However, most readers quickly become bogged down with all the mysterious symbolism of "seals," "trumpets," "bowls," the 144,000, the Two Witnesses, the Woman and Dragon, the beasts and the "horns," Babylon and the Four Horsemen. We are so attracted by these images, and so anxious to figure out what it all means, we run right past the opening chapters which contain easy to understand messages which are very applicable to the church of our day. It is well known that the early Apostles wrote actual letters which were sent to actual churches located in actual cities. What we have at the beginning of the book is a "Readers Digest" condensed version of seven such letters written by the Apostle John to churches under his supervision. All of these churches were located in Asia Minor, now the country of Turkey. Geographically, these seven churches were located in somewhat of a circular formation - none of them were more than one hundred miles from any of the others. If the currier started at Ephesus, he would have traveled in a clockwise direction to go from church to church, dropping off letters as he went.

However, while these were actual letters for a particular time in history, we can view the churches as representative of the entire church at any given time in history. Each of these churches has a counterpart in our own day, or at least has features which we can identify in our own church.

Before we review the messages given to the churches, let's first look at what can be learned about the sender of the letters. Obviously He is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. He is identified as:

The First and the Last, the crucified and risen (2:8) Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. (2:18)

The One who is holy and true, who holds the key of David (3:7), and who has the sharp, double-edged sword (2:12) which we understand to be the Word of God;

The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation (3:14)

The One who holds the leaders of the churches, the seven stars, and walks among the churches symbolized as the seven golden lampstands (2:1).

We also notice some wonderful promises made to these churches, promises which are given to those who overcome, i.e., those who are victorious. Here there is optimism, for it is clearly assumed that there will be overcomers, there will be those in each church who prevail, who survive the battles, the suffering and the temptations. To understand what "overcomer" means, we need only to look at what this same author, John, wrote earlier, "Everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." (I John 5:4,5)

Too often, the church of Jesus Christ is only viewed from the perspective of its faults and failures:

The church sponsored the Inquisition, and the church launched the Crusades, which, we have been told, were only motivated by thirst for power, money and expansion of the empire.

The church martyred its progressive members such as Galileo and Joan of Arc, and

Even today the church is accused of using missionaries for this worldly purposes of colonialism and the spread of Western capitalism.

Although some of this is certainly true, it is not representative of the true church of Jesus Christ. Far more representative of the church are the untold millions of members, saints who are overcomers - not conquering the world for political or economic expansion, but overcoming the evil within themselves and in the larger society through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now listen to the glorious promises given to those who are the victorious ones. These true believers in Jesus, members of His Church will:

1) Be acknowledged before the Father and his angels and have their names written in the book of life, never to be blotted out (3:5);

2) Bear the name of God and His city, the new Jerusalem (3:12);

To be "acknowledged" simply means that we are known by the Father, as Paul wrote, "God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: 'The Lord knows those who are his....'" (II Timothy 2:19)

3) Receive a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it (2:17);

What is this "white stone"? Some think it may carry a legal meaning, referring to the vote of the judges - a black stone thrown down means guilt, a white stone, innocence. Or, it may be interpreted in line with the competition of the games; in this case the stone would be the ticket the athlete used to gain entrance into the banquet hall for the victory celebration. On the other hand, if, as we could reasonably expect, Jewish religion is behind this symbolism, it could refer to the Urim, the breastplate worn by the High Priest (Exodus 28:28,29). In this case, the white stone would be a diamond - none of the twelve stones representing the 12 tribes were diamonds; this most precious of stones reserved to represent believers.

4) Eat from the tree of life (2:7) and of the hidden manna (2:17);

5) Not be hurt at all by the second death (2:11), but will be made to be pillars in the temple of God (3:12);

6) Receive authority over the nations (2:26); and sit with Christ on His throne (3:21).

Now then, if these messages to the church are considered to be universal, and if we are among those who have an ear to "hear what the Spirit says to the churches," what are we hearing?

In addition to the promises, notice that in each message there's a reference to what God knows. This must be received as both comforting and disconcerting as God says:

I know your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men (2:2).

I know your afflictions, poverty, and the slander you are subjected to (2:9).

