Revelation Sermon Series – “Unveiling Empire” – Chapters 16-18 – July 19, 2015

We are going to look mostly at chapter 18 of the Book of Revelation today. But, just to keep us in context within this summer sermon series I want to briefly walk through chapters 16 and 17.

Chapter 16 of Revelation describes the last of three sets of seven plagues. We have heard in this series that Revelation should not be read as predictions about the future. It is not a weather forecast that forgot to mention the dates it was predicting. It is not a schedule of events to come. Revelation is the creative portrayal by the early Christian community of the Roman Empire and the consequences of living by the values of Empire. They saw the Empire as powerful, oppressive, violent, obscenely wealthy and most importantly persuasive and seductive. The early Christians were worried not so much that the Roman Empire would persecute them although that was a concern. They were more worried that the Roman Empire would convince them that power, wealth and violence were the highest values and the values demonstrated by Jesus of self-sacrifice, service, compassion were worthless