Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars; and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days; be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass; I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works until the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as the thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works; behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it; for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked; I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
Our subject last Sunday was the revelation or unveiling of the Son of Man to His servant John. He was walking in the midst of seven golden candlesticks. He had the robes of the High Priest. His form was Divine and human. Light was in Him and went forth from Him. He had died, and He lived. He was alive for evermore. He had the keys of death and hell.
What John saw and heard, he was to tell; he was to write it in a book for the good of the seven Churches that were in Asia. For these seven Churches were declared to be the seven candlesticks, in the midst of which the Son of Man was walking. They were to shed abroad the light which dwelt in Him. The stars which He held in His hand denoted their angels or ministers. The revelation of Him was therefore a revelation to them, a revelation of their relation to each other, of the end for which they existed.
The second and third chapters carry on this revelation. They contain a series of messages to these Churches. These messages have been accepted by readers who see little meaning in the other parts of the book, or despair of finding its meaning, as having great practical worth. In every period of the history of Christendom they have been felt to have a force for that period. It has been found so impossible to confine them by the conditions of the Apostolic age by the circumstances of Asia Minor—that theories have been framed to show which time of the Church was the Sardian, which the Philadelphian, which the Laodicean. After what I have said of the maxims which I wish to follow in studying this book, you will not suspect me of any fondness for such theories. I do not care to inquire which is the best, or which the worst. I am determined to adhere to the Apostle, and when he speaks of his time, to suppose that he means his time; when he speaks of Sardis or Philadelphia, to suppose that he means Sardis or Philadelphia. But I take such theories as witnesses that the revelation which this book contains is a revelation of that which abides, of that which is not dependent upon circumstances, however they may affect or modify its appearances. In this respect I do not find that the messages to the Churches differ from the parts of the book which precede or which follow them. If we are permitted to understand them, to feel in any degree their force upon our own lives, it will be because the Spirit who spoke them to the Churches of old is speaking them to us now; because He who was promised to be with the Church for ever, of whose living power the Church is the witness, has not ceased to live or to work. It will be because He opens our ears that we may hear what in these messages, or elsewhere through any instruments, He is saying to us and to mankind.
I. 1. Before I allude to any of the special characteristics of these messages, I wish you to notice that which is common to them all. The first and most obvious of these common characteristics is one for which I have prepared you already. St. John, their companion in the faith and patience of Jesus Christ, St. John the Apostle, who was dearest to them, who was to survive all his brother Apostles, is not addressing them. To one and to all the Son of Man is speaking Himself. To one and to all He is declaring that He knows them, knows what they are, and what they are doing. To one and to all He makes known the secret of their own lives. “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works. And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works. And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works. And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass; I know thy works. And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works.”
The language, you will perceive, is uniform in these respects,—that it identifies the speaker with the Person who was unveiled to the Apostle in the Isle of Patmos, and that He and He only is assumed to know what the works of each Church are. The difference between the messages lies in the discovery of one aspect of this Divine Person to one of these Churches, of another to another; these discoveries having, as we shall see hereafter, reference to their peculiar tendencies and dangers.
2. The second general characteristic is that these words are repeated after each message, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” When we have examined the account which is given of them more closely, we shall discover, I believe, why it was not enough to tell them that the Son of Man was in the midst of them, that he knew what they were doing. To admit this is possible. To recognise Him as in some sense a Head of all Churches, as in some sense discerning their qualities, as in some sense ruling them, has not been found very difficult in later times, and would not, by many, have been felt so in that time. But to join this with the belief that He is conversing inwardly with them by His Spirit, that by this Spirit He is convincing them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, that by this Spirit He is appealing to that which is most inward and permanent in them, not to that which is casual or impulsive—that, I suspect, was the difficulty then, and has been ever since. It took, we shall find, different forms. Now, the confession of a Son of Man could become a mere hard, outward, almost material confession. Now, the confession of a Spirit could be turned into the excuse for all lawlessness and fanaticism. Therefore that every message should begin with one of these revelations and end with the other, is, I conceive, very significant, and one of the great reasons why we feel that in reading of the Asiatic Churches of eighteen centuries ago, we are reading of the European Churches in the midst of which we are dwelling.
