Questions on the Text

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 17, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 51.

Questions on the Text.

Under what description does Christ address Himself to Sardis?

“These things saith He that hath the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars.”¹ Verse 1.

“THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST.”

The Dying Church—Sardis.

The fifth letter of our Lord is addressed to the angel, or messenger, of the church in Sardis. Sardis (sun) was a city of Asia Minor, beautifully situated on the River Pactolus, noted for its “golden sands.” The city is famous as the residence of the rich Croesus, who filled Sardis with wealth. When Cyrus conquered Croesus in B.C. 548, he gathered treasure to the value of $600,000,000. It was afterward taken by Alexander in B.C. 331, sacked by Antiochus 117 years later, afterward subject to the kings of Pergamum. Destroyed by an earthquake in A.D. 17, the city was soon rebuilt. It was noted for its prosperity, commercially and in manufacturing lines. The art of dyeing wool was discovered in Sardis. The principal worship was that of Cybele, identical with the Greek Rhea, the mother of the gods. Ruins of a magnificent temple have been found, supposed to have been dedicated to her worship. The site of the city now (presumably always) is very unhealthy, and almost uninhabited.

Wealthy, rich, luxurious, its people feeling that its worship was the mother of all other worships, Sardis, the sun city, became a fitting type of modern Babylon, of Christendom of post-Reformation times, even down to the present; of the religio-scientific, religio-commercial world, in which conditions many of the church of Jesus Christ are drifting to doom. Christ’s awful message to Sardis—His message to the back-slidden, cold-hearted, spiritually dying and dead professors of Christianity in our popular churches—is found in Rev. 3:1–6, and is given after the

How does He reprove the church of her condition?

“I know thy works that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.”²

What exhortation does He give?

“Be thou watchful, and establish the things that remain, which were ready to die.” Verse 2.

Why is the exhortation so urgent?

“For I have found no works of thine perfected before My God.”³

How does the Master further exhort?

“Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear; and keep it, and repent.”⁴ Verse 3.

What warning is given?

“If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”⁵

What is the only redeeming feature mentioned in Sardis?

“But thou hast a few names in Sardis that did not defile their garments: and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.”⁶

What is the promise to the overcomer?

“He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments; and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.”⁷

With what solemn admonition does the message close?

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”

1. “Seven Spirits of God.”—Seven is the number denoting fulness or completeness. God’s cycle of time is measured by seven. The pure white light is manifest in the seven colors of the spectrum or rainbow. Every sound in nature ranges in the seven notes. All periods of incubation are even factors or are multiples of seven. One circle is completely enclosed by six others of the same size. Lines connecting the centers of the circles form the outline of the six faces of a perfect cube. Note also the various angles. Mark how the passage in Isa. 11:2, amplifying in description the Spirit of God, perfectly conforms to this combination of geometrical figures. (See diagram next page.) The seven Spirits of God are the universal agencies, the fulness of God’s working, in all parts of His universe. The thought is especially brought home to poor, blind, dying Sardis to show God’s power to reveal, to search, to know

to do, to sanctify, to uphold. God has the all-bountiful supply, the fulness of the Godhead for His messengers and His people. Above all things else He desires His people to know the fulness of His Spirit, that they “may be filled with all the fulness of God.”

2. “A name that thou livest.”—only a name. There is life and LIFE. There is a life that is no life, because it is ever tending to death. It is perverted by sin. Those who possess it eat and drink and sleep and walk and talk, and seem to themselves very much alive; but they are “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18), “dead in trespasses and sins,” stricken with the awful leprosy of sin. Such is the great world apart from Christ. Such is the condition of many, O, so many, who profess the name of the Living One. Such give birth to spiritual children, and “a month devours them.” If a little one comes in their midst, the walking corpses of spiritual life sap his vitality or repulse him utterly. O, it is an awful thing to fill the living house of God, the church which He purchased with His own blood, with those who live in name only, who are as veritably dead spiritually as the dreamless sleepers in the churchyard. They may live, and the way is simple—just to accept, receive by faith, the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus; and “in the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28.

