The passage: Christ, who holds the seven stars and walks among the seven golden lampstands, sends a message to each of seven churches. To Ephesus: I know your works, labor, and patience; you have exposed false apostles and hate the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, but you have left your first love — repent, or I will remove your lampstand; the one who overcomes will eat of the tree of life. To Smyrna (from him who was dead and is alive): I know your tribulation and poverty, though you are rich; be faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life; the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death. To Pergamos (from him with the sharp two-edged sword): I know you dwell where Satan’s seat is, yet you held my name even when Antipas was martyred; but you have some who hold the doctrine of Balaam and of the Nicolaitanes — repent; the one who overcomes will receive hidden manna and a white stone with a new name. To Thyatira (from the Son of God with eyes like fire): I know your love, service, faith, and patience, and that your last works exceed your first; but you tolerate the woman Jezebel who seduces my servants — she and hers will be judged; the one who overcomes and keeps my works will receive power over the nations and the morning star. To Sardis (from him with the seven Spirits and seven stars): you have a name that you live but are dead — be watchful; a few have not defiled their garments; the one who overcomes will be clothed in white and his name confessed before my Father. To Philadelphia (from him who is holy and true, holding the key of David): I have set before you an open door; because you kept my word with little strength, I will keep you from the hour of temptation coming on the world; the one who overcomes will be a pillar in God’s temple, marked with God’s name and the name of the new Jerusalem. To Laodicea (from the Amen, the faithful witness, the beginning of God’s creation): you are lukewarm, and think yourself rich when you are wretched and poor and blind — buy from me gold, white raiment, and eye-salve; I stand at the door and knock; the one who overcomes will sit with me on my throne.
Last Sunday our subject was the revelation, or unveiling, of the Son of Man to His servant John. He was walking among seven golden lampstands. He wore the robes of the High Priest. His form was both divine and human. Light was in Him and shone out from Him. He had died, and He was alive — alive forever. He held the keys of death and hell.
What John saw and heard, he was to report; he was to write it in a book for the good of the seven Churches in Asia. Those seven Churches were declared to be the seven lampstands among which the Son of Man was walking. They were to spread abroad the light that lived in Him. The stars He held in His hand stood for their angels, or ministers. So the revelation of Him was also a revelation to them — a revelation of how they were related to each other, and of the purpose for which they existed.
The second and third chapters continue this revelation. They contain a series of messages to these Churches. Readers who find little meaning in the rest of the book, or who despair of finding any, have still accepted these messages as of great practical worth. In every period of Christendom’s history they have been felt to speak forcefully to that period. Indeed, it has proved so impossible to confine them to the Apostolic age or to the circumstances of Asia Minor that theories have been built up to identify which era of the Church is the Sardian, which the Philadelphian, which the Laodicean. Given what I have said about the principles I mean to follow in studying this book, you will not suspect me of any fondness for such theories. I do not care to ask which is best or worst. I am determined to stay with the Apostle: when he speaks of his own time, I assume he means his own time; when he speaks of Sardis or Philadelphia, I assume he means Sardis or Philadelphia. But I take such theories as evidence that the revelation this book contains is a revelation of what abides — of what does not depend on circumstances, however circumstances may affect or alter its appearance. In this respect the messages to the Churches seem to me no different from the parts before or after them. If we are permitted to understand them, to feel their force on our own lives at all, it will be because the Spirit who spoke them to the ancient Churches is speaking them to us now; because He who was promised to be with the Church forever, and of whose living power the Church is the witness, has not stopped living or working. It will be because He opens our ears to hear what, in these messages or through any other means, He is saying to us and to mankind.
I. 1. Before I mention any special features of these messages, I want you to notice what they all have in common. The first and most obvious of these shared features is one I have already prepared you for. St. John — their companion in the faith and patience of Jesus Christ, St. John the Apostle, dearest to them, who was to outlive all his fellow Apostles — is not the one addressing them. To each and all, the Son of Man is speaking Himself. To each and all He declares that He knows them, knows what they are and what they are doing. To each and 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 so likewise to Smyrna, from him who was dead and is alive; to Pergamos, from him with the sharp two-edged sword; to Thyatira, from the Son of God with eyes like fire and feet like fine brass; to Sardis, from him with the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars; to Philadelphia, from him who is holy and true and holds the key of David; to Laodicea, from the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God — in each case with the same words, “I know thy works.”
The language, you will notice, is uniform in these respects: it identifies the speaker as the Person who was unveiled to the Apostle on Patmos, and He alone is assumed to know what the works of each Church are. The difference between the messages lies in which aspect of this divine Person is shown to which Church — and these disclosures, as we shall see, correspond to each Church’s particular tendencies and dangers.
2. The second general feature 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 look more closely at what is said about them, I believe we will see why it was not enough simply to tell them that the Son of Man was among them and knew what they were doing. To admit that much is possible. Recognizing Him as in some sense the Head of all Churches, as in some sense discerning their qualities and ruling them, has not been very difficult in later times, and would not have seemed so to many even then. But to combine that 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 what is deepest and most permanent in them, not to what is passing or impulsive — that, I suspect, was the difficulty then, and has been ever since. It has taken different forms. At one time the confession of a Son of Man could harden into a merely outward, almost material confession. At another, the confession of a Spirit could be twisted into an excuse for all lawlessness and fanaticism. So it is very significant, I think, that every message should begin with one of these revelations and end with the other; and this is a great reason why, in reading of the Asiatic Churches of eighteen centuries ago, we feel we are reading of the European Churches among which we live.
3. Another feature is no less obvious — the one I touched on last week in speaking of the seven stars. Each message is addressed to the whole body, in the person of its angel. There were clearly very wide differences in the conduct and moral life of the various people who made up these Churches. Some of these are noted. Yet still a mind and temper is attributed to the whole society, and the minister’s mind and temper are taken as a faithful index of it. He represents the particular Church over which he presides. There is no address to its individual members apart from him. With such materials it would be easy to construct a whole system of priestcraft and claim St. John’s authority for it. Indeed, such a system is bound to arise if only this part of St. John’s words is noticed, and the part about the Son of Man walking among the lampstands and the Spirit’s presence with the Churches is forgotten. Take away those divine revelations, and the light they receive from St. John’s refusal to claim any honor for himself, and it takes no elaborate ecclesiastical theory to turn priests into tyrants and Churches into slaves. This will happen naturally, because there is such a craving for unity in the human heart, such an inward sense that we are set under some head, such a consciousness that fathers are responsible for their children, kings for their subjects, ministers for their congregations, that whenever the divine principle explaining these convictions and setting their limits is forgotten, there will be perpetual new outbursts of anarchy opposing priestcraft. If a minister forgets that he is a messenger of God, the only way he can avoid becoming a usurper over men is by becoming their tool.
4. Once more, all these messages share this feature: every one ends with some words about struggle and victory. To Ephesus: the one who overcomes will eat of the tree of life in the paradise of God. To Smyrna: the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death. To Pergamos: the one who overcomes will receive hidden manna and a white stone bearing a new name known only to the one who receives it. To Thyatira: the one who overcomes and keeps Christ’s works to the end will be given power over the nations, ruling them with a rod of iron as Christ Himself received from His Father, and will be given the morning star. To Sardis: the one who overcomes will be clothed in white, his name not blotted from the book of life, and Christ will confess his name before His Father and the angels. To Philadelphia: the one who overcomes will be made a pillar in God’s temple, never to leave it, marked with the name of God, the name of the new Jerusalem, and Christ’s new name. To Laodicea: the one who overcomes will sit with Christ on His throne, just as Christ overcame and sat down with His Father on His throne.
