Revelation 2-3 The Seven Messengers He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.—Revelation 2:7 Jim Parkinson The seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3 are shown also as seven lampstands (1:12,20). Just as the Menorah, or seven-branched lampstand, in the tabernacle and temple was wrought from one piece of gold (Exodus 25:31), so the seven lamps, or seven churches, signify the whole of the true church. But who are the seven messengers to the seven churches and what are their messages? We are introduced to the seven messengers in Joshua chapter six where the army of Israel marches around the walled city of Jericho on seven successive days, accompanied by seven priests blowing seven trumpets. The Israelites are under the direction of Joshua (the Greek form of the name is Jesus; Joshua is, appropriately, a type of Jesus Christ). The priests served as Joshua’s messengers, successively blowing the trumpets, one day after the other, throughout Jericho’s last week, which week is a type, or foreshadowing, of the entire Gospel age. In the book of Revelation this theme of the seven messengers is expanded upon, with the seven messengers (Greek, angels, which means messengers, whether spirit or human) blowing the seven trumpets (Revelation 8 to 11), and the seven messengers giving messages to the seven successive days, or periods, of the true church (Revelation 2 and 3). The seven messengers correspond to the seven priests at Jericho. Just as the priesthood is associated with human Christians and not angels of the heavenly realm, so the seven messengers are to be found among leaders of the true church of Christ. Just as the priests blew the trumpets on successive days marching around Jericho, the seven messengers speak to successive periods of the church throughout the Gospel age. This succession of Gospel age periods will be the same for these seven messages as for the seven trumpets of Revelation 8 to 11. If we are to identify the seven messengers throughout the Gospel age, we must first see how this age is divided in time. We would expect each messenger to 1) deliver the message to his period of the church in Revelation 2 and 3, and 2) begin his activity at the beginning of the period (to be a messenger for the whole period). Christian history readily divides the Gospel age into these seven distinct conditions:
1. “I know thy works and thy toil but thou didst leave thy first love” 1 At the beginning of the church, Jesus Christ told Peter, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19, author’s translation). Peter unlocked the kingdom of heaven first to the Jews on Pentecost, and then to the rest of the world with the conversion of Cornelius (Acts 2:1-40; 10:1-48). Peter’s counsel to be “fervent in your love among yourselves; for love covereth a multitude of sins: using hospitality one to another without murmuring” (1 Peter 4:7-9) answers well to the message to the first period of the church: “Thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works” (Revelation 2:4,5). Thus, Peter would logically be the messenger to the first (Ephesus) period of the church.2 2. “Fear not the things which thou art about to suffer” The second period saw Christians tortured and slain under heathen Rome. Ignatius of Antioch (fed to the lions in Rome, 108 A.D.) exhorts, “I am God’s wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts that they may become my tomb, and leave no trace of my body, that when I fall asleep I be not burdensome to any. Then shall I be truly a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall not even see my body. Beseech Christ on my behalf, that I may be found a sacrifice through these instruments. I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; they were apostles, I am a convict; they were free, I am even until now a slave. But if I suffer, I shall be Jesus Christ’s freedman, and in him I shall rise free.”3 As messenger to the second (Smyrna) period of the church, Ignatius set a good example in his own martyrdom of how a persecuted Christian should conduct himself. 3. “Thou hast there some that hold the teaching of Balaam [for gain]” At the beginning of the third period Emperor Constantine ended the official persecution of Christians by Rome and moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium in Thrace (renaming it Constantinople). From the beginning the puritanism of Arius was famous; in 313 A.D. he is already pleading for a restoration of primitive purity to an Alexandrian church going worldly. The worldly element could hardly accuse the man of being too pious, but after five years they codified a new concept of the nature of God and accused Arius of heresy against it. Arius was variously banned and recalled by the emperor (as was alternately his archenemy Athanasius). Arius defended the teaching that Jesus Christ was created by God, is the son of God, and is himself a god subordinate to the Father.4 Coming back from his last recall in 336 A.D., his enemies poisoned him and he died (the Athanasians called it the righteous judgment of God). Thus, Arius would appear to be the messenger to the third (Pergamum) period of the church. 4. “Thou sufferest the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess” The period of Papal Roman domination opens with a young man having been baptized in approximately 536 A.D., and then mightily defending the doctrine that there was one nature in Christ, the human, while he was here on earth—a teaching called Monophysite (mono-physis, one nature). As a Syrian monophysite, Jacobus Baradaeus (James, the Ragedy, because he spent his efforts on Christian work and not clothes) was now excluded by the largest body of professed Christians; in his activity he ranged from Egypt to Babylon and consecrated 80,000 bishops.5 “As many as ... know not the deep things of Satan ... I cast upon you none other burden” (Revelation 2:24). 