28: World News & Prophecy – Revelation 2:1-7

[Darris McNeely] Okay, we are now ready to go into the individual messages of the seven churches. And my intent is just to cover them in detail for this setting since we're taping this and laying down some information.

I will say that on our ucg.org website, we have a Beyond Today series on each of these seven churches that I did. In recent years, we also have a Beyond Today Bible Study series that Gary Petty, Steve Myers, and I did a few years ago on each of these seven churches as well. So there's a lot of material out there, both in video and written form. But those two sets of videos have a lot that’s right there. Transcripts are there for all of that should you want to go there and learn more. Because a lot of my lectures will be based off of that, since I was involved in both of those particular projects.

And so we talked last time about the relevance for the Church today, and I think we've established that.

I want to briefly mention, as we start into this, that in each of the messages, there are certain similarities. As I said, there are seven church congregations—distinct congregations—in Asia Minor in the first century that received the Book of Revelation and a message for each one. And in all but one of those churches, they receive a correction. Christ tells them, “There’s something you need to change.” The only one that does not have anything bad about it is the church at Philadelphia.

All seven churches are admonished to overcome. So there is an admonishment to overcome their world, their time, their age—to overcome sin, idolatry, compromise, complacency, lethargy, whatever it might be. They are all told to overcome. And each has a distinct promise given to them. All seven have a distinct promise if they overcome and endure to the end. And that promise, Christ says, “I will do with you.”

So we’ll go through each of those.

Looking at this particular slide up here, I want to draw attention to one aspect of the word “overcome.” And this is where it gets into our application of the message today—and really what you and I, as you read through, I want you to think about overcoming. Because the word that is translated “overcoming” is the Greek word nikeo, which means victory.

Christ wants us to overcome—or be victorious—as Christians, as disciples. And that’s really a super big takeaway of these messages. You know, we can talk about eras and distinctions there, and church history and all. But if we look at it: What do I learn from each of these messages? Every one of them is told to overcome. And there may be certain messages to, let’s say, the church at Sardis, that might apply to any of us at any particular time. We’ll talk about that when we get to it—that we have to overcome and be spiritual victors to receive a crown of life, to receive salvation from Christ. And that’s what He’s getting at.

Every church must overcome. And every Christian, every disciple, must overcome.

Now, the picture you’re looking at is a picture of the goddess Nike.

Nike. All right, everybody knows Nike. Sure you do. I don’t know—anybody got Nike shoes on right now? There you go. There’s a pair of Nikes right there.

Look at your brand symbol of Nike. You know what it is? It’s a swoosh. You see the swoosh right there in this image?

It begins on the left, where this goddess is kind of laid out there, and it swoops up through her, and her left arm is extended and she’s holding a wreath. That’s a victory wreath for the games, given to the victor.

And so, if you look at this—you’ve got the swoosh. You’ve got the Nike swoosh right there. That’s where they got it. That’s where Nike athletic goods got their idea: from the goddess Nike and this particular representation of her, which actually is in the city of Ephesus.

I took that picture. Now, we always stop there when we’re walking through the ancient city of Ephesus at this point and point that out to the group. It’s a popular spot.

But nikeo—to be victorious—is what Christ is talking about here to the churches.

So let’s dig into it.

Let’s begin to look at the message to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:1. It’s going to take us a bit of time to go through this, so just kind of settle in and get a good cup of coffee if you’re watching this at home at a later time.

And I want to cover these in good detail for this particular class.

Let’s read it, beginning in chapter 2 at verse 1—the message to the church of Ephesus:

“To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, ‘These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands’” (Revelation 2:1).

Now remember—in Revelation 1:20, the Bible interprets itself here:

“The stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.”

So Christ holds them. He’s responsible. The Church is His body. The stars—or the angels—are under His control. And the message is to that angel.

Now, interpreters are divided over: is this a literal divine being, an angelic being that this is addressed to? Or is it a human being? The word angelos can refer to either a divine messenger from God, or a human messenger bearing God’s message in this case.

So interpreters are divided on that.

We do know from other scriptures about angels that they are given to be helpers and servants to the people of God. Does each congregation of a church have an angel? That could be one interpretation.

It could also mean that it is given to and through the spiritual human leader—the pastor, the elder—of that congregation. In this case, Ephesus.

So we’ll leave it at that. I’m not going to come down hard on either side. I probably lean toward that being a minister, but if God has angelic representation to each congregation yet today, I would not deny that. Certainly, you know, we can bear evidence of God’s angels working in and amongst the Church through the ages—in the Bible, and even today.

I did a Beyond Today program on that a few years back, and what the representation of that was in my own life at one time.

At any rate, this is how it begins. So He says to the church at Ephesus...

Now, I want to go back quickly just to our map. Keep in mind that the city of Ephesus is right here on the coast of the Aegean Sea at the time. It was a major, significant port city in Asia Minor. Quite a large city—probably a couple hundred thousand people minimum at the time this letter is written.

Remember I mentioned that Acts chapters 19 and 20 record the time when the apostle Paul resided in Ephesus and did a ministry there—a very significant ministry. And it was probably during that time that these seven churches—and others—all came into existence. So that’s the time and place for that.

Ephesus is where Paul parked himself. It was a port city coming from the west, and it was at the end of a major river system flowing westward through Asia Minor, all emptying there at Ephesus.

At the time, Paul would have gotten off a boat and walked into the city. The water was right there. If you go to Ephesus today, there’s no water there at all. The water is about six miles away from the current site of the ancient city. That’s because the river silt has washed down through the ages.

Even in the first century, they had to dredge out the harbor to keep it open because dirt and silt coming from the east filled it in. But over time, as the city was abandoned and political events changed, it just filled in and became land. So today, where Paul would have disembarked in Ephesus, you're standing on dry ground. You’d have to go another five or six miles west before reaching the Aegean Sea.

But that’s how it was. And it was here that Paul had this ministry. And there was a church.

Now keep in mind, we do have the Book of Ephesians, which was written to the church at Ephesus. That’s one of these seven churches—actually, the only one of the seven that has an entire book of the New Testament devoted to it. I’ll talk more about that later.

Let’s go ahead and read the message.

Revelation 2:2 “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars.”

Revelation 2:3 “And you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.”

So this is a commendation. These two verses are a compliment—an “attaboy.” Christ is saying, “I know your works.” You’re a good group. You’ve resisted evil. You’ve tested people who claim to rise up among you with apostolic authority—they didn’t have it, and you found them to be false. You dealt with them.

You’ve been patient. You’ve persevered, meaning you’ve held to true doctrine and faith. You’ve labored—you’ve done a work for My name’s sake. And you haven’t grown weary.

Now, that’s the commendation. And that’s a typical pattern in most of the messages—there’s a commendation. But... Right?

You ever had that happen to you? From your parents, or from your job? “You’re a great employee. You’re a great daughter. But...” There’s that issue—your room, or something else. Your parents say, “We’ve got to work on that.” Well, that’s kind of what Christ is doing here.

“You’ve done well. But...”

Revelation 2:4 “Nevertheless, I have this against you: that you have left your first love.”

Now, that’s an important phrase—“first love.” You’ve left it. Wow.

What is that “first love”? We’ll come back to that.

Revelation 2:5 “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.”

Now, the lampstand is one of the seven, among which Christ stands in this representation. And there’s a danger here. If they don’t change, Christ will take that lampstand and remove them. They would no longer be the Church. They’d be in a position where they’re no longer responsive to Him as the Head.

He can’t work with them—and they could be removed. Meaning, they collapse.

You ever seen those blow-up Santas? Or reindeer? You know—those air-filled decorations outside businesses or in people’s yards. You’ve got a big floppy guy waving around. But it’s powered by an air machine.

Turn off the air, what happens? It collapses.

Now, that’s maybe a bad analogy—Santa Claus and all—but the point is: you may be full-blown, functional, visible... but turn off the life source? Christ removes your lampstand? You collapse. Ineffective.

That’s what He’s saying.

And He’s giving them—and us—an opportunity to change.

“Repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).

Revelation 2:6 “But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” 

Revelation 2:7 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God” 

All right. Now this—verse 7—He mentions the overcoming. But then He also says, “Let him who has an ear hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” That also is said to each of the seven churches. “Hear what the Spirit says.” All right?

Hear the Spirit. So you can put in your notes: all seven churches are told to hear the Spirit, and to overcome, and to—have a—they get a promise. So there’s kind of three similarities there. All right?

They all have to overcome to inherit that promise.

So this is the message to the church at Ephesus.

Now here’s a picture on the monitor of a portion of the current city—and a building. This is an ancient building called the Library of Celsus. It was a library. The contents were not books like we have, but scrolls at that time. It dates from the time of the late first century. Paul would not have seen this building when he was in residency at Ephesus, but it’s a common picture in Ephesus today, and all the tours stop right there.

