The 7 Churches of Revelation, Part 1

Good morning, everyone. Pentecost is a week from tomorrow, and I think all of us understand that Pentecost is a symbol of a number of factors. First of all, the first fruits of God's plan and purpose. It is also the day that we, in a sense, commemorate as the start of the church, the New Testament church, when we look at the book of Acts, chapter 2, and we see that it was on the day of Pentecost. When it was fully come, the church was gathered there in the precincts of the temple that the church began.

And so from that date in 31 A.D., we figure on Pentecost the birthday, if you will, of the church of God, the New Testament church. And so it's only fitting that we spend some time thinking about that, as we will today, and very likely next week in next week's sermon that I give, or Bible study that I'll give you as well. It just happens that this year I am going to be giving my early church history classes at the Ambassador Bible Center prior to Pentecost.

I normally do this in June, but this year I'm going down tomorrow night, and this coming Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'll be teaching my early church history classes at the Ambassador Bible Center. This year I'm going to have 15 extra students setting in on the class. There's about 40-plus students at ABC this year, and we'll have an additional 15 this week because running concurrently right now is the last session of the pastoral training program that Ministerial Services has been conducting for a group of 15 ministers who have been recently hired into the ministry full-time. They started in January coming in for like a 10-day session, and this is their third and final session.

And they're going to set in on my class on Monday and Wednesday when I teach, and then on Tuesday morning I have about two hours with this class giving a session to them solely on Revelation chapters 2 and 3, where it talks about the message to the seven churches. So as I've been preparing, getting my head wrapped around church history and early church history and book of Revelation for this, these classes, I only give it once a year, so I have to kind of refresh my mind a lot through the material.

I've been adding some stuff, and with this extra class I have to teach, that is where my mind has been in recent days in preparing for that. And so I'm going to share with you some information that I will kind of overview of some of the information I will give and talk to the pastors about. The reason I'm doing this, not because I am the church expert on church history or Revelation 2 and 3, I am not, but I had the, we had a regional conference last October, and we were doing one of these whiteboard sessions interactive where you put a lot of things on the board and ideas about what is it that you would want a newly hired minister to know and to understand.

What should he be trained in to be an effective pastor? And I raised my hand after about 15 minutes of give and take, I raised my hand and said, well, you know, I think a man, a minister, any minister, knew or otherwise, ought to have a good grounding in the early history of the church. They don't have to be experts in it, but they should understand the book of Acts and the subsequent decades and first two or three centuries and how the truth of God was corrupted and changed in that early period, which is what I cover in my class.

And so I said, okay, I made my contribution. Now I can go back to sleep in the session. Well, Richard Penelli was in the back of the hall. He was getting together. He's in charge of the training these new ministers. And after the session ended, he came up and he said, I want you to teach that. I want you to prepare a class on that for these ministers. So the moral of the story is never raise your hand and contribute in certain sessions unless you're willing to follow through on these things. So not only that, to teach the ABC students now, I've got to teach my peers.

And that's all that's even rougher when you start talking to another group of ministers and try to teach them something about the Bible. You know, you're tough enough, but try talking to a group of ministers who think they know it all and try to teach them something new about the Bible and the book of Revelation and church history, things like that.

So I've been a little antsy about this for several weeks in trying to get this together and prepare it. But what I want to talk with you about is just, it'll be an overview, not all the details that I will cover, but I have been thinking about this a great deal. And let's just turn back to the book of Revelation and turn to Revelation chapter 1. And let me share with you some of my thoughts and observations and I hope some fresh insight for us all. I have really begun to, I've been focusing on this and for a number of reasons, Revelation has kind of taken on a different cast to me in recent weeks as I've written some things about it and preparing for these classes.

We've all, in many ways, Revelation is a fascinating book with the prophecies and the beasts and the images and the numbers and all of these things and for prophecy buffs. I mean, you can wade into Revelation and very quickly get lost in all of the symbolism and the story flow of Revelation and you can spend all the time you want going through this book and coming to a lot of understanding and then in some areas you don't know any more than you did before you began in some ways.

