Revelation – BLOGPASTOR

Tag: Revelation

Rising Cost of Living & the End Time

7 June 2022 blogpastor 2 Comments

I was seated at the Giant supermarket when my wife came to me and showed me some French beans. She said the price has doubled. Later she brought to me another two types of vegetable and told me the amount it increased. Yesterday, I also read in the news that some premium petrol has reached the SGD$4 per litre mark. Unheard of in all my thirty years of driving. It seems that prices have increased more than 50% in many cases. Electricity rates have gone up. Transportation costs have gone up. Food prices have gone up. My wife informs me about price increases. She does the grocery and pays the bills. She knows.

I sometimes tell her, “Can you quote Philippians 4: 19 “my God shall supply all your needs” at the end of every update of price increase?” God’s promises need to be mentioned alongside news of inflation. It is an antidote to worry and fear. Faith comes by hearing the word of God.

This inflation looks likely to be set in place for the long haul. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has affected the world. Pandemic lockdowns have caused disruptions of supply chain distribution and will continue to do so as long as China keeps its zero-covid policy. And not to forget: the GST increase the Singapore government had announced it would implement from 1 January 2023 onwards. It will keep its word.

We are living near the close of this age. The black horse and its rider (symbol of famine or food shortages) with the pair of scales in his hand in the Apocalypse (Rev 6:5,6) reminds us of what is to come. “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, or three quarts of barley, but don’t lay a finger on the oil and wine”. What can feed only one person can only be bought with a whole day’s wage. Barley would be cheaper but still the amount would not be be enough to feed a whole family. The poor will suffer. Only the rich can afford what was once affordable for the middle income (oil and wine). Cost of living will skyrocket. So will lawlessness. Only the love of many will decrease, will grow cold (Matthew 24:13).

Where does this leave retirees living off the monthly amounts from their CPF retirement savings? If they receive a monthly payout of SGD$1,000 a month, it will be able to buy one half of what it used to be able to buy in goods and services. The current crisis invites us to trust God to be faithful in providing for us. He who feeds the sparrows knows our need. It invites us to live within our modest means and find contentment and joy in Him alone. It invites the well-off to look out for poor who are in need, and to share God’s abundance with them. The church has the opportunity to truly become the community of love Jesus envisioned. May the world see this and say, “How these Christians love one another!”

The blessedness of preaching Revelation

27 July 2016 blogpastor Leave a comment

There are great blessings in preaching through the book of Revelation. Blessings for those who preach it and those who hear it. “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.” (Rev 1:3).

The greatest blessing for me is the confidence and sense of achievement it gave me. Completing the whole series was not smooth sailing. It was challenging. There were times when I had inadequate time for research but the sermon had to be delivered. There were times I was groping for answers to my questions. Quite a few times I was sure the sermon fell flat. Other times I struggled to find interesting connections and applications. However, once it was finished, I felt something similar to that of climbing Loh’s Peak for the first time: a deep satisfaction and a super high. With this experience of perseverance and passion, I feel that I can tackle any other lengthy book of the Bible if I am led to do so. There cannot be anything more difficult in the Bible.

Preaching Revelation had forced me to grow as an exegete. I had to apply principles of interpretation that is unique to apocalyptic literature. I had to grope with controversial issues and work with them to a conclusion even if a tentative one. I had to sort out and learn to recognise different approaches like the dispensationalist approach. I had to learn to remove my coloured lenses due to years of hearing sermons and reading books on Revelation that uses a particular theological viewpoint. Reading many commentaries have broadened my mind. Yet I observe that in terms of the main themes many of them share similar views. I am now better able to handle such types of literature (genre) in the Bible.

My hope was rooted deeply in God’s sovereignty. The dominant themes of stubbornness, idolatry, judgement, holiness, conflict and persecution, God’s sovereignty and faithfulness kept reappearing. It made me realise the importance of being watchful and faithful to the end. I have to persevere in the grace of God knowing that in the end injustice will be overturned, and the victory will be manifested in fullness.

How I decided to preach through Revelation

11 July 2016 blogpastor Leave a comment

Preaching through the whole book of Revelation was something I was apprehensive abut. When it was first suggested to me by Deena, a church leader, my reply was, “Wah, that book is too controversial. How to preach? Maybe a Bible study discussion class is a better format. Cannot lah!” The reasons for my apprehension were a few. I had never studied the book of Revelation for myself before. All I had been exposed to during my spiritual beginnings were the early teachings of our church’s founder, Brother A.M. Mathew, who loved to preach from that book. Of course like many other Christians in the 70s, and 80s, I had heard and read a smattering of messages and books a la Hal Lindsey, Dwight Pentecost, and Tim La Haye. I now know they belong to the school of interpretation called Dispensionalism, but not at that time. Seminary did not teach it. I had on a few occasions tried to study the Revelation, but each time I never got beyond chapter 6. So I had a general idea what Revelation was about. I had in my hands several pieces of a strange jig-saw puzzle that looked familiar. However, by and large, I was apprehensive that if I were to embark on a series, I would be entering without a clear idea of my view. I had a lot to research and learn, and was unsure if the congregation would be able to “endure to the end, and be saved”.

Providentially, by the mouth of two witnesses, the power to embark on this long uncertain expository journey, was imparted. One was the Turkey-Greece exploratory trip organised by Bible Society and Omega Tours for pastors. During the trip in 2015 pastors took turns to share devotions about the messages of the glorified Christ to the seven churches. As I listened to those devotions the Lord drew me in and shifted my “impossible” attitude towards preaching Revelations, to one of “maybe it can be done”. Then back in Singapore I was sharing this with pastor Eng Hwa, an evangelical free church pastor, and he said he has done it before and shared how he did it. That got me thinking it can be done.

I prayed some more, discussed this with my colleagues, and explored different ways of doing this project. My colleagues, pastor Thomas, and Ethel the youth worker, did not object and were supportive. Looking at different outlines and examining the church calendar, I tried different options of doing Revelations. However, the best option was to divide out the book into its natural sections, and have other more topical, accessible and practical sermon series interspersed with the more serious and sobering themes in the Revelation series. Rightly, I figured that the darker themes of judgment, conflict and disaster in Revelation would be balanced out with lighter seasons of lighter practical, relevant subjects that directly touched the congregation’s felt needs. It was like making sure we add to the year’s spiritual menu with some foods they can enjoy together with the vegetables and fibre of Revelation.

Finally, I had to take the first step of faith of announcing the series, which I called Revelation Made Simple, to remind myself through the series to keep it simple. When that was done there was no turning back. However with the relatively more easy preparation required in the early parts of Revelation chapters 1 to 5, I would have about three months of buffer to begin initial preparation of the more difficult sections which starts from chapter 6. An exciting sermonic adventure had begun for me on the 5th July 2015. As the angels in heaven had sung, so did I resound with a loud, HALLELUJAH, when I completed preaching through Revelation, and all God’s people having gone through the great tribulation echoed, Amen, on the 29th of May 2016. Glory to God.