precious.txt

• Chapter 1: John is in the spirit on the Lord's day and he hears a voice commanding him to write down what he sees and send it to the churches. He sees seven golden candlesticks and the Son of Man. His hair was white as snow, eyes like flames. In hand, seven stars. Out of his mouth came a two-edged sword. He explains that the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the candlesticks are the seven churches.
• Chapters 2 & 3: John writes to the churches and implores them to be faithful, frugal and cast out the wicked. He knows their hearts and failings and speaks to each ones strengths and weaknesses.
• Chapter 4: John is taken before the throne of God, twenty-four chosen ones, and four Creatures covered with eyes, front and back. One looked like a lion, the second an ox, the third a face of a man and the last an eagle in flight. They give glory to God.
• Chapter 5: At right hand of One on the throne is a scroll with seven seals. The lamb is found worthy to break the seals and open the scroll.
• Chapter 6: The lamb opens the seals: 1st Seal: Creature cries out; "Come foreword" A white Horse, it's rider had a bow and was given a crown. He rode forth victorious, ready to conquer again. 2nd Seal: Second creature cries out. A red horse, with rider given power to rob the world of peace: Given a sword; 3rd Seal: Third creature cries out. A black horse. Rider with pair of scales in hand. Expensive Food. 4th Seal: Fourth creature cries out. A sickly green horse. Rider is Death. These are given authority over one quarter of the Earth to kill with sword and famine and plague and the wild beasts of the earth. 5th Seal: The martyrs cry out for justice. They are told to be patient a little longer until the quota of them is filled. 6th Seal: Violent earthquake: Sun turns black: Moon turns red. Stars fall from the sky. Sky disappears. Mountains and islands ripped from their base. Rich and poor hide in the mountains and caves. They cry out to mountains to fall on them and hide them. The great day of vengeance has come. Who can withstand it?
• Chapter 7: Four angels hold in check the four winds so no wind blew. They are told not to release winds until seal is imprinted on foreheads of the servants of God. 144,000 to be marked, 12 thousand from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. He is suddenly surrounded by a huge crowd which no one could count from every nation, race and tongue. He is told these are the ones who have survived the period of great trial.
• Chapter 8: 7th Seal: Silence in Heaven for about half an hour. Seven angels are given seven trumpets, 1st Trumpet: Hail and fire mixed with blood. One third of the land and plants are scorched. 2nd Trumpet: A flaming mountain is cast into the sea. One third of the sea turns to blood, one third of the sea creatures are killed, one third of the ships are destroyed. 3rd Trumpet: A huge burning star crashes down. One third of the rivers and springs are polluted. Many people die from drinking this bad water. "Wormwood" is the star's name. 4th Trumpet: One third of the sun, moon and stars were hit hard enough to be plunged into darkness. The day lost a third of it's light, as did the night. An eagle flying in midheaven cries out woe to the Earth.
• Chapter 9: 5th Trumpet: A star falls from sky to earth. It is given the key and opens the abyss. Smoke pours out. Out of smoke comes locusts as powerful as scorpions in their stings. They are commanded not to harm plants or any living things except those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. Tortures them for five months. They wish for death but will not find it. Description of locusts: In appearance the locusts were like horses equipped for battle. On their heads they wore something like gold crowns; their faces were like men's faces but they had hair like women's hair. Their teeth were like the teeth of lions. Their chests like iron breastplates. Their wings make a sound like the roar of many chariots and horses charging into battle. They had tails with stingers like scorpions; in their tails was enough venom to harm men for five months. Acting as their king was the angel in charge of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon. 6th Trumpet: Thee first woe is passed, but two more to come. A great voice says, "Release the four angels who are tied up on the banks of the great river Euphrates: " The Angels are released. It is precisely the hour, day, month, year for which they had been prepared to kill a third of mankind. Their cavalry troops numbered two hundred million. Description of horses and riders: The breastplates they wore were fiery red, deep blue and pale yellow. The horses' heads were like heads of lions and out of their mouths came fire and sulfur and smoke. One third of mankind is killed. Those who survive do not repent.
• Chapter 10: Another mighty angel comes down from heaven. He holds a little scroll which has been opened. His right foot is on the sea, left foot on the land. Angel and seven thunders cry out. John is told not to write down what seven thunders said. He is told there will be no more delay. When the seventh angel blows trumpet. God's plan will be accomplished in full. John is told to take the scroll and eat it. It tastes sweet in the mouth but sour in the stomach.
• Chapter 11: Told to measure God's temple and alter and count those who worship there. Exclude the outer court for it has been handed over to the Gentiles who will crush the holy city for forty two months. Commission two witnesses to prophesy for those twelve hundred and sixty days, dressed in sackcloth. Fire comes out of the mouth of the witnesses to any one who tries to harm the witnesses. They have the power to close up the sky and not allow any rain to fall during that time. Also can turn water into blood and afflict earth with any kind of plague. When finished a wild beast comes up from abyss and wages war against them. Their corpses will lie in the street of the city where their lord was crucified for three days. People all over the world will celebrate and stare at their corpses for three days and refuse to bury them. After three and a half days witnesses rise. It terrifies all who see them. God assumes them into heaven on cloud. Suddenly, there is a violent earthquake. One tenth of the city is destroyed. Seven thousand people are killed, the rest repent. Second woe is passed. Third to come. 7th Trumpet: Loud voices call out that the kingdom of the world now belongs to the Lord. God opens the temple in heaven and can be seen the Arc of the Covenant. Lightning flashes, thunder, earthquake hailstorm.
• Chapter 12: A great sign appears in sky, a women clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of seven stars. She is with child. Gives birth. Another sign, a great dragon, flaming red, with seven heads and ten horns. On his head, seven diadems. His tail swept a third of the stars from the sky and hurled them down on the earth. He waits for child to be born so he can devour it. The child is born. It is a son, destined to shepherd all nations with an iron rod. The Child is taken up to God and the throne. The woman flees to the desert to special place prepared for her for twelve hundred and sixty days. War breaks out in heaven. Michael and his angels battle with the Dragon. The Dragon is hurled down to Earth with his minions with him. The Dragon pursues woman in the desert. She is given wings of a giant eagle where she can fly to her place in the desert for three and a half years. The Dragon spews a torrent of water to search out the woman, but the earth opens and swallows the water. Enraged by her escape, the dragon goes out to make war on the rest of God's people. He took up his position by the shores of the sea.
• Chapter 13: A Beast comes out of the sea. It has ten horns, seven heads containing diadems and blasphemous names. Like a leopard, but paws like a bear and mouth like a lion. It is given power, throne and authority by the Dragon. One head was mortally wounded and healed. In wonderment, the whole world followed after the Beast. People worshipped Beast and Dragon. Their authority to last only forty two months. Granted authority over all people, nation and race. Worshipped by all those who do not have their names in book of life. Let him who has ears heed these words: If one is destined for captivity, into captivity he goes! If one is destined to be slain by the sword, by the sword he will be slain! Such is the faithful endurance that distinguishes God's holy people. A Second Beast comes up out of the Earth. It used the authority of the first Beast to promote its interests by making the world worship the first beast whose mortal wound had been healed. Performs great miracles, leads astray Earth's inhabitants by telling them to make an idol of first Beast. Life is given to the image of the Beast, and the power of speech and the ability to put to death anyone who refuses to worship it. Forces all men, rich and poor to accept a stamped image on right hand or forehead. No one allowed to buy or sell anything unless firstmarked with the name of the beast or the number that stood for it's name. A certain wisdom is needed here; with a little ingenuity anyone can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a certain man. The man's number is six hundred sixty six.