And yet there are some fundamental principles to understand about the book of Revelation and especially in this area, the first few chapters that talk about the church. First of all, when you look in chapter 1, you understand how it all begins and that is in verse 1, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to show His servants things which must shortly take place and He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John. So it is Christ's revelation. We've always emphasized that. It is not John's, it is Christ's. He is in the book from the very beginning.

He's in the middle of it. He's at the beginning. He's at the end. He is the Alpha and the Omega. And chapter 1 sets that stage. And then down in verse 3 it says, Blessed is He who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near. This is the first of what are really seven blessings throughout the book that offer a blessing to the reader.

And the first one is here in verse 3. If you read this book and you not only read it but you hear the words of the prophecy. You really take it to heart. And not only that but then you keep those things that are written. In other words, they guide your actions. They are what you keep. So you read, you hear, and you keep. Now you can read the book and, okay, that's a nice book, put it aside. You can read it and understand or hear the words and have a certain level of understanding about it.

But then you have to move to a third level which is actually keeping these things that are written in the book. And that's a blessing. You will be blessed for that crisis. So it really gets off on a very positive note. It's a very positive book. Revelation is not a book of total gloom and doom.

In fact, it does contain some bad things, let's be honest about that, that are going to happen to humanity and this world at the close of this age. But overall, it is a message of hope because it shows that Christ is guiding and directing history, human events, kings, and His church. Christ is in charge and that nothing happens that He neglects or He does not understand. And then in verse 4, it says, John, to the seven churches which are in Asia.

And so we get specific and we see that seven churches are singled out here for this message and to understand and to receive this message. And then He goes on with a typical introductory comments of grace and peace to you from Him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits which are before His throne.

And He has made us and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler over the kings of the earth. So Christ here is shown to be the ruler of the kings. This is a book that talks about what world leaders both from a political and a religious perspective are doing through history and especially at the time of the day of the Lord, the time of the end.

And yet we're told here that Christ is the ruler over those kings, which means that they don't do anything without His permission, without His knowledge. They are allowed a great deal of leeway, but ultimately it is all within His hands that Christ is the ruler over the kings of the earth. Revelation is going to talk a great deal about those kings.

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. So here's the first time that the promise of being a king and a priest is mentioned to the saints.

You recall that in chapter 20, this also comes back and is told that Christ has made us kings and priests to our Lord and Father, when He speaks of those who are part of the first resurrection. So the true kingship rests with the saints and those to whom this book is addressed. Then He says, I am Alpha and Omega in verse 8, and the beginning and the end says the Lord who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty.

This is repeated again in verse 11 when it says that I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.

And so seven churches are mentioned here. Now, let's understand that what is familiar to some of us, but let's rehearse once again. These were seven congregations of the church in Asia Minor. They were literal cities and there were churches in those cities from Ephesus to Laodicea. Those churches probably began during the ministry of Paul at various times. Maybe Timothy was involved and others, but you can look at the story flow of Paul's travels through the book of Acts and you can figure at a time that he spent a great deal of time at one point in Ephesus. And it may be, although the record doesn't specifically show that, but that would have been a logical time for him perhaps to either have gone out himself to some of these other cities and raised up churches or deputized or some of his assistants may have done that at the time. But over a period of years, these churches began. There's also another note that's important to understand and that is we know from the, again, the way things happened and just the culture of the time that these were seven cities that were on a mail route. And when John wrote the letter and put it into mailbox, it first went to Ephesus and then it went to Smyrna and then it went to Pergamos, then it went to Thyatira and then to Sardis and then to Philadelphia and to Laodicea. And there was an order and a progression of these churches by which the mail in a sense was delivered. So the order in which these churches are mentioned relates to the order of the the route, the mail route, that they had during that period of time. That is another interesting note to kind of just keep in the back of our mind as we think about the message to the churches and what it means.

There is a progression in terms of at least space from one city to the other, but eventually they would have all received it as it would have been written on a parchment and they would have had it read to them in their congregations. The remainder of chapter one focuses upon Jesus as this image that this vision that John had because he said, I turned in verse 12 to see the voice that spoke with me and having turned I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands one like the son of man clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.

