6/25/2025

This past Sunday, when I was preaching about the way believers in places like Syria and Nigeria read the book of Revelation, I didn’t know that I could have used them as recent object lessons for my sermon.  I didn’t know that in the early hours of Friday, June 13, 2025, more than 200 Christian villagers were slaughtered by Islamic Jihadists. I’ve seen     NOTHING in the news about it. 

I also didn’t know that on Sunday morning, the same day I preached that sermon, a  group of some 350 believers were gathered for their morning worship in Damascus, Syria, when a suicide bomber killed at least 25 believers and wounded more than 60 others.  

How did the believers respond?

Young Syrian Christian posted his response to the violence. Is he afraid? No. Why? Because the message of the Bible for believers at all times and everywhere is, “Do not be afraid.” And that has been the overwhelming and very public response of the Syrian Christians. They refuse to be afraid.

Besides being the most often repeated phrase in the Bible, this is also the message of Revelation: “Do not be afraid.” 

I find it interesting (and infuriating) that so many who preach and teach and write about Revelation use it to do just the opposite. Despite the opening, “Blessed are those who read aloud the words of this book and blessed are those who hear and who keep the words,” the book of
Revelation is used to spark fear in the hearts of believers. 

Sparking fear is the absolute opposite reason for why it was written. 

Revelation was written to people who were already afraid! Believers who lived in Rome were persecuted when Nero was emperor, but that was a local persecution. Now 30 years later, this threat raged throughout the empire.

Why the persecution? To begin with, Christianity wasn’t a legally recognized religion — anywhere! Can you imagine that? It’s hard to, in our comfortable 21st century North Alabama, Bible-belt world with a church on every street corner. 

But that could be overlooked if believers “behaved, and blended into” Roman society. Even if they didn’t really mean it. If they contributed to the emperor’s temple and offered just a pinch — just a PINCH — of incense to the emperor’s statue, they could live and work in peace. That’s not asking too much is it? Just pretend? But for believers who insisted on following the way of the Lamb and who refused to worship the emperor Domitian, their lives and the lives of their families were at stake. 

That’s the way it is for many Christians living in our world today.  And for them, Revelation is a source of hope, encouragement, and challenge. God will eventually bring about the ultimate victory and in the meantime, as Jesus said to Smyrna, “Be faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life.” 

That’s all good and well, but what message does Revelation have for us in our comfortable 21st century North Alabama Bible-belt world? 

The same! “Be faithful unto death!” 

The call to faithfulness is just as appropriate for our safe, comfortable lifestyles because the threat, while not of losing our heads, is just as real. And the churches in Revelation knew this threat as well.

Let’s think a bit about the churches to whom Revelation was written. In chapter 1, we’re reminded in verses 4 and 11 that the letter is written to 7 churches in what is now modern day Turkey: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

These churches lived as colonies of believers in secular and sometimes hostile areas. But like fish in a fishbowl that don’t notice they’re wet, believers can live submerged in a secular and even godless society and not realize the influence that society has on their faith and experience. 

Revelation 1 makes it clear that the 7 churches are not on their own: Jesus walks among them. He sees what they're facing, and he sees how they’re living. Two of the churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, receive commendation for their faithfulness, but the other five have let Babylon’s influence creep in and Jesus calls them out for it.

We’ll look at them in more depth in August, but for now, let me point out four areas these five churches have allowed Babylon to infiltrate and influence them. Each of these practices is the manifestation of their ungodly society’s (John called it “Babylon”) influence in the communities of Jesus. I like the terminology Scot McKnight uses in his book, Revelation for the Rest of Us, for the four basic problems in these churches: 1. disordered love (2:4); 2. distorted teaching (2:14-15, 20-23); 3. corrupted worship (2:14-15, 20-23) and 4. behavior inconsistent with the way of the Lamb (3:1-2, 15-18). 

Does any of that sound familiar? Does it sound like the time we live in now? Does it sound like the sort of threats faced by the church in any day and age?

Yes. And in the way that Revelation addresses these compromises with Babylon, we might discover that Revelation is one of the most relevant books to our time in the New Testament. Because whether the threat comes from the outside (persecution) or from the inside (compromise), Revelation calls us to faithfulness. Faithfulness even to death. 

Blessings,
Pastor Terry