Revelation - A self-parsing text

[Richard Amiel McGough]

One of the issues raised by skeptics against the idea of Inner Cycles and Inner Wheels is based on the fact that the original text did not include chapter and verse numbers. That is, of course, true, but it implicitly denies that God had anything to do with His Book beyond the mere inspiration of the actual words. Specifically, it denies that the hidden hand of God could have guided the people indexing the Bible for His Purposes (which were completely unknown to the men He directed). I can not think of any reason any Bible-believer should deny that God could have done that. The really odd thing is that I've talked with extreme Calvinists who assert God ordained absolutely everything that ever happened, included the exact positions of the hairs on your head, but that he had nothing to do with the order of the Books of the Bible! Amazing .. but I digress (even as I plant seeds for another thread ).

Getting back to my point: the 22 Chapters of Revelation reveal the Final Book to be a Wheel within the Wheel. The most stunning correlation is Rev 4 which opens with a "Door" (the literal meaning of Dalet, the 4th Letter) and then proceeds to recapitulate the opening vision of Ezekiel (from Spoke 4). There are many other examples discussed on my site.

The purpose of this thread is to explore the self-parsing structure of the Book of Revelation. Its breakdown into 22 chapters is most definitely not a accident. For example, Here is the distribution of the key phrase "And I saw" in Revelation. Note that it appears in the first or second verse in just one less than half of the chapters (marked bold):

Chapt 5:1, 2
Chapt 6:1, 2
Chapt 7:2
Chapt 8:2
Chapt 9:1
Chapt 10:1
Chapt 13:3
Chapt 14:6
Chapt 15:1, 2
Chapt 16:13
Chapt 17:3, 6
Chapt 19:11, 17, 19
Chapt 20:1, 4, 11, 12
Chapt 21:1, 22

"And I saw" is clearly a "marker" put in the text to help parse it into the proper chapter structure to form an Inner Wheel.

Are there other structural patterns in Revelation that connect it to the Wheel?

[Richard Amiel McGough]

An excellent book, which I hope to review soon, is William Hendriksen's classic commentary on Revelation call More than Conquerors. I mention it now because of an observation he made on the structure of Revelation:

III. THE TWO MAJOR DIVISIONS

According to the opinion of many commentators, the seven sections fall into two groups. Chapter 12:1 (or II:15) seems to be the point where the first group or series of visions ends and the second begins. In the first group (chapters 1-11) we see the struggle among men, that is, between believers and unbelievers. The world attacks the Church but the Church is avenged, protected, and victorious. In the second group of visions (chapters 12-22) we are shown that this struggle on earth has a deeper background. Is is the outward manifestation of the degvils attack upon the Man-Child.

So there it is - the book of revelation is divded right down the line of bilateral symmetry!



But there's more. The Temple of Solomon appears on Spoke 11 of the Bible Wheel, just as the Temple in Heaven appears on Spoke 11 of the Inner Wheel of Revelation.

Revelation 11:19 And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.

[gilgal]

I like the circular shape wherein you put the Hebrew letters. How do you do that? What program do you use? Because I want to show my findings and use that technique.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

I like the circular shape wherein you put the Hebrew letters. How do you do that? What program do you use? Because I want to show my findings and use that technique.

I use CorelDraw. It's programmable with VB, so I don't actually have to draw anything, I just tell the program to create some circles, draw a diameter and duplicate and rotate it 22 times, and draw and place the 22 letters. Its very simple really.

Unfortunately, the program is not cheap. The newest version runs about $400. Of course, you could probably find an older out of date version much cheaper, and then buy the upgrade.

I'm note sure how it compares with other drawing programs. I began using it because it was already installed on a used computer I bought ten years ago.