Blessed Is the One Who Reads This Book
Pastor Tan Thai · Nov 7, 2019
This opening sermon of a Revelation series introduces the seven beatitudes found in the book and surveys key methods of biblical interpretation. The pastor emphasizes that Revelation was written not only for those with special gifts, but for all who read, hear, and keep its teachings.
This sermon opens a series on the book of Revelation, anchored in the special promise of Revelation 1:3: blessed is the one who reads, hears, and keeps the words of this prophecy. The pastor presents all seven beatitudes found in Revelation (1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7; 22:14), while acknowledging that many believers view Revelation as something like science fiction or mythology due to its unusual imagery—the four horsemen, the seven-headed beast, the woman clothed with the sun—and its reputation as the most difficult book in the Bible.
The pastor warns against the danger of reading current events or historical facts into Revelation's prophecies. He cites numerous examples of failed date-setting for Christ's return, including multiple predictions by Jehovah's Witnesses, and shows how figures from Roman emperors to modern political leaders have been identified as the Antichrist over the centuries. This demonstrates that interpreting Revelation through the lens of contemporary history is unreliable and misleading.
Two foundational principles for reading and understanding Scripture are presented. First, Revelation was originally written for seven specific first-century churches, and readers today must first ask what a passage meant to its original audience before applying it to the present. Second, believers must recognize the complexity of Vietnamese Bible translations (BTT, BHĐ, BDM, BD2011) and exercise caution when drawing conclusions from unreliable online resources or commentaries.
The sermon surveys four main approaches to interpreting Revelation: preterist (all prophecies fulfilled in the first century), historical (the seven churches represent seven eras of church history), futurist (most prophecies await end-time fulfillment), and eclectic (combining all three methods). The pastor announces he will use the eclectic approach throughout the series. He also raises the question of literal versus symbolic interpretation, using the dimensions of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 to illustrate that a strictly literal reading can produce physically impossible results, pointing instead to the need for symbolic understanding in many passages.
Running throughout the sermon is a central call to faithful endurance in the face of suffering, exemplified by the apostle John—who remained faithful to Christ for over sixty years, endured exile alone on the island of Patmos while all other apostles had been martyred. The stated goal of the entire sermon series is not to decode every symbol in Revelation, but to help believers read, understand, and apply its teachings to their daily lives, with the assurance that God holds history and the future in His hands.