• Chapter 15: Seven angels holding seven final plagues that would bring God's wrath to a climax. Given seven bowls containing God's wrath.
• Chapter 16: The Angels are told to go pour out bowls of God's wrath on the Earth. 1st Bowl: Boils on men who accepted the mark of the beast. 2nd Bowl: The sea turned to blood like a corpse. All sea creatures die. 3rd Bowl: Rivers and springs turn to blood. 4th Bowl: Burned men with fire. They do not repent. 5th Bowl: Plunged into darkness. 6th Bowl: Poured out on the great river Euphrates. It's water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings of the East. Three unclean spirits come from the mouth of Dragon, Beast and False Prophet. They perform miracles, and assemble the kings of the Earth for battle. Be on your guard! I come like a thief. Happy is the man who stays wide awake and prepared. Devils assemble the kings in a place in Hebrew called Armageddon. 7th Bowl: Loud voice says, "It is finished." Suddenly, the worst earthquake ever. The Great City is split into three parts. Other Gentile cities also fall. God remembers Babylon the great, giving her cup of His blazing wrath. Islands, mountains disappear. Giant hailstones fall.
• Chapter 17: Babylon as harlot on a scarlet beast. I will explain to you the symbolism of the woman and of the seven headed and ten horned beast carrying her. The beast you saw existed once but now exists no longer. It will come up from the abyss once more before going to final ruin. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits enthroned. They are also seven kings. Five have already fallen, one lives now and the last has not yet come, but when he does come he will remain only a short while. The beast which existed once but now exists no longer even though it is an eighth king, is really one of the seven and on his way to ruin. Ten horns represent ten kings which have not yet been crowned. They will bestow their power on the beast and fight against the lamb. The ten kings will turn against her and destroy her.
• Chapter 18: Another angel comes to Earth, Calls out: "Fallen is Babylon the great." Kings lament. Merchants lament. Sailors lament. Saints, apostles, prophets rejoice.
• Chapter 19: There is loud singing of victory from Heaven. John falls at feet of a great angel. He is told to get up, worship God alone. Heaven opened up, a rider on white horse emerged, his name was "The Faithful And True" Justice is his standard. His eyes are like fire. The armies of Heaven are behind him. The armies do battle with the Beast. The Beast is captured, along with False Prophet. They are hurled down into the fiery pool.
• Chapter 20: An Angel comes down with a huge chain. It seizes dragon and chains him up for a thousand years. He is thrown down into abyss and held for a thousand years, after which he is to be released for a short time. John saw the spirits of those who had been martyred for Jesus or had not received the mark of the beast. They reign with God for a thousand years. This is the First Resurrection. After one thousand years, Satan will be released. He will seduce all nations of the earth for battle and muster troops of Gog and Magog. He invaded the country and surrounded the holy city where God's people were encamped. Fire comes down from Heaven and devours them. The Devil is thrown into a pool of burning sulfur. All living and dead are judged.
• Chapter 21: New Heaven and Earth. Jerusalem as bride of the Lamb. No more tears, pain or mourning.
• Chapter 22: City of God. Trees bear fruit 12 times a year. God shall give them light and they shall reign forever.

