Back in America after 9 years away!

For you folks who've been looking in on this site (and there've been quite a few) I apologize for being away for over a year!


Almost all of 2011 was taken up with the move from one country (Cyprus — part Middle-East, part Europe) back to the U.S., and when back most of the rest of the year was taken up looking for and getting an apartment, and then shipping a container full of our stuff over here — weight-wise mostly books! — and setting up so that's it's livable.  Which it now is.


You can see by the new Lightning Sword Journal image that there are going to be changes in focus.
From 2009 to 2010 I preached through the Book of Revelation, 60 sermons in all, not including the Babylon series.  I should explain how I came to be doing that:  With the help of an OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church) pastor I planted a church in the city of Limassol, and pastored it for four and a half years (and, earlier, an Arabic Evangelical church on the same premises for two and a half years.  With the Arabic-speaking folks I mostly spoke through translators).


At any rate, for over a year I pondered and studied the Book of Revelation.  I mean, I had been reading it for some forty years, but now studied it in depth, so as to be able to fully comprehend it, and then teach it.  Below I'll give a list of some of the commentators I used at that time, as well as some more I am studying presently.


It's an electrifying book!  In it the risen Lord Jesus speaks to the seven churches in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), and not just to them, but to all the churches extant then, and to all the churches up through the ages till now, and even till the end of this age.  Imagine the Son of God addressing a particular congregation, with either reproof or commendation, or a mixture of both!  And thus these letters — there are seven of them, one each to the seven churches — speak to varying conditions in all the churches, if faithfully unpacked by godly pastors.


And then the unfolding of the New Covenant period — from the ascension of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, till His return at the end of this age and the resurrection of the dead, the great Day of Judgment, and the commencement of the destinies of the damned and the blessed, the former in what Christ calls "the lake of fire" and the latter on the New Heaven and Earth, where God has chosen to actually dwell in the midst of His beloved people, which He calls the Bride of His Son, in an eternity of festive rejoicing and glory.  But in that New Covenant period of the present age — symbolically depicted as "1,000 years", a millennium — there will be a terrible battle of the powers of darkness and death against the New Covenant people of God.  These people will stand faithful in the face of whatever the hostile world throws at them, and where they fail, the mercy of their God will cleanse and sustain them — for the times will be very difficult.


The Book goes into some detail regarding these things, as well as the judgments of the Almighty upon the world that persecutes His blood-bought children, and worships the idols this world manufactures in their hearts and loves (idols such as beauty, power, wealth, comfort, illicit pleasure, race, religion, etc).


The Revelation also talks about an entity called "Babylon the great", its oppression of the nations generally and the people of God — called "the saints" — in particular, its manifestation in various world powers, including Chaldean Babylon and the Roman Empire, and some mysterious political-economic-military entity manifesting at the end of the age, which shall surpass in brazen audacity all the oppressive pleasure-loving empires of the ages.  That shall be the primary focus of Lighting Sword Journal for a while.  Stay tuned.