But there was another distinguishing feature of the city of Ephesus—among many. And we will read about this in the Book of Acts when Paul is there.

The city had a large temple to the goddess Diana—or Artemis, Diana of the Ephesians. And it’s in Acts 19 where we read that Paul’s preaching was so effective that he cut into the business of the silversmiths who made images of the goddess Diana.

This is a scale model from the museum at Ephesus that I took. And if you look all the way through the middle of the columns, you’ll see a statue of the goddess back there. This is what the temple looked like at the time of the apostle Paul and the first century, as they received this message. And this was a central feature of the city of Ephesus.

This temple to Diana—or Artemis—was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Historians designated seven things throughout the ancient world as “wonders.” The temple of Diana at Ephesus was one of those seven ancient wonders of the world at that time. It was quite magnificent.

It was not the only one dedicated to the goddess Diana. There were multiple temples to Diana in Turkey—or Asia Minor—and throughout the world at this time. But this was considered the number one. And the city had the honor of holding that.

It contained thousands of priests and priestesses to serve all the ceremonies. Many of the priestesses were dedicated to prostitution.

This is what it looks like today. There’s nothing there. There’s one upright pillar—you see that in the image here—that’s been reconstructed. But it’s just kind of a static lagoon, and you kind of walk around it. There’s nothing there. It was dismantled in late antiquity.

Frankly, if you go today—on tours that I take—you go to Istanbul, and you go into the great church called the Hagia Sophia, the “goddess of wisdom,” to the goddess of wisdom—to wisdom. Today it’s a mosque. It originally was a church—a Byzantine church. And there are columns inside that church today—many of which came out of the temple of Diana.

They believed in recycling in the ancient world, and those columns were quite expensive to make. So when they tore this down, a lot of the stuff wound up in Christian churches. Hagia Sophia, in what was then Byzantium—built in the 600s A.D.

But same thing happened with many other pagan temples from antiquity. As they were dismantled with the rise of Christianity, the materials found their way into large Christian basilicas and churches throughout Europe and the ancient world—recycled, repurposed. And along with that, we had a lot of pagan teaching as well. But that’s another part of the story.

This is a depiction of what that goddess would have looked like in her early years. Artemis was a fertility goddess, and this is an early representation of a goddess by a different name—but kind of an ancestor of Artemis. And you can see—she’s kind of fat. And she’s kind of rolling along there with a lot of things hanging out.

But she’s worshiped as a goddess of fertility.

Now here’s what the goddess looked like at the time of Paul and the message we’re reading about. You can see—she slimmed down. She went on a keto diet, okay? And she slimmed down. But she’s got multiple breasts hanging out of her—or beehives—or bull testicles, depending upon which interpretation you have.

A little bit frank here as part of this, but it's what people worship. She was a goddess of fertility. The experts are divided on what is represented there, but she went from this to this. And this is what caused all the ruckus in Acts 19, when Paul, through his preaching, cut into the business trade of silversmiths—making small images based off of this particular design right there.

Well, if you’re a church member in Ephesus, this is the center of the civic religious life in Ephesus. And you come into the Church—you don’t go there anymore. You don’t go there for any purpose anymore. But there’s consequences to that. You don’t go to the other places.

This is the ruins of, in Ephesus, the temple that was built to honor the god Domitian—who I mentioned in the last class—the Roman Emperor Domitian, who made the mistake of wanting to be worshiped as a god while he was still alive. He had a temple built to him in Ephesus. These are the ruins of it.

But a part of the problem—and this is something that we will note throughout all of our studies of these seven churches—the problem the church members had to contend with was emperor worship. Not just pagan god worship like Artemis—that too was a problem—but now, with this development of the Roman Empire in the late first century, there were temples now to Augustus, there were temples to Tiberius, Nero, and others—Vespasian, and now Domitian.

And part of your civic duty was to go there at least once a year and make a sacrifice.

This is the problem that you as a church member—and I—would have run into in all of these seven cities. And it's common to what is the message to each of these seven, and that is the cult of emperor worship at this time.

It’s hard for us to understand that, because we don’t have these temples like this and these demands upon us today. We have other demands that can be equally damaging spiritually, but this is one. And so we’re going to kind of take a minute on this, because emperor worship impacts every one of the seven churches and the members there.

If you did not go down and, in a sense, pay your tax through money to a service, you could have been ostracized. You could have been ostracized from your job and within your community. You could have been killed. And we read about people who did—we’ll read about that in the message to Pergamos.