- I imagine that, even if the first three features have not separated the Apostolic-age Churches from those of later times, the fourth may be thought to belong especially to the age when Christians were persecuted for their faith. These urgent calls to overcome, it will be assumed, must refer to the cross, the stake, the amphitheater, or at least the prison. But if you read through these chapters, you will be struck by how rarely such perils are even mentioned. The most notable case — the only one where the call to struggle and the promise to the victor are directly connected with outward suffering — is Smyrna’s: from him who was dead and is alive comes the acknowledgment of their tribulation and poverty (though they are rich), and of the slander of those who claim to be Jews but are the synagogue of Satan; then the encouragement to fear nothing they will suffer, though the devil will cast some into prison and they will have tribulation ten days; and the charge to be faithful unto death, with the promise of a crown of life. Then follows the further promise already quoted: the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.
In this city there was a persecution — apparently not a Roman one at all, but one coming from a synagogue of Jews, men who clung to that venerable name while denying the King of the Jews. Such men, through their influence in particular cities before or after the fall of Jerusalem, could easily raise a violent storm against the sect of Nazarenes and get them thrown into prison. If they themselves were in rebellion (as was shown in the second century, when they followed Barcochba as their Messiah), they were especially willing and able to make the disciples of the Crucified suffer. Or, if the Roman authorities suppressed them by force, Christians might easily be lumped in with them, as sharing a common origin and equally refusing to worship idols. Such persecution would have been just as terrible for the Church of Smyrna as the most general and systematic kind. It had clearly borne the best fruit in the lives of both pastor and flock. Though poor, they were rich. He who had died and become alive and lived forevermore saw in them the blessed result of His agony. Still, they needed strength and comfort. The tribulation would be sharp, though short. The flesh would shrink from it. But let them hold on. The second death, the death of the spirit, would not reach those 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 the message was as truly 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 immense loss if this one instance of a body suffering persecution were missing among the seven, it is not typical of the others; it is the exception. Pergamos is called Satan’s seat — probably because, as one of the wealthiest cities in Asia Minor, it had been a special resort of Jews who were unusually hostile there. A distant reference is made to an earlier tribulation in which Antipas was a faithful martyr and the Church held fast to Christ’s name. But that danger was apparently over; in any case it is not the one the angel is chiefly warned about. In Philadelphia, too, there is a reference to a “synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie.” That synagogue might greatly harass the Christians of Philadelphia. But the chief harassment seems to have come from their claiming to be the people of God, and denouncing those who confessed Jesus as the Son of God as deserters from the old faith. On the whole, nothing could more distort the words of this book than to associate the conquests it speaks of chiefly with external troubles, or to suppose that the seven Churches were all going through such experiences — as if this made them unfit to serve as examples or warnings for those living in ease or safety.
2. If we are not allowed to build that highly plausible theory about these early Churches, we are even more firmly forbidden to hold another: that they were free from the invasion of immoral doctrines and habits, or that such things, where they appeared, 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 seem to have gained a foothold and to be linked with another doctrine, 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.” And the angel of Thyatira is charged with tolerating “that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,” in seducing Christ’s servants into fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols.
That there is a difference among the three doctrines or states of mind named here, I fully believe. That there was one trait common to all — an indifference to ordinary moral obligations, grounded on the belief that Christians had been raised to a state above them — is equally certain. Two passages in the Stromata of Clemens throw light on the teaching of the Nicolaitanes. From the first (Book II. c. xx. § 118), it appears the sect twisted a saying of the teacher whose name they took, about contempt (or abuse) of the flesh, into a sense opposite to what he meant; what was asceticism in him became libertinism in them. The second passage suggests (c. xxiv. § 25) that the founder’s ascetic profession was joined with a practical arrogance and disregard for the most sacred obligations, which might well explain the later conclusions drawn from it. Those conclusions, according to Clemens, amounted to a defense of concubinage, if not of a community of wives. These accounts come from an uncertain tradition and are not entirely clear. But they have an inner probability; the same story has been repeated again and again in different forms.
