“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” (Revelation 2:18).
The symbolic description embodied in the words: “These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire,” seems to indicate very clearly the imminence of approaching judgment and an arraignment of the Church of Thyatira — a judgment of the most severe character. Considering this message from the prophetic standpoint, it is generally and very properly applied to the period immediately following that of Pergamos, which, as we have seen, was the age of worldly church history, when the professed Church enjoyed the patronage of the professed, Christian emperors, from 303 to about 539 AD.
We can readily see that by means of the doctrines of Nicolaitanism, or lordship over the people, and Balaamism, or world affiliation, which characterized those times, all kinds of corrupting elements were introduced, and the professed Church assumed another and more evil phase; indeed, merged into complete apostasy. Richard Trench, a voluminous writer on Bible topics, who is the author of a work entitled The Seven Epistles of Asia Minor, states that “for such Protestant expositors as see the Papacy in the scarlet woman of Babylon, the Jezebel of Thyatira appears exactly at the right time, coincides with the Papacy at its height, yet at the same time, with judgment at the door, in the great revolt [the Sixteenth Century Reformation] which was even then preparing.”
The Reign of the Worldly Church
This period of Church history represented in the Thyatira message is very fittingly referred to by some writers as the period of the reign of the world-church; thus distinguishing it from the previous period of Pergamos — the Church’s uniting with the world. It represents the period of the Papacy during which “the virgin Church was enduring the hardships of the wilderness; while the apostate Church sat on the throne of her royal paramour.” Prophetic writers differ in fixing the exact date of the beginning of the Papal Church. The most fitting event as marking its beginning would seem to be when, by a decree of Justinian, the Roman emperor residing at Constantinople, a Roman bishop was made head of all the Churches of Christendom. This decree was first made in 533 AD, but does not seem to have been fully enforced until 538 or 539 AD. This development into apostasy was a gradual work.
“Systematized prelacy, and Balaamism [in the Pergamos period], made the emperor president of the church councils and the confirmer of their decrees, brought the community of saints into conjunction with ‘Satan’s throne,’ and so gave being to that mongrel but mighty thing in which Pagan life was transferred to Christian veins, heathen pomp and ceremony commingled with Christian rites and sacraments, and the professed Bride of Christ transformed into a queenly adulteress, the harlot mother of a harlot household. And in all history there is not another character which so completely represents the Papal system — its character, works and worship — as the unclean wife of Ahab, the Jezebel of this epistle. She was a heathen married to a Jew; and such is the character of the Papal system in its main elements — Paganism joined to an absolute Judaism. She is described as calling herself a prophetess, and as undertaking to be the teacher of God’s servants. This Jezebel is also described as having ‘children,’ alike with her, unsatisfactory to Christ; and whence but from that unclean source have we those semi-Papal national religious establishments, by which the Church of Jesus is befouled, hindered, and disgraced, even in many Protestant countries? We thus obtain from these epistles Christ’s own direct verdict upon Romanism, both in its more offensive features in the old mother, and in its more modified forms in the daughters.”
“The Book of Revelation (2:20-25, 18:7) pictures to us Queen Jezebel as representing a great religious system of this Gospel Age which did great violence to the Truth. Ahab [king of Israel] represented the worldly governments. His wife [Jezebel] represented a false Christian church system married to earthly governments. As Ahab represented the worldly governments claiming to be Christ’s kingdoms, so Queen Jezebel pictured, or typified, a false church system, which, instead of maintaining its purity as the virgin Church of Christ, became married or united to these earthly systems. As the prophets of Baal were under the care of Queen Jezebel and under the patronage of King Ahab, so the priests and the religious representatives of a great church system have been the obedient servants of the great false institutions pictured by Ahab and Jezebel.”
The chief evil pointed out in this Jezebel of Thyatira, by the one “whose eyes were as a flame of fire,” and the evil that was the primal cause of all the others mentioned, is that she professed herself to be a prophetess. The Papacy or Papal Church claims and professes to be the only infallible teacher of God’s truth. While holding to the Scriptures, this system claims to be their sole interpreter; indeed, claims the right to set them aside or add to them at will. There is certainly a true principle involved in the antitypical Jezebel’s false claim, and one that ever needs to be given heed to by the Lord’s people, and this is, “that infallible teaching alone can demand obedience, as alone it can, implicit faith. Allow that in any degree the guide may lead astray, and how can it be safe to follow her? ‘If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?’ ”
Rome, while a deceiver in most matters, has been very open and frank in this claim. No one of the Lord’s people need be deceived by her in this. It should be Thyatira kept in mind, however, that it is quite possible for one to judge and condemn the followers of Rome in this particular, and yet partake, unconsciously perhaps, of the very evils he is condemning, and to which he is in bondage. She is called “the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth,” and it is said that by her “sorceries were all nations deceived,” and that she caused all that dwelt upon the earth to “worship him [the Papal beast], whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb.” It is possible for the Lord’s people to be deceived for a time and to receive and adopt some of Rome’s unscriptural principles and practices and to follow them, and yet reject the full fruitage and development of them, as exhibited in the highest degree in Rome; indeed, the features of Romanism in this particular are very often found in the guise of Protestantism. “There is heard sometimes the voice of the woman who calls herself a prophetess, whether the woman’s name be Jezebel or not.” In modified forms these teachings, these claims of Rome, may be endorsed unconsciously by the Lord’s people. Wherever the teaching of a church, of a religious organization, or of men (except it be the twelve Apostles) is in any measure maintained as authoritative (although it be over a body of Christians who claim to have no creed but the Bible, and to be guided by it), even here the voice of the woman is heard, even though the woman’s name be certainly not Jezebel.
The infallible Word, the Scriptures, and these alone, are to constitute the test that must settle every matter for the “free-indeed” Christian. “[Any] imposed creed actually takes away any appeal to Scripture, becoming itself the only permissible appeal. If there be error in the creed, it will have to be maintained as carefully as the truth in it. If there be defect in the creed, the Scripture cannot be allowed even to supplement it. It [the Scriptures] is, in short, completely displaced from its rightful supremacy over men. The conscience is not allowed to be before God, and the most godly are just those who will be forced most into opposition against the human rule, thus substituted for the Divine.
“It is evident that Jezebel is right thus far, in that she connects her right of rule over the people of God with the infallibility of the prophetess. She displays, however, the falsity of her pretension by her refusal to submit her claims in this respect to be judged by that which she owns herself to be the Word of God. Her infallibility must not be tested, but received; whereas Scripture itself, with a claim no less absolute, on that very account submits to every possible test, assured that the more complete the test, the more will this claim be manifested and made good. The true coin fears not the test which would at once expose the counterfeit. Faith in Rome is credulity and superstition only: faith in Scripture is intelligent, reasonable, and open-eyed.
“In Scripture, the Church does not teach at all. The Prophets speak and the rest judge. The Word itself is the rule by which all is judged, and the conscience is kept directly in the presence of God Himself. All are exercised as to what is spoken: they are to take heed what they hear as well as how they hear. This exercise is necessary to maintain the soul in vigor and independence. Vigilance, the constant habit of reference to God, and walking before Him, are to be ever emphasized and insisted on.
“We tend continually to follow human authorities and traditional teachings, which God has continually to break through for us, sending us afresh to His Word, that our faith may not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Thus alone true spiritual health is realized and preserved.”
It was this letting go, losing sight of the Word of God, that brought into the professed Church of God all the evils symbolized by the expression, “to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.” We found these evils beginning to come in Pergamos, but in the Thyatira period of church history it prevailed to such an extent that the professed Church became apostate. While there were plenty of perverters of the Word of God in the Pergamos period, none at that time claimed to be inspired of God, and the divinely appointed channel of Divine grace and truth. The Word of God was still honored in Pergamos, and had its faithful witnesses there; and these witnesses, through their enlightening influences, testified against the threatened evils of Nicolaitanism, Balaamism, and Jezebelism. But in Thyatira, the Word of God seemed to remain no longer.
Thou Sufferest That Woman Jezebel
It is Jezebel’s teaching and doctrine that prevails in Thyatira, and while in this period of church history there were believers in the true doctrine, these believers, including the symbolical angel or messenger, the ministering class of that period, were unwilling or unable for some to testify, to witness, as they ought against Jezebel, for we hear the Savior saying to these: “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.”
Concerning the little, despised, humble, local assemblies, the Waldenses, etc., and their pastors of this period, we should keep in mind that as a remnant, they are distinctly singled out in the Thyatira message, and that neither the Jezebel system nor her children are included among them. By so doing we will be better able to appreciate this testimony on the Lord’s part as to what he saw commendable in them. How little do we know of the hidden lives of those who, amid the days of Roman pride and tyranny, walked humbly and in secret with their God. It is very comforting and encouraging to realize how fully Christ could appreciate their stand for him, even though in a measure defective, and how openly he will in the day of his manifestation acknowledge them as his own. “Like the devil-coats put upon their victims by the Inquisition of old, how many falsehoods have besmirched the memories often of those who in the day of manifestation will receive their crown of righteousness from the Lord the righteous Judge! Of how many Naboths has Jezebel suborned her witnesses that they have [been told that they] ‘blasphemed God and the king,’ because they would not surrender their inheritance for a price! Here is the record, that they are not forgotten, those nameless ones, or of dishonored names: ‘works and love and faith,’ how tested! ‘and service,’ amid what discouragement! ‘and thy patience,’ marked and emphasized in the language used — that long endurance!
“And then comes, last of all, that sweet witness of real Divine energy, which does not flag as what is merely human does — ‘and thy last works to be more than the first.’ Not simply the same as the first — that would be much to say, as it would seem, amid all the opposition, continuous, unrelenting, of all that held power on earth. But here it is ‘more than the first,’ for the works recorded are fruits of the life eternal, which, implanted within us, is a growth, a living energy, which, thank God! can burst all bands and defy all imprisonment. We have all remarked how the might of a living tree will break up and burst through the stones around its roots, as it forces its way up into the light of heaven. How much more will the energy of that eternal life which the Spirit of God [the Spirit of Truth] sustains, develop itself in the face of whatever hindrances. ‘They go from strength to strength’ is said of God’s pilgrims through the valley of Baca; for it is Christ’s strength perfected in human weakness.”
As we become familiar with the history of those dark days, we are enabled to discover that there was, in the long line of these patient witnesses covering many centuries, a growth in courage as the days went on. As they come more into the light, they take a bolder and more open stand against Rome; the coming Reformation under Luther and others had its precursors — Wycliffe, Huss, as illustrations; the torch of truth, as it is laid down by one generation of the Lord’s followers, is taken up by another; and gradually testimony against, and separation from, the apostate Church, becomes more decided. This is a great point, this spirit of separation — one of the greatest in character development; for we discover that what the Lord has against these saints of his, is declared to be their tolerance of the woman Jezebel without making any protest against her teachings.
The professing Church during these long centuries was hopelessly apostate, and it would very naturally seem useless on the part of the Lord’s followers to testify against its false claims. Nevertheless, their full duty would require a public testimony of the Truth, that those deceived might also escape Rome’s bondage. It was during the giving of such a testimony, in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, that the great Reformation established itself. True it was, that it was only the simple foundation truths of the Gospel that were proclaimed; but these needed first to be brought to light before the full measure of truth could be discovered as it was later on; and the facts of history show that wherever these foundation truths were proclaimed, God raised up noble defenders who rallied around them.
“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” (Revelation 2:24,25).
Viewing, as we have been, the seven messages or epistles to the seven Churches from the historical, prophetic standpoint, we have found that there has been a steady decline on the part of professed Christianity, and in the period represented by Thyatira, apostasy is reached. From this sad condition history informs us that every effort towards reformation that has been made since has been only partially successful. Indeed, while the Sixteenth Century Reformation accomplished wonders in releasing the nations from Papal bondage, as we shall see in later visions, even this resulted at last in failure so far as bringing back primitive Christianity was concerned. It finally merged into the Protestant sects, which, as such, are now so leavened with evolutionary and inherent immortality theories, and Higher Criticism, that their final destruction is seemingly but a matter of a comparatively brief time. As one has said, referring especially to the Thyatira message as representing Romanism: “In Thyatira, our eyes are no more toward the past, but toward the future — the coming of the Lord: there is no more the call to repentance and doing the first works; the word is now, ‘I gave her space to repent, and she did not repent.’ The opportunity of repentance is therefore over; henceforth there can only be judgment — judgment which has accumulated terribly during the long delay.”
The word space in the text, “I gave her space to repent,” has been interpreted by some to represent a period of three hundred and sixty years. However, a comparison of Acts 19:22, 20:18, Revelation 6:11, 20:3, where the same Greek word is used, does not seem to support such an interpretation.
Bearing in mind what has been noted concerning the influence of the symbolical woman, Jezebel — that of the leavening of the pure doctrines of Christ, it will be interesting and instructive in this connection to observe the evident correspondence between the fourth parable given by Christ — that of the “leaven” (Matthew 13:33) — and this fourth message of Thyatira. The parable reads: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
The common interpretation of this parable is that it refers to the universal spread and final triumph of the true Gospel; the Gospel itself in this erroneous interpretation being represented by the leaven. It will not be in proper order at this point to treat this feature exhaustively. Suffice it to say that the figurative, Scriptural use of leaven, as well as the facts of church history, prove the above interpretation to be erroneous. Leaven is invariably used in the Scriptures to denote evil. It seems quite evident that the key which unlocks the meaning of this parable is found in Leviticus 2. The three measures of meal in the parable seem to refer to the “fine flour” of the meal offering of Leviticus 2. (The Revised Version renders it the meal offering instead of as in the Common Version the meat offering.) Into this meal offering the leaven was never to be put (Leviticus 2:11). The significant point in the parable is that the woman is doing what was expressly forbidden to be done. This follows logically and naturally the teaching of the three preceding parables — the Sower, the Wheat and Tares, and the Mustard Seed. It will readily be seen that the process of deterioration or decline of the professing Church is shown in these three parables; the third, the mustard tree and the fowls in its branches, representing the worldly Church in the period of the so-called Christian emperors — the Pergamos period. The fourth parable, that of the leaven, assumes a more decided character of evil, just as in the case of the fourth message, that of Thyatira.
The meal offering seems to represent Christ as the bread of Life, the food of the priestly people of God. The putting of the leaven in the meal seems thus to signify the adulteration of the Christian’s food (Christ) by the woman, the apostate Church. The feast of unleavened bread which was enjoined to be observed in connection with the celebration of the Passover Feast, shows that the Jews were perfectly familiar with the use of this figure. The Lord’s hearers could scarcely fail to apprehend the fact that leaven in meal represented a thing of evil significance, and not of good; and this is positively stated in the Word: “For whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel” (Exodus 12:15). This was, of course, well known, and rigidly held as an essential doctrine by the mass of people of our Lord’s day. The ordinance concerning the meal offering to the Lord was no less familiar to them, and the prohibition of the introduction of leaven in any offering to the Lord made with fire, was very clearly understood by the Jew as conveying the thought of evil, and as a thing abhorrent to the Lord.
It is the very clear teaching of Scripture that Christ is the bread, the manna (John 6:32-35) of the Christian; and this food is administered to us in the way of doctrine, teaching. The Scriptures constantly speak of Christ in a figurative sense as food to be eaten or appropriated by faith, as absolutely essential for the Christian development. Christ is the Truth, and it is through the Truth we apprehend him as our Savior, our Advocate, our Intercessor, and our High Priest. The doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees, called leaven (Matthew 16:12), is error presented in the forms of external and self-righteous formalism (Pharisaism), or unbelieving rationalism (Sadduceeism). The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, then, represents the rejection of Christ as God’s Word presents him, and as faith receives and enjoys him. In the Gospel of Mark (8:15) we have the leaven of Herod referred to. It seems here to represent the court party; and thus we have fully pictured the great triumvirate of evil — the world, the flesh, and the devil — as the corrupting, leavening, poisoning influences introduced into the pure doctrine of Christ.
Into these “three measures of meal” the woman of the parable is seen putting leaven, or evil, corrupting teaching. The woman undoubtedly represents the false Church, which is frequently in the Scriptures symbolized by a woman; a pure, chaste woman representing the true Church, and a corrupt, harlot woman, the false Church (Revelation 12:1, 17:1-6).
The parable of the mustard seed becoming a great tree, etc., represents the Babylonian character which the professing Church assumes in the days of the nominal Christian emperors, patterning in its earthly administration after the kingdoms of the world. It is very significant in this connection that the figure of a tree is elsewhere used to describe the great world-empire over which Nebuchadnezzar is depicted as ruling (Daniel 4). We thus have most clearly portrayed the reigning world-church, like the world-empire, making its own laws and promulgating its own doctrines. It is in this way that the leaven necessarily comes into the meal. How remarkable and true to history is the picture here presented. The woman, the false Church, has in her hands the doctrine of Christ, the unadulterated meal, the Christian doctrine. As one has very forcibly described it:
“She has authority over it (the doctrine of Christ); she can knead and mould it at her will; she can add her traditions, her unwritten law, equal in authority to the written Word; she can interpret and fix its meanings. Here is the leaven: it is the leaven of Church-teaching, the essential error which wherever found, in whatever modified forms, quenches the Spirit of God, deforms and mutilates the Word of God, gives the conscience another master than the Lord Jesus Christ, and does all this cunningly in his name and by his authority, so that the souls of his people even bow to the forged decrees and shudder at the thought of resistance. [Let him that readeth understand!] For this is ‘Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth’; and her merchants are the great men of the earth, and by her sorceries are all nations deceived.”
We next have described in strong, startling, symbolical language, the threatened judgment upon Jezebel and her children: “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” (verses 22,23).
Applying this language symbolically, as is evidently the only proper way, it would denote, not what would be represented by a bed of ease, but rather a bed of pain. It seems very evident that the purpose in these words of Christ is to contrast the state or condition represented here with her former condition of pleasure, enjoyment, and ease. The harlot’s bed of ease and a sick-bed which usually follows, are thus contrasted. “One cannot be indulged in without leading on, sooner or later, to the horrid sufferings of the other.” The same contrast is brought out in the vision of the final destruction of the Jezebel system, called there, “Babylon the Great” (Revelation 17:5). “How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously so much torment and sorrow give her” (Revelation 18:7). “Those committing adultery with her” — those who imbibe her spirit of selfish ambition and worldliness, those who advance the claim of being the divinely appointed channel, etc. — will meet the same punishment, suffering the bitter disappointment and distress of the great tribulation coming, in which Babylon will eventually be destroyed. The expression, “I will kill her children with death,” teaches that all systems that have taken on the spirit of the “mother,” will suffer with her in the “plagues” that describe her troubles, when these plagues come on her, ending in the seventh plague, with her utter destruction.
One has noted in this expression a close connection of this Thyatira period with the Sardis period that follows: “He would kill her children with death, and Sardis, which follows, seems to be a stillborn, a ‘dead’ child, though having a name to live. All this is serious, and none but eyes of fire could trace these markings of evil so acutely.”
“And all the Churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts” (verse 23). Applying these words as addressed to the Church as a whole throughout the entire age, we understand the meaning to be that the time would come in the end of the age when all who were members professedly or truly of the Church of Christ would see the wisdom and justice displayed in the judgments that would fall on apostate Christianity.
“Who Know Not the Depths of Satan”
“But I say to you, to the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this teaching, who knew not the depths of the Adversary, (as they say) I will lay on you no other burden” (verse 24). The word “and” in our Common Version is omitted in many Greek manuscripts, and therefore the Diaglott translation, which we have used above seems to be the preferable one. The Savior now addresses all who had escaped the contaminating influences of Jezebel’s doctrines. These had not known, experienced, the “depths of Satan.” They were loyal to Christ as their Head; they had not yielded their consciences to another — a fallible teacher.
The words following in this connection, “I will put upon you none other burden but that which ye have, hold fast till I come,” seem to convey the thought that the spiritual strength of the Lord’s people at this time was sufficient only to enable them to hold fast the true doctrine of Christ, which Jezebel’s teachings had almost buried out of sight. Those who attempted to be aggressive and dared to raise their voices in testimony against Jezebel’s doctrines and blasphemous usurpation were either intimidated by threats or torture to silence, or lost their lives. Some of the visions that St. John saw later on portray the sufferings unto martyrdom of God’s saints of this period.
“And 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” (verses 26,27). This promise to the overcomer seems to be given to remind the Lord’s true people that Jezebel’s rule, which was claimed by Rome to be the reign of Christ, was a usurpation, and that when he should take to himself his power, the overcomers would enter upon their inheritance and be associated with him in judging the nations, preparing them for the reign of righteousness over them.
“And I will give him the morning star” (verse 28). The “morning star” is one of the symbolical names given to Christ: “I am the bright and morning star” (Revelation 22:16). The morning star anticipates, precedes, the day. The sun ushers in the day. The promise of the morning star may therefore suggest that the overcomers who fall asleep shall be gathered to Christ before he manifests himself in the last act of judgment on the nations, and before he appears as the “Sun of Righteousness” with healing in his beams; for before this latter stage of the Second Advent the overcomers will all be with him; and with him “shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Thyatira presents to us a condition, a state of things, that exists until the Lord has come and delivered all his overcoming saints; not, however, until the rising of the Sun of Righteousness upon the world, but until he comes and makes himself known as the Morning Star, the Herald of the Day, before the Day fully appears. At any rate the thought would properly be that those who are given the Morning Star, Christ, will be given to possess and enjoy the closest of union and fellowship with him, with all that this signifies of ineffable glory and bliss throughout countless ages.
It will be noticed that in this epistle, as also the three that follow, the Savior makes a complete change in the position of the admonition: “He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.” In the three previous epistles the admonition is placed before the promise to the overcomer; while in this and the three that follow, the admonition comes after. This change is accounted for by some in what appears to be a reasonable way: “In the first three instances, it would seem to be the address of the spirit from within the professing body, calling to the world [those who have ears to hear] without; but in the last four it would seem that the spirit itself is without, and that the call is considered now as having the same relation to the body of the professed Church as to the world. It is thus intensely significant of prevailing apostasy which has so paganized the professing Church as to make true Christians as exceptional in the Church as in the world. As the pillar of cloud went up from before the camp of Israel, and took its place behind it, to sever the Lord’s people from the Egyptians, so this change intimates that the Church as a body has become so blended with the world that a separation needs to be drawn between Christ’s true people and it, the same as its calling was meant to sever it from the world. Hence, in all the epistles in which the Spirit’s warning takes its place after the promise, the great body of the professed Church, as such, is treated as apostate, and hopelessly corrupt, whilst at the end, the fearful announcement is made that Christ is about to cast it loathingly from him.
“And in still another respect does Christ successively alter his attitude toward these Churches, indicative of growing displeasure on his part and gradual ripening for judgment on their part. He required of the Ephesians to repent of their decline of love, simply referring to the fact that he ‘will come.’ He enjoined upon the Pergamites to repent of their still worse defections, by the sharper announcement: ‘Otherwise I am coming to thee quickly.’ Concerning the Thyatirans, he gives a still more fearful picture of his coming judgment, and declares that he will cast Jezebel and her paramours into perdition, and slay her children with death. Upon the Sardians he threatens the disaster of arriving over them as a thief, at a moment of supposed security. The liars and errorists of Philadelphia he says he will humble in the utmost degree and bring upon those settled down in the world an hour of dreadful trial, the same as shall befall the world itself; and that he is coming quickly as already in the very act of it. And with reference to the loathsome Laodiceans, he represents himself as already present, appealing to them for the last time, and ready now to spue them out of his mouth.
“What then does all this mean, but that the Church as a professing body, pure and excellent as it was at the beginning, and with all the partial revivals that mark different periods of its career, and with all the myriads of [professed] saints it has embraced, is yet in the judgment of the Son of God Himself, a subject of gradual and ever-increasing decline and decay, first in one direction, then in another, until it becomes completely apostate, and, as such, is finally and forever rejected? This will be for many a very sad and startling doctrine. It is a paradox. It crosses many a fond dream. It carries dismay to certain humanitarian theories, which are much preached up. It strikes the death blow to the doctrine of a temporal Millennium, and to the hope of an ecclesiastical renovation of the world. Contrary to much of the thinking which prevails, it shows the professed Church in process of conversion to the world, instead of the world in process of conversion, by its means, to Christ. But I am sure that it is the truth of God. Be the logical consequences what they may, I stand here upon the solid rock of Christ’s own presentation of the case, as viewed from the Judgment Seat.”