Revelation 2:8
And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;
The address is to the angel of the church in Smyrna, spoken by Christ as the first and the last, who was dead and is alive, who died and lives again. That description introduces His message to Smyrna, whose works and tribulation and poverty He knows while affirming that it is rich, and it grounds His encouragement to remain faithful through suffering. It is one of the messages to the churches in Asia given as Christ's last testimony to John to write, and Smyrna symbolizes the Christian church in a different period of the Christian Era. As one of seven, with seven indicating completeness, the message extends to the end of time, is in force today, and portrays the state of things existing in the churches of the religious world today.
Its figures are symbolic of the state of God's professed people, with wheat developing among tares and truth standing on its own eternal basis in contrast with error. The message reveals Christ's discrimination in weighing the characters of those who have taken His name, with every individual under His supervision and He acquainted with the thoughts and intents of the heart as well as every word and act, knowing all about religious experience and whom each loves and serves, which calls for close self-examination. Christ as the one who was dead and lives again is the Lamb who died and now lives as a triumphant Conqueror, whom the redeemed will honor as worthy. The title First and Last identifies Christ as the speaker who promises faithful overcomers that they will walk with Him in white because they are worthy.
As part of the first, second, and third chapters of Revelation, the verse gives an earnest warning to prepare to meet the Lord in the clouds of heaven, for He comes with power and great glory, confronting indifference to the signs He foretold and giving evidence that the end of the world is right upon us. As part of the second chapter of Revelation, the verse must be heeded and understood by humbling the heart before God so He can safely work with and for His people, keeping first love, seeking the Lord with all the heart, giving due respect to those who have borne the burden in the heat of the day, and loving God supremely and neighbor as self, so that despite little faith the truth prospers and goes forth as a lamp that burneth. Together with the other church messages, the verse tells His followers that they must do their work amid trials and exposure to persecution even to life itself, must not grow dim or cease to shine as lights amid moral darkness and the dense gloom of immorality and sin, but must unite in bearing one another's burdens as a combined, united power in love and efficiency to give light to the world and to enter destitute unworked fields with earnest effort to put workers in them.