I do not think we need to assume there was an actual school or sect of “Balaamites.” The man who would not curse the children of Israel in words, who could only bless them, and yet did Balak’s work far more effectively by setting a temptation before them that undermined their moral strength — he is the forerunner and type of all who accept and proclaim the spiritual lessons of the higher covenant but turn them into excuses for encouraging the fleshly license that saps and destroys the spirit. So far the Nicolaitane and the Balaamite are alike. The Balaamite’s distinctive features are two. (1.) He has a real inspiration; he is not a pretended but a genuine prophet, turning an actual gift to a vile use. (2.) His motive for evil is money. Indulgence of lust is the result in his victims. Covetousness has destroyed him.
Like the Nicolaitanes and Balaamites, the Prophetess of Thyatira sets herself above law. Like the Balaamite, she enthrones her own spiritual intuitions. But it is power, not liberty, that she aspires to. Her prototype is the Sidonian Jezebel, who broke down the righteous laws of Jehovah, set up the worship of the Baalim (the powers of nature), and turned the Israelites into Phoenician idolaters, and so into a degraded, filthy people. Such female usurpation is as directly connected with sensual worship, and all its consequences, as the doctrine of the male prophet. Indeed it leads more directly to tyranny.
3. The use of names borrowed from the Old Testament for two of these three heresies is proof, I think, that they did not appear to the Apostle as essentially new. He was sure they had existed and borne fruit ages before. They appeared in the Church because the Church was made of men and women; no new race had been created to people it. Even the one heresy with a modern name, of post-Pentecostal origin, was like the others in its nature and effects. Yet it did testify to the fulfillment of the old covenant, to the baptism with the Spirit. In doing so it explained how the conflict between flesh and spirit, present in all earlier times, had now reached its full intensity. Every question now came down to this: what has the illumination of the Divine Spirit done for men? Has it freed them from the restraints imposed on their evil natures, or has it explained the meaning and blessing of those restraints? Has it opened to them visions of heaven that make their earthly conduct a matter of indifference, or has it given meaning to all the common occupations of earth? Has it made those who receive it into tyrants, or made them more obedient — and so more free? If that is so, then instead of confining these Nicolaitane, Balaamite, and Jezebel tendencies to the Apostolic period, we should expect to see them growing from the little seeds in Pergamos and Thyatira into monstrous diseases infecting the Church’s life in every region — diseases that, if the Church gained influence over the nations, would infect them too, weakening and corrupting their powers and threatening their existence.
These consequences — which we would expect must follow, if these messages were true and divine — have, it seems to me, actually appeared in the history of Christendom. Nicolaitane communism has kept reappearing in the most varied forms and at the most unexpected moments. The Balaam-prophet — who speaks grand words and sets an example of foul deeds, flattering the spirit with its own greatness until it sinks under the rule of animal or covetous desires — has never been absent from small communities, and has influenced whole countries and generations. The Jezebel, or female form of wickedness, mingling with the others, has given birth to the most widespread idolatries and to systems of spiritual despotism so bewildering, in their variety and apparent opposition, that the successive reformers who fought against them have seemed to others, and even to themselves, to be fighting under different banners for opposite ends. Yet they have been of one heart and mind, in that they all bore witness that morality is unchangeable and that the righteous God cannot dispense with His own laws. And when they have been wise and successful, they have been alike in this too: they never hoped to overcome spiritual delusions by weakening their testimony to a Spirit of Peace and Love and a Sound Mind; they traced the evil around them not to belief in His Presence, but to the denial of it.
