For His Renown

A trailer for my book, Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches didn’t come together, but this video for RevelationApp basically does the job:

I was grateful when Matt Smethurst approached me for an interview on Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches for The Gospel Coalition site. Since previous interviews on Denny Burk’s blog, the Crossway Books blog, and Kevin Boling’s radio program had not focused on the millennium, we steered this interview in that direction.

Since this interview focuses on that issue, it could give the impression that I’m fixated on the topic.

I am historic premil, and I’m glad to defend that position, but I promise it’s not all I want to talk about. Imagine a smiley faced emoticon here.

Thanks to Matt Smethurst and The Gospel Coalition for the opportunity to do this interview!

Kevin Boling had me on his Knowing the Truth radio program to talk about Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches.

It can be downloaded it here.

My sister sent me this email about a friend of ours I haven’t seen in a long long time. They started an organization called I Choose Hope after their daughter was killed. Here is an announcement I would encourage you to watch:

God help us. This is a sobering post by Mary Kozakiewicz on the Covenant Eyes blog, “My Daughter Was Caught by a Predator: A Word of Warning from One Parent to Another.”

Reader discretion advised. This is a broken and dangerous world.

I’m thankful for Proverbs 23:10–11, which teaches that the defender of the fatherless is strong and will plead their case against violators.

We’ll be singing along with John Denver as we drive to West Virginia on Friday:

I’ll be teaching Genesis through Esther at Randolph Street Baptist Church in Charleston, WV, on Friday and Saturday, preaching there Sunday morning. You can find more info on this page. Would love to see you there.

My dear friend and fellow pastor Denny Burk blessed me with a blog interview on Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches. Here are the questions:

What is the main point of Revelation? What is the genre?

If much of the prophecy in Revelation symbolizes early Christian conflict with Rome, then why not take a Preterist reading of the book?

Did John write Revelation, or did some other John write it? Is that relevant to our interpretation of the book?

Is rapture doctrine taught in Revelation?

What about the interpretation of Revelation 4:1 that says “come up here” is a reference to the rapture?

Does revelation teach that there will be a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth?

Here I list seven reasons to be pre-mil

What’s your millennial position, and how does Revelation inform your view?

What do you say to pastors who do not preach Revelation because it is either too difficult or too divisive?

Did you split your church when you preached it?

Check out the interview here. Amazon should have the book soon, and it’s available now from Crossway.

I assume that anyone who looks at this blog is already subscribed to Denny’s, but just in case there’s someone who isn’t, I highly recommend it. Don’t miss him on twitter, either.

Thanks for the opportunity, Denny!

So I’m sitting in church on New Year’s Day and my friend C. T. Eldridge gets up to do the New Testament reading. The reading is Revelation 15, and these words jumped out at me:

“Then I saw another sign in heaven . . . And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire–and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass . . .” (Rev 15:1–2).

Why is this another reason to be pre-mil? Because of the way it fits with everything else in Revelation, but before I go into that, consider how the amillennial interpretations won’t work. The amil explanations I have in mind are what is sometimes said of Revelation 20:4,

“Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.”

Amillers will say that this is a reference to these people coming to life in the presence of God. That view fails because back in Revelation 15:1–2 they’re already alive in the presence of God. Another amil attempt to explain this is that it refers to regeneration, which won’t work because we’re dealing with people who have been “beheaded for the testimony of Jesus,” which means that they were already born again believers before they got beheaded.

Some amillers will say that Satan’s inability to deceive the nations in Revelation 20:3 just means that the gospel can go to the nations, but that fails to fit everything in the book together. What I mean is this:

Satan is deceiving the nations in Revelation 13:14, which is when this “image of the beast” and the mark “on the right hand or the forehead” with “the number of its name” first became an issue (Rev 13:15–18). It’s here, too, that the beast is killing Christians (Rev 13:7), and it’s here that the Christians are “conquering” the beast by not loving “their lives even unto death” (Rev 12:11). Revelation 13, 15, and 20 all mention the beast, the mark, and the number of the beast’s name.

So the beast is deceiving the nations in Revelation 13 when the Christians who come to life in Revelation 20:4 were being put to death. Moreover, those same Christians are already alive in heaven with God in Revelation 15:1–2 (note how they are “in heaven” and “standing beside the sea of glass”).

Thus, the depiction of the saints there in Revelation 15:1–2 is one more reason to be premillennial.

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Related:

An Evening of Eschatology

Response to JT on What Premillennialists Must Believe

Did You See What He’s Doing in Revelation 13:14?

The Millennium

Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches