Revelation

https://www.faithwire.com/2023/09/20/end-times-author-on-antichrist-tribulation-and-biggest-error-made-surrounding-book-of-revelation/

Many people think that revelation is meant to be indecipherable. But that's not the case. Why would God call it Revelation...a Revealing and then make in incomprehensible.

https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/the-seven-churches-of-revelation-why-they-matter-and-what-we-can-learn

The history of those seven cities interested me since the time i began the study of this book.  Incidentally the book of revelation is the only book that promises a blessing for those who read it or listen to it.

That the letters to the seven churches often betray characteristics of the cities in which these churches flourished reminds us how easily churches can reflect the values of their culture if we do not remain vigilant against those values.

Such parallels are noted at relevant points in the commentary, but one of Ramsay’s other observations should be summarized here:

The two cities that are now completely uninhabited belong to two of the churches most severely rebuked (Sardis and Laodicea).
The two cities that held out longest before the Turkish conquest are the only two churches fully praised (Smyrna and Philadelphia).
The city of Ephesus was later literally moved to a site about three kilometers from where it was in John’s day, just as the church was threatened with removal from its place (2:5).25
Such parallels may be coincidence, but they might also illustrate a pattern in history: The church, no matter how powerless in a given society, is a guardian of its culture.

Given the high degree of assimilation of North American Christians to our culture’s values—more time spent on entertainment than on witness, more money spent on our comfort than on human need—the prognosis for the society as a whole is not good.

When pagans charged that Rome fell because of its conversion to Christianity, Augustine responded that it fell rather because its sins were piled as high as heaven and because the commitment of most of its Christian population remained too shallow to restrain God’s wrath. Naturally we recognize that not all suffering reflects judgment; but some does, especially on the societal level. Is Western Christianity genuinely different enough from our cultures to delay God’s judgment on our societies?