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An Easier Way to Read Revelation by Jim Davis • Skyler Flowers, from TGC

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Imagine watching the final play of a football game from several different camera angles. Angle one from the pylon cam: a player scores a rushing touchdown. Angle two from behind the goalposts: he scores the touchdown and spikes the ball. Angle three from the blimp: he scores a touchdown, spikes the ball, and the crowd rushes the field and fills the stadium. Our understanding of this one event grows in intensity and meaning as it's shown from multiple angles. In his classes at Reformed Theological Seminary, Michael Kruger uses this helpful metaphor to explain a biblical literary device called  recapitulation . Recapitulation is the act or instance of summarizing and restating a narrative to give a different emphasis or perspective. One biblical book that employs recapitulation with stunning effect is Revelation. Seeing the World Through 7s Revelation is notoriously confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Yes, there are dragons, angels, antichrists, and (seemingly) multiple returns...
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Sproul on preaching and feeling it

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Do you think it is remotely possible that my feeling of spiritual intensity, my feeling of closeness to Christ is equally strong every time I speak? Of course not.  There are times when I feel so overwhelmed by a sense of awe and adoration for Christ, that I can't wait to speak. There are other times I feel so far away from Christ; perhaps I am tired, sometimes I am just not in the mood, often I feel spiritually vacant and poverty stricken.  But it says on my calendar that I have to give a lecture or a sermon or a lesson. At such times, I am thinking, 'What am I doing standing up here trying to encourage other people when I am going through this?'  But I have found that the worse I feel, and the less I feel like it, the more I really feel dependent upon the power of God. R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1994), 158.
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Phillips: "To say that God chose me because with His ability to foreknow the future He saw me choose Christ, robs God of His sovereignty."

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 John Phillips on God's sovereign election-  Some have thought that the word “foreknown” is the key to the problem. All knowledge is based on fact, the argument runs; fact is not based on knowledge. A fact has to be established before it can be known. Human knowledge is largely after-knowledge of a given fact, but God is not restricted to after-knowledge. He is omniscient and therefore has foreknowledge. But whether it is after-knowledge or foreknowledge, the knowledge is based on fact. For example, John Brown accepts Christ as Saviour on a given day in his personal history and thereby establishes a fact which can be known. His friends and relatives come to know of this fact after it happens, but God can see the same fact a week, a month, a year, an eternity before it happens. Nevertheless, His knowledge, like that of John Brown’s friends, is based on the fact of John Brown’s acceptance of Christ. “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.” There is only one thing wrong ...
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Richard Young: "...instead of glorifying sin's power..."

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When Jesus comes back he isn’t coming to free you from sin. He isn’t coming back to do that because he did that the first time around. Jesus has freed you from sin. Sin is a noun. It’s a cosmic power that you were enslaved to. You died. New you was raised with Christ with newness of life. Therefore sin has no power over you anymore. Yes you are still capable of committing sin, but you actually don’t have to. You are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You are the righteousness of God in Christ. So instead of glorifying sin’s power why don’t we lift up the one who is able to keep you from sin Jesus Christ the righteous. Give honor to him as Lord and see yourself in him. Then you will be living in the reality that was created for you in him.
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Ryken: "they can see a community that shares in his sufferings and thus confirms the truth of his passion."

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 Paul’s readiness to share in Christ’s sufferings. One was his belief that they were necessary for the evangelization of the lost. The world could not understand the message of the cross unless those who preached it were themselves marked by its suffering and shame. This is the meaning—at least in part—of Paul’s enigmatic claim “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).  This verse has nothing to do with the extent of the atonement, of course, but everything to do with missions and evangelism. What is still lacking is the communication of the gospel by a suffering church. The unsaved people of the world cannot see Jesus hanging on the cross, but they can see a community that shares in his sufferings and thus confirms the truth of his passion. The sufferings of the apostles—and, by implication, of the church and its ministers today—were public exhibitions of Christ and his cross.  Paul thus described himself as part of a procession b...
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Mounce: "Unless God determines in some sense..."

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  Rom 8 v 29 (CSB)       29       For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  Verse 29 is sometimes interpreted to mean that God predestines on the basis of his prior knowledge about how each of us will in fact respond. But this would mean that in election God would not be sovereign; he would be dependent upon what he would see happening in the future. Theologians rightly point out that prior to knowledge must be the divine decree. Unless God determines in some sense that something will happen, he cannot “know” that it will. For God to foreknow requires an earlier decree. Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 188–189.
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Hodge: "For faith is... the result of election..."

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  Charles Hodge on why "foreknew" does not mean foreknowing what people would have faith.  It contradicts the apostle’s teaching. It makes the reason for our calling and election the result of something in us, our works, whereas Paul says that this is not the reason for our being chosen: “… who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9; see Romans 9:11, where the opposite doctrine is not only asserted but proved and defended).  To say that faith as distinct from works is what is foreseen and constitutes the basis of election does not help the matter. For faith is a work or act, and it is the gift of God, the result of election, and therefore not its foundation. Charles Hodge, Romans, Crossway Classic Commentaries (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), Ro 8:29.
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