OK, I accept the criticism, now lets go on . . .
When in an earlier post I excoriated researching man's traditions, when I wrote that spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, it wasn’t intended as an insult, it was pointing out what I believe to be an important scriptural truth. Research leads us into a better understanding of the doctrines of men, but it is the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth, John 16:13. For example, what does the word "revelation" mean . . .
Dictionary definition: Revealing knowledge that was previously unknown. The uncovering of obscure or hidden truth. The disclosure or conveying of divine purpose.
Revelation by its very name should be a revelation!!! In other words, it should reveal truths to us that we don’t already know! But do we go to Revelation that way? NO! We go to Revelation with our traditions firmly in place.
To learn anything from Revelation, we must enter the book with a doctrinally blank slate and allow the Lord to replace our debatable traditions with truth. The Lord can teach us nothing from Revelation if our end-time doctrines are already set in concrete!
Revelation is the final crown of God’s Word, it's a twenty-two chapter synopsis of God’s plan for creation, but getting that across to you guys is like trying to pull an elephant’s teeth through his rump. (That’s called a metaphor and it’s not intended as an insult either) <grin>
I agree, let's go on.
I am not contradicting or even evaluating your conclusions. I was only pointing out that I do not believe you have correctly identified chiasms. The reasons I gave are literary in nature, and have nothing to do with the thoughts being expressed by the text. The problem is, that certain groups of people accept certain types of proof. When they feel you make a mistake in the facts of the argument, these people do not accept the conclusion. I accept many kinds of proof. Thus, I agree with many parts of your conclusions. When I point out the error in the proposed chiasmic structure, it is only to help you refine what you believe to be true, so more people can accept it.
I went back to your first post, and found that one conclusion seemed to be most offensive to people. That conclusion is that the two witnesses represent the Jewish and Gentile church. That conclusion, I believe is contained in Revelation in another way.
Let me ask a couple of questions about matters from 101 courses (prerequisites to Hernameutics 402): What do you believe about the four or five "senses of Scripture"? Different theologians have different lists, but usually included are some selection of "historical sense", "prophetic sense", "doctrinal sense", "mystical sense". Do you believe in such a hermeneutical principle? How should we invoke the principle to obtain the multiple senses of the prophecies of Revelation?
Second, what is the proper relation of the Greek aorist tenses to the translation into English? Most of the verbs in Revelation are in the aorist tense. English lacking one, makes the verbs be translated into past or present, pretty much at the translator's whim. What steps will be necessary to get the proper sense of the original back?
If we agree, more or less, on how these two questions are answered, I think we will have no trouble reaching agreement on the nature of the two witnesses, and on the incorporation of Jews into the book of Revelation, with or without identifying the proper chiasms.
By the way, do you suppose that the 22 chapters of Revelation can be identified in some way with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet?