come up out of the Euphrates. And to not see a parallel with the Greek Titans being released from Tartarus. Seems like a serious educational oversight.

Katie Dooley  42:18

See, and this is where, like you said, I'm gonna have trouble being nice. This some of this imagery is fine, if you think it's an allegorical, or, you know, a metaphor, or whatever. But the people think this is literal. Like I just I like I lost me. Like when you think that there's a seven headed beast beast with 10 crowns, or 10 horns with 10 crowns, with feet of a bear mouth of a lion body of a leopard and powered by a dragon. Like, play.

Preston Meyer  43:00

Yeah, why? That's the idea that it's not just symbolic, is mind boggling. I'm not here to judge by it's just I am fully on the symbolic side of this argument for the Revelation of John. Yeah, and if it's good at all, it's symbolic. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  43:25

And then there's other ones that I found so like you said, the the demonic angels in the phrase and even like, the angel Michael coming to fight with its sexy angel armies, watching Lucifer. Just like, what? Like this is never I mean, again, I've only read six, seven books of the Bible, but like, nothing of this level of drama has ever happened before in the Bible. I'm pretty sure how often do dragons show up in the Bible?

Preston Meyer  43:57

Going through automated dragons never

Katie Dooley  43:59

right like it just you know on like, mon on Samuel one. So you know, I'm gonna have some good Bible stories under my belt. Like there's no angel armies. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When

Preston Meyer  44:13

the the Lord of hosts is a title that you've probably heard several times. That so that is hosts means armies, sees the God of angel armies.

Katie Dooley  44:24

When are they fighting?

Preston Meyer  44:27

I want to say that they show up mostly in prophetic literature later on ahead of where you're at. Okay, but I could swear that there's some in the Torah where they talked about the support from angel armies, but I might be making things up. I think you might have to look that up.

Katie Dooley  44:50

To feels like very dramatic in a way

Preston Meyer  44:54

it's a very familiar idea to his audience. 100%

Katie Dooley  44:57

angel armies Hi, you Yeah, but the bear leopard. No, that's Oh, that's new.

Preston Meyer  45:05

more familiar than it is entirely new. Interesting. Ezekiel and Daniel use some pretty weird imagery like this as well. You'll get there. I

Katie Dooley  45:16

don't know. I know. But my brains just going and people think this is real.

Preston Meyer  45:20

It's symbolic. It's meant to be symbolic 100%. At least, that's my position and

Katie Dooley  45:26

barefooted based at the door. It's a dog footed beast.

Preston Meyer  45:35

Very nice. Numbers in Revelation are kind of an interesting thing. Like the this seven heads and 10 horns, nonsense. 10 crowns on those 10 horns. Yeah. It's the idea that it's not symbolic. seems insane to me. But some people really want to see this monster. And so an awful lot of people has been an awful lot of time. Creating art eyes represent this monster and

Katie Dooley  46:03

good ones. And I really liked how they tried to make 10 horns fit on seven heads. I really appreciate the effort there.

Preston Meyer  46:09

Well, having two horns on one head is easy to crowns on a head. No, they put those rounds on the forum, of course, because of that way to hang

Katie Dooley  46:17

properly. Yeah, but I just liked that some of the heads just had like one unicorn horn. Yeah. And then some of the heads had some of the drawings. I saw that they had like two unicorn horns, vertically stacked, sideways, or sideways.

Preston Meyer  46:30

I mean, we have rhinos, saying they're vertically aligned isn't too wildly inappropriate for the animal kingdom.

Katie Dooley  46:39

Yeah, Todd Preston,

Preston Meyer  46:41

is just seeing them on anything other than a rhino just seems. I mean, fairness, so wild to me.

Katie Dooley  46:50

Do you understand what I'm saying? Oh, absolutely. I do.

Preston Meyer  46:53

Absolutely. What's interesting, though, is that seven plays really well into the theology of the audience. So the seven for the good team. Is the seven branch lampstand. Oh, yeah, the menorah of the tabernacle of the Temple of all of the temples of Israel.

Katie Dooley  47:17

My brain didn't figure out it was a menorah. Because it talks about a lamp Sam. Yeah. And listening to it in my brain never made the connection and some Nora, thank you. So what's

Preston Meyer  47:26

really annoying is that we often distract from that symbol by using candles. And though a lot of menorahs use candles, the one in the temple was an oil lamp with seven branches, okay. And so that's actually not that important. But it's annoying to me as a person who likes to look back, I guess.

Katie Dooley  47:52

Is that clear in the writings, because I find a lot of this stuff is not clear, unless you have a normal text tool.

