product of a people’s past experience. Language is limited in expression to that which is familiar to people in a given time and place. Even the future can only be described in the language of a people’s past and present experience.”30 It is important to keep in mind that, while the prophecies of Revelation often refer to our future, the language in which the prophecies were communicated was the language of the time and place of the inspired author rather than our own. “It is all too easy to impose