Atheos

Okay, in all seriousness I'll give a stab at how I personally used to handle the questions raised by the OP. It's impossible to resolve all the differences in the various accounts about how the bible claims the world is going to end, because these things were written by people who had very different beliefs. But there was a time when I believed that such answers existed. I was a preacher for the church of Christ and I just figured that if I didn't know the answer it was my fault. "The Book" was perfect.

The church of Christ typically looks at Revelation in a very different way from most protestant denominations. They tend to hold that nearly everything in the book applied to the early christians facing persecution in the first century. The "vials of wrath", the "seven trumpet woes", the plagues, etc., all happened or were metaphors for things that happened during the late 1st century (C.E.)

Towing the "Hermeneutics 101" line, I was careful to apply the following (question begging) rules:

• If it appears that there is a contradiction the problem is with me, not the book. The book is perfect.
• Never interpret a difficult-to-understand passage in a way that contradicts a plain and simple passage.

In this case I saw the book of Revelation as being highly symbolic, filled with metaphors and difficult to understand. I saw the passage in I Thessalonians 4:15-19 as being very simple and easy to understand.

The picture of the end of the world painted by the writer in I Thessalonians is very brief and direct. A trumpet sounds, Jesus floats down out of heaven, christians who are dead resurrect and float up to meet him first, then christians who are alive at that time float up to join up with them. After that point they're with him forever.

So everything in Revelation had to fit into this very simple scenario.

Because of this I believed that all the conflict, plagues, etc., described in the first 19 chapters of the book of Revelation were metaphors for events (plagues, persecutions, famines, wars, etc.,) that happened during the latter part of the 1st century. It began with the persecution of christians by Nero and culminated with the atrocities committed by Domitian. The 1000 year reign of christ in Rev 20 is a metaphor for him ruling now in the hearts of his followers (a symbolic and "spiritual" kingdom that covers the entire earth). This period (though described as 1000 years) is just a long period of time and we don't know how many years it actually represents, as if we did then we'd have some way of knowing exactly when Jesus would return as described in I Thessalonians 4.

Of course that interpretation is not without its substantial problems, but it does have the virtue of resolving many of the questions raised in the OP.

Edit: Oh, and by the way, Welcome michaelj! I see that was your first post! :wave:

driver8

That was remarkably easy.