Church history and linear combinations

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The book of Revelation has the letters to the seven churches right after the introduction.

One view of these letters is that they have a secondary meaning as a prophecy of some two thousand years of church history.

This idea can be better seen as linear combinations over time rather than having distinct beginnings and ends for each period.

$Churches in Revelation$	$Beatitudes$
$Kingdom parables$	The probability that all three would be ordered together is 1 in 504050405040 or 1 in 128,024,064,000 ≈ 128 billion. Some people prefer to just use church history to help remember the order of the churches, parables and beatitudes.

The horizontal scale is time. The vertical scale is the proportion that history evidences the traits of those verses. The historical interpretation is like a linear combination in mathematics in that what the verses say is more valid in some time periods than other time periods.

The probability that any 7 objects would be ordered at random in a given order is 7! = 7*6*5*4*3*2*1 or 1 in 5040. Note that there were many more possible churches or parables or beatitudes than used by Jesus.

*	Churches	Parables	Beatitudes	Church ages
1	Ephesus	Sower	Poor in Spirit	Jesus and the Good News
2	Smyrna	Weeds	They that mourn	Roman persecutions
3	Pergamus	Mustard	Meek inherit	Roman acceptance
4	Thyatira	Leaven	Hunger and thirst	Catholic Church
5	Sardis	Treasure	Merciful and alms	Protestant Reformation
6	Philadelphia	Pearl	Pure in heart	Great Awakenings
7	Laodicea	Harvest	Peacemakers	Apostate church age

$Time periods$ If you do not like the historical interpretation, as prophecy, just use the model to remember the order of the Churches, Parables and Beatitudes.

▶

1 Churches

2 Parables

3 Beatitudes

4 Time periods

Interpretations
☐ Literal	☐ Christian living
☐ Figurative	☐ Heresies over time
☐ Historical	☐ Prophetic details

Note that the time of Roman persecutions was that of the universal church as a collection of small "mustard seeds" while the time of Roman acceptance was that of the universal church as "tree with birds making a home in the branches".

$Churches in Revelation$ Interpretations:

Literal
Figurative
Christian living
Historical
Prophetic details

$Kingdom parables$ Interpretations:

Literal
Figurative
Historical
Christian living

$Beatitudes$ Interpretations:

Literal
Figurative
Historical
Christian living

If in fact these letters to the seven churches have such a prophetic meaning, then some of the controversy between "quickly" and "soon" is resolved since that church history had already started so that would be very "soon" indeed.

More: Come quickly: sooner or later