His head and hair were white like wool as white as snow and his eyes like a flame of fire. His feet were like fine brass as it refined in a furnace and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in his right hand seven stars and out of his mouth when a sharp two-edged sword and his countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And so this is a vision that John had of Jesus Christ standing in the midst of seven lampstands. Now these were separate lampstands that was more like what stood in the temple and they are not like the seven branched menorah that we know from the Jewish tradition, but they are seven separate standing lampstands that he stands within the midst of.

And these court correlate to the seven churches that are mentioned in verse 11, these seven congregations. But verse 17, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead and he laid his right hand on me saying to me, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last.

I am he who lives and was dead. Behold, I am alive forevermore and I have the keys of the grave and of death. Write the things which you have seen and the things which are and the things which will take place after this. The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.

So this is very easily understood here in the first chapter. The symbols are interpreted. The stars are angels and by that we could gain that they are specific angels appointed to each church which is I think the likely interpretation of this because in the Bible stars are used as a symbol of angels, not necessarily humans. And so the focus is upon the message to the angels of the church and the various churches. What you're mentioned here such as if you look in verse one of chapter two it says to the angel of the church of Ephesus write or to the messenger which is the Greek word angelos from which we get the word angel is a messenger.

We see in the Bible that angels are are messengers of God from his throne to communicate various things to the servants. Daniel received various angelic messengers in his prophecies and various other occasions we find in the Bible where angels communicated to humans information and aspects of God's will. And so we see here that there seems to be an angel that is somehow appointed as a overseer or as a messenger responsible for these seven congregations, these seven congregations of God that are are mentioned from these particular particular cities.

From that we gain I think probably the most important thing to understand is that Christ is guiding and directing all of us. Keep in mind he is standing in the midst of these seven golden lampstands as we find out from verse 12 and 13. He stands in the middle of them. And probably the biggest message that all of us should focus on when it comes to what we are being told here is that Christ is in the midst of His church.

He is involved in His church at all times. Christ made the promise that the church would never die. He said, I will be with you until the end of the age. He said to Peter, I will build my church. The gates of the grave will not prevail against it. That is a sure promise from the Gospels that God's church would never fade, never die. It would be persecuted.

It would always be small. It would never be a large world-dominating religion. The church of God would never be what would be classified by scholars as a world faith like Hinduism or Islam.

It is not a world faith. It's always been a small flock and it's always been one that has been, quite frankly, on the fringes looked upon as a cult. Through the ages, you can see where the people of God were persecuted. In the early stages of the church, they were put to death.

Even up into the 16th century in England, to keep the Sabbath could have caused you to lose your head, which we find records of people losing their head in England because they kept the Sabbath.

And they were executed by the state. We've never experienced anything like that. And God willing and hopefully we won't in one sense, but that's alien to us to consider, to think about, with the freedoms that we have. But the message to the church is that Christ is always in the midst of the church. He is guiding it. And that is anchored here at the very beginning of the book of Revelation. And this letter was sent to these seven congregations, and it's a message for all of the church to understand. But at probably the top of our list of things to learn from Revelation is that Christ is always guiding his church. In fact, when we look at these messages to the seven churches, there is a common message to each one of them, which is to repent and listen to what the Spirit has to say to the churches. He who has ears to hear will read that in a minute. And, brethren, that's something that we have got to keep in mind in a practical way in our own time, and even this very moment within the church as we move forward.

I had communicated to you the vote of the ministers two weeks ago over this proposal to relocate the home office from Ohio to Texas. And I was honest with you up front as to how I would vote on that. And many of you have been honest with me in terms of your thoughts and feelings.

The vote was taken by seven votes. We're going to Texas. And it's a done deal. And we have to accept that and move forward. Now, I haven't changed the reasons that I voted the way that I did.