- This last lesson, about how falsehood should be handled, is contained in the message to Ephesus. The angel of that Church had a great horror of religious pretenders: he “cannot bear them that are evil.” And he had not only zeal but discernment: he tested those who claimed to be apostles and were not, and found them liars. He also spared no toil: he bore up patiently. And this from real devotion: for Christ’s sake he labored and did not faint. As for that sect which has done so much mischief, he hated the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, as Christ Himself does. For all this clarity and vigor of purpose, He who walks among the lampstands and holds the stars in His hand commends His servant. And yet an evil change has been found in him: he has left his first love. The outward activity is still there. The heart is gone. His service has become — is becoming — not dishonest, but mechanical. He who looks within knows it. And He calls him to repent — He whose call, if heeded, is itself the gift of repentance. But if he does not repent, if the coldness and indifference grow deadly, then the punishment is this: “I will remove thy candlestick out of its place.” It was set to give light; he is failing to give it. Men see him busy repressing bad opinions and dutifully going through his round of duties. But the life and love of good do not flow from him. So he must not pretend to be what he is not. Ephesus must cease to be a Church if it fails in the one function of a Church. This, then, is the temptation he must overcome — not persecution, not heresy, but dreariness, formality, the worship of decorum. Let him fight against it in the strength of Him who walks among the lampstands. And He will give exactly what is needed: the fruit of the tree of life — the fruit that has power to prevail against every tendency in him toward torpor and death.
2. In Pergamos it is different. He who has “the sword with two edges,” who fights not only outward enemies but the subtle, secret one that undermines the heart within, saw that this Church — brave enough when called to bear witness against Jewish or heathen oppressors — was becoming infected with Balaamite and Nicolaitane corruptions, and that the angel was not resisting them courageously. No doubt they had crept into his own heart. He was not clearly distinguishing there between the liberty of the spirit and the license of the flesh; he was not hating the one so as to cherish the other. So he could not fight them in his flock. But the Son of Man is fighting them in both, and can overcome them in both. And if the angel will let that two-edged sword do its work, this shall be his reward: he will eat of the hidden manna that restores the spirit which the flesh-pots of Egypt have weakened. He will have the white stone of Absolution — the true spiritual emancipation which the Balaamite and Nicolaitane emancipation only counterfeited. On the stone will be written “a new name, which no man knoweth save he which receiveth it.” The divine liberty is not given in his own name but in Christ’s name. The regenerated spirit accepts its freedom in that name; it knows it bears His name, though it cannot make anyone understand how it came to bear it. 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 every appearance, and who Himself passed through the furnace of human temptation — sees how much good there is in the angel and the Church: their love, service, faith, patience, and their last works exceeding the first. There is life; there is growth; evils have been beaten; where there had been failure, there is now success. But He sees evil at work here too — evil of the same inward, penetrating kind as in the other case.
The angel tolerates the woman Jezebel in drawing Christ’s servants away to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. He is clearly afraid of her spiritual pretensions. He dares not rebuke one who regards herself as a great saint, and whom many of his flock follow as such. He has not learned 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 dabbling with idolatry — dignify them with whatever religious names you please — are the 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 that hide under respectable names, who will make it known what gross and open crimes spring from spiritual self-exaltation. That is how I understand the terrible threat to this Church — fulfilled to it, I have no doubt; and fulfilled again and again in particular Churches, and in the Church at large, whenever the Jezebel temper has run rampant.
