The American Journal of Biblical Theology just published one of my articles. You can check out Encouragement in Foresight: An Ideological Texture Analysis of Philadelphia and Revelation 3:7-13 by clicking here (link will download article in .pdf format).
In this article I analyze underlying ideologies in this passage and focus especially on the encouraging aspects of it. Many times we praise the “hard” leaders and think the encouraging ones are soft. I am not so sure we should, and encouragement is an important tool of any leader to motivate his/her followers. This passage teaches us much about this encouragement and my paper helps understand that a bit further. As always, if you have any feedback or comments, feel free to send those my way.
Dr. Tim Vanderpyl 