But as I have said, this was a business decision. This is not a spiritual decision. It's only spiritual if we get cranked out of shape and let our attitudes get really funky about it. Then it becomes a spiritual issue. And I think what we...and I'll just share personally how I've come to think these things through. And that is just what we've been reading here in Revelation, that Christ is in the middle of His church. He's among the seven lampstands.

And He's either guiding us or He's not. And I happen to believe that He is guiding us.

Not always in ways that any one of us can always see and understand at any given time.

But as I pray about it and think about it, then I have to come to a realization that Christ knows something, perhaps Christ knows something that we don't know.

He sees something that we don't see. When you look at this message, and you understand it and allow myself to get a little bit Star Trek-y here, John is seeing this in vision. And he's seeing the resurrected Christ.

And he says, I'm the Alpha and the Omega. Now, that's a whole mind-blowing statement in itself.

But if I can simplify it, just look at this book and all that we are told in Revelation, and especially the message to the churches here, just as we focus on that. Look at that, and look at Christ, in a sense, John saw Christ out into the future. Christ is already there.

He knows how it ends. He knows the plan from Alpha to Omega, from beginning to ending. And it's progressing according to his plan. Nothing has upset it. The powers and the forces of evil and the physical forces directed by Satan through the ages have never derailed the plan of God and its purpose. We know as we keep the Passover each year, we see Satan's direct hand in trying to thwart that part of the plan of God when it comes to the Passover sacrifice and Christ's sacrifice. It didn't happen. It came off right on schedule, and as it was planned, and it happened.

Christ is out in the future, and he's waiting for us. He's waiting for the church. He's waiting for the fulfillment of all of these things, and they're going to come to pass, and the Kingdom of God is ultimately going to be here. And so, again, without getting into the questions of free will and, you know, and all of these things, let's just understand that Christ looks further ahead than we do.

And some of these things we just have to understand and recognize and focus on what he is saying to the churches. So that's how I've worked it through in my mind, and if it helps you, then let's understand it, put it all in context, and we'll move forward and see how the fruits and the things all work out, work together. If it's otherwise, then Christ will show us through some things, perhaps even beyond our means at this point. So I certainly want God's blessing on any decision of that magnitude that is made. But I think you all realize that within the United Church of God, we chose 12 years ago to give a voice that we had never chosen or had before in terms of some of our decisions, and we at least have an opportunity to express that voice and opinion. But then we also decided that we were going to move forward together rather than separate. And this is not an issue to separate over and is or to decide to set out and come to some other conclusion.

Christ is not dealing with the Church in that way. He is dealing with the Church with some very clear specific messages. And when you look at those messages, really to all of us today, it all comes down to listening to what the Spirit has to say to the Church. If we can just jump into chapter 2 and go down to verse 7, this is at the end of the message to the Church of Ephesus. It says, 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. The first part of that chapter, that verse is repeated to every Church in this, these two chapters. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the Churches. And that really becomes the main message to the Church at any time, at any place, and for all of us to understand. Listen to what Christ says.

Listen to what God is telling us. Make sure that it waxes out of our ears. Make sure the eyes are seeing just as clear as they can. And listen and hear what God, what the Spirit, says to the Churches. And it's speaking in plural. So it's speaking to, I take that, the message that is contained herein is relevant to all of the Churches. And every Church on these seven Churches should have understood that. And God's people and God's Church at any time should look at any of the messages that are given and strive to understand what is being said, and to take instruction from those messages. Because I think this admonition applies to all of God's people in whichever age they might live. True Christians in all ages should be concerned about their spiritual condition, the conditions that are mentioned here in these two chapters, to make sure that we embody the positive ones and that we stay as far away as we possibly can from the negative ones. Because these are the words of Christ to His called-out sons, and there are many lessons for us to look at and to understand. When we look at what Christ is the head of the Church here is teaching us, there are many things for us to hear and to understand from these seven messages given to the angels of each of these particular congregations. And depending on the perspective that we take and understand this in, I think it will determine probably the depth of our understanding of the whole message. Now over the years in the Church, we have looked at these messages and we have understood them. There are several ways, really in one sense, to look at these passages. Let me just rehearse a little bit. First of all, what I've already mentioned one way is to look at these messages as messages to specific congregations in the first century located in Asia Minor, which they are. They were, I should say.