Can the promise, too, 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 in order to win them. The hook was wonderfully baited; not to nibble at it was very hard in the earliest times, and has been very hard ever since. What is the encouragement to reject it entirely? This: if you do, you will have the very power you were seeking — power over those to whom you were being asked to surrender yourselves; a power they will confess; a power that will break their corruptions and superstitions in pieces; a power the same in kind as that which Christ received from His Father. Now this is a promise I am sure was performed to that Church at Thyatira and its angel, and has been performed to every Church since, insofar as it has struggled with this most subtle evil and conquered it. Every society that has kept its own moral standing-ground, that has refused to win power and influence by stooping to the practices of those around it, has been allowed, in marvelous ways, to lift them up, to reform nations, to make them confess that Christ’s kingdom is no dream. In the smallest circle this is verified; it is proved by all the real dominion the Church has exercised over the world, by the conquests it has won from the world. It has been proved just as fully by the Church’s own abominable tyrannies over the world, by the tyrannies it has kept alive in the world, and by the defeats it has suffered from the world. Grasping at the promise, “Ye shall rule them with a rod of iron” — but forgetting the clause, “as I have received from my Father” — the Church has misused her rod to crush the very spirits Christ came from the Father to raise, and to protect and worsen the cruelty and oppression He came to break to shivers. And what has been the recompense? The wretched power she wrenched and stole from the nations has been turned against her. She has been forced to grovel to them and beg their help, and they have justly spurned her. She chose to exalt herself like Lucifer, and she has fallen like Lucifer. Had she trusted her Lord, He would have given her the morning star. She should have received 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 take these messages this way — as applying directly to the Churches of Asia — then, it seems to me, they apply most powerfully to all times, and most stingingly to ourselves. Is there one of these early heresies to which we are not exposed? Are we free from any Antinomian danger — the danger of turning spiritual imaginations, or even spiritual realities, into an excuse for self-indulgence and self-glory?
But perhaps we are even more surprised to read the messages to Sardis and Laodicea — connected as they are with bodies we suppose must have had all the freshness of youth upon them — than to hear of the startling moral corruptions denounced in the others. For here we find all the marks we associate with what is aged and worn out, or with the indifference, softness, and self-satisfaction that ease and luxury breed. 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 he is “rich, and increased with goods,” and does not know he is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” This language has often been used in pulpits to show the contrast between primitive times and ours, how far below that blessed age of the New Testament we have fallen. And the admonition has been felt to have force; it has struck home to many consciences and stirred some to repentance and reform. Why? I think, brethren, because the language itself is far truer, mightier, and simpler than the preacher’s interpretation of it. His golden age never existed. Christ’s revelation of facts scatters that dream. But that revelation tells the Sardian that he has the seven Spirits that quicken and the seven stars that give light. And those Spirits can quicken what is ready to die now as well as then; and those stars can light up 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 from the book of life, but that He will confess them before His Father and the angels. In such a sentence lies an imperishable power. Those white robes of innocence, that power to stand before God and call Him Father — we need them as much as the generations of old. And since it is held out not to those full of faith, energy, and hope, but to those whose works were feeble, who had only a name to live, we may take 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 anyone hears His voice and opens the door He will come in and sup with him, and that to the one who overcomes He will grant to sit with Him on His throne, as He overcame and sat down with His Father on His throne. Such words carry an undying message to those beginning to discover their own nakedness, blindness, and wretchedness. They are an assurance that for these too there is gold to be had, tried in the fire, and white raiment to clothe them, and eye-salve so they may see.
5. And so the brightest vision of all among these Churches — the only very bright one — ceases to be a vision of some bygone period owing its happiness to a set of circumstances that can never return. The angel of the Church of the Philadelphians had only “a little strength,” and because he knew he had only that little, he kept Christ’s word and did not deny His name. While those who called themselves Jews refused to believe that the Son of David could be the Son of Man, and claimed an exclusive Messiah to glorify them and condemn the world, this angel would not deny that glorious name; he believed in One who came to die for the world and redeem it. Amid all the apparent difficulties and contradictions, he kept the word of Christ’s patience, believing that Christ would at last show Himself to be what He had declared Himself to be — that His cross would prove to be the conquering power in the world, the central sun to draw all things to it. Therefore, He who is holy and true, who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens, promises to keep this servant and this Church from the temptation that was to come upon all the world, to try those who dwell on the earth. What that temptation was, and how true the promise “Behold, I come quickly” was, I believe we shall learn as we study this book further. And the more we learn it, and the more we believe it, the less we shall think that any promise of His has worn itself out, or that He Himself has left us; the more we shall long to grasp the full force of the words 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.”