Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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*Message: /“The Time is Near”/*
*Revelation 1:1-3 *
/The revelation of Jesus Christ, /
/which God gave him to show his servants /
/what must soon take place.
/
/He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, /
/2 //who testifies to everything he saw —/
/that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
/
/3 //Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, /
/and blessed are those who hear it /
/and take to heart what is written in it, /
/because the time is near.
/
* *
*Revelation 3:20-22*
/20//Here I am!
I stand at the door and knock.
/
/If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, /
/I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
/
/21//To him who overcomes, /
/I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, /
/just as I overcame and sat down /
/with my Father on his throne.
/
/22//He who has an ear, /
/let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”/
A little boy came downstairs one day
and heard the clock begin to chime.
It chimed thirteen times.
“Mom,” he said excitedly,
“something’s wrong.
It’s later than it’s ever been before!”[1]
!
Reading the Book of Revelation
can easily make us a bit paranoid or anxious
because of the many cryptic messages
and some of the hidden symbolism.
Many of the popular End Times prophesies tell us,
that we better brace ourselves for the “rapture”
and for the “tribulation”
because “the Beast” has been set free…
And if you don’t believe that this is so,
then just look at how the European Union of Nations
is forming the alliance of 10 World Powers
that will march into the final battle over Jerusalem…
and on and on.
I have read only one of the Books by Jenkins and LaHaye
in the “Left Behind” series…
but, it sometimes frightens me when I hear
how many Christians gobble up that stuff as “Gospel Truth”.
I checked out the “Left Behind” Web page
to get an update on the End times… (forgive my sarcasm)
Listen to this add:
“We've got exciting news!
In March, Tyndale will release
a special 10th Anniversary edition of /Left Behind./
And that's not all we have in store for you in 2005!
No, there won't be one book for every year of the millennium,
but instead of a single "prequel"
there will be a "Countdown to the Rapture" trilogy
describing the background of the characters
and events you already know from the series.
The first of these, /The Rising/,
will be on store shelves on March 1,
along with the 10th Anniversary edition of /Left Behind./
The next book in the Countdown series
will come in November,
and the final one is slated for June 6, 2006
(That’s right, for those of you are keeping track
of the sign of the beast, that’s 6~/6~/06!).
Right now, a single sequel is planned for March 2007.
(I guess that’s just in case the calculations were wrong).
Popular eschatology (that’s a technical term for
the study of the last things or final events)
and much traditional Christian thinking about heaven
and the end times
have taken a literalistic approach
to interpreting the apocalyptic or “end times”
literature of the Bible.
Nelson Kraybill,
the president of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries,
says in a Christianity Today article (Oct. 25, 1999 31ff) that,
“If you read a telephone book as though it’s a novel,
you’re likely to be confused.
Something like that happened to Revelation in the church.”
Furthermore, “Don’t get trapped with wooden literalism –
unless you really expect to get to heaven
and find that Jesus is a sheep.”
When our “end-times-thinking” is separated
from the Good News
that we are already living in the Kingdom now
and that we catch glimpses of “heaven”
as we reach out in love and reconciliation to others,
we end up with a distorted and fanatical view
of the end time.
Heaven is more about living out God’s grace and justice
in our everyday lives
than about waiting for an angry God
to destroy the earth in his wrath
and to bring in the eternal Kingdom at the end of time.
Throughout the history of Christianity
there have been periods of great emphasis,
if not hysteria, about the end times.
Albert Schweitzer points out that this
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