That was a Greek-speaking Roman province in what is today Western Turkey. Last year, we did have a feast site in that area and a hundred or more members and ministers, they traveled to each of these seven locations where these churches existed and had a kind of a roving feast site there. I wish I could have been on that one, but it wasn't possible. They visited these areas. You can go there today and there are nothing but ruins of the original cities. There are amphitheaters, there are buildings and the typical Greek columns of the period that remain. The various sites are in various stages of excavation and observation for people who go there today.

But those cities, such as Ephesus, over a period of time, they just passed from the scene.

And there's a great deal to learn from the location, the physical descriptions of each of these cities. I'm not going to take the time to go through all of that here with you this morning.

But a way to look at these messages is that they were messages to these specific congregations in the first century. And no doubt, as I already mentioned, the contents of this book were read to these churches. And in fact, all seven letters were probably sent to each congregation along with the entire book of Revelation. Now, another way to look at these seven churches is that they represent the progressive state of the Church of God through the centuries. Now, this has been a traditional way that we took to understand the messages in our past. And for those of us that came into church in the 1960s and read such booklets as The True History of the True Church, or went through the original 56 or 58 lesson edition of the correspondence course, we were schooled in an approach to this that went through that idea that these were progressive state of God's Church down through the centuries that linked God's Church through time. And we looked at these seven churches as seven eras, beginning with Ephesus and ending with Laodicea, that the Ephesian era was that of the first century church. The Laodicea era would be that of the last period before the return of Christ, and that in between the other five eras represent various phases of the church down through history. And we had a very elaborate scenario based on our studies, studies of various men in the early years of the Masseter College, that laid this out. And those booklets, that booklet and those Bible study courses that I mentioned to you, went into a great deal of detail to explain then how that the Ephesian era ended at a certain time, and the Smyrna era began subsequently. And it lasted for a period of time, and then it ended, and then the Pergamos era began, and so on, down through the Dark Ages and through the Middle Ages and into the modern period. And we were, in the early years, or during the mainstream years, the worldwide church of God, we would say that the worldwide church of God represented the Philadelphian era of the church at that particular point, and the Laodicean was to come. We made some very specific statements about that and taught that in our literature and looked at these messages primarily from that point of view. Now, these other points were always mentioned, too. I can remember that being brought out, that they were seven churches then, and that all of the messages... because it's a third way to look at it, and that is that the characteristics of the seven churches can all exist simultaneously among God's people at the end of the age.

That's another possibility, is how to look at the messages to the churches.

In the early 1980s, when they had formulated a church history class that was taught at Ambassador College, Mr. Herbert Armstrong told the instructor of the class not to teach dogmatically the idea of these seven messages in these seven churches as specific church eras. I have that in writing. I've heard that on the presentations that Mr. Armstrong instructed the teacher at the time not to focus on these as eras in that sense. Mr. Armstrong felt that there was not enough historical evidence available to us to say that a group of people in the Alps of Switzerland, let's say in the 1400s, was indeed the Thyatyran era of the church or indeed even the church of God, as we had alluded to and put those particular titles to over the years.