And so, when we look at this message to Ephesus, we’ve got a lot to consider.

So, going back to it, I want to just call your attention to Him.

“But this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Revelation 2:6).

Who were the Nicolaitans?

The best that we can understand is, they were a heretical group that developed in the first century, blending pagan ideas with elements of the truth, that became popular for people to follow. And it became a trap for some in the Church—which is why Jesus says to them here, “You hate their deeds, which I also hate.”

The technical term for that is syncretism—where you blend ideas together to come up with a dogma. And in this case, they would have blended elements of the truth with elements of paganism to come up with untruth—kind of a cafeteria-style approach to religion. And so this was a particular group mentioned here that we know a little bit about here as well.

Now, notice He says, “You have been patient. You have found those that are claimed to be apostles and are not”—verse 2—“you found them to be liars” (Revelation 2:2). Here's where it's important to look at this message and certainly to understand the first-century context for it.

I'm going to tell you something at this point I want you to remember: We know more about this congregation at Ephesus than any of the other six congregations from Scripture.

And we know more about this congregation from Scripture—why?

Let me tell you why.

First, we have this message right here in Revelation chapter 2.

We also have a letter called Ephesians.

We also have two chapters in the book of Acts—19 and 20, largely chapter 19—where Paul is at Ephesus, and we know what he did, as Luke records it. So there's three.

First and Second Timothy were written to the minister—or the pastor—of the church at Ephesus. And there, Timothy is told—Paul tells Timothy—how to deal with certain problems that are in the Church. You haven’t covered Timothy yet in your studies, but you will.

There’s also First, Second, and Third John—the epistles of John—which were, or are felt to have been, written to the Church at Ephesus by John, who’s the author—or the recipient—of the book of Revelation.

Ephesians, Revelation, Timothy, and John and Acts give us a wealth of knowledge about the church at Ephesus—the life of it, what was going on. And when we look at this message, I will say that there's a lot—that if you take the cumulative impact of those letters in the books of the New Testament—if we read this letter today, and if we read the whole story of the Ephesian church from the New Testament Scripture, there's a lot there for us to relate to today in the Church, to instruct us.

Let me illustrate.

What does He say in verse 2? "You have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars" (Revelation 2:2). Apostles—what’s an apostle? It’s one sent with a message, technically. The Apostle Paul was an apostle. We have twelve of the original apostles. An argument could be made that Barnabas was an apostle too. But let’s just stick with Paul, who wrote the letters and who was there.

Paul starts the church in Ephesus, but then Paul eventually dies. But the church at Ephesus lives on. This letter here is being written in the 90s—some 40-plus years after the founding of the Church. A lot has happened. The founding generation is just about gone.

Get it? The founding generation? They’ve had splits—because in chapter 20 of Acts, Paul warns the elders at the church at Ephesus: they’re going to come in among you, men who are wolves, seeking to divide the Church.

That happened. Paul—or Christ—says it happened. "You have found those that claim to be of an apostolic position, like Paul, the founding minister. You found them to be liars, and you’ve worked against them."

They’ve had to deal with persecution. They’ve had to deal with false teaching. When it comes—and again, read 1, 2, and 3 John, and you see some of what those problems were. Gnostic teaching. Denying Christ. We've had that in our period today.

Here’s my point: we in the Church of God today—your parents, your aunts and uncles, me, my mother—throughout our time, we’ve lived through a kind of founding period of our church experience with a leading minister, who then died. Who then died. And then afterwards, many come along claiming to hold his position: “Be like him. Follow me into this church organization. I’ll restore the truths. Oh, we’ll be more Philadelphia here.”

And so, we see the landscape that we have today—and the impact upon the Church. It’s worn at us. We’ve resisted that.

My point is: we have a lot in common with what happened in the first century that is addressed to the Church—both in this letter and in the other letters of the New Testament—to give us some solid instruction.

I can’t go too deep into all of it by going to all those other passages. But we’ve had to look at some who claim to be apostolic, or coming with a message, that say, “Follow me across the street into my organization.” And I will tell you personally, I’ve had to say, I don’t think so. There’s problems here and this and that. I’m not going to.

You, your families, people listening to this—we’ve all been in that boat. We have to make a decision. Where are we going to park ourselves to be fed the truth and to prosper spiritually—to hear the Spirit, to overcome, and to work toward that promise that Christ has given to us?

Christ commends the Ephesians for their labor, their patience in verse 3. And He says, “You’ve not become weary.” But He says, “You’ve left your first love.” Now that was their problem.

