Revelation

The newest entry in Crossway’s “Preaching the Word” series is Revelation by Southern Seminary professor Jim Hamilton. Jim’s homiletical commentary will be a great help to anyone who is preaching or teaching through the book, or who just wants to study it for themselves.

Jim deftly negotiates the numerous questions that swirl around this apocalyptic book. He addresses them all, but he doesn’t allow any of them to distract from the main application of each passage. Thus, while Jim stakes out a gracious, premillennial perspective, his many insights can still be appropriated by amillennialists and postmillennialists (if there are any left after this election season).

I could go on about how this even handed book keeps an eye on what is most important, but I thought I’d simply post my endorsement:

The enigmatic imagery of Revelation often elicits one of two responses:  some Christians eagerly interpret its mysteries as literal, play by play descriptions of future events while others, embarrassed by their excess, avoid the book entirely. Jim Hamilton wisely avoids the woods of overwrought prophecy on the right and the barren desert of avoidance on the left, and rips his tee shot right down the fairway. He warmly demonstrates that John’s Revelation was written primarily to encourage and exhort the church—and that is as true in the twenty-first century as it was in the first.

Hamilton has done his homework—and numerous footnotes reveal his scholarship—but he keeps the plot moving as he focuses on the pastoral duty of preaching the book. When exegeting difficult texts he presents the best case for differing viewpoints and then argues persuasively for his. All with an eye on preaching. Pastors will find here an inspiring foundation to craft their own sermons (and check their work), and laypeople will discover a pastoral guide through the minefield that is Revelation. Do you have a question about a passage in Revelation? Look here first.