There is perhaps no book of the Bible that offers as many interpretive challenges as the book of Revelation. I sometimes debate whether the book is actually perfectly clear while we are pathetically thick or whether the book is extremely difficult to understand because God intended it to be. Either way, though the intent and general message of Revelation is clear enough, the details present a challenge worthy of the most eminent theologian.

Speaking of which, Thomas Schreiner has recently taken on that challenge in three forms: a general-level commentary in the ESV Expository Commentary series; a major academic commentary in the Baker Exegetical Commentary series (which is still forthcoming); and The Joy of Hearing, a short book on the theology of Revelation. The latter work represents the debut volume in a new series titled New Testament Theology, co-edited by Schreiner and Brian Rosner. Each volume will examine the big ideas one of the books of the New Testament and do so in a readable and relatively concise format. (The second volume, The Mission of the Triune God: A Theology of Acts, will release in January.)
The Joy of Hearing, then, offers a theology of Revelation, which means it approaches the book thematically rather than chapter-by-chapter and verse-by-verse. Schreiner begins by telling why it is so important that contemporary Christians read the book of Revelation carefully and know it well. And, of course, this means he needs to address what the book is and is not. “The book of Revelation is not a prophecy chart about the future but a call to be a disciple of Jesus. John tells us to be faithful and fruitful, and we should not give in to despair, for in the end, all will be well.”

My contention is that we desperately need the message of Revelation for today’s world. There is a great conflict between good and evil in our world, and the Christian faith is under attack, as it was in the first century. John reminds us in this book that God rules, even in an evil day; that God has not forsaken his people; and that goodness will finally triumph and prevail. In the midst of evil, in a world in which the Christian faith is under attack, we need hope and assurance that evil will not have the last word, and Revelation teaches us that a new world is coming, that a new creation is coming, and that all will be well. God is just and holy and righteous, and those who turn against God and his Christ will suffer judgment. At the same time, we see in the book that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the center of history, or the fulcrum of history. Evil has been defeated because of what Christ has accomplished. The triumph over wickedness was realized not by an act of judgment but through the suffering of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, through the Lamb who was slain. What do believers do as they live in Babylon, as they live in a world in which the governments of the world are like ravenous beasts tearing apart the church? John tells us that we are to stay close to Christ, that we must not compromise with evil, that we must endure to the end, and that we must look to the final reward.

Schreiner then advances to a brief examination of the book’s setting, date, and genre, suggesting that the best evidence is that it was written during the reign of Domitian, which would date it somewhere between AD 81-96.—a time when the churches in Asia Minor were experiencing state-sanctioned persecution. Yet he insists that “no interpretation should be accepted that demands a particular date—an important hermeneutical conclusion that we can draw from the imprecision of the historical situation.” As for the genre, while Revelation is clearly apocalyptic, Schreiner also emphasizes that it was a personal letter. “The epistolary genre in the book reminds us that we should not indulge in what I call ‘newspaper eschatology’ in reading the book. The book was written to readers who occupied a particular social location, and presumably they understood, at least mainly, what was written to them. The hermeneutical significance of this fact is massively important, for it eliminates the popular conception that modern readers interpret Revelation better than the original readers.”
With all this groundwork in place, Schreiner begins the study proper and, through seven chapters, picks up on the major themes of the book:

The deafness of those living on earth
The saints hear and heed
The declaration that God rules on his throne
The good news of the Lion and the Lamb
The testimony of the Holy Spirit
The promise of blessing and the New Creation
Reigning with Christ for one thousand years

Many will want to read this book to know where the author lands on the question of the millennium (and, therefore, which of the three major positions he advocates—postmillennialism, premillennialism, and amillennialism). He treads carefully and writes charitably without advocating one position far ahead of the others. That said, he is clearly most sympathetic toward historic premillennialism and amillennialism while fairly easily setting aside both postmillennialism and dispensationalism.
As he concludes his study, Schreiner says “In a world full of evil, selfishness, materialism, and sexual exploitation, John proclaims a message of hope, although it is an apocalyptic message that is hidden from the world. Thus believers must attune their ears to hear a transcendent message, to hear the words of the Son of Man and the Holy Spirit.” This wonderful little book, which is equally appropriate for pastors, academics, and general readers, will help accomplish just that—it will better equip us all to hear, understand, and apply that transcendent, hope-filled, life-giving, soul-sustaining message.
The Joy of Hearing is available at Amazon or Westminster Books (where it’s currently 50% off).