Preston Meyer  48:00

The menorah is not super clear in this text to a reader who's not familiar with the context of the time. But on the other side of that we have the seven mountains or the seven hills of Rome, which also translates to your seven heads and all of the seven bad things are in direct opposition to the seven good things. You got the seven seals that are put in place by God, who is in charge of the seven branch Lampstand of the menorah? Yeah.

Katie Dooley  48:33

Was the number seven just picked arbitrarily or doesn't have a deeper meaning? Or are they giving it meaning by making it? They're doing seven years? Yeah.

Preston Meyer  48:44

There's an awful lot of writing of people saying that seven is this number of completion. And it's interesting that wrong at the time consisted of seven hills. But there's also a couple more Hills either laid added later to the city, officially, or they're just too small to be counted for a while, you know, whatever. It's just an interesting thing is this idea of completeness and this completeness, extending to the full Cosmos, and the totality of life as we know it.

Katie Dooley  49:24

Seven is my favorite number. If favorite numbers are a thing.

Preston Meyer  49:30

I don't know having favorite numbers seems kind of a weird position.

Katie Dooley  49:36

As a kid, I just like the number seven, I

Preston Meyer  49:39

can see how like a number would be a thing. Like if somebody said pick a number between one and 100 There's one number that you'll say more often than any other number. And but other

Katie Dooley  49:50

than that it's completely arbitrary, right?

Preston Meyer  49:54

Unless you have like synesthesia where numbers have a color and flavor to you, then And then it's perfectly reasonable, I guess. But for those of us who don't have that, it feels like a weird thing. Weird yeah I think we'll be just fine though. But numbers are kind of interesting and they they definitely have specific meanings there and the trick is that because we're so far removed from the author and his actual intended audience, it's really hard to say what these symbols actually meant at the time for some of the things

Katie Dooley  50:41

Yeah, I mean, I imagined numerology

Preston Meyer  50:47

garbage I was

Katie Dooley  50:48

gonna say numerology is already garbage and Church changed a lot in 2000 years. So well, we give meaning to now. Might not be what like give meaning to then

Preston Meyer  51:00

yeah, numerology isn't a call it an interesting art form. To read numerology into something into which it was not written, is what I will call stupid behavior.

Katie Dooley  51:12

Okay. I thought I was.

Preston Meyer  51:16

But there's loads of great things that have been written with the intent of numerological readings. And then that's cool. But to read numerology into a thing, where the author did not intend it, you're gonna have a bad time.

Katie Dooley  51:30

That feels like a good segue into something the author didn't tend 666

Preston Meyer  51:35

number of that be? Yeah, we've talked about this before. It's worth bringing up for this episode, though, that the number, almost every scholar, even the truly faithful Christian scholars who are just trying to understand the book, are willing to say yes, this number 666 refers to Nero. Because of numerology, and the values of the letters that make up his name in their mathematical system. 666 is also 616. And some versions of the text matching up with alternate spelling, because of linguistic differences for the same dude's name. You

Katie Dooley  52:18

can literally find this on Wikipedia. Yeah, it will break it down for you very nicely. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  52:22

it's really helpful and nice. For anyone who wants to Davos or for anyone who wants to learn more, go

Katie Dooley  52:30

yeah, go learn more instead. Right.

Preston Meyer  52:34

And, I mean, Nero was an example of an emperor who was terrible to the Christians. And so this figure is showing up in the text as the adversary makes perfect sense. Whether you're looking forward as long distant prophecy, or the immediate future and the things people are dealing with in the moment, as they're reading this text knew that's perfectly reasonable to include this figure that has recently died, people are afraid that somebody like him will come back or even he, some people knew himself could come back in their fears. And then, of course, we have the far opposite of reasonable interpretation of this number that's being imposed on the faithful and readily accepted by the heathens of people actually taking a number on themselves physically, to represent their new fidelity to this false god. And you were talking a little earlier about something you had found in your research is that well, that

Katie Dooley  53:46

is the Bible literalist that truly believe there is an antichrist and a beast coming. We talking about the microchip, yeah. Okay. So I was reading this video on YouTube, and it's, it's from 2018. So it's not even news. Yeah. Well, you know, part of me was like, oh, microchip, it must have to do with COVID But it's so old, hasn't like COVID pre COVID People are talking about so one of the this video, you can find it it's called the revelation explained. It says the Antichrist will give you the mark of the beast on your right hand and I believe that is in the Bible, that it's a right hand and mark, but the video was like it will be a microchip. Like we're in the goddamn Bible, does it see microchip and then he's like, you're gonna need it to buy fast food. I was like wearing the Bible doesn't mention McDonald's. It just makes me angry.