When I heard that, I thought, hmm, that's interesting. I began to go back into a study of it myself. Obviously, I've always had an interest in church history, and many of you know that, but I looked into it, and I had access to a lot of research that was done by some of the men at the college, Dean Blackwell and others. Mr. Blackwell had written a very thick thesis on church history, and I've got copies of it, and I'd talk with him and looked through it all. I did a Bible study in the early 1990s down in Indianapolis and went through Revelation 2 and 3. I had to come to the conclusion that Mr. Armstrong was right, that we don't have enough hard physical historical evidence to say that this group of people at this particular time in history that we can read about was indeed the era of the church or represented the church of God. We just don't have enough information. Reasons being, the evidence is just not there. We have scattered bits and pieces of information about these various people, but that information was written by those who won. If you get what I'm saying, history, there was a saying about history. History is written by those who win, which means that they destroy what was written by those who lost, and then they rewrite history because they won. I mean, that's been the whole history of mankind, and you see that very quickly when it comes to church history. I have to be very careful in what I say even about the first couple of centuries of church history when we do have some interesting information, but I have to realize we don't know everything. And this one particular person may have been a true minister of the church, and he may not have been. I can make a deduction based from the knowledge that I have that he might have been, and I could have been comfortable setting in his congregation listening to him preach on the Sabbath. But then again, I have to realize I don't have the whole story. So don't be too dogmatic, and so it goes down through time. In fact, when you get into the Middle Ages, most of the histories that we have were written a lot by the Catholics who went in to exterminate these people as heretics. And yet there's always been some fascinating information that has been made available about people who stood up against the power of the church, who did not swear allegiance to the pope, who did not worship the Virgin Mary, who didn't feel that a cross was something to venerate. And we can get bits and pieces of what they believed, but we don't again know the whole story of their whole fundamentals of belief. You can pick up a book called The Fundamentals of Belief, The United Church of God. You know the 20 points that we believe as our fundamentals. You can't find that about any other group of people through history virtually. You can find bits and pieces. So I think Mr. Armstrong came to a conclusion wisely that we need to be careful with what we say about various organizations and individuals in terms of identifying them with eras of the church down through time. Now that's not to say that the message here in Revelation 2 and 3 is not showing us a prophetic sense of the church down through time. That in some way there is a progression. In fact, let me read to you, just for your refreshing, what we wrote and have written in our booklet, The Book of Revelation Unveiled. I just took this off the internet. We spent a lot of hours going through that booklet as part of our committee work back in 2000 to make sure we vetted that book properly.

Remember our discussions on this particular section. Here's what we do say about Revelation 2 and 3 and what is these messages to the churches. I won't read it all, but it says, first of all, each church needed a particular message and the spiritual state of each church corresponded precisely to the exhortation which was given. The selection of the churches was also governed by the fact that each one was in some way normative and illustrated conditions common in local churches. The messages to the seven churches, therefore, embody admonitions suitable for churches in many types of spiritual need, along with the messages to the churches were exhortations which are personal in character, constituting instruction and warning to the individual Christian.

Many expositors believe that in addition to the obvious implication of these messages, the seven churches represent the chronological development of church history viewed spiritually.

They note that Ephesus seems to characterize the apostolic period in general, and that the progression of evil, climaxing and laodicea, seems to indicate the final state of apostasy of the church. The order of the messages to the churches seems to be divinely selected to give prophetically the main movement of church history. Let me repeat that last phrase. The order of the messages to the churches seems to be divinely selected to give prophetically the main movement of church history. We lifted that as a quote from a book entitled The Revelation of Jesus Christ by John Walford.

And that in a sense summarizes an interesting approach and a logical and possible approach to this, that there is a prophetic movement through these messages of church history down through time. We felt that that was specific enough for us to make as a statement in our booklet on Revelation at this point in time without getting into the matter of eras and everything that is dealt with there. One of the other problems that you run into with the traditional way in which we explained this was this, that if we said that the worldwide church of God at a particular point was the Philadelphian era, then what is it now?

And what has happened? And I think we all realize that various people have made various claims about who is Philadelphian and who is Laodicea. And the obvious conclusion that I came to a long time ago on this is that whenever we started to put, at any time, if you put a name and an organizational title around any of these churches in terms of trying to label a group or a people or a person, you run into a very serious problem of judging. And that gets problematic. Because I think we all should recognize the problem now that if we stick strictly to that and a very strict adherence to this teaching of eras, then who is Laodicea, who is Philadelphia, and all of this? And do we really know? I don't think we do. And I don't think any one individual knows or any one organization can make those claims. I think that that is not what the message of the book is, because when you get into judging of each other and other fellow Christians, you're into a category Christ said you better not get into. And the fruits of what has happened in the last 10, 12, 13, 15 years where various groups have formed and called themselves this and that, and they begin to make serious judgments about other Christians, to me, belies Christianity and the fruits of the spirit and are totally wrong. And so I think that that is a flaw that we've had to live with and part of the fruit sown by trying to figure out in a sincere way. Quite frankly, let's look at it this way. Some of the men who formulated these ideas in the 1950s in the then radio Church of God were men in their 20s. These men are now in their 70s or 80s, and they're still alive.