Buy from Amazon

My gratitude goes to the excellent Spurgeon College for sponsoring the blog this week to tell you about their Accelerate program.

There are a few new Kindle deals again today.
(Yesterday on the blog: On Nick’s Twenty-Third Birthday and My Own)
Sufficient in Our Sorrows
Aubrynn makes such a good point here: “Healing is a gift, and it is something I will continue to pray for, but it is not an end in and of itself. True confidence is found not in my strength, my assurance, or my abilities, but only in the foundation of my confidence itself. Christ is my confidence.”
Is the Ark of the Covenant a Type of Mary?
This is a lengthy but interesting refutation of the Roman Catholic teaching that the Ark of the Covenant is a type of Mary.
7 Ways to Mishandle a Bible Story
“The Bible is full of stories.  And we preachers are full of ways to mishandle them.  God has richly blessed us with the stories in the Bible.  Each one reveals God’s heart and character. Each story is designed to point our hearts to Him and to stir our faith in His word and character. So, how can we go wrong?” Here are seven ways.
Jesus Revolution and American evangelicalism
Bethel McGrew considers a character from the film Jesus Revolution. “As I read up on Lonnie, Chuck Smith’s mysterious hippie guest, I especially wondered how the film would handle his story. The dynamic evangelist was directly responsible for a wave of conversions, but he was also a deeply troubled soul whose moral failings cost him his ministry platform and ultimately his life. March 12 will mark 30 years since he died of AIDS at just 43.”
Whining vs. Biblical Complaint in Caregiving
Distinctions matter. “I believe there is a real difference between whining and biblically complaining. Whining is what we do when our preferences aren’t being met. Biblical complaint is when we acknowledge the disconnect between the pain of our lived-in reality, and what we know is true of God’s character and his plan for redeeming our world.”
External Morality
“I believe objective morality exists. I believe God is the only explanation for objective morality. But skeptics will run you in circles trying to prove that objective morality can exist apart from God…”
Flashback: 10 Lessons on Parenting Big(ger) Kids
Don’t be too easily dismayed by kids who happily display their badness; don’t be too easily impressed by kids who mostly display their goodness. In Jesus’s most famous parable, neither the older nor younger brother was outside the need or the reach of the Father’s love. Your best and worst child equally need Jesus.

Genuine thankfulness is an act of the heart’s affections, not an act of the lips’ muscles. —John Piper

These are the days in which summer begins to give way to fall. The days grow shorter, the nights get longer, and there begins to be just a bit of a bite in the air. Though winters in Southern Ontario are long, I still look forward to their slow approach.

