Church History Foretold with the Seven Churches in Asia

Preamble: The Historicist Interpretive Model

Despite it having become to some extent received wisdom in certain Protestant circles that the messages of Christ to the angels of the seven churches in Asia in Revelation 2 and 3 are wholly allegorical and not intended as a chronology, this is a spiritualised departure from, and rejection of, the Reformation’s historicist model of interpretation of prophecy which holds that the seven churches in Asia are, in fact, to be taken as a sequential foretelling of church history from Apostolic times until Christ’s return, just as Revelation 4-9 cover profane history from Apostolic times until the mid 1800s, whereupon Revelation chapters 10 and 11 “zoom-in” on modern history and its convergence with church affairs.

The great 18th Century English commentator, John Gill, said this of Revelation 1:1, the opening verse of the whole book which establishes the interpretive context from the very start:

...the sense is, that these things should very quickly begin to be fulfilled, and from thenceforward go on fulfilling till all were accomplished. Now to show, to represent these things, in a clear manner, as the nature of them would admit of, to the servants of Christ, all true believers, read and hear and diligently observe them, and especially to the ministers of the Gospel, whose business is to search into them, and point them out to and particularly to his servant John, was this revelation made by Christ, who immediately answered this end: and he sent, and signified [it] by his angel unto servant John; he who is the Lord of angels, and to whom they are ministering spirits, sometimes sent one angel and sometimes another; and by various emblems, signs, and visions, represented and set before John, a faithful servant, and a beloved disciple of his, the whole of this revelation. (John Gill on Revelation 1:1)

Reinforcing the opening verse of the book, Revelation 1:19 reveals Jesus instructing John to record what he has seen up to this point in this supernatural discourse with the Lord, along with “the things that are, and the things that shall be hereafter”; that is, the things that pertain unto the state of the church in John’s day, and those things that were to follow afterwards into the future, up to the emergence of the Kingdom’s golden age, the Millennium thereafter, Judgment Day and the eternal condition as the church’s consummation with Christ in endless bliss and joy begins, all of which things are described in Revelation, thereby underlining once again the fact that Revelation is not to be interpreted by any ethereal idealist method, such as that favoured by the Romish Antichurch and some wayward Reformed denominations.

If the historicist interpretive model must be applied to Revelation, what then can be meant by the seven churches in Asia, and what are we to make of Christ’s messages to them?

Here we review each of them as presented in Revelation 2 and 3 in order.

1. The Ephesian Church Age

(Ephesus means "desire" or "remissness"; this was the Apostolic Era and its Immediate Aftermath, ca. AD 33-303)

Revelation 2:1-7 covers the Ephesian church age but note that some principles applicable to all seven of the church ages are established here:

• That Christ walks in the midst of all seven church eras, sustaining, observing, rebuking and commending them.
• The term angels, to whom the messages from Christ are addressed, is in the first instance to be taken as a metaphor for the pastorship of each church age, but in a fashion as to make it clear that the pastors are corporate representatives of the laity they minister to, and thus the messages are not merely directed at the pastors, but also at the rank and file believers they minister to; it is presented in this fashion as a reminder of the Lord’s ordained order within the New Testament church, i.e. elders then laity.
• The phrase “to him that overcometh” is to be understood in two ways: (1) When considering the letter preceding it as being bespoke to the relevant church era, the “him” largely refers to the church transcendent, in abstract, in that era, especially to believers at the start and / or end of that era, and (2) to individuals in all ages when applying each letter as a lesson applicable generically, in which case ostensible rewards such as “a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10) are metaphors for different aspects of blessedness in the hereafter given on the basis of Christ’s merits, not ours.

The Ephesian age saw the first instances of false teachers claiming to be apostles, but the true believers of that era were commended by Christ for exercising discernment in detecting such impostors; there was no wresting of the “judge not” motif or naive unequivocal acceptance of all and sundry who called themselves Christian.

Ephesus was additionally praised by the Lord for being diligent, patient and longsuffering, which were attributes very much required for the early church’s advances in the face of hostile Judaism and, in the world beyond Palestine, paganism.

The Lord also commended Ephesus for its hatred of the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, a sect within the professing church who committed various acts of fornication; these evil deeds were alleged by some ancient writers to have been perpetrated with the support of wrested Scripture, much in the same way many apostates today invoke “love is love” and other means to dilute the meaning of Old and New Testament passages that condemn both homosexual urges and acts for the utter wickedness that they are; but here Christ’s words cut through all fabricated justifications for sexual immorality: “which I also hate” (Revelation 2:6).

