What will it take to get pastors to say the "R" word?

Jonathan Brentner wrote a blog post regarding the strange phenomenon of pastors who won't say the word "rapture" in their preaching. I'm sure there are lots of reasons for it.

"There are differing views."

"I might make someone angry who holds a different view."

"No one can really know what it means."

"I don't want anyone to leave because Revelation is weird."

"People want practical teaching on how to live their daily lives."

"It doesn't fit into my series."

Etc.

It's the last one that gets me the most, in this day and age. Our daily lives are complete chaos right now. What used to pass as practical teaching before 2020 almost seems comical right now. The words from Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Thessalonians, Revelation...they are practically crawling out of people's Bibles and waving at them to take a look.

Nope. Same old pre-2020 sermons, with a dash of woke for some preachers.

One way you can get a pulse on what people are desperate to hear but aren't being taught in their church is to see what's selling.

When I go into the local Christian bookstore, it feels empty. Oh, there are lots of books still being pumped out. But the books that seemed even mildly interesting before have zero importance to me now. The shelves are full. Ironically, the small shelf of books on end times prophecy by David Jeremiah, Amir Tsarfati, Todd Hampson, and others is consistently sold out.

Pastors, take a hint. The books you see that are GONE in the bookstore are what people want to know about. That's not itching ears. That's desperate ears.

Ever look in all the fancy study Bibles, what they have to say about the end times, about Revelation?* It's one of the first things I do, when thumbing through a Bible, because it tells me where they are coming from and what I can expect, as far as Bible inerrancy and symbolic interpretation goes, in the rest of the study notes.

From the Bible I had as a teen and in college.
My denomination was dispensational, I read Chick comics as a kid (ha), so I didn't pay much attention to this kind of thing, happily.

Except for the study Bibles from David Jeremiah, Henry Morris, Tim LaHaye, and Charles Ryrie (there may be others; those are the ones I'm familiar with), you'll be hard pressed to see anything but pure symbolism or a "balanced" set of notes explaining that no one really knows what Revelation really means and the point isn't to reduce it to timelines or argue about it, but to read it simply to be reminded that Christ triumphs in the end. They painstakingly explain all of the different views, from amillennialism to preterism to pre-trib, making sure to use value-neutral language and then move on from there as if you could read Revelation as a pure history or poetry book and get the same hope.

Yes, knowing Christ triumphs in the end is important.

But why would God say he would bless the readers of a book he intended to befuddle them with?

"I've inspired this book to be a source of crazy confusion down the ages. Be blessed," God would never say.

That's not the point of his Word. As the Creator outside of time, he is communicating exactly what his creation, currently locked in time, needs to know. Revelation isn't a slam poetry event. Revelation isn't a history of AD 70. Revelation isn't PlayDoh to be shaped into Augustinian fancy. Revelation isn't some wispy Kingdom Now thread wafting through all of the church age to some vague conclusion of glory brought about by the voting booth and seven mountains somewhere.

As a teen, I could tune out adults talking to me, but the moment their voice dropped to a whisper my ears perked up. Something important was being said and they didn't want me to hear. This was the time to listen.

Revelation, and the lack of preaching by pastors, is like that. Lots of noise elsewhere, lots of practical tips for living now, but barely a whisper at what's coming as clearly laid out in Revelation. The enemy doesn't want you to hear it. There's never been a more important time to listen.

So much silence on such an important book, the book that people want to understand right now, of all times. The book they are being told "no one really understands" as if there was any hope or blessing in that.

How odd it is that a sign of the end times is a refusal to talk about the signs of the end times? 

It's called the Revelation of Jesus Christ, not the Revelation of Jesus Wins by Chapter 22 But The Rest Is Up For Interpretive Grabs.

How many ways do you think you can interpret that and still be OK? How many ways can Jesus, and all that he is going to do, be revealed?

Whether it's Rapture or Revelation, pastors won't preach it. They won't preach the most necessary message people are desperate to hear. 

*I do the same thing in Genesis. If they can't get the beginning and end right, forget it.