3. Again, that is no less obvious a mark of all these messages, to which I adverted last week, when I was speaking of the seven stars. Each one is addressed to the whole body, in the person of its angel. There were differences, evidently very broad differences, in the behaviour and moral life of the different persons who composed the respective Churches. These are in some cases noted. But still there is a mind and temper attributed to the society, of which the mind and temper of the minister are taken to be faithful indexes. He is the representative of the particular Church over which he presides. There is no speech to the individual members of it apart from him. With these materials we may easily build up a structure of priestcraft, and plead St. John’s authority for it. It is inevitable that such a structure should arise, if this part of St. John’s words only is regarded, if that part which concerns the walking of the Son of Man in the midst of the candlesticks, and the presence of the Spirit with the Churches, is forgotten. Take those Divine revelations away, take away the illustration which they receive from St. John’s abnegation of all honour to himself, and it requires no elaborate ecclesiastical theory to make priests into tyrants and Churches into slaves. This effect will follow naturally, because there is such a craving for unity in the heart of men, there is such an inward sense that we are constituted under some head, there is such a consciousness of a responsibility in fathers for their children, in kings for their subjects, in ministers for their congregations, that when the Divine principle is forgotten which explains these convictions and determines their limits, there will be perpetually new manifestations of anarchy in opposition to priestcraft. If the minister forgets that he is a messenger of God, he can only avoid becoming a usurper over men by becoming their tool.
4. Once more, there is this common characteristic of these messages: every one ends with some words concerning struggle and victory. To the Ephesian angel it is written, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” To the angel of Smyrna, “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” To the angel of Pergamos, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” To the angel in Thyatira, “He that overcometh, and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers; even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star.” To the Sardian, “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.” To the Philadelphian, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.” To the Laodicean, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”
II. 1. I fancy that if the first three of these characteristics have not severed the Churches of the Apostolic period from those of later periods, the fourth will be supposed to savour peculiarly of the times in which Christians were persecuted for their faith. These earnest calls to overcome must, it will be thought, have reference to the cross, or the stake, or the amphitheatre, or, at all events, the prison. If you read through these chapters, you will be struck with the rarity of the allusions to any such perils. The most notable case—the only case in which the call to struggle and the promises to the victors are directly connected with outward suffering—is that of Smyrna: “These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty (but thou art rich), and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” Then occurs the further promise which I have quoted already: “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”
In this city there was a persecution; it would seem, not a Roman persecution at all; one proceeding from a synagogue of Jews, from men who clung to that venerable name, though they denied the King of the Jews. Such men, by their influence in particular cities before or after the fall of Jerusalem, might easily raise a violent storm against the sect of Nazarenes, might easily procure them to be cast into prison. If they were themselves in rebellion (as was shown in the second century, when they followed Barcochba as their Messiah), they were especially willing and able to inflict sufferings on the disciples of the Crucified. Or again, if the Roman authorities put them down violently, the Christians might easily be included among them, as having a common origin, and as abjuring idols equally with the rest of their race. Such a persecution would be quite as terrible to the Church of Smyrna as if it had been of the most general and systematic kind. It had evidently borne the best fruits in the life of pastor and flock. Though poor, they were rich. He that was dead and had become alive, and lived for evermore, saw in them the blessed result of His travail and agony. Still, they needed strength and consolation. The tribulation would be sharp if it was short. The flesh would shrink from it. But let them hold on. The second death, the death of the spirit, would not reach those who were trusting in the Deliverer from death. There was life in Him. Was not that life for them? Was any royal crown like that?