3. “No work perfected.”—It is a sad thing to begin a work, but never bring it to completion; to plant seeds and never reap the crop nor pluck the fruit. It is sad in the religious life to find always children or dwarfs. But how many there are in modern Sardis. How gloriously the Reformation churches started on their work of Gospel progress, but O how short was the course they ran! Leaving the Word of God for their rule of faith, the Spirit of God for their power, they substituted creed for the first, and the arm of civil power for the second. The State Church services soon become matters of mere form. Earnest souls, finding therein no sustenance, went out from the cold walls of creed and State and formed new flocks, such as the Methodists in England. These soon crystallized into creeds their belief, and progress ceased. And now every one among the so-called evangelical bodies in Christendom have, without exception, either by inclusion or exclusion, adopted some other creed than the Word of God; and all now stand clamoring at the doors of legislative halls for civil law to enforce church dogmas upon men whom the church has no power to reach by the Word and the Spirit of God; (1) because the dogma is not supported by the Word; and (2) the Spirit of God will not convict hearts of the transgression of man-made, man-fostered, traditional, anti-scriptural dogmas. The church with the world has prospered materially. Heart and mind and soul have been seeking worldly fame, wealth, and pleasure, and “she that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth.” 1 Tim. 5:6. Our Lord gives a similar reason why souls do not do

acceptable work for God—“they are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.” Luke 8:14. Men may call our work grand, noble, perfect, but how does it stand before God?

4. “Remember.”—It is ever necessary for the child of God to prove himself whether he is in the faith. If he has ever received Christ at all, he did it by yielding all to Him in humility, and by faith receiving Jesus as his all in all—the Way, the Truth, the Life. “As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and builded up in Him, and established in your faith.” Col. 2:6. Only by walking humbly with our God can we do justice, and love mercy, and bring work to perfection. Micah 6:8. He who keeps not his humility before God, who keeps not his living faith, will fail. But even tho he has failed, if he remember and repent, there is hope. God will forgive and restore. If there is failure it will be needless failure with us.

5. “If”—a word of awful import sometimes, and especially so here. Christ is coming. His work as priest will soon close. The last repentant soul shall sometime have been shriven by Him who alone can forgive sin. Probation will close. But the repentant, the watchful, will not be overtaken as a thief in the night. See 1 Thess. 5:1–5. The light of God illumines their way. To the unwatchful (always unready) He will come as a thief, not designedly on His part, but carelessly, recklessly on the part of the faithless, rebellious ones. Every soul may know when Christ’s coming is near. Matt. 24:33; Luke 21:25–27. Every unwatchful, careless, selfish soul, will not know. Now is the time to give heed to the “more sure word of prophecy.”

6. “A few names in Sardis.”—God has His faithful few in the modern Babylon of creeds, and science, and higher criticism, and false education, and commercialism, and pleasure. They may not see all His light and truth, but they are faithful to all they see. They have not stooped to the wine of worldly policy and pleasure, nor have they drunk of the fouled waters of false shepherds. They are the earnest praying ones, the steady, hard lifters, the attendants at prayer-meeting, the ministers to the poor and needy. Upon them God will place the robes of His own righteousness. “They shall walk with Me in white.”—“Let thy garments be always white,” is the Lord’s admonition; and the prayer of the penitent should be, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” To such prayers God answers: “Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.” “I will cause thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.”

7. “Will in no wise blot out his name.”—Many of those who have come out of the Sardis condition of the church for the truth’s sake have had their names blotted out of church books. They have been covered with obloquy, reproach, and reviling. They have been cast out, excommunicated. God comforts all such. These few short years are not all there is of the life of His people. The perishable books of earth in which men love to have their names recorded are not the only records. God’s life is eternal. His records of His children on high are as imperishable as their character; and there their names remain. But another blotting out is implied. There may be names recorded in God’s book of life which will be blotted out. When a soul accepts

Christ Jesus, he is recorded in the book of life as a candidate for the eternal name and character to which God has called him. If he is faithful to the end all his sins will be blotted

out (Acts 3:19); and he will attain the eternal character; its name will become his new name, and he will be recorded as among the living forever. The choice of every candidate for immortality is whether it shall be his sins blotted out or his name blotted out of the books of heaven. But that his sins may be blotted from the books of heaven, they must be blotted from the character here. Blessed are those who overcome. Jesus says: “I will confess his name before My Father.” The Father, then, is not some great circumambient, impersonal sphere; He is somewhere as He is nowhere else; and sometime surrounded by all His holy ones, into His presence the redeemed will come as they have never come before; and the Lord Jesus Christ will introduce them, and they shall see the Father’s face, with no dimming veil between. This is the climax of faith’s glorious triumph.