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OUR SUNDAY SCHOOL MINISTRY

Highland Laker Kids are discovering this summer all the fun involved with being one of "God's Secret Agents". Please join us as we discover interesting people from the bible, learn some great, positive values and enjoy making creative crafts. Most of all -- the kids just have a lot of fun and get to hang out with other kids!

Summer Sermon Series
ON HOLY GROUNDS:
Examining Controversial Issues Biblically
Starting Sunday, July 4


PASTOR'S VACATION

Pastor Ron and his family will be away July 26 to August 10. Pastor Ron is a native of Nova Scotia and will be visiting there for the first time in 20 years. Please keep the Mahlers in prayer as they travel, and that the family would have a great time seeing all the sights (and eating lots of fish!)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

A message from Pastor Ron

"Reading Revelation With Freedom!"
By Rev. Ron Mahler


Have you ever wondered why you don’t hear the average pastor (other than the more famous type) preach regularly or even remotely from the Book of Revelation, or as it is sometimes referred to: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ"?? I will tell you what I think. I believe we don’t hear a lot of preaching on its content because pastors often feel the pressure to preach or teach the Book in a "predictive" way, rather than in the fashion it was written to be taught from - pastorally! That’s right, you’ve heard it here, the Book of Revelation is a pastoral book! Now there are a plethora of books, and I have read a few of them - perhaps you have also - that will tell you - the who, what, where and when about Revelation. Their authors have made billions of dollars (can you say: Left Behind series? I knew you could)! Books like those and others are thoroughly fascinating - but - are they really a proper, geo-political-theological fool-proof depiction of Revelation’s teaching and purpose?


John, the author of Revelation was exiled as a pastor to a Roman penal colony on the Ilse of Patmos (off of modern day Greece). He was pastor to a few churches who were steeped in persecution at the hands of Rome - namely, the emperor Domitian. You think Nero was mad - this guy, Domitian, was one bad dude!!! And John, being the pastor he was - was writing to the Christians to encourage them (see seven churches in Chapters 1-3). More than anything else - John was communicating that in the end - there will be a reversal: God will win in the end, and all His enemies, and the enemies of the church will come to ruin. Revelation is a Jewish-apocalyptic writing - meaning; it has pastoral precedence in guiding and counselling the people it is written to. A Prophetic writing, on the other hand, like the "Minor Prophets" in the Old Testament - was written to cause and call people to "change." Is this how we should read Revelation - as a prophetic book? Evangelicals in the 20th century, said "Yes" - and I feel since then, we have lost its true purpose, which is not to read it in order to "predict" the future. It was not written for that purpose exactly.


The early Christians believed Jesus’ return to earth, was imminent - and so to them, the "number of the Beast" when calculated in Jewish thinking, was connected to the emperor "Nero." They thought everything that John wrote down that he received in the vision from Christ - would happen in their lifetime. Did it? Well, I will give you a hint: we still don’t have "a new Heaven and a new earth" as yet! So, how can we be sure, 2000 years later, that all of our wrangling through the images and symbols in Book, will amount to what we think will happen? Again, Revelation was not meant to be read like that. And I could go on to tell you how the various types of interpretation have come up with how the Book will be played out - but I don’t want to fascinate you more than perhaps what you already have been with Revelation. Suffice it to say, that God gave us His Word not to speculate on, but to be instructed by. If we treat Revelation like a hobby-horse - and not as a teaching tool, we are distorting God’s Word. Perhaps this is why the reformer and preacher John Wesley once said, "I can’t figure out this book!"

Just as a side note, Revelation was the last Book to receive canonical approval for inclusion into the New Testament. In the final analysis, maybe we should look at Revelation and resolve as Billy Graham did, "I saw the last page in Revelation, God wins!" Yes -it is a fascinating and intimidating Book to read, and it is an interesting scriptural exercise to work through all the variables in the images and symbols – and we could even find how they link to other wordings and prophecies in the Old Testament – but let’s read it with freedom, by reading it pastorally, and not with the pressure to predict!