Preach from Revelation… I dare you!
When’s the last time you heard a sermon preached about the book of Revelation? Despite its popularity as a source of end-times speculation and plot material for countless Christian novels, Revelation can be an extremely difficult book to preach about in church. The latest Online Pulpit post looks at some of the reasons that Revelation doesn’t show up in many sermons today.
Perhaps the greatest deterrent to preaching the book of Revelation is that the preacher is going to have to stake some solid ground on his or her approach to biblical prophecy. Ah, there’s the sticky wicket. We can nearly preach the entire New Testament and never have to divulge whether we’re pre-, post- or a-millennial. We can preach the entire Pauline corpus and never have to stake out a position on the rapture. (We’ve found ways of skirting 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15.) But get into the book of Revelation, and the emperor is naked again. You can’t preach the book of Revelation and not come clean on how you understand biblical prophecy. That’s the reason so few of us ever tackle the entire book!
Despite the difficulties, Craig Loscalzo, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Kentucky, suggests that delving into Revelation is an important and rewarding experience. As he writes in the post, he challenged himself this year to help his church explore the difficult-to-interpret book, and has found it worth his while. Perhaps your church (or your personal Bible study) would benefit from such a resolution as well?