I know where you live -- where Satan has his throne. (2:13).

I know your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first (2:19).

I know you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead (3:1).

I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name (3:8).

I know that you are neither cold nor hot (3:15).

Along with these mostly comforting words, we must also listen to the messages of correction.

"You have forsaken your first love." (2:4)

"You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans." (2:14,15)

"You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols." (2:20)

"I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God, so Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die." (3:2)

"You say, `I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked." (3:17)

These corrections for the church can be summed up in three categories: relational, doctrinal and moral.

First, there are the relational problems.

Members of the Ephesus church were accused of having lost their first love, and the last church Laodicea was faulted for being lukewarm and materialistic.

The fact is, throughout all of religious history there has been this temptation to formalize and institutionalize the church. On the one hand, we have this human drive to control our environment, and are not comfortable letting the Holy Spirit be like the wind and blow wherever it pleases. (John 3:8) On the other hand, our desire for security causes us to want our religion to tell us what to do, how to do it, when to do it. But from the beginning, God didn't want rules but relationship. Christianity was never meant to be a religious system or even a moral code - Jesus wanted His followers to enter into a relationship.

This even applies to what we call the "sinner's prayer" - there is no failsafe formula, no prescribed set of words, no guarantee that if you say the right words you will be set for eternity. God seeks a personal relationship - but our question is, how are we to relate to someone we can't see or hear? To deal with this, we make sacred certain places and/or persons so we can see with our physical eyes and hear with our physical ears, or we sanctify certain activities that we can participate in physically. This response is not acceptable with God, He wants a relationship built on faith, not sight.

Why do you think they lost their first love or became lukewarm in their devotion? The most obvious answer would be the same for all failing relationships - separation, lack of time spent together. The old saying is, "absence makes the heart grow fonder." We know that it is more valid to say, "Absence makes the heart to wander." We all know that attending church cannot replace a personal relationship with the Lord. However, hanging around others who also know Him goes a long way in helping us maintain that relationship.

This week in the Joyful Ministry Email Circular that is sent out to nearly 6,000 subscribers, I quoted from a song written a number of years ago by Lavernon Davis:

Secondly, let's look at the doctrinal problems in the church. We note that three kinds of false teachings were mentioned in these letters:

First was the teaching associated with Balaam, the Old Testament prophet hired to speak a curse against the people of Israel as they were preparing to enter into Canaan. We would summarize this teaching as being that which seeks to give the people what they want. In our day this takes place in these ways:

1) We want a message of freedom without responsibility - yes, we are free in Christ, but not free to do what we want to do, but free to do the will of God, which, due to His infinite wisdom, always ends up being in our own best interest.

Furthermore, there can be no true freedom without love - freedom without love is total selfishness. When we truly love, we take on the responsibility to curb our own behavior so as to not harm others or limit their freedom, and we work to bring benefit to others.

2) We want prosperity without diligence and discipline. We sometimes wonder why it is that, in America, some of the largest churches are those that preach the "prosperity" message - it's obvious that it's because this message gives us what we want to hear. When my daughter recently returned from her mission trip to Jamaica, she went along with a group of students to visit a church in Pittsburgh where the message was that God shows His favor by way of material blessings. This was a large and growing church, populated by many quite well-to-do members. What bothered my daughter was that in the midst of all this "blessing," no mention was made, nor assistance offered to the church across town which, just days before, had lost its building to fire.

3) It also seems we too easily embrace a doctrine of forgiveness without repentance. When our children do something wrong towards another child, we train them to say, "I'm sorry." When they say the words, we go further and tell them, "No, you have to mean it." That's good, but "sorry" isn't good enough. We need to listen to the teaching of Jesus who said, "Go and sin no more." That's repentance.

4) One other doctrinal problem today is that we want to hear a message of faith without works. As has been said before, it's easy for critics of Christianity to call ours the "lazy man's religion." Why? Because we say, all that's needed is to believe, which to many folk simply means mental assent. We love to quote Paul's verse, "By grace you have been saved, through faith -- not by works" (Ephesians 2:8,9), and like Martin Luther, we tend to put on a secondary inspiration level the writings of James, who says, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? . . . faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2:14,17)

The second false teaching was by a sect called the Nicolaitans.