Preston Meyer  54:50

So this is a slight extension to what we call intertextuality where they take this idea and they apply it to the world that they're familiar with. So my bank card has a chip on it. I need it to make most of my purchases.

Katie Dooley  55:07

Correct. But if this is prophetic and liberal, there is no microchip. Correct if you're going to take it exactly, literally you believe a bear pod leopard is coming back. You don't get a microchip.

Preston Meyer  55:20

I agree. Agreed.

Katie Dooley  55:23

You don't get both. Yep. But sorry. So

Preston Meyer  55:31

it's it's interesting to watch people make these arguments. It's definitely a symbolic thing. Even the the, the mark on your hand or your forehead, and it's probably an end situation. So the the fair sake tradition had Jewish people wearing phylacteries on their foreheads and their arms, that's a bad word. So flattery is a little box. That's usually got a little piece of scripture. I've seen Jewish people. Yeah, exactly. So that's part of the Pharisee tradition that continued with the rabbis and as part of mainstream Judaism today. Well, more more conservatives and liberals, though, and you'll still see it all around. And

Katie Dooley  56:09

I think it's just just during prayer, like they don't walk around with it all

Preston Meyer  56:13

the time. No, not all the time. No. But so the audience of this book, and when it was first published, would have been very familiar with that symbol of having a mark for your God, on your forehead and on your hand. And so this idea that there would be a replacement forced upon you by this God Emperor and the new state religion, it's, it's not wildly outside of their understanding. But the way we interpret it without intertextuality and just putting it in a modern context, has definitely caused some problems.

Katie Dooley  56:56

Like he said, you just don't get both. No, that doesn't. That doesn't fly with no weird cameras

Preston Meyer  57:01

and microchips, it's gonna take the Bible, literally, then you don't get a microchip. Agreed 100%. But also, the idea of forcing people to get these microchips implanted in the more they can participate in society. Sounds ludicrous. How do you get the mainstream of the majority of population to get on board with we

Katie Dooley  57:27

just did it Preston with the COVID vaccine? Oh, no.

Preston Meyer  57:33

If you think there's microchips in the vaccines, we, we have bigger problems.

Katie Dooley  57:38

I mean, the entire population, the world has a cell phones. I

Preston Meyer  57:42

mean, you're awfully close to true. And, and

Katie Dooley  57:46

it's in my right hand, right now. Oh,

Preston Meyer  57:51

I keep my phone in my left pocket most of the time. So, oh, well, and

Katie Dooley  57:59

you need it to participate in society

Preston Meyer  58:01

at this point, if this is true. So now

Katie Dooley  58:05

just wait for the seven years where to start, and we're good to go.

Preston Meyer  58:08

I mean, there's an awful lot of the markers in this revelation, like we talked about with Nostradamus. There's a lot of things that if you reward them just right, they are things that have already happened. Oh,

Katie Dooley  58:21

absolutely. I mean, Hitler's, you know, an easy one for the Antichrist because he was persecuting Jews, right. Lots of people thought Trump was the Antichrist. A lot of people thought Trump was the Messiah. I'm pretty sure I've seen Justin Trudeau referred to as the Antichrist.

Preston Meyer  58:38

Honestly, at this point, any leader of any government is probably going to be called the Antichrist by somebody. And you can quote me on that and just check the news on a regular.

Katie Dooley  58:52

Right, so yeah, in that. Yeah, in that way, there's a lot of, you know, I'm sure there's other historical rollouts of things that might flicked like the microchip. vaccine or the market that we

Preston Meyer  59:07

start, we initiated the social insurance already. That yeah, ages ago, people freaked out about that. ever giving us numbers. Yeah, because we got 42 million John Smith's in the world. We can't just have them all. In the government. Yeah. That's

Katie Dooley  59:29

funny. Yeah. And I saw some crazy math on how the social insurance number related to the number of the beasts because it was divisible by six or like, I was like, you're really

Preston Meyer  59:42

stretching by nine digits.

Katie Dooley  59:46

But three groups of nine digits and three and nine is six in the middle.

Preston Meyer  59:54

just reminded me of Bowfinger with Eddie Murphy at the beginning of the movie, He's stressing out because he's he's an actor within this movie. And he got a script for this new show he's supposed to be in. And he counted all of the K's in the script. And it was perfectly divisible by three. And that's an outrage because obviously, Eddie Murphy is a black man.

Katie Dooley  1:00:20

That means the kk k, yeah.

