June 16, 2007

Revelation 5:9-10, Do the Four Living Creatures and Elders Represent the Church?

Some of you may know that I blog infrequently on a popular apologetics blog. I mostly blog on some technical topics such as Greek, textual criticism (i.e. examining and comparing ancient manuscripts and their character, which results in demonstrating the trustworthiness of God's Word), and Reformed theology.

Recently, I wrote an article there on a significant textual issue that directly affects a pretribulational interpretation of Revelation 5:9-10.

A few of you may have encountered the textual discrepancy in Revelation 5:9-10 between the King James reading of "us" and the modern translations' reading of "them." Since many pretribulationalists will cite the KJV in this example to try to prove that the Church is in heaven in Revelation 5, I believe that it is important for you, the prewrather, to be aware of this and be prepared to give a ready response to this error.

You can find my article on this text here.

*Btw, I am sure that some of the readers here, and other prewrathers as well, use the King James Bible. Though I believe that the KJV does not have the proper term in this particular text, I do believe that the KJV is a generally reliable translation.

If the Elders are not the Church, then who are they? Warner and Cooper write,

The best identification seems to be that the twenty-four elders are a special group of beings that are always in view when the throne of God is in view. What they do, other than worship God, we do not know. Why they are there, we do not know. Who they are, we are never told, other than that they are elders and from common usage throughout the Bible, they function in some capacity as spiritual leaders.

Perhaps we should leave their identification as it is given in the Scripture: unidentified.

See their article here.