“THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST.”
The Church of Suffering—Thyatira.
The Pergamum state of the church brought us to the beginning of the sixth century. The Thyatiran state begins at this time as the result of the work of Justinian and others, and stretches on over a weary millennium. The main facts will be brought out in the notes. The text will follow. What is the fourth church addressed by our Lord? “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira¹ write.” Verse 18. Who dictates the letter to Thyatira? “These things saith the Son of God, who hath His eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like unto burnished brass.”² Verse 18. How does He commend His people in Thyatira? “I know thy works and thy love and faith and ministry and patience, and that thy last works are more than the first.”³ Verse 19. For what did He reprove her? “But I have this against thee, that thou sufferest the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess, and she teacheth and seduceth my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols.”⁴ Verse 20. “And I gave her time that she should repent; and she willeth not to repent of her fornication.”⁵ Verse 21. What sure punishment are we told will follow her reprobate course? “Behold, I cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of her works. And I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He that searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto each one of you according to your works.” Verses 22, 23. What comfort does He give to those who are true? “But to you I say, to the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as have not this teaching, who know not the deep things of Satan, as they are wont to say; I cast upon you none other burden.”⁶ Verse 24. What exhortation does He give? “Nevertheless that which ye have, hold fast till I come.”⁷ Verse 25. What promise is given to the overcomer? “And he that overcometh and he that keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of My Father: and I will give him the morning star.”⁸ Verses 26-28. 1. Thyatira.—A not very important city of Asia Minor, founded by Seleucus Nicator on the birth of his daughter. The word means “daughter’s city.” It was one of the many Macedonian colonies established in Asia Minor after the overthrow of Persia by Alexander. It was the home of Lydia, a prominent woman in the early church. The principal worship of the city was that of Apollo, under the name of Tyrimnas, the sun-god, answering to the ancient Baal; a priestess of Artemis (Diana) is mentioned in the inscriptions, these constituting the male and female elements of nature-worship, noted for abominable licentiousness and fornication, a fit type of the apostate church of the Dark Ages, from the time of Justinian (about A.D. 500) to the Reformation. 2. “The Son of God.”—Elsewhere in the Revelation, the Son of Man; setting forth His glorious majesty and authority. “His eyes like a flame of fire” (1:14) indicate their piercing power and intensity. All things are open to the glorious Son of God. “His feet . . . like unto burnished brass” (1:15) is readily suggestive of the furnace, the affliction, the refining. He is speaking to a people, part of whom are apostate, part of whom pass through the furnace of temptation, of trial, of persecution. He would show to one class that their sins could not be concealed from Him, and to the other that He was with them in every painful, trying, experience. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 3. “Thy last works are more.”—The church, the true people of God, had works, and love and faith and ministry and endurance; and the faith and ministry and endurance increased as the trials progressed. See Rev. 13:10 where the faithful are spoken of as possessing faith and patience, in contradistinction to the remnant, who possess both of these, and, in addition, are said to keep the commandments2of God and the faith of Jesus (14:12). 4. Jezebel of old was the sun-worshiping wife of king Ahab of Israel, daughter of Ethbaal, the king of the Sidonians. See 1 Kings 16:31-33; 18:19; 21:25, 26; 2 Kings 9:22-30. Ahab stood as the representative of the people of God who were espoused to Him; Jezebel as the representative, the teacher, the prophetess of the world in its most abominable religious phase. The union of the two was fornication. Jezebel became therefore a fitting type of the heathen philosophy introduced into the Christian church, developing into the great apostasy of the Dark Ages, and resulting in the Papacy, the union of Church and State, the spiritual fornication, set forth in later chapters under Babylon. These teachings of the apostasy were suffered, tolerated, nay, more, received. Justinian had a principal part in making the bishop of Rome “the head of all the holy churches,” and refers to him as the “head of all bishops, and the true and effective corrector of heretics.” “Croly on the Apocalypse” quotes from the Novellæ of the Justinian Code 131, chapter 2, on ecclesiastical titles and privileges, as follows: “We therefore decree that the most holy pope of the elder Rome is the first of all the priesthood.” This union with the world, this recognition by the State, deepened the apostasy, and gave character to the spiritual fornication and adultery which came in like a flood, and well nigh swept the church of God from the earth. Those who were not seduced by Jezebel’s witchcrafts, were hunted and slain by her and her paramours, even as God’s children of old were hunted and slain by the typical Jezebel. 5. “Gave her time.”—In all this apostasy God ever gave faithful warning. Many times these warning voices were stilled by flatteries; many times they were stifled by dungeon, many times by death in varied forms; but through all the ages God gave warning, tho His witnesses testified in sackcloth. So God gives every sinning soul space to repent, and pleads with every soul to repent, till the heart is no longer repentable. All the punishment, affliction, and suffering which followed were the result of sinning against God. Sometimes the innocent suffered because of the guilty, but in the final punishment each will receive his individual deserts. All the calamities which came on the heels of the apostasies of the Dark Ages, the persecutions which resulted from a seemingly harmless union of Church and State, the fearful blow upon the Papacy, her utter failure to govern as demonstrated in chaotic Europe in the close of the eighteenth century, were designed of God to be a lesson to His people of all times, that all union of His church with the world and temporal power was evil and only evil, and would inevitably work out destruction. But how the church is forgetting it to-day! 6. “The rest in Thyatira.”—God always has His remnant. In the almost universal apostasy of Elijah’s day, there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. So in the antitype God had faithful children scattered in the mountain regions of Europe, in lordly palaces, in convent cells, in humble cottages, who mourned the apostasy but trusted only in Jesus Christ for salvation. 7. “Hold fast.”—It is the constant admonition of the Spirit to the church in evil times. It ought to be the prayer of every tried heart, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Ps. 51:10, margin. “For we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.” “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” “Till I come.”—Impossible to express in English, Alford tells us, the indefiniteness of the original. It indicates this, however, that some phases of that true church which resisted the papal errors and apostasy might continue till His coming. 8. “Authority over the nations” is promised to the overcomer, but not the overcomer by carnal weapons, not the overcomer of earthly foes, but the overcomer of sin, the victor over self, over flattery, over all the seductions of the enemy. Many of the overcomers went down into martyrs’ graves. The ashes of some were strewn to the four winds. But in Christ they conquered. “Who fought the good fight, and who vanquished the demon that tempts us within;
Who held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the world holds on high;
Who dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight, if need be, to die.” And these who have been persecuted, oppressed, crushed, killed by apostate powers, will in God’s own time have authority over the nations. With Christ will they sit in judgment during the thousand years (1 Cor. 6:1, 2; Rev. 20:4), with Christ they execute judgment at the close of all sin’s reign (Psalm 149). “The Morning Star” is Jesus Christ. Rev. 22:16. It is a reference to the revelation of the power and glory of Christ Jesus just before the dawning of the day of His coming, the special illumination of His Spirit (2 Peter 1:19), the outpouring of the latter rain (Zech. 10:1; Micah 5:7, 8). That time is now. God is willing, waiting, to pour out His Spirit upon His people, and the only thing that hinders is that the church loves ease, loves pleasure, loves the world, loves sin, better than she loves the service of God. For God gives His Spirit for service; and we can not serve two masters. As long as we are serving self and sin and Satan we can not serve Christ, and He will not, He can not, bestow His Spirit upon any soul to make that soul more effective in Satan’s service. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”