Truth
On
Tough
Texts
ISSUE 23 –
June/2007
Do
the Seven Churches Have a Historical
Application?
Revelation
2-3
II. The Collective
Application
By this we mean that these
letters are an admonition to all churches of all time.
In other words, by extension, not only did they apply to
the seven specific churches in Asia Minor, they apply to
all churches everywhere both then and in the future.
These messages provide us with the seven possible
appearances of any church. Every individual local church
throughout this age fits into one of seven types.
It is interesting to
observe that except for Smyrna and Philadelphia, our
Lord rebuked all the churches for some sin that existed
within them. How many churches is that true of today?
Further, the specific evils in those five churches
varied in seriousness from a lack of love at Ephesus
that progressively grew in severity until it reached the
total apostasy at Laodicea. Further still, and even
worse, a church can be plagued by more that just one of
these problems. Let us briefly overview the seven
possible types of local church.
First, there
was Ephesus, which had no love for the Lord (2:1-7).
They hadn’t “lost” their first love,” as some
incorrectly quote verse 4, rather they had
“left” their love for the
Lord behind. While they were busy and free of heresy, it
was all mechanical and lacked a genuine love for the
Lord.
Second, there
was Smyrna, which was willing to suffer tremendous
persecution for the Lord (2:8-11). No sin is mentioned
for this church, which shows us that suffering for
Christ keeps us pure, faithful, and humble and makes us
gloriously triumphant.
Third, there
was Pergamum, a church that was tolerant of the world
(2:12-17), tolerant of false teaching and had
compromised key principles of God’s Truth.
Fourth,
Thyatira was clinging to paganism (2:18-29). While
Pergamum was entangled with the world,
Thyatira was absorbed into the world. Pagan teachings had actually been
embraced.
Fifth, there
was Sardis, the church that was dead and buried (3:1-6).
The inevitable result of Pergamum and Thyatira was dead
orthodoxy, a church where there was liturgy but
no life.
Sixth, the
church at Philadelphia is a breath of fresh air in the
progression, for here we see a church that is faithful
in all things (3:7-13). Here is a church with great
works, a consistent witness, and a guarding of God’s
Truth.
Seventh,
after a moment of respite in Philadelphia, the church at
Laodicea was overtaken by apostasy (3:14-22). Here the
church was people-centered and had become the authority
in place of God’s Word.
III. The Characteristic
Application
Each of these messages
also carries with it a personal application to every
individual believer. After all, a church is comprised of
people who will make that body what it is. As each of
these churches, therefore, applies collectively to other
churches, the lessons of each likewise apply to every
individual Christian. Note Revelation 2:7, for example:
“He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith
unto the churches.” This admonition is used, in fact, at
the close of each letter showing that every Christian is
responsible for the message he has heard. Each letter,
then, is a challenge to believers to ascertain what
“characteristics” are true in their lives.
IV. The Chronological
Application
Here is truly one of the
most fascinating things in all the Word of God. These
seven churches also present the entire history of the
Church (Christ’s body) from its beginning in the first
century right to the time of Christ’s return for His
Church at the Rapture. I spent countless hours studying
Church History in light of these seven letters and saw
this fact unfold before me. The Church has gone through
seven distinct periods in her long history. The number
“7” is “the number of perfection” in Scripture, and
Revelation 2 and 3 are, indeed, the “perfect historical
record” of Christ’s Church.
It should be said at this
point that there are, of course, Bible teachers who do
not agree that the seven churches picture Church
History. There are various reasons for this skepticism,
but one of the main ones is that some feel the parallels
are not close enough to prove this idea. I think,
however, that as our study unfolds the reader will see
that just the opposite is true.
Others do not agree
with this historical presentation because they are not
ready to face the conclusion that we find in the letter
to the church at Laodicea. Many simply do not want to
face the sad condition of the Church today. While many
people in Christianity today think the Church has never
been in better shape, the very opposite is true. The
Church as a whole has never been further away from
the absolutes of Scripture
since before the Reformation.
While it has been
observed that only Dispensationalists hold this view,
that seems quite irrelevant in the final analysis. From
Pentecost until now, Church History is Church History.
The more one studies these letters and Church History,
in fact, the more glaringly obvious it becomes that
these letters anticipate that history. I for one simply
do not understand how someone can miss this application
or why they would want to argue against it. Having said
that, however, some interpreters, such as
Postmillennialists and others, miss this simply because
they do not take a literal view of the Book of
Revelation. And, in point of fact, if we reject the
literalness of Revelation, as well as
all Bible prophecy, the Bible
becomes virtually incomprehensible. In such a case, we
cannot know what is literal, allegorical, mystical,
real, false, or much of anything else.
