Revelation is one of those books of the Bible that no matter how many times you read through it or study it or hear sermons on it, you always feel that you are still only just on the verge of understanding it. Or at least that’s how I feel. So in this post I want to highlight a number of resources on Revelation that I have found helpful.
Commentaries
First, some commentaries. I have read and reviewed commentaries by Michael Wilcock (Bible Speaks Today) and Alan Johnson (Expositor’s Bible Commentary). I also have the two more meaty contributions of Grant Osborne (Baker Exegetical Commentary) and Greg Beale (New International Greek Testament Commentary) sitting on my bookshelf but they will require a serious time commitment to read right through. Two other commentaries I would also like to get hold of are by Craig Keener (NIV Application Commentary) and Gordon Fee (New Covenant Commentary).
Books
In terms of general books on Revelation, the most commonly recommended is The Theology of the Book of Revelation by Richard Baukham. Within newfrontiers, our Revelation expert is John Hosier. His two books, Thinking Clearly About the End Times and The Lamb, the Beast and the Devil are both excellent. Simon Ponsonby has written a book more generally on the end times, called And the Lamb Wins.
Individual Talks
Revelation is of course almost impossible to do justice to in a single talk, but here are a few from people who really know the book inside out:
Preaching Revelation – John Hosier at Leadership International 2010
[audio:http://media.project1.com.s3.amazonaws.com/6ff4d391-3fd7-421d-becc-028354f5b474.mp3]Revelation in an hour – John Hosier
[audio:http://www.waterfrontchurch.org.uk/download.php?d=images/file/Sermons/John%20Hosier%20-%20Revelation%20in%20one%20hour.mp3]
How to read the book of Revelation – Richard Bauckham
[audio:http://www.criswell.edu/audio/Bauckham_Richard_3508.mp3]Also, my friend Andrew Fountain recently preached a two part series giving an overview of the book of Revelation. He has a solid grasp of the book and often teaches a longer series on it, which you can find the outline for here.
Series
Finally, I want to higlight two series of talks on Revelation that are well worth your time. The first is a six-part seminar series by Liam Thatcher, which he gave very recently at Christ Church London. I have found these extremely helpful and are a great introduction to the message of the book, presented in a very accessible style:
- Revelation 1 – Apocalypse Now
- Revelation 4-5 – The Lamb and the Throne
- Revelation 6-11; 16 – Seals, Trumpets and Bowls
- Revelation 12-13 – The woman and the dragon
- Revelation 20 – The Millennium
- Revelation 21-22 – New Creation
Also, Justin Taylor recently linked to a 26 part lecture series on Revelation by Don Carson. Carson is an excellent expositor and is rumoured to be writing the Pillar Commentary on Revelation, so I would expect these to be very thorough.
Do please let me know in the comments of any resources you would recommend in addition to these.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the recommendation! Glad you enjoyed the talks…
Beale’s commentary is a masterpiece! Well worth the read. Though it is pretty enormous! Bauckham is brilliant, Phil Moore’s ‘Straight to the Heart of Revelation’ is a great introductory book too, and Wright’s ‘Rev for Ev’ book is also worth a quick read. There are some gems in it. I haven’t listened to all of those Carson lectures, but I did listen to a shorter series (I think 7 or 10 parts) which was helpful. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was writing the Pillar commentary. I dipped into Mounce’s commentary, but didn’t get time to read it properly before I preached the series, so intend to go back over that soon… I also dipped into commentaries by Witherington, Swete and Caird, each of which had some interesting insights!
Liam
thanks Liam, I really enjoyed your series. Very accessible and well researched, and you did an excellent job of applying it rather than just explaining it. Great work.
The Carson lectures are not in the correct order and are misnumbered. The correct order is here. That post also includes links to all the other talks and sermons he’s given on Revelation that are available online, of which there are many (but a lot of them are repeats).
thanks Jeremy, looks like that was a bit of a challenge to work out the correct order. I’ll update my post with your link.
you may want to have a peek at Martin Charlesworth’s series http://www.barnabascommunitychurch.com/othertalks.htm
thanks Dave, looks like another really good resource
I’d value your reflections on this post on Revelation:
http://thebluefish.org/2011/05/revelation-and-song-of-songs.html
Just tried to leave you a comment on your developer’s blog but the robot detector was a bit too keen! Thanks for the rapid response to my question on stackoverflow about asynchronous audio. Not sure how you find time to answer those questions with a job, 5 kids and your other hobbies!
no problem Tim, glad it was of use to you
Mark have you stopped blogging these days?
hi Tom, I haven’t deliberately stopped, just been really busy recently. Most of my theology time has gone into preparing talks for leadership training, and I have been building a website for my father-in-law which has taken a lot of time. Hopefully I’ll get to blog here a bit more soon (even if its just the notes for leadership training).