Here are some resources for the questions that have come up in the past couple of weeks:
1. Will the Jewish people be saved? What about other non-Christians?
Thank you to Dr. Mary Utzerath: please refer to CCC 674, Romans 11:25 and Lumen Gentium specifically paragraph 16 http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
2. What about the four living creatures in Revelation 4:7?
First, I was asked to send you this description from the commentary I have been using to prepare for this study: "Beginning in the late second century AD, Christian writers identified the four creatures in the heavily throne room with the four gospel writers…although first century readers would not have understood the creatures in this way…Matthew's gospel has the human face because it begins with a genealogy that traces Jesus' human origins. Mark is identified with the lion because it beings by calling Jesus the 'son of God', referring to his royal power. Luke is the ox since his gospel begins in the temple where sacrifices were made. John is the eagle, since his soaring introduction of Jesus as the Word of God points to his heavenly origin."
Thank you to Brian Higgins for his further research: "On Friday I asked when did the church assign the four living creatures from Revelation 4:7 to the four gospels. Your guide said it was the 2nd century which my research concurs. I then asked how did the oxen get assigned to Luke. One reason I asked this is that in the Jeff Cavin video he talked about the daily custom was to sacrifice two lambs a day at the temple. Since no clear answer could be given, I agreed to research this myself and provide a report.
All my research concludes that the oxen was assigned to Luke based on Luke 1:9 which describes the priestly duties of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, in this manner "And it came to pass, when he executed the priestly function in the order of his course before God, according to the custom of the priestly office, it was his lot to offer incense, going into the temple of the Lord." The only conncection between this priestly duty and an oxyn is that incense was used as part of the daily sacrificial offering. We have to conclude that Zechariah was also involved with preparing the burnt offering, which may have been an oxen, but could have been something else.
Further research lead me to Leviticus 22:19 which says that "a burnt offering, to be accepted you shall offer a male without blemish, of the bulls or the sheep or the goats." An oxen is a form of a bull so it qualified, and a lamb is a form of a sheep. Also, in Genesis 22:13, a goat is sacrificed instead of Isaac.
What I have concluded was that since the gospels had already been written and accepted 100 years before the Catholic church assigned the four symbols, a certain amount of literary license was employed to get the four symbols to fit. Not just for Luke, but getting a lion to fit Mark relies on Mark 1:4 describing John the Baptist in the wilderness and Mark 1:13 describing Jesus in the desert with wild beasts. Close enough, Mark gets the lion."
3. Why was the tribe of Dan so much worse than the other tribes of Israel that Dan was not included in the list in Revelation 7? I had a difficult time finding a Catholic source for the answer to this question. Here is one: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/christiancrier/2017/02/20/9546/
4. Is suffering offered up to God by any other religion besides Catholicism? https://www.fisheaters.com/offeringitup.html
God bless
Krishna Smith