And they were sincere people, but they were they were naive in the faith. They were new in the faith. They were sincere. They were studying history. They were studying the Bible, sitting at the feet of Mr. Armstrong. But, you know, this entire structure was built at a time when the church was quite young and ideas were being formed by men who were quite young.

At a time 25 years younger than I am now, without the experience that we have had, we've gone through in the church in subsequent years and the testing and proving of certain theories and ideas by time and again by Scripture. And I submit by the lead of God's Holy Spirit, I think, bring us to the point of stepping back from that and asking some very important questions and looking at this to see exactly what it is that we are being told. So I don't teach eras as we traditionally believed it in the past, but I do believe that there are things to learn from that. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't look at, let's say, the Waldensians of the Alps of the Middle Ages and recognize that among those people, they were probably members of the Church of God. That within a group of people that we history calls Paulishians in the year 800 or 900 AD, that there may well have been people who were of the true faith called of God with His Holy Spirit.

But to label an organization as an era and therefore, you know, the full-blown, full-fledged Church of God, we just don't have enough knowledge.

And to say of a particular group in our modern period that they are dead and that their, you know, their works are dead, that who are we to say? The Scriptures say Christ says that, not us.

And the message that is there is more than enough for any one of us to chew on, to meditate on, to pray about, to fast, and to study about, and to try to understand and to apply to our lives.

Without trying to put labels on someone else. And so, just as over the years we learned that with other sections of prophecy, we're probably going to get burned if we put a face to a prophetic figure. Try to say, this person is the beast. Or this particular event is the fulfillment of this prophetic scenario. And set of dates, set of times, set some type of a framework, we generally are going to make a mistake. So it is when it comes to church history, and church prophecy. To try to put an organization around a name of Ephesian, or Thyatyran, or Laodicea, and to put a face there, and an organizational title, and say, this is, is to run afoul of the Word of God. Now, that doesn't mean that Laodicean attitudes and the spirit of Laodicea is something that we should not be aware of in our day and in our time. In fact, my personal feeling is that a logical way to look at this story is that, indeed, Ephesus does give certain similarities and tell-tale signs and relate more to the apostolic period of the first century. And there is a progression. And that the entire spirit of the age at the close is more Laodicea, not just church-wise, but society-wide. Christ said, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? That's a pretty good description of a spirit that does not listen to the voice and the message of God. There's another point to consider.

When you look at these messages to these seven churches, when you begin in Ephesus, and you move through, you move from specific to general.

Look at Ephesus just briefly for a minute here. He said to them in verse 6 of Revelation 2.

Well, first of all, verse 2, he says, You have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars.

The first period of the church had 12 apostles, 13 if we factor in Paul.

He came later. So then there were others who claimed to be apostles and weren't.

There's a specific allusion to something that we can kind of relate that to.

And then in verse 6, he says, This you have that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

There's a whole study in itself, but the Nicolaitans were a specific group of people in an ideology that wanted to marry paganism with the truth and to lead people to sin, to cause them to sin, thinking they were obeying God.

That's a specific reference to a group of people that we can talk about historically. Okay? You move through these and you see the same thing. In Smyrna, there are Jews who are the synagogue of Satan in verse 9. That's another specific that is mentioned there in the church at Pergamos in verse 12.

Verse 13, look at that. He says, My faith, even in the days in which Antipas was my faithful martyr who was killed. There's another specific marker there.

Those people hearing that message, they would have understood what he was talking about. What he was talking about. It could be that Antipas had been the first in the city of Pergamos, among the church of Pergamos, the first martyr.

And Christ makes a specific reference to Antipas. But again, it's specific.

And you come on down through here, down in verse 20 to the message to the church at Thyatira, there is a reference to a woman named Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and to seduce my servants. There's another specific reference.