There's been a lot of scholarly debate about what were the teachings of this sect. Some believe it was basically synonymous with the Balaam group. However, the actual word suggests something different. The first part of the word "nico" is from the root of the word mentioned earlier, "conquer," and the last part is the word from which we get our word "laity." It's possible then that this group was one which held to an extremely strong authoritarianism for its leadership - the church leaders ruled (conquered) the laity. This found its way into modern times in the form of the "Shepherding" movement. The point here is that too often leaders take on way too much authority over the members of the group they lead. Jesus was very clear on this, leaders in His church were to be the servants. There is no authority given to control the lives of other people, there is no moral authority to determine what is right or wrong for other people, there isn't even any teaching authority that would insist that members believe what their leaders teach just because "I said so." There is only Spiritual Authority which, simply put, is influence confirmed by the Holy Spirit in the heart of each individual believer.

The third set of teachings alluded to by the Apostle John was that of Jezebel, which was a legitimizing of immorality. This leads us right into the next point, the moral problems in the church.

Here the problem is not quite the same as what John, and before him, Paul was concerned about. For the most part, except for a few isolated cases, the contemporary church is not teaching that sexual immorality is acceptable. What we are concerned about, is that the church has been much too silent on this topic. Perhaps it's because we're embarrassed to talk about sex in church, thinking that it's an unholy topic and shouldn't be discussed in a holy place. Or it may be that our church gatherings are too large and usually involve mixed audiences of male and female, young and old, married and unmarried. Whatever the reasons, we have been neglectful in the training of our young people, and even in the correcting of our adult members. We've all been horrified to learn of the widespread immoral behavior that has been going on in one major segment of the church for the past 50 years. But rather than being quick to judge others, let's focus on the building of our own house, making sure we are doing the best we can to bring up our own children in the ways of righteousness.

In line with this, next month we will host a five week course for teens providing Biblical counsel and instruction on the subject of sexual activity. Parents will also be invited to an introductory class so they can be informed about what will be taught. The important thing is that we as a church accept some responsibility for training in righteous Christian living, not just pointing the finger of blame and accusation.

At the end of the book of Revelation, there is given a strong warning - if anyone adds or takes away "from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." (Revelation 22:18,19)

Does this mean that there would be no more messages given to the church? Would the Spirit leave the church when the last chapter of the last book was finished, or is the message given to the first churches be also given to our church now? Remember what was said to each church? "Hear what the Spirit says to the churches." Can we believe that the Spirit is still speaking today? The answer is a resounding "Yes!" Our church may not go by the name of a Turkish city of the first century. Nonetheless, we desperately need to receive a fresh message from God through the Spirit. He still speaks to us concerning these important matters: relational, doctrinal and moral.

1. Why is there so much interest in the last book of the Bible?

2. What were the geographical names of the "Seven Churches"? in what country would they be located today? and in what pattern were they arranged?

3. Why do you think these letters to the churches were preserved so that we could read them 1900 years later?

4. What are some of the titles or functions ascribed to the Lord Jesus in the letters to the churches? (2:1; 2:8; 2:12; 2:18; 3:7; 3:14)

5. Who will be recipients of the wonderful promises given in these letters?

6. What is good about the idea that God knows everything? On the other hand, why could this cause us to be uncomfortable?

7. The messages of correction fall into three areas. What are they?

8. On the list of seven, the first and last churches had something in common. What was it?

9. What caused the "luke-warm" state of the Laodicean church?

10. The false teaching addressed by John were known by what three names, and what false teaching did each represent?

11. Supply the missing word in each of the following statements:

We want a message of freedom without ________________

We want prosperity without ___________ and _____________

We too easily embrace a doctrine of forgiveness without ________________

We want to hear a message of faith without ____________

12. How much, and what kind of authority do Christian leaders have over those who are members in their churches?

13. What kinds of sexual immorality problems were in the first century church, and what kinds are present in the twenty-first century church?

14. If nothing is to be added to or taken away from the "book," how is it that the Spirit is still speaking to the church today?