Revelation 9:
I was raised in a Christian home, but I'm no longer a believer. I just couldn't find any solid evidence for it and I never felt what I was supposed to feel. I really tried to, but I just didn't.
Nonetheless, I keep my eyes and ears open, and the prophesy above has always been interesting to me because I think it has predictive value. That is to say, it's a prophesy which makes (what might be) a very specific and testable prediction. I'll explain what I mean.
First, you have understand what a prophesy like this is - or rather (if you're an atheist) what it's claiming to be. There are prophesies where you claim god gave you specific words to say, and there are visions where you claim the thing you saw was symbolic (like saying "I saw a dead tree bloom" and that symbolizes a restored kingdom). In the passage above, the claim is that god showed him the future - thousands of years in the future - and he's describing it as best as he can.
But you have to keep in mind that he lived in a very different world than we do. What that means is, first of all, he's not going to understand a lot of what he's seeing. For example, if you showed him a car, he obviously can't use the word "automobile" because that word doesn't exist. It's worse than that though. He has no words for anything even close to what a car actually is. He can't even recognize that it's a machine because there are no machines in his world which are even remotely similar.
He'll recognize the wheels though, and if he made a comparison to a chariot that'd be a pretty good description. But since he doesn't see a horse, and he doesn't understand that the car is a machine, he might conclude that the car is the horse - he might say "they rode on wild beasts that were like chariots, and made growling noises like lions"
You can imagine the difficulty in reversing that description, and realizing he's talking about a car if I hadn't told you that up-front. The part about "wild beasts" is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion, because in the world you live in, the difference between a machine and a living creature is obvious to you.
So okay, with that in mind (and repeating my position that I don't actually believe in god), the passage I quoted above from Revelation could be a description of a helicopter. I'll make the case for that, but the really interesting feature of this post is the prediction of something that's still yet to come, but will be easily recognizable if it does.
He starts by calling them locusts. If you're a man from a thousand years ago and you're shown a helicopter and you're struggling to pick something to relate it to, "locust" is actually a pretty good get. The proportions are about right - bulky up front, with a slender tail - and the spinning blades are about where the wings would be.
https://i.imgur.com/NKr1AEh.png
Next he says, "the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle." When a horse is prepared for battle, is its shape different?? I don't really think so. I think it's still shaped like a horse. It's just wearing armor. He might be picking up on the fact that the helicopters are made of metal.
"on their heads were as it were crowns like gold" - this could be a description of the spinning rotor blades. It's round like a crown, shiny like gold, and on top where a crown would be.
"and their faces were as the faces of men" - this could be anthropomorphizing a machine, the way we see a car's headlights as eyes and its grill as a smile or a frown. Or it could be that he's seeing the pilots in the cockpit.
"And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions." This part, I have to admit, is starting to be a bit of a stretch for me to explain. But maybe he's seeing exhaust gases and thinking it's hair? And maybe teeth are painted on the nose?
https://i.imgur.com/Iz8SPVZ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/cXq3YkB.jpg
"hey had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron" - yep, the bottom of the fuselage is broad and flat and made of metal.
"and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle" - this to me is the coolest part of this helicopter-prophesy theory. The sound of a helicopter is exactly like the sound of an army of horses running!
"they had tails like unto scorpions" - sure, the tail of a helicopter turns up at the end, just like a scorpion.
"and there were stings in their tails" - and this is the part that I'm calling "predictive value" because he's very specific that there's something that stings and it's in the tail. This doesn't exist. To my knowledge, there are no tail-mounted weapons on any helicopter. If he saw a vision of a modern helicopter, and saw it firing a weapon, he would say that it "shot fire from its mouth" or that it had arms that could shoot fire. Something like that.
He's very specific that it's the tail that houses the weapon.
Personally, I think the most likely explanation for this is that he was tripping out on some very good (or very bad) drugs. But, as I said, I consider this portion of the prophesy to be specific enough to be used as confirmation. If I ever read about some DARPA project to mount a weapon in a helicopter's tail, I will have to concede that this passage is very likely a legitimate prophesy.