But that is beside the point of the rest of this article. While I link to several good pieces of writing each day in my A La Carte column, I focus almost exclusively on Christian material. Sometimes, though, I read other material and feel like commenting on it. That’s exactly what you will find below—interesting articles from mainstream sources that are accompanied by some brief commentary.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a fascinating and deeply concerning article about South Korea, the country with the industrialized world’s lowest birth rate. “South Korea’s fertility rate—a snapshot of the average number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime—slumped to 0.78 last year, from 0.81 in 2021, according to new government data. And the slide has worsened in recent months, falling to 0.70 in the April-to-June quarter.” For a birthrate to replace and maintain the current population, especially in a country with no significant immigration, it must be no lower than 2.1. A number as low as .70 represents a looming disaster. The government has been heaping up subsidies, incentives, benefits, and even cash payments to those who have children, but they have been unable to stem the tide.
What the article does not discuss is that a generation ago the government very successfully convinced its people to not have children due to fears of overpopulation. They ran an extensive campaign to promote family planning and childlessness, even going so far as to reward people who would agree to be sterilized. That campaign proved successful and lasting. Combined with greater urbanization and a high cost of living, especially in the cities, there appears to be no easy way to reverse the situation. Perhaps it is worth praying for South Korea and especially for its Christians that they would be counter-cultural and take seriously God’s desire that his people, even today, “be fruitful and multiply.” And we should probably pray for other Western nations who are consistently beginning to show the same trend. It might also be a good time to read or re-read Kevin DeYoung’s article The Case for Kids. (Note: WSJ is a subscription site, but because I subscribe they offer me the ability to create links for others to read an article for free. I am not sure, though, how many can click that link before they cry foul. I guess we will find out. If you find it locked, try googling the title of the article (World’s Lowest Birthrate Sinks Further Despite Cash Payouts to Parents) since that will sometimes allow you to enter WSJ’s site for free.)
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Legal Lullabies is a site meant to help you fall asleep. To do this, a reader provides a mellow reading of the complete Instagram Terms of Use. If you prefer to listen to TikTok’s, they are there as well. Clever! And probably effective.
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The National Post recently ran an article about people who are freezing their bodies or even just their brains in the hope of a future resurrection. Of course “cryopreservation” has been spoken about and occasionally practiced for a number of years now. Yet the science is still in its infancy and few people believe there is any legitimate chance of ever reanimating those frozen bodies. Still, it is a good reminder that humanity naturally fears death and longs to overcome it. This seems to especially be the case with those who gain great wealth. How many billionaires turn away from their enterprises to instead focus on attempts to promote health and longevity? It is my assumption that their ability to experience so many of earth’s pleasures actually just prompts their souls to sigh, like The Sage, that “everything is vanity.” Yet because they will not look to God and the true hope of a true resurrection to life, they must look somewhere—anywhere—else.
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Wired recently ran an article titled Preferring Biological Children Is Immoral. It is fascinating in the way it manages to tick almost every possible box related to the unholy trinity of intersectionality, gender identity, and climate change, not to mention its use of what has become a rare word in our day: immoral. To describe something as immoral requires holding it up to some kind of a standard and, indeed, the author does that. The standard, though, is the new standard, the current standard—the one that has existed for about 5 years and will inevitably be modified or replaced within the next 5. That is a low bar to label something “immoral.”
I think Christians may resonate with his plea for people to think more about adoption and not to believe that biological children are inherently superior to non-biological children—something he labels biologism. But the reason behind this moral claim is that the current phase of the sexual revolution requires us to set aside any notion of biological essentialism or of the traditional family. He believes that single people and same-sex couples have every bit as much of a right to have children as opposite-sex couples. This, of course, requires either adoption or some kind of donor and/or surrogate. So his desire in the article is not really to promote adoption but to promote the growingly chaotic sexual/gender landscape.
What’s fascinating in his view and that of others is that reproduction and parenting are now considered rights. If infertility has traditionally been viewed as a condition to be treated, it is now seen as a right to be claimed. If reproduction and parenting are rights, then it falls to society to enable them, even when biology makes it impossible (as in the case of single individuals or same-sex partners). Hence, a female same-sex couple has the right to acquire sperm and a male same-sex couple has the right to make use of another human being’s womb. Such claims are unparalleled in human history but seem to be unfolding right before us.
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Also in the Wall Street Journal is an article about friendship, and particularly the relationship of Lew Wilcox and Bobby Rohrbach Jr., who struck up a friendship in 1962 and have maintained it ever since. “Good friends are good for us. They help us get through bad times, listen when we need them and offer advice. A lack of someone you can confide in can lead to loneliness and isolation, which have been labeled a public health threat, on par with smoking and obesity. Yet as important as they are, people have fewer close friendships than they once did.” Not surprisingly, they turn to statistics: “Four in 10 Americans say they don’t have a best friend at all, up from 25% in 1990. The best-friend gap is more pronounced for men, who typically have fewer close friends than women do. The percentage of men without any close friends jumped fivefold to 15% in 2021 from 3% in 1990…”
I would like to think that Christians are a little more committed to friendships, and perhaps especially in the context of the local church, but I’m not certain that’s the case. Either way, the article makes the case for friendship and provides a sweet example of one. Maybe it will inspire you to follow these men’s example. Speaking as one who has been blessed with some truly great friendships, I can attest that it’s worth the time, effort, and vulnerability. Friends are one of God’s greatest gifts.