I have taken this Church first out of its order. The words spoken to it must have cheered thousands in different generations. They must have felt that the message was as really addressed to them as to the angel of the Church in Smyrna, and that it could only come from Him who had died and was alive. But though it would be an infinite loss that this instance of a body suffering persecution should have been wanting among the seven, it is not a specimen of the others, but an exception. Pergamos is spoken of as Satan’s seat; probably as it had been one of the wealthiest of the cities in Asia Minor it had been an especial resort of Jews, and they were there more than usually hostile. A distant allusion is made to a former tribulation, in which Antipas had been a faithful martyr, and in which the Church had held fast Christ’s name. But apparently that peril was over; at all events it is not the one which the angel is chiefly warned of. In Philadelphia, again, there is a reference to a “synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie.” This synagogue might greatly annoy the Christians of Philadelphia. But apparently the chief annoyance came from their assuming that they were the people of God, and from their denouncing those who confessed Jesus to be the Son of God as deserters from the old faith. On the whole, there cannot be a greater perversion of the words of the book than to associate the conquests of which it speaks chiefly with external troubles, or to suppose that the seven Churches were passing through experiences of this kind, which made them unsuitable either as examples or beacons for those in ease or security.
2. If we are not allowed to form this highly plausible theory respecting the condition of these early Churches, we are still more sternly prohibited from entertaining another: that they were free from the invasion of immoral doctrines and habits; or that, if these appeared, they never took root. In the message to Ephesus, we hear of the deeds of the “Nicolaitanes, which I hate.” There these deeds were discouraged and kept down by the angel of the Church. But in Pergamos they appear to have gained a head, and to be connected with another doctrine, which is said to be that “of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.” It is charged upon the angel of Thyatira, that he suffers “that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.”
That there is a difference in the three doctrines or habits of mind designated by these three names, I fully believe. That there was one characteristic common to them all, an indifference to ordinary moral obligations, grounded upon a belief that Christians were raised into a state which was superior to them, is equally certain. There are two passages in the Stromata of Clemens which illustrate the teaching of the Nicolaitanes. From the first (Book II. c. xx. § 118), it would appear that the sect had construed a phrase of the master whose name they assumed respecting the contempt (or abuse) of the flesh, in a sense contrary to that which he intended; that what was asceticism in him became libertinism in them. The second passage intimates (c. xxiv. § 25) that the ascetical profession of the founder was connected with a practical arrogance and indifference to the most sacred obligations, which might well account for the subsequent deductions from it. Those deductions, according to Clemens, amounted to a justification of concubinage if not of a community of wives. The narratives are derived from an uncertain tradition, and are not quite perspicuous. But they have an internal probability; in different forms the same history has been repeated again and again.
I do not see that it is necessary to assume the existence of a school or sect of Balaamites. He who would not in words curse the children of Israel, who could only bless them, and yet did Balak’s work far more effectually by setting a temptation before them which undermined their moral strength, is the precursor and type of all who, accepting and proclaiming the spiritual lessons of the higher covenant, should make them into excuses for encouraging the fleshly licence which enervates and destroys the spirit. So far the Nicolaitane and the Balaamite are alike. The distinctive features of the latter are two. (1.) He has an inspiration, he is not a pretended, but a real prophet. He turns an actual gift to a vile use. (2.) The motive to his evil is money. Indulgence of lust is the result to his victims. Covetousness has slain him.
Like the Nicolaitanes and the Balaamites, the Prophetess of Thyatira sets herself above law. Like the latter, she enthrones her spiritual intuitions. But power, not liberty, is her aspiration. Her prototype is the Sidonian Jezebel who broke down the righteous laws of Jehovah; who set up the worship of Baalim, the powers of nature; who changed the Israelites into Phœnician idolaters, and so into a degraded, filthy people. Such female usurpation is as directly connected with sensual worship, and with all the consequences to which that worship leads, as the doctrine of the male prophet. It leads more directly to tyranny.