So, as one commentator
writes:
Obviously these churches
were specially selected and providentially arranged to
provide characteristic situations which the church has
faced throughout its history. . . . There are some
remarkable similarities in comparing these letters to
the seven churches to the movement of church history
since the beginning of the apostolic church.[i]
Another writes: “It can be
no mere coincidence that these Epistles do set out the
salient characteristics of the Church through the
centuries, and no one can deny that they are presented
in historic sequence.”[ii] Commentator William
MacDonald also observes the obvious: “The letters give a
consecutive preview of the history of
Christendom, each church representing a distinct period.
The general trend of conditions is downward.”[iii] And even a cursory
viewing of Church History proves that statement to be
absolutely correct.
First, the
church at Ephesus pictures the history of the Church
from Pentecost to A.D. 100, a time of great growth,
great labor, and purity of doctrine, but also a time
when it all eventually became
mechanical.
Second, the
church at Smyrna pictures the Church from A.D. 100 to
313. The “Ephesian Period” was characterized by a waning
love for the Lord, so God allowed great persecution to
come on the Church to bring it back to Him. It was
during this time that the Church experienced its
greatest suffering—Satan tried to destroy Christianity
from without using a series
of ten periods of persecution under ten Roman
emperors—but we also see some of the greatest growth the
Church has ever known.
Third, the
church at Pergamum is vivid indeed, as it pictures the
period of Church History when the Church and the state
were united under the Roman emperor Constantine and his
successors (313-590). While Satan tried to destroy the
Church from without in the “Smyrnan Period,” here he
tried to do it from within. A. C. Gaebelein puts
it well: “When the devil found that the ‘blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the church’ he stopped his work
as the roaring lion and took on the form of an angel of
light.”[iv]
One of Satan’s great
attempts came in 313 when the Roman emperor Constantine
succeeded Diocletian (the worst of the Roman
persecutors). Constantine supposedly had a vision of a
fiery cross in the sky and a voice saying, “In this sign
conquer.” He wondered what this meant and was told that
this was the sign of the Christian religion. He took
this to mean that God was calling him to be the champion
of this religion, and that if he obeyed, he would become
emperor of the world. Though we cannot view Constantine
as being a true believer, since he was never weaned from
the cult of Apollo and at times consulted the pagan
sooth-sayers (fortune tellers), he did, in fact, become
emperor of the “world” (i.e. the known world of his
day). He liberated all Christians and stopped all
persecution, although Christianity merely became one
more of the many religions of the empire.
As time went on, however,
Constantine discovered that Christians were more
trustworthy than his pagan subjects and were not causing
him constant problems as were the pagans. In 324 he
ordered Christianity to be the one and only religion of
the empire. He threw all the pagans out of the
government, and filled every post with a Christian. Our
first reaction to that might be, “Oh, how wonderful!”
But in reality, this was the worst event to occur in
Church History, for in this way the Church was “married”
to the world; it was here that the Church stopped
looking for the Second Coming of Christ; it said,
“Constantine’s empire must be Christ’s kingdom.”
Moreover, Christians had to tolerate many pagan
superstitions and customs to get along with priests who
had become “Christian,” literally, at the point of the
sword. The effects of that unholy alliance continued
right up to the Reformation and, may we point out, still
continue today in many respects.
Fourth, the
church at Thyatira is extremely significant in viewing
Church History, for it pictures “The Middle Ages”
(590-1517), the latter of which was “The Dark Ages.” The
church at Thyatira is, without any shadow of a doubt, a
picture of the rise of “Romanism,” Papal Rome (Roman
Catholicism). Catholics quite boldly say: “The first and
only church was the Roman
Catholic Church.” All the different branches of the
Protestant Church, they argue, have simply broken away
from Rome, the true Church. It is insisted that there
was no Protestant Church until Martin Luther. That is a
lie that is easily proven to be a lie! Historically,
there was no Roman Church (or Papacy) until the seventh
century. For six centuries before that the one true
Church, the body of Christ, was continually growing more
corrupt as it drifted away from the Word of God. Between
313 and 590, the bishop at Rome was considered “first
among equals,” but in 590 the Roman bishop was given
supremacy over all other bishops. In the strict sense of
the word, this bishop (who in 590 was Gregory I) became
the first “Pope.” The Papacy then had to go back through
history and arbitrarily choose certain men through whom
they could trace “apostolic succession” back to
Peter.