5. “Establish the things that remain, which were ready to die” The Reformation began in 1517 with Martin Luther tacking up his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, protesting forgiveness through the sale of indulgences rather than through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. “Jesus Christ died for every man” remains a Lutheran watchword to this day. Said Luther, “When people shall be resurrected, it will seem to Adam and to the old fathers as though they had been living only half an hour before.”6 In later years Luther translated the Bible into German. 6. “Thou hast a little power, and didst keep my word” After the Thirty-Years War (1618-1648), when Protestants were seldom threatened with mass execution, many turned their efforts to carrying the Bible and its loving message to the rest of the world. Principles of Christian love were emphasized over intellectual assent to one creed or another. Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705) in Germany, the father of the Pietist movement, delivered just such a message. And departing from what had become Lutheran orthodoxy, he considered regeneration necessary for the true theologian, and expected the conversion of the Jews and the fall of Papacy as the prelude of the triumph of the church.7 Little criticism is spoken to the Philadelphia period of the Christian church. 7. “Thou ... knowest not that thou art the wretched one” The harvest is the final period of the Gospel age; it is a time of separation when the Lord calls his people to come out of Babylon (Jeremiah 51:6-9; Revelation 18:1-5). The centerpiece of Pastor C.T. Russell’s worldwide presentations was that Jesus Christ died once for all, and that therefore all will benefit from that death. The thousand-year kingdom of Christ is for resurrecting all the world’s billions and restoring them to the perfection lost in Eden. Prophecy was studied to determine what we should be doing today: “Deliver your loving testimony to the goodness and wisdom of the Lord’s great plan of the ages, and, wisely and meekly giving your reasons, publicly withdraw from them” [i.e., from organizations practicing the sins of Babylon].8 Seven Lessons for Our Day We may each draw modern-day lessons from the messages of the seven messengers in the Ephesus to Laodicean periods:
________ 1. Scriptural quotations are from the American Standard Version (1901) 2. Other possibilities for the first messenger would include James (as presiding over the early church); John (whose message of godly love is evident throughout, and who lived to the end of the period; and Paul (1 Corinthians 13, though he would have been a messenger for only half the period.) 3. Ignatius’ epistle to the Romans IV. Other suggestions for the second messenger are John and Timothy. Polycarp and Paias could also be considered. 4. From Adrian Harnack, “History of Dogma,” Vol. IV, p. 20. “The passages cited so frequently later on by the Arians, [Deuteronomy 6:4, 32, 39, Proverbs 8:22, Psalm 45:8, Matthew 12:28, Mark 13:32, Matthew 26:41, 28:18; Luke 2:52, 18:19, John 11:34, 14:28, 17:3, Acts 2:37, 1 Corinthians 1:24, 15:28, Colossians 1:15, Philippians 2:6f, Hebrews 1:4, 3:2, John 12:27, 13:21, Matthew 26:39, 27:46, etc.,] were probably already used by Arias himself,” “The idea of the subordinate God is indeed as old as the theology of the C Christian Church” (Vol. III, p. 135). And “the puritanism of Arius is, of course, famous” (Vol. III, p. 141, footnote 2.) 5. Beginning with the Thyatira period, the call “He that hath an ear” is on the outside of the message just as Jacobus was outside the mainstream. Other suggestions for the fourth (Thyatira) messenger include Peter Waldo (late 12th century) and John Wycliffe (1328-1384), either requires centuries of delay in the starting of the period. 6. Sermon on the Gospel of Luke 16, “Of the rich Man and poor Lazarus”, D. Martin Luther’s Werke. Vol. XII, p. 592 (June 7, 1523) (in German). Concerning the nature of God, and dogmatism, Harnack quotes Luther. “’The Arians had wrong views with regard to the faith, they were nevertheless very right in this … that they required that no profane and novel word would be allowed to be introduced into the rules of faith.’ In like manner he objected to and rather avoided the terms ‘Dreifaltigkeit,’ ‘Dreiheit,’ ‘unitas,’ ‘trinitas’ (threefoldness, threeness, oneness, trinity.” “The history of dogma comes to a close with Luther.” (History of Dogma, Vol. VII, p. 225, 226, 268.) Other possibilities for the fifth (Sardis) messenger include Andreas Bodenstein [Carlstadt] (1480-1541) John Oecolampadius (1482-1531), and John Wycliffe (a choice that would require a much earlier start for this period). 7. Encyclopedia Brittanica (1886 edn,). Others suggested as the sixth (Philadelphia) period of the church include George Fox (1624-1691), William Penn (1644-1718), Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), John Wesley (1703-1791), Joseph Wolff (1796-1862), and William Miller (1782-1849), the latter two would imply a very short period. 8. Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. III (1891), p. 184. |
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