They end here, chapter 3, with the Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea churches.

The messages here are more general. You don't find specific people or groups or references made. You don't find them here. They're more general. And by the time you get to Laodicea, you have a very general description of an attitude and a problem and a church that is here. But the point is, it moves from specific to general. And by the time, if indeed this is a progression prophetically through the time of the church experience, then if we come down to the period before the close of the age, let's say the Laodicean period, there's not enough specific things there to put a person or an organization on to label. And we shouldn't add to the Scripture. Keep in mind one of the fundamental points about the book of Revelation holds your place here and turn back to Revelation 22 is in Revelation 22. It says, if anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the book of life. So the point is, we don't want to add into any part of Revelation things that are not there.

We don't want to take anything away that is there as well. And so again, I submit that when we add in organizations or we add in personalities in talking about these churches, we are in a category that we have a specific warning about not doing here in the book of Revelation. So it's not something that we need to be concerned about from that point of view. Now, I'm not going to have time to go through all the explanations of every one of these verses, these churches, but again, just keep in mind, go back to Revelation 3 and verse 22, that it says, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

And I like to look at the book of the message here to Laodicea, because in this particular message to the angel of the church of Laodicea, you do have an image of Jesus Christ that is, in that sense, specific. So I guess I don't change my mind on it, but there is a reference to Christ in verse 20 where He says, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with me. Now, this is a very explicit statement of Christ adding on to the message given to each of the other churches where it says that if you have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches, hear it. The Christ is standing at the door, and He's knocking.

I think Christ is always standing at the door of a Christian at any given age or period, and He's knocking. And He says, if you hear my voice and open the door, I'll come into you and dine with you. Remember the sermon I gave three weeks ago on the road to Emmaus? The story of the two disciples that were walking on the road to Emmaus, they're in the book at the end of Luke, on the day of the resurrection, the day after the resurrection, I should say.

And they were talking about these things, and Christ came alongside. And He explained to them from the Scriptures, and then they went together into the house, and they had a meal.

I mean, it fits, I mean, exactly what He's talking about here in verse 20. You can overlay that to that message, or that story on the disciples on the road to Emmaus, because in a sense, Christ knocked, and they opened the door, and He went in with them literally, and dined with them.

And they were excited. The message was burning in their heart, remember, from what we read in Luke. And He opened to them the understanding about Himself from all of the Scriptures, and what had taken place, and explained it all. Those are the things that we should focus on.

The leadership of Christ in His Church, all through the ages. Christ's leadership and His desire to speak to us, and to come in and speak to us. That's the important things to focus on through these two chapters. I don't have the time to go into Revelation 12. I'm going to do that with the men on Tuesday. Sometimes we've looked at Revelation 2 and 3, and we don't put Revelation 12 along with it. I think that if we are going to really look at Church history, and the message to the churches, then we need to also look at Revelation 12. Because if you will, you do have a specific timeline in Revelation 12. Sometime ago I gave a sermon on Revelation 12. But you have the Church from its beginning, in the verse, to the very time of the end. And there's a progression through Revelation 12 of the Church, down through history. You come down to the end of Revelation 12, and what are the two things that identify the people of God that the serpent goes after?

What are the two things? He goes after the woman whose people keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Those are two clear markers of the Church of God at the time of the end, at our time. They keep the commandments of God. They have a reverence for the Sabbath.

And know how that fits together with the true gospel of Jesus Christ in the Kingdom of God, the testimony of Christ. When we, you know, a lot of things we could say when we move away from looking at, you know, narrowly looking at organizations and people, and we step back and see the whole forest, we can open our minds up to a lot of understanding, and truly hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches in the past, and in the present, and forever as Christ stands in the midst of the Church, forever teaching us.

We keep our minds on those things. We have a lot to learn and a lot to be thankful for. I'll go back into this next week. We'll cover a little bit more of it from a different perspective, and finish that up. So don't think that I've had the final word on the whole message, but hopefully that'll open our minds to a little bit of things and appreciate God's Spirit working in the Church as we come up to the time of Pentecost.