• The Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the books in the New Testament. Its author is not known.
• The primary purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews is to exhort Christians to persevere in the face of persecution. The central thought of the entire Epistle is the doctrine of the Person of Christ and his role as mediator between God and humanity.
• No author is internally named. Since the earliest days of the Church, the authorship has been debated. In the fourth century, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo supported Paul's authorship: the Church largely agreed to include Hebrews as the fourteenth letter of Paul, and affirmed this authorship until the Reformation. However, it is now generally rejected, and the real author is still unknown. A fuller discussion is in the article Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and this summary is not elaborated below. The epistle opens with an exaltation of Jesus as "the radiance of God's glory, the express image of his being, and upholding all things by his powerful word."[ The epistle presents Jesus with the titles "pioneer" or "forerunner," "Son" and "Son of God," "priest" and "high priestIt has been described as an "intricate" New Testament book. The epistle casts Jesus as both exalted Son and high priest, a unique dual Christology. Scholars argue over where Hebrews fits in the first century world. Despite numerous publications on this epistle, scholarly discussion has failed to yield a definitive consensus on most issues. One author says conclusions on most questions, including the one concerning authorship, should be avoided.

• The text is internally anonymous. It is not related to the lost apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews.
• New Testament and Second Temple Judaism scholar Eric Mason argues that the conceptual background of the priestly Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews closely parallels presentations of the messianic priest and Melchizedek in the Qumran. While not enough is known about Hebrews or its background, its dependence on any early Jewish tradition cannot be proved. In both Hebrews and Qumran a priestly figure is discussed in the context of a Davidic figure; in both cases a divine decree appoints the priests to their eschatological duty; both priestly figures offer an eschatological sacrifice of atonement. Although the author of Hebrews was not directly influenced by Qumran's "Messiah of Aaron," these and other conceptions did provide "a precedent... to conceive Jesus similarly as a priest making atonement and eternal intercession in the heavenly sanctuary."