Now, I will tell you—they were holding on, but the years would have taken their toll, just like they have with us. And Christ says, “Get back to your first love.”

What was the first love of the Ephesians? Well, it certainly was a love for the truth. But when you look at Acts 19, you actually can see what it was.

In Acts 19, people turned from idolatry. They burned their books of magic. And they turned to the worship of the true God. That was their first love—as told to us by Acts 19.

And a church grew there. And an effective church—that Paul could thrive in as a teacher—and from which other congregations throughout the region of Asia Minor could be started. It was a productive period of time. Probably Paul’s most productive period of ministry. We’ll talk more about that when we get to chapter 19.

But it applies here.

I think that they had a love for the truth, but in their zeal and turning away from it—in the midst of their pagan, idolatrous culture—they had to get back to this iron-clad zeal, and to remember their first works, lest they kind of just be deflated and their lampstand removed.

And so, the church that’s holding on—they have to make a bit of a course correction and examine themselves in the light of this letter as it’s read to them. Keep in mind: this letter is read to them on a Sabbath, after it is put together and distributed. And they’re hearing this.

Put yourself— as we look at each of these messages—put yourself in the seats of the congregation. How would you take this message?

As I said at the beginning, this is really the only way we can take any of these messages—as we listen to it in 2025, at your age and your stage in your life, your spiritual development. Where I am right now—I’ve been reading this since I was, you know, early teens. And I’ve heard all the teaching about the seven churches, and etc.

And I come down to my age at this time and my years of experience—2025—and I’m still reading it. What do I take away from it?

Well, I take away from it what the Scripture tells me—that I should look at my zeal, my love for truth, for the Bible, for God, for Christ... to be sharp in my estimation of false teaching from any modern Nicolaitan-type group that wants to blend in elements of teaching and ideas and philosophy and ideology from today to water down my love and zeal for the truth.

What idea might you hold that is your pet idea that may not be exactly square with doctrinal, biblical teaching—but it’s comfortable for you and it’s attractive? Where did it come from? The culture around us? From some other message you may have picked up from somebody or somewhere else?

That’s what we have to examine ourselves against today and take from this.

And I will tell you—30 years ago, when we formed the United Church of God—we labored, we stood up. We’ve had struggles in the interim period, but we’re still holding firm to our teaching and to our doctrine and to our truth. But I will tell you that we’ve had patience, we’ve endured—but it still takes a toll. Still takes a toll. And it can diminish a bit of love.

And that can be manifested in brotherly love, godly love, or love for God—in a true relationship with God or His Word. But each of us have to examine it and take it at that point and at that level.

And that is a big takeaway. Because as it says, if we have an ear to hear—“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7).

The Spirit is the Lord. It’s the Father. It is God.

God’s Spirit guides and directs and is in the Church through us—as individuals—as we have that Spirit through baptism, laying on of hands, and as we have been put into the Body of Christ. And we yield to the lead of God’s Spirit, and it flows through all of us.

And as we listen to that—if you have an ear (we all have an ear)—then hear what the Spirit says to the Church. God’s talking to the Church today. Christ is talking to us. We still have to overcome.

Now that last phrase: “I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7). Now, that can bring up an allusion to the Garden in Eden in Genesis, the paradise of God—eating from the tree of life there. And that’s certainly a primary matter. Adam and Eve should have taken from the tree of life.

As God has called us—and through His Spirit and His truth—we have access to and can take of the tree of life today, that is in the midst of the paradise of God.

Scholars say that this teaching could have reminded people of this particular image in their city when they heard the message. Around the temple of Artemis—the original site of this temple to Diana/Artemis—was in a grove of trees. And then this temple grew and took that over.

But even as you look at the columns of this temple, they are carved in such a way with leaves and embroidery and all on it to give the impression—if you were to walk through a forest of columns—you would be thinking that you were in some kind of a garden-like place where there are trees of life, and from a pagan perspective, a paradise of at least the god—or in this case, the goddess.

So some scholars kind of make that allusion, that this was given to Ephesus because of the temple. And that would be a secondary application.

But primarily, for us, it would be to the Garden in Eden experience—and access to the knowledge of God. That is the promise when that Edenic world is restored with the coming of Christ in the new age.

So that’s the message to the Church at Ephesus.

At this rate, we’re going to be stuck here for a long time—but it’s okay. We’ll go a little bit faster with the others.

Next, we will talk about the Church at Smyrna. We’ll pick that up in the next class.