I was raised in a Christian home, but I'm no longer a believer. I just couldn't find any solid evidence for it and I never felt what I was supposed to feel. I really tried to, but I just didn't.
Nonetheless, I keep my eyes and ears open, and the prophesy above has always been interesting to me because I think it has predictive value. That is to say, it's a prophesy which makes (what might be) a very specific and testable prediction. I'll explain what I mean.
First, you have understand what a prophesy like this is - or rather (if you're an atheist) what it's claiming to be. There are prophesies where you claim god gave you specific words to say, and there are visions where you claim the thing you saw was symbolic (like saying "I saw a dead tree bloom" and that symbolizes a restored kingdom). In the passage above, the claim is that god showed him the future - thousands of years in the future - and he's describing it as best as he can.
But you have to keep in mind that he lived in a very different world than we do. What that means is, first of all, he's not going to understand a lot of what he's seeing. For example, if you showed him a car, he obviously can't use the word "automobile" because that word doesn't exist. It's worse than that though. He has no words for anything even close to what a car actually is. He can't even recognize that it's a machine because there are no machines in his world which are even remotely similar.
He'll recognize the wheels though, and if he made a comparison to a chariot that'd be a pretty good description. But since he doesn't see a horse, and he doesn't understand that the car is a machine, he might conclude that the car is the horse - he might say "they rode on wild beasts that were like chariots, and made growling noises like lions"
You can imagine the difficulty in reversing that description, and realizing he's talking about a car if I hadn't told you that up-front. The part about "wild beasts" is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion, because in the world you live in, the difference between a machine and a living creature is obvious to you.
So okay, with that in mind (and repeating my position that I don't actually believe in god), the passage I quoted above from Revelation could be a description of a helicopter. I'll make the case for that, but the really interesting feature of this post is the prediction of something that's still yet to come, but will be easily recognizable if it does.
He starts by calling them locusts. If you're a man from a thousand years ago and you're shown a helicopter and you're struggling to pick something to relate it to, "locust" is actually a pretty good get. The proportions are about right - bulky up front, with a slender tail - and the spinning blades are about where the wings would be.
https://i.imgur.com/NKr1AEh.png
Next he says, "the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle." When a horse is prepared for battle, is its shape different?? I don't really think so. I think it's still shaped like a horse. It's just wearing armor. He might be picking up on the fact that the helicopters are made of metal.
"on their heads were as it were crowns like gold" - this could be a description of the spinning rotor blades. It's round like a crown, shiny like gold, and on top where a crown would be.
"and their faces were as the faces of men" - this could be anthropomorphizing a machine, the way we see a car's headlights as eyes and its grill as a smile or a frown. Or it could be that he's seeing the pilots in the cockpit.
"And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions." This part, I have to admit, is starting to be a bit of a stretch for me to explain. But maybe he's seeing exhaust gases and thinking it's hair? And maybe teeth are painted on the nose?
https://i.imgur.com/Iz8SPVZ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/cXq3YkB.jpg
"hey had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron" - yep, the bottom of the fuselage is broad and flat and made of metal.
"and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle" - this to me is the coolest part of this helicopter-prophesy theory. The sound of a helicopter is exactly like the sound of an army of horses running!
"they had tails like unto scorpions" - sure, the tail of a helicopter turns up at the end, just like a scorpion.
"and there were stings in their tails" - and this is the part that I'm calling "predictive value" because he's very specific that there's something that stings and it's in the tail. This doesn't exist. To my knowledge, there are no tail-mounted weapons on any helicopter. If he saw a vision of a modern helicopter, and saw it firing a weapon, he would say that it "shot fire from its mouth" or that it had arms that could shoot fire. Something like that.
He's very specific that it's the tail that houses the weapon.
Personally, I think the most likely explanation for this is that he was tripping out on some very good (or very bad) drugs. But, as I said, I consider this portion of the prophesy to be specific enough to be used as confirmation. If I ever read about some DARPA project to mount a weapon in a helicopter's tail, I will have to concede that this passage is very likely a legitimate prophesy.