• Hebrews was written to a specific audience facing very specific circumstances. We can discern various facts about the recipients of Hebrews through a careful mirror reading of the letter:
• The original readers of the letter were conversant in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, as the author's usage shows. The contrast in 13:14 and the types of sins listed in Chapter 13 suggest they lived in a city. They had once faced persecution, [10:32�34] but not to the point of bloodshed. It is possible that 12:1-3 and 13:12-13 imply that they would soon face renewed opposition. Some had stopped assembling together, and this was possibly due to persecution. As the author saw it, at least some among them were being tempted to avoid severe persecution by "shrinking back" from the eschatalogical fulfillment of the true hope and faith of the Old Testament proclaimed by the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ. It is debated whether the anticipated persecution was from secular (i.e., Roman) authorities or Jewish authorities. Perhaps there were elements of both, or as we see elsewhere in the New Testament, the Jewish authorities may have stirred up the secular authorities to suppress the Christians. The author exhorted them to encourage "love and good works"[10:32�34] and warned them that if they "sin willfully" by denying Jesus' sacrifice it will become ineffective for them.[10:26] But for non-Jews, these loving actions are sufficient for "great recompense of reward"[10:35] as long as they "hold fast the profession of our faith [in Jesus] without wavering,"[Heb. 10:23] and thus do not need to convert to Judaism. In 13:24 the author says that those from Italy greet the readers. This could mean that the author is writing from Italy or that the author is writing to recipients in Italy, and that Italians present with the author are greeting those back home. Traditional scholars have argued the letter's audience was Jewish Christians, as early as the end of the second century (hence its title, "The Epistle to the Hebrews"). However, Hebrews is part of an internal New Testament debate between the extreme Judaizers (who argued that non-Jews must convert to Judaism before they can receive the Holy Spirit of Jesus' Jewish covenant) versus the extreme lawless ones (who argued that Jews must reject God's commandments and that God's eternal Torah was no longer in effect). James and Paul represent the moderates of each faction, respectively, and Peter served as moderator.[8] The Epistle emphasizes that non-Jewish followers of Jesus do not need to convert to Judaism to share in all of God's promises to Jews. Liberal American theologian Edgar Goodspeed notes, "But the writer's Judaism is not actual and objective, but literary and academic, manifestly gained from the reading of the Septuagint Greek version of the Jewish scriptures, and his polished Greek style would be a strange vehicle for a message to Aramaic-speaking Jews or Christians of Jewish blood." The debate continues to the present day, see also Biblical law in Christianity.
• Hebrews is often erroneously named as one of the general (or catholic) epistles. But since it was written to a specific group of Jewish-Christians, it is not technically a general epistle.

Harold W. Attridge claims only a general dating is possible and places the letter as being written between 60 AD and 100 AD. Others, such as John A.T. Robinson, place the entire New Testament at a much earlier date. Robinson argues, for example, that there is no textual evidence that the New Testament authors had knowledge of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The use of tabernacle terminology in Hebrews has been used to date the epistle before the destruction of the temple, the idea being that knowing about the destruction of both Jerusalem and the temple would have influenced the development of his overall argument to include such evidence. Therefore, the most probable date for its composition is the second half of the year 63 or the beginning of 64, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.[1]

• Most scholars today believe the document was written to prevent apostasy.[9] Some have interpreted apostasy to mean a number of different things, such as a group of Christians in one sect leaving for another more conservative sect, one in which the author disapproves. Some have seen apostasy as a move from the Christian assembly to pagan ritual. In light of a possibly Jewish-Christian audience, the apostasy in this sense may be in regard to Jewish-Christians leaving the Christian assembly to return to the synagogue. The epistle dissuades non-Jewish Christians from feeling a need to convert to Judaism. The author writes, "Let us hold fast to our confession."[
• The book affirms special creation. It affirms that God by His Son, Jesus Christ, made the worlds. "God...hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son...by whom also he made the worlds."[ The epistle also states that the worlds themselves do not provide the evidence of how God formed them. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Christians believe that Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant.[8:6] His famous sermon from a hill representing Mount Zion is considered by many Christian scholars to be the antitype[10] of the proclamation of the Old Covenant by Moses from Mount Sinai. the Epistle opens with the solemn announcement of the superiority of the New Testament Revelation by the Son over Old Testament Revelation by the prophets.[Heb. 1:1-4] It then proves and explains from the Scriptures the superiority of this New Covenant over the Old by the comparison of the Son with the angels as mediators of the Old Covenant,[1:5-2:18] with Moses and Joshua as the founders of the Old Covenant, [3:1-4:16] and finally, by opposing the high-priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchisedech to the Levitical priesthood after the order of Aaron.[5:1-10:18] [1]

• Hebrews is a very consciously "literary" document. The purity of its Greek was noted by Clement of Alexandria, according to Eusebius (Historia Eccl., VI, xiv), and Origen of Alexandria asserted that every competent judge must recognize a great difference between this epistle and those of Paul (Eusebius, VI, xxv).
• This letter consists of two strands: an expositional or doctrinal strand,[1:1�14] [2:5�18] [5:1�14] [6:13�9:28] [13:18�25] and a hortatory or strongly urging[11] strand which punctuates the exposition parenthetically at key points as warnings to the readers.[2:1�4] [3:1�4:16] [6:1�12] [10:1�13:17]
• Hebrews does not fit the form of a traditional Hellenistic epistle, lacking a proper prescript. Modern scholars generally believe this book was originally a sermon or homily, although possibly modified after it was delivered to include the travel plans, greetings and closing.[13:20-25] [12]
• Hebrews contains many references to the Old Testament�specifically to its Septuagint text.