One of the greatest
tragedies of our day—and I can’t emphasize this strongly
enough—is the continued tolerance of Catholicism by
evangelicals. When one honestly and biblically analyzes
Catholicism, he finds that virtually every doctrine,
holy day, rite, dogma, ceremony, vestment, and title in
the Roman Church has its roots in ancient pagan
religion; it is the ultimate perversion of
“Christianity,” the “continual sacrifice” of the “mass”
being perhaps the greatest of all. During every
mass Christ is again offered up in sacrifice for the
sins of the living and the dead. The priest supposedly
calls Christ down from Heaven and sacrifices Him again,
a “power,” that is supposedly given to the priest at his
ordination. This parallels the pagans as they made
“continual sacrifice” to their gods. Such teaching is
unimaginable, and it is equally appalling that any true
Christian today can tolerate such teaching and even
encourage “unity” of any kind with the Romanism. The
Word of God clearly declares that Christ’s sacrifice was
once-for-all (Heb. 9:28;
10:10-14), never to be repeated. To do so is to “crucify
to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an
open shame” (6:6). Think of it! Tens of millions of
times our Lord has been blasphemed by the Roman
mass.
Fifth, the
church at Sardis clearly pictures the period of Church
History called “dead Protestantism,” the time of the
great state churches of the Reformation (1517-1790).
The importance of the Reformation should never be
discounted or understated. While men in
southern Europe wallowed in the Humanism of the
Renaissance, another movement was arising in the
north. The men there struggled with the same
questions of morals and life, but they came to a
conclusion, and therefore
results, that were the polar
opposite of Renaissance man. The reformers recognized
the biblical teaching of man’s totally fallen and
perverse nature, that his entire being—intellect,
emotions, and will—is hopelessly depraved. The reformers
also considered the Bible as the Word of God and the
only authority over men’s lives. By removing Humanism
from their thought, the reformers rediscovered the Truth
of the Gospel.
As one writer words it,
however, “The Reformation was not a golden age. It was
far from perfect.”[v] That is an
understatement. While the Reformers tried hard to make
Scripture their only standard, there were
inconsistencies that seriously marred the movement.
Space does not permit the many details, but the bottom
line is that the Reformers came out, but they didn’t
come out far enough. Gaebelein
says it well:
The reformation itself was
of God and the great men of God who were used were the
most mighty instruments of the Holy Spirit. It was the
greatest work, up to that time, since the days of the
apostles. But out of it came the human systems which go
by the name Protestantism. The reformation began well,
but soon developed in the different Protestant systems
into a dead, lifeless thing.[vi]
Indeed, the
Reformation was of God and
had a glorious beginning, but its leaders fell short by
failing to return to the principles of Church government
and ministry that were evident in the first century and
which are recorded in the Word of God. The majority of
what we see in much of Christianity today was originally
founded, not upon Biblical authority, but upon human
reasoning and human ideas. We still suffer today because
of the Reformers not coming out far
enough.
Sixth, the
church at Philadelphia pictures the time of great
revival and great preaching that took place in the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and may we add, the very
early twentieth century. Think of some of the great
preachers and theologians of those days: Charles Haddon
Spurgeon, Robert Murray McCheyne, Matthew Henry, Andrew
Bonar, Thomas Chalmers, Charles Hodge, Robert Haldane,
Richard Fuller, John Henry Jowett, Andrew Murray, C. H.
Mackintosh, Alexander Maclaren, and others. Though there
were still a few problems that remained from Reformation
thought, men like this nonetheless stood on the Word of
God more firmly than anyone had in some 1800 years of
Church History. Some folks would ask here, “But isn’t
this true today?” To that we must answer, absolutely
not! Sad to say, the Word of God
and the strong preaching of doctrine and practice are
not the emphasis today. How churches today need the
depth of the Word and strong doctrinal
preaching!
Seventh, the
church at Laodicea, the “lukewarm,” apostate church,
pictures the period of Church History in which we are
right now. This period began in the early twentieth
century and will continue until Jesus comes. As John R.
W. Stott wrote in 1980:
Perhaps none of the seven
letters is more appropriate to the twentieth-century
church than this. It describes vividly the respectable,
sentimental, nominal, skin-deep religiosity which is so
widespread among us today. Our Christianity is flabby
and anaemic. We appear to have taken a lukewarm bath of
religion.[vii]
Even the word
Laodicea demonstrates the lukewarmness of this
church and our own age. The Greek Laodikeus is
comprised of two words: laos, meaning “people,”
and dike, meaning (depending upon the context)
“law, right, custom, and even prescribed punishment.”
The idea in this word, then, is “the law of the people”
or “the people ruling.” The society of that day (and
today) was people centered.
People had become the authority instead of the Word of
God being the authority. The modern term for this is
“Humanism,” which says, “Man is the center of all
things.”
Dear Christian, is there
any doubt that we are right now living in the “Laodicean
Age” of Church History. We are living in the age of
Humanism, in which man has set himself up as the final
authority on every subject and every question. This is
the age of “people ruling.” Sadly, this is true even in
the Church. Never before in Church History has the
Church been as “people centered” as today. We build
entire churches and ministries based upon what people
want, not upon the sole authority and sufficiency of
Scripture. We are more concerned about “felt needs” and
appealing to the “unchurched” than with proclaiming
Truth.