Preston Meyer  1:00:23

It was a really funny scene and, like, bright way to throw shade at the way people read things into things that they shouldn't be reading into them. But it was great. Another thing that popped out to me fairly recently, actually, as I was going through the revelation is wormwood. It shows up a couple of times. And for a long time, it's just like, yeah, it's bitter. I've spent a lot of time looking at the Greek text of the New Testament. And only recently has a jumped out to me that the word that we're actually looking at is Absinthe.

Katie Dooley  1:01:01

Oh, interesting. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  1:01:04

I just thought that was a fun little thing to throw out there. That all of the waters into which this star that falls from heaven, fall turns into absence,

Katie Dooley  1:01:13

I get some sugar kind of wider.

Preston Meyer  1:01:18

It helps the absence go down. The Bottomless Pit is a symbol that we see in the Revelation. And fairly often throughout a lot of religious text. Actually, it's a mysterious and powerful symbol that based on those virtues alone, keep us from giving a better translation of what we see in the Greek text. In fact, it's an endless grave, which is spiritually speaking a much better symbol. Yeah, and you know, Christ is supposed to resurrect all of mankind, as it's laid out in this book. And so the endless grave is defeated. But the serpent is thrown into this endless grave. Some nifty symbology that's actually lost when we translated as bottomless pit instead of endless grave.

Katie Dooley  1:02:15

Right, that's a fun fact. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  1:02:16

I kind of there's honestly so much in this book that's actually fun to unpack. But that's not the focus of our show. And it would take so many episodes and hours to go through what's on this book, and it's not what the Holy watermelons about

Katie Dooley  1:02:34

that we do have our Bible study Patreon episodes, which eventually we'll get to Revelation where

Preston Meyer  1:02:39

we might take some slow time there and let it burn.

Katie Dooley  1:02:43

Yeah, you can fire and brimstone me.

Preston Meyer  1:02:48

Okay, shifty eyes make me wonder if you read something into that that I don't

Katie Dooley  1:02:52

say phrasing, Katie.

Preston Meyer  1:02:56

Yeah, it's so

Katie Dooley  1:02:57

I Yeah. I don't know if this conversations gonna go anywhere this question, but part of me wants to talk about the people who take this so seriously. And again, like creeped me out. Like, I feel like you should pull up the comments on this YouTube video, which again, I said, Revelation explained 2018, you took his phone hour and 45 minutes. Like when Lady was saying, like, she doesn't want to be microchipped. And she doesn't know if she's gonna be strong enough to say no. And like, she doesn't want to be beheaded. And then so it was like, yeah, it's gonna be really hard to watch your child starving and still say no to the microchip. Okay, Preston shaking his head. Like, my brain cannot expand that far to understand that. It's,

Preston Meyer  1:03:45

it just seems like a ludicrous thing, that so many people are genuinely afraid of that being our reality. And it just doesn't seem possible. At all, like beyond plausible, it seems like it could never happen, especially when we have a whole bunch of atheists who will actively prevent this from happening. Yes. And the the single biggest group of religions on this planet identify as Christian. So is it really going to be that bad? I'm gonna say no.

Katie Dooley  1:04:28

Well, and you say that but it's so interesting because someone so it's basically like a wall of like, I, John Smith, take Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Like, that's 95% of the comments and then there's like a few discussions and what are some common use like I would like really like to, you know, be raptured but I know I'm not worthy because I'm spending my time on YouTube instead of like, gospel rolling it up. I was like, I just don't. This leads probably better into our next step. So then into this episode, but like he said, My, I'm a pretty open minded person. And I also think I'm a pretty intelligent person and my brain cannot, it cannot go there. I

Preston Meyer  1:05:13

feel very confident in saying that if you are more concerned about the Second Coming than literally anything else, then, like, if that's the number one concern in your life, you're living your life wrong. If you are a Christian, then basing your life on any writings in the Bible other than the words of Jesus saying, live right with God and with your fellow man, love your neighbors, you're not doing it right. If you go out doing good in your community, and you're worried about all of these terrible things coming up, based on what you read in the Revelation of John, the New Testament also tells us, the faithful don't have anything to worry about, I just don't

Katie Dooley  1:06:07

see how that's healthy. It's not healthy.

Preston Meyer  1:06:11

The healthy choices going out and loving your neighbors being a good neighbor. But I guess a lot of people would rather focus on literally anything else, other than the need to be good to the people that they just can't stand. And way too many people use a handful of cultural elements of the Bible and the world from 4000 years ago, 3000 years ago, 2000 years ago, to make decisions on how they're gonna be a neighbor to the people around them. Nonsense.