3. The adoption of names borrowed from the Old Testament to designate two out of three of these heresies is proof, I think, that they did not present themselves to the Apostle as essentially new. He was sure that they had existed and borne fruit ages before. They appeared in the Church because the Church consisted of men and women; because no new race had been called into existence to people it. That one which had a modern name, which was of post-Pentecostal origin, was like the others in its nature and in its effects. It did, however, bear witness to the fulfilment of the old covenant; to the baptism with the Spirit. By doing so it explained how that conflict between the flesh and the spirit, which had existed in all earlier times, had now reached its fullest strength. All questions now resolved themselves into the question, What has been done for men by the illumination of the Divine Spirit? Has it set them free from restraints which were imposed upon their evil natures; or has it explained the meaning and blessing of those restraints? Has it opened to them visions of the heavenly world which make their doings on earth indifferent? Or has it given a significance to all the common occupations of earth? Has it constituted those who receive it into tyrants, or has it made them more obedient, and therefore more free? If this be so, then, instead of limiting these Nicolaitane, Balaamite, Jezebel tendencies and tempers to the Apostolical period, we shall expect to see them developing themselves from the little seeds in Pergamos and Thyatira into portentous diseases, which would infect the life of the Church in all regions, which, if the Church should obtain influence over the nations, would infect them, would weaken and corrupt their powers and threaten their existence.
These consequences, which we should suppose must be, if these messages were true and Divine, have, it seems to me, actually presented themselves in the history of Christendom. The Nicolaitane communism has been continually reappearing in the most various forms, and at the most unexpected moments. The Balaam prophet, who speaks grand words, and sets the example of foul acts, flattering the spirit with its own greatness till it sinks under the dominion of the animal or covetous desires, has never been wanting in small communities—has influenced countries and generations. The Jezebel, or female form of wickedness, mingling with the others, has given birth to the most widely spread idolatries; to systems of spiritual despotism, so perplexing, from their variety and their apparent opposition, that the successive reformers who have struggled against them have seemed to others, and even to themselves, as if they were fighting under different banners, and aiming at opposite results. But they have been of one heart and one mind, inasmuch as they have borne witness that morality is immutable, that the righteous God cannot dispense with His own laws. And when they have been wise and successful, they have been alike in this respect also, that they have never hoped to overcome spiritual delusions by weakening their testimony to a Spirit of Peace and Love, and a Sound Mind; that they have traced the evil about them not to the belief in His Presence, but to the denial of it.
III. 1. This last lesson respecting the treatment of falsehood is contained in the message to the Church at Ephesus. The Angel of the Church had a great horror of religious pretenders: “Thou canst not bear them that are evil.” Nor had he only zeal, he had discernment: “Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars.” Moreover, he spared no toil: “Thou hast borne, and hast patience.” And this too from real devotion: “For my sake thou hast laboured, and hast not fainted.” And as for that particular sect which has done so much mischief: “Thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate.” For all this clearness and vigour of purpose, He who walks in the midst of the candlesticks, and holds the stars in His hand, commends His servant. And yet an evil change is discovered in him: “Thou hast left thy first love.” The outward activity is there. Thy heart is gone. Thy service has become, and is becoming, not dishonest, but mechanical. He who looks within knows that it is so. And He calls thee to repent; He whose call, if thou heedest it, is the gift of repentance. But if thou dost not repent, if the indifference and coldness grow to be deadly, then this is the punishment: “I will remove thy candlestick out of its place.” It has been set to give light. Thou art failing to give it. Men see thee active in repressing evil opinions, and going punctually through a round of duties. But the life and love of good do not proceed from thee. Therefore thou must not pretend to be that which thou art not. Ephesus must cease to be a Church, if it does not fulfil the one function of a Church. This temptation, then, thou hast to overcome; not the temptation of persecution, not the temptation to heresy, but dreariness, formality, the worship of decorum. Fight against this in the strength of Him who is walking in the midst of the candlesticks. And He will give thee just what thou wantest; the fruit of the tree of life; that fruit which has power to prevail against all tendencies in thee to torpor and death.