Finally, we must
accept these churches as a picture of Church History
because of Christ’s words to John, “Write the things
which are in this age.” These words indicate that our
Lord is speaking of the entire age, not just a limited geographical area. We submit
that our Savior was being much more farsighted than to
be looking only at Asia Minor. Are we to think that
while the great prophets of the Old Testament looked
centuries into the future, our Lord was looking only at
the contemporary scene or at only the first century, as
some argue? Surely not! He was concerned about His
Church, His Body, throughout the centuries to come. As
one commentator observes, while there were hundreds of
churches in existence at that time, only seven letters
were sent. Our Lord
knew the entire history of
the Church from the beginning. . . . He saw in seven of
them conditions which were in embryo, the condition
through which the whole church on earth would pass, so
that we have in these seven messages, which uncover the
state of the different churches, the spiritual and
religious history of Christendom.[viii]
Why would anyone want to
ignore the obvious? Why would we wish to close our eyes
to the deep significance of this “Prophetic History?”
We do so, in fact, at our peril. As the notable
quote goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.”[ix] We have had to be brief,
but even our brief look at this “Prophetic History”
explains much of the error that has existed in the
Church through the centuries and explains where the
Church is today and why it is there.
Dr. J. D.
Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace Bible
Church
*
* *
Letter
to the Editor
Dear Brother
Watson,
[Your position on the
angels of the seven churches] is the first disagreement
I have with you which I consider important. . . . This
view held by lesser men than yourself leads to primus
among peers and then up the ecclesiastical stairway to
the papacy. I think this is the pathway Ignatius of
Antioch [took]—perhaps you can research his teaching. .
. .
I prefer the angels being
literal messengers/servants of the Lord Jesus. Michael
and his angels were responsible for Israel (Dan. 12:1),
and angels in heaven care for the children/church (Matt.
18:10), and Michael and his angels protect and nourish
the woman (Israel?) in Revelation 12:7. The literal
angels of the churches can easily fit into this scenario
and be pictured as responsible, although in the
physical/spiritual realm the elders of each church are
responsible (Prov. 11:14). The angels picture the Lord
Jesus’ direct contact with each local church. They are
in His right hand of sovereignty, as are we (Jn. 10:28)
individually.
Sincerely, your Christian
brother (RG in Colorado)
Dear Brother G,
I truly appreciate your
comments and well-presented arguments. I did weigh them
as other expositors made similar points, but I do
believe that “pastors” better fits the context, as I
shared. I assure you from the bottom of my heart that I
make no complicity with the papacy; no one hates
Catholicism more than I, as this month’s article
demonstrates. I don’t feel, however, that this view
builds an “ecclesiastical stairway” anymore than does I
Timothy 3 and Titus 1 in showing the uniqueness of and
qualifications for that very office. At any rate, we can
certainly agree to disagree agreeably.
*
* *
The condition of the Church in
the Middle Ages was pitiful. The masses of the people
had a blind faith in the doctrines and tradition of the
Church and never inquired whether they were in harmony
with the Scriptures. Few could read, books were scarce;
it was a rare thing for a man to have any real
acquaintance with the Word of God. . . Occasionally
feeble attempts were made to introduce reform, but such
movements were soon checked. . .
.
While the demand for a drastic
reformation of the Church became stronger as the years
passed, every attempt to bring it about failed, mainly
because it proceeded from a wrong principle. External
abuses were to be corrected, but corrupt doctrine was to
remain untouched. There was no appeal to the Word of
God, no turning to the old paths, no repentance from
dead works, and no belief in the basic doctrine of
justification by faith. Dark was the night, and more
than human power was needed to drive away the thick
clouds. But . . . in God’s time dawn came.
S.
M. Houghton, Sketches From Church
History
Banner
of Truth Trust, 1980, pp. 59-61
NOTES
[i]
The Bible Knowledge Commentary
(Wheaton, IL: Victor Books,
1984).
[ii] R. H. Clayton. Cited in Lehman
Strauss, The Book of Revelation
(Neptune,NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., 1964), p.
33.
[iii] Believer’s Bible
Commentary (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
1995), p.
2355.
[iv] A. C. Gaebelein., The Revelation (New York: Loizeaux
Brothers, Inc.,
1961),
[v] Francis Scheaffer, How Should We Then Live (Old Tappen: NJ:
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), p.
84.
[vii] John R. W. Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), p.
116.
[ix] George Santayana, Life of Reason, Ch. 12, “Reason in Common
Sense” (Scribner’s, 1905), p.
284.
