Reply #26: I disagree with that to some exent

[The Straight Story]

The people back then had a limited vocabulary with which to describe what they saw. A simple text analysis can reveal a lot in that (also, see sir arthur conan doyles works, I have done some analysis of them based on the words he used and when and how they integrated into his works).

We as a church, or believers, work to extract things they saw using the terms they had to use then and bring such things into a modern light where we can define it better using a broader language.

Even if it is all fantasy - it is interesting to try and use the clues of language then and now and see how it fits into the now using the odd words used then. How would one describe something with which they were not familiar using a limited dictionary?

John saw something (as did others) - maybe he is way wrong, and so were the rest - but it is nonetheless interesting to examine it all in the light of modern constructs. People like puzzles, and this is the big one in western civilization.

They did have an idea of the future - mankind would be it's own worst enemy. They were right on that, as we are now. We failed at the start and ruined a paradise, we are doing the same thing now.