Revelation 2 - Introduction

CHAPTER II.

This chapter begins the messages to the seven churches. Each had need of instruction, advice, warning, promise, and encouragement. These seven churches were the field of John's oversight. Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province "Asia" was John's home in his later years, and the center from which he superintended the adjoining churches. In making an itinerary of these churches, one would travel in a curve much resembling a horseshoe. Starting with Ephesus and traveling north forty miles, one comes to Smyrna for which the Greeks and Turks have lately been contending. Then going sixty miles farther north, we find Pergamos. These one hundred miles constitute the west side of the curve. Then the course leads thirty miles eastward to Thyatira, thence southeast, through Sardis and Philadelphia, to Laodicea; the eastern side being slightly longer than the western. How often John made this itinerary, what experience he had, what dangers, hardships, sorrows, triumphs, and joys, all this affords scope and theme for lively imagination.

There were other cities and churches in that region; e. g., Colosse, but they do not come within the range of this book. These cities and churches were well known in John's day though most of them have perished long ago. Who founded them we do not know. We know that Paul passed through Asia Minor and dwelt at Ephesus, though nothing is said of his having founded these churches. But in subsequent years they evidently came under the supervision of John.

These messages are just plain letters to the seven churches with their consequent lessons to all churches in all places and times. Some extravagant notions have been entertained in regard to these messages. Dr. C. I. Scofield says: "The messages to the seven churches have a prophetic application, as disclosing seven phases of the spiritual history of the church from, say, A. D. 96 to the end. It is incredible that in a prophecy covering the church period there should be no such foreview. These messages must contain that foreview if it is in the book at all; for no church is mentioned after 3:22. These messages do present an exact foreview of the spiritual history of the church and in this precise order. Ephesus gives the general state at the date of the writing; Smyrna, the period of the great persecutions; Pergamos, the church settled down in the world "where Satan's throne is," after the conversion of Constantine, say A.D. 316. Thyatira is the Papacy, 500 to 1500 A.D. Sardis is the Protestant Reformation whose works were not "fulfilled." Philadelphia is whatever bears clear testimony to the Word and Name in the time of self satisfied profession represented by Laodicea. "It would seem from this that Laodicea represents the present day of lukewarm and indifferent church membership, and being the last of the seven, we are therefore at the end of the age in dire apostasy."

If Dr. Scofield finds such a scheme in these Chapter s, he must have use of a microscope that ordinary men do not possess. This is all sheer invention. By these methods one can prove anything; and find anything in the Scriptures whether it is there or no. Such interpretations are almost as rationalistic as the rationalism they condemn. A recent writer gives us an example in his reference to Joseph: Joseph is a type of Christ; He marries Asenath, a type of the Gentile church. This occurs before Joseph's brethren arrive in Egypt and become reconciled to him; thus the conversion of the Gentiles must precede the conversion of the Jews which will occur only when they meet Christ at his second advent. To make such farfetched arguments, is the extreme of allegorical interpretation. We might proceed with this kind of argument and say that since Joseph died and left his brethren in bondage, therefore the conversion of the Jews will result in their servitude to Satan; a reductio and absurdum, but quite as legitimate.

The arguments to prove this typical view of the seven churches, are entirely inconclusive. The number seven; the similarity traced between these churches and the ages they are supposed to represent; the increasing strength of the promises given to the faithful in the latter group of churches, all this proves nothing, or at least is inadequate to validate the interpretation.

A recent Premillennial writer has said that there are difficulties in this view. He should have said that the chief difficulty is that there is not one syllable in the whole book of Revelation that says any such thing. It is not evident that the promises climax in the latter churches of chapter three. Similarities may be traced between these churches and almost any kind of human institutions. Of course we can find a likeness between the luke-warmness of the church today and the luke-warmness of Laodicea which Christ was ready to spew out of his mouth. And the lukewarmness of today is just as abominable as that of Laodicea, and Christ is just as ready to spew it out of his mouth now as then. But while there are these similarities and these lessons that are eternally true, we are not to read the whole history of the world into these seven churches.

And while the word 'church' may not be found in Chapter s four and eighteen inclusive, yet the church is there as really as if mentioned by name, woven into the narrative and represented by symbol.