2. In Pergamos it is different. He who has “the sword with two edges,” who fights not only with outward foes, but with the subtle, secret enemy, that undermines the heart within, saw that the Church, which was brave enough when it was called to bear witness against Jewish or heathen oppressors, was becoming infected with Balaamite and Nicolaitane corruptions, and that the angel was not courageously resisting them. They had, no doubt, crept into his own heart. He was not clearly distinguishing there between the liberty of the spirit and the licence of the flesh; he was not hating the last that he might cherish the first. Therefore he could not contend with them in his flock. But the Son of Man is contending with them in both. He can overcome them in both. And if the angel will let that two-edged sword do its work, this shall be his reward. He shall eat of the hidden manna which restores the spirit that the flesh-pots of Egypt have weakened. He shall have the white stone of Absolution, the true spiritual emancipation which the Balaamite and Nicolaitane emancipation has counterfeited. On the stone “shall be written a new name, which no man knoweth save he which receiveth it.” The Divine liberty is not imparted in his own name, but in Christ’s name. The regenerated spirit accepts its freedom in that name; it knows that it has His name, though it cannot make any one understand how it has got that name. It stands fast in Christ’s liberty, the liberty of doing God’s will, of giving up itself.
3. In Thyatira, again, He “who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass,” He who sees into the heart of things, and looks through all appearances, who has Himself passed through the furnace of human temptations, sees how much good there is in the angel and the Church, “what charity, and service, and faith, and patience, and the last works to be more than the first.” There is life; there is growth; evils have been vanquished; where failure had been, there is success. But he sees evil working here; evil of the same inward, penetrating kind, as in the other case.
The angel suffers the woman Jezebel to draw away the servants of Christ “to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication.” He is evidently afraid of her spiritual pretensions. He dares not rebuke one who regards herself as a great saint, and whom many of his flock follow under that character. He has not learnt that the spirit which exalts itself above law is the spirit of Lucifer; that those depths of wisdom which lead to moral corruption, and to a tampering with idolatry, let them be honoured with what religious epithets they may, are depths of Satan. But if the angel is timid, if he dares not exercise discrimination and judgment, there is another who will lay bare sins which pass under seemly names, who will let it be known what gross and open crimes spring from spiritual self-exaltation. So I interpret the fearful threatening to this Church; fulfilled to it I cannot doubt; fulfilled again and again in particular Churches, and in the Church at large when the Jezebel temper has become rampant.
Can the promise also have been fulfilled? “He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give unto him the morning star.” The temptation to be overcome is the temptation to covet heathen privileges and heathen power; to tamper with heathen opinions and practices for the sake of winning it. The hook has been wonderfully baited; not to nibble at it was very hard in the primitive times, has been very hard ever since. What is the encouragement to cast it wholly aside? If you do, you shall have the power you are seeking; power over those to whom you are asked to give up yourselves; a power which they shall confess; a power which shall break in pieces their corruptions and superstitions; a power which shall be the same in kind with that which I have received from my Father. Now this is a promise which I am sure was performed to that Church at Thyatira, and to its angel, and has been performed to every Church since, so far as it has struggled with this most subtle evil and conquered it. Every society which has maintained its own moral standing-ground, which has refused to win power and influence by stooping to the practices of those who surround it, has been permitted in marvellous ways to elevate them, to reform the nations, to make them confess that Christ’s kingdom is no dream. In the least circle, this assertion is verified; it is established by all the real dominion which the Church has exercised over the world; by the conquests it has won from the world. It has been established as completely by its own abominable tyrannies over the world, by the tyrannies it has kept alive in the world, by the defeats it has sustained from the world. Grasping at the promise, Ye shall rule them “with a rod of iron”—only forgetting the clause, “as I have received from my Father”—the Church has misused her rod to crush the spirits which Christ came from the Father to raise; to protect and aggravate the cruelty and oppression which He came to break into shivers. And what has been the recompense? The wretched power which she had wrenched and stolen from the nations has been turned against her. She has been obliged to crouch to them, and beg their help, and they have justly spurned her. She has chosen to exalt herself like Lucifer, and she has fallen like Lucifer. If she had trusted her Lord, He would have given her the morning star. She should have derived from Him what she claimed independently of Him. She should have dispensed light to the world. She should have shouted for joy with all the sons of God.