Katie Dooley  1:06:53

Nonsense. He says.

Preston Meyer  1:06:57

It's, there's so many things that people want to say are more important in the Bible than the things that Jesus say. And that's weird.

Katie Dooley  1:07:08

I mean, that's an episode for another day. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, I really enjoyed learning about Revelation. Yet. It's a pretty interesting book. You're right, it is a lot to unpack. But the audiobook if anyone is interested is on YouTube. A great way to consume it. And then, yeah, do some digging on it, because there's a lot in there, including a barefooted leopard. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  1:07:33

It's, like Nostradamus, we talked about a couple of weeks ago. John incorporates a lot of elements from the culture in which he is immersed. But unlike Nostradamus, he actually does use those images to create new ideas that aren't found anywhere else. And an awful lot of people for the entirety of its history have said, You know what, this books pretty dubious. Maybe it doesn't belong in the Bible.

Katie Dooley  1:08:06

It's pretty wild.

Preston Meyer  1:08:09

Yeah, it is. It is wildly different from the books around. In the New Testament, it is unique. As far as whole books, we've got Matthew 24, and a couple other sections of the New Testament that are a little revelant revelation, revelatory, but not quite like this book is. But ultimately, the Apocalypse of John does not describe the end of the world, but instead promises a very rough transition into a long lasting paradise, which is really easy to forget, when you focus on all of the really cool images in the book.

Katie Dooley  1:08:53

I also I mean, I think that's a good summary, too, because I think that's accurate, regardless of what you believe, right? Where we have the most equitable, safest society globally that we've ever had. I'm not saying that there aren't problems our way. Yeah, two steps forward, one step back. And I know sometimes it's hard to remember that when we watch the news, but hey, we don't crucify people anymore. So that's cool. We

Preston Meyer  1:09:22

haven't beheaded anybody with a guillotine until or since shortly after Star Wars first came out. 77 was the last time that somebody was beheaded with a guillotine. I mean, we we still electrocute people to death. Oh, I know for fun. Tell me that. Nobody shows up to these electric chair executions in the audience.

Katie Dooley  1:09:46

It's happening. I believe that it's not fun for everyone. It's not fun

Preston Meyer  1:09:50

for everyone. executions have never been fun for the participants except for St. Lawrence.

Katie Dooley  1:09:58

Is that another saint? That shouldn't be a thing. I have

Preston Meyer  1:10:00

no issues with St. Lawrence based on the things I know about him right now. But his execution, he made a joke of it in the moment. All right, respect St. Lawrence as a champ. prophecies are an interesting thing. But just like we talked about last time, the last 112 Pope's, for the most Protestants, this revelation is describing the fall of Rome, and also the fall of the Roman Catholic Church. But since Frances the tolerable is not Peter, the Roman as we discussed before, the fall of the Roman church is not right away. And I mean, statistically speaking, Pope Francis has got what five years left? Pops. I

Katie Dooley  1:10:57

think he'll last longer. He might. I mean, badly, man, if he

Preston Meyer  1:11:00

lasts more than five years that makes him the second oldest Pope to die. Oh, really? Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:11:05

I feel like he's got more more spunk in him than the last two. Yes,

Preston Meyer  1:11:10

I agree fully with that. So I feel like keel

Katie Dooley  1:11:13

over a long time. You know, who should be pope if you want a longtime Pope, somebody who's under 50? I mean, it's gonna take Queen Elizabeth. Is she never gonna pay?

Preston Meyer  1:11:25

It feels that way. Some days.

Katie Dooley  1:11:30

I will say In summary, do not be concerned about the end of the world.

Preston Meyer  1:11:34

Yeah, if you're stressing about the end of the world, you are focusing on all the wrong things. You could die tomorrow. Are you ready for that? I'm not I'm not. But I mean, the end of the world. I mean, maybe we'll get hit by a surprise meteorite. You never know what's going to happen in the future. Don't worry about it live right. Enjoy your life. Don't be like don't be a dick. And I think everything's gonna be fine. And

Katie Dooley  1:12:05

by buy Oh, we'll have a don't be a dick t shirt yet yet. But we do have other great merch on our Spreadshirt

Preston Meyer  1:12:16

Yeah, and check out our Discord where we have great discussions. We can talk about this further.

Katie Dooley  1:12:20

And we have a Patreon. Yes, so you can support us with a small monthly donation into the collection plates.

Preston Meyer  1:12:30

You get exclusive content, and you help support us and keep the show going for a long time, which is what we really want to do. Peace be with you.