I've been reading Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the lesser-known title of the book/story behind the movie "127 Hours". It's been a great book so far, but at the point where I am, I can't believe he hasn't cut his arm off yet! It seems like he would see that he doesn't have to drag it out like this--he's already been trapped for 96 hours, and he's resigning to death rather than re-attempting to cut his arm off. Come on, Aron!
Last night I was surprised and weirded-out while reading about some hallucinations he's having--mostly because it sounded a lot like the book of Revelation in the Bible. And I'm pretty sure he hasn't read Revelation. He's in a situation of extreme suffering, and an unidentified man in a white robe comes to him to show him visions of his family and friends (haha this also reminds me of "A Christmas Carol"). He finds great comfort in these hallucinations--they're an escape from his suffering.
Which caused me to ask the question, "Does this say something about the validity of Revelation?" John, the apostle who wrote it, was under exteme suffering for proclaiming the Good News about Jesus. And he has lengthy indecipherable visions of Jesus' future return and reign on the earth--in which he finds great comfort because of his suffering and exile.
I revisited the idea this morning by reading some of the beginning of Revelation, and it was apparent right away that yes, maybe it's similar in that extreme suffering led to visions that allowed both the apostle John AND the person Aron Ralston to mentally escape their circumstances. But John wrote words from God to real churches of his day--and they are prophetic, insightful words that address the hearts of the people of those churches; he wrote things he couldn't have known apart from a revelation from God. Then he has a bunch of crazy visions. From God. But chapters 1-3 were enough to reassure me that, no, the Bible is not comprised of the ramblings of madmen. And obviously, if I've based my entire life on the Bible, this isn't nearly the first time I've made sure it's valid--I've done a good amount of reading/research on the topic.
There are a lot of writings out there about the validity of the Bible; Lee Strobel is the person who comes to mind who has recently done a lot of research. He actually became a Christian because of his research on the Christianity's validity and veracity. If you're interested, here's a link to Lee's website that contains articles and videos on the topic:
http://www.leestrobel.com/
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