Sometime ago a Christian man asked a gospel preacher: “Why do we not have great gospel sermons like those we used to hear?” The reply was: “There is no demand for them.” Do that question and answer reveal conditions as they are? Have we reached the point where preaching is trimmed down to fit the demands of the times? Is preaching thus reduced to a matter of trade?
Some factories make only those articles that are in demand. But occasionally an article is offered for sale for which there had been no demand, but the makers of such articles proceed to create a demand. They do extensive advertising; they extol the uses and virtues of their article till people want it. And cannot we in the same way create a demand for the pure gospel in communities where there is no demand? We cannot do it by dealing in religious soup. There is a demand for the unadulterated gospel, for great gospel sermons; but the demand is not as extensive nor as intensive as it should be. Even in some churches of Christ there is not as strong demand for gospel sermons as there should be. When an elder can say, as some of them have said, “So far as I am concerned, I do not care whether our preacher can preach or not,” it is time we were waking up.
E. B. Taylor asks seven or eight questions on the twentieth chapter of Revelation. To give answer to all these questions would require an exegesis of the chapter. For me that is impossible. The chapter abounds in figures of speech. Many have read into that chapter things that are not in it. They also make some of it figurative and the rest literal, as the needs of their theory require. With them a day in some of the prophecies is a year, but they take the thousand years as literal. Yet they will not say that the devil is a real snake, nor that the chain is a literal chain, nor that the beast is a real four-footed animal. Here are some of the things in this chapter that I do not know: Who the angel is, what the key is, the great chain, why the devil is called a snake, what the binding means, the thousand years, when the thousand years end, the abyss and how it was sealed, length of the “little time,” who sat on thrones, what judgment was given them, the extent of that judgment, what the beast is, the image, mark of the beast, the war of verse 8, Gog and Magog, the camp of the saints, how devoured by fire, the lake, the beast of verse 10, who the false prophet is, nor how there can be day and night in eternity. Yet the chapter makes some plain statements.