4. If we thus take these messages as applying directly to the Churches of Asia, they have, it seems to me, the most powerful application to all times; the most stinging application to ourselves. Is there one of these early heresies to which we are not liable? Are we exempt from any Antinomian peril, from the peril of turning spiritual imaginations, and even spiritual realities, into an excuse for self-indulgence and self-glorification?
But perhaps it surprises us even more to read the messages to Sardis and to Laodicea, when we connect them with the history of bodies which we suppose must have had all the dews of youth upon them, than even to hear of startling moral corruptions such as are denounced in the others. For here we have all the signs which we connect with what is senile and effete; or with the indifference, effeminacy, self-satisfaction, which ease and luxury engender. The Sardian “has a name that he lives and is dead.” He must “strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die.” The Laodicean is “neither hot nor cold.” He says that he is “rich, and increased with goods,” and knows not that he is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Often has this language been used in pulpits to show what a contrast there is between the primitive times and these, how far we have fallen below the blessed age of which the New Testament speaks to us. And the admonition has been felt to have a force; it has gone home to the consciences of many; it has stirred some to repentance and reformation. Why? I think, brethren, because the language itself is so much truer, and mightier, and simpler, than the preacher’s interpretation of it. His golden age has no existence. Christ’s revelation of facts scatters the dream. But that revelation tells the Sardian that he has the seven Spirits which quicken, and the seven stars that enlighten. And those Spirits can quicken what is ready to die now as well as then; and those stars can illumine what is dark now as well as then. Christ’s revelation tells the Sardian that all who overcome “shall be clothed in white raiment;” that what is evil shall be blotted out, that their names “shall not be blotted out of the book of life,” but He “will confess them before his Father, and before the angels.” In such a sentence lies an imperishable power; those white robes of innocence, that power to stand before God and call Him a Father, we need as much as the generations of old. And since it is held out not to those who are full of faith, and energy, and hope, but to those whose works were feeble, who had only a name to live; we may have a courage to take it home; in us it may be accomplished. Christ’s revelation tells the Laodicean that He is the “Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God,” and that “as many as he loves, he rebukes and chastens,” and that “he stands at the door and knocks,” and that “if any hears his voice and opens the door, he will come to him, and sup with him,” and that “to him that overcometh he will grant to sit with him on his throne, even as he has overcome, and sat down with his Father on his throne.” Such words contain an undying message to those who are beginning to discover their nakedness, and blindness, and wretchedness. They are an assurance that for them also gold is to be had which has been tried in the fire, and white raiment with which they may be clothed, and eye-salve with which they may see.
5. And so the brightest vision of all among these Churches—the only one which is very bright—ceases to be any longer a vision of some bygone period which owed its felicity to a state of circumstances that can never return. The angel of the Church of the Philadelphians had only “a little strength,” and because he knew that he had only that little, he kept “Christ’s word, and did not deny his name.” Whilst those who called themselves Jews would not believe that the Son of David could be the Son of Man, while they claimed an exclusive Messiah who should glorify them and condemn the world, he would not deny that glorious name, he believed in One who came to die for the world and to redeem it. Amidst all apparent difficulties and contradictions he kept the word of Christ’s patience, believing that He would show Himself at last to be what He had declared Himself to be; that His cross should be found to be the conquering power in the world, the central sun which should draw all to it. Therefore, “He that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth,” promises to keep this servant and this Church “from the temptation which should come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” What this temptation was, and how true the promise was in the next verse, “Behold, I come quickly,” I believe we shall learn as we study this book more. And the more we learn it, and the more we believe it, the less shall we think that any promise of His has worn itself out, or that He Himself has departed from us; the more shall we ask to understand the full force of those words which this Apocalypse was written to explain to the Philadelphians and to us: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name.”