However, Christ rebuked Ephesus for cooling in its love for godly things and threatened its failure to repent with the swift removal of its “candlestick” out of its place, by which He meant not the total dissolution of the church in that time, but of the church’s displacement – by way of chastening – into a different, less comfortable state, which is what in fact happened during its persecutions (and arguably definitively when the Smyrnean age began); this cooling in love Gill thinks was connected to the admission of errors into the Ephesian church, or perhaps, the tacit tolerance of them by many if not most members, but I would disagree because Christ commended Ephesus for discerning false apostles and thereby demonstrating a willingness to judge professions of faith and with it, presumably, doctrines of teachers; rather, therefore, I suspect the Ephesian departure from its first love may have been a side effect of its industry in fending off heresies; that is, I am surmising that perhaps it became so embroiled in doctrinal disputes as to have neglected the fundamental duties to fervently love God and the brethren; like Martha, it failed to choose that “good part” (Luke 10:38-42), and in that there is a sobering lesson for us today also, in the midst of fighting a multi-fronted battle against error, as well as trying to make a living and eke a way through the cares and trials of this life.

The major heresies facing the Ephesian church state were as follows:

• Gnosticism (late 1st Century), featuring occultic ideas about the nature of man, sin, etc.
• Marcionism (mid AD 100s), which included proto-dispensationalist ideas about salvation.
• Adoptionist Monarchianism (mid 100s), blasphemously held that Jesus became Divine through adoption by God.
• Montanism aka New Prophecy (mid-to-late AD 100s), a forerunner to modern charismaticism, entailing the first claims to Pentecostal experiences since the very early church era of Acts and 1 Corinthians; it is among the Montanists that the false apostles of Revelation 2:2 substantially (if not wholly) abode.
• Ebionism (late AD 100s), an alleged (but disputed) heresy with a despicable Christology.
• Docetism (circa AD 200), which denied the humanity of Christ, among other faults.
• Sabellianism aka Modalist Monarchianism (AD 200s), held that God is one person, but assumes divergent personas; this blasphemy is retained by Modalists today, such as Oneness Pentecostals.
• Arianism (late AD 200s onwards), which held that Jesus was created by the Father and not co-eternal with Him and is maintained today by Unitarian sects, notably the Jehovah’s Witness; Arianism became extremely prevalent in the eastern Roman Empire and murderously aggressive toward true believers, posing an existential threat to the church transcendent at that time.

Meanwhile, persecutions of varying intensities also began under the Roman rulers during the Ephesian church age, but most of them were relatively minor compared to the great one that followed in the Smyrnean church age; nevertheless, there was a distressing trend that saw the persecutions transform from minor and regional to major and widespread, which supports the view that – as chastisements upon the Ephesian church state – these persecutions became more heated because it consistently failed to repent of cooling on its first love.

The Ephesian-era persecutions were as follows:

• Under Claudius (AD 41-54), a minor banishment of Christians.
• Under Nero (AD 54-68), whose notoriety exceeds the scale of his persecution which, not to be diminished by any means, was brief and not widespread beyond Rome.
• Under Domitian (AD 89-96), some minor exiling of Christians.
• Under Trajan (AD 98-117), occasional cases of Christians being pressed to renounce their faith.
• Under Marcus Aurelius (AD 161-180), there came occasional and more widespread cases of persecution, but no wholesale coordinated attack on the church yet.
• Under Septimius Severus (AD 193-211), there were sporadic persecutions at the hand of regional governors.
• Under Decius (AD 249-251), a terrifying, empire-wide mandate to bow to Pagan idols before a magistrate was issued, upon pain of various penalties including death; this was an alarm call for worse to follow.
• Under Valerian (AD 253-270), Decius’ decree was reinstated as centralised power in the empire became stronger and government more developed, and even wealthy, influential Christians faced beheading for refusing to comply with the demand to bow to idols; this too was another warning ahead of the superlative persecution that would follow when the Smyrnean church era began.

This rebuke for the Ephesian cooling is later echoed in the stern words Christ directs at the Laodicean church state, and likewise, His adjuration to the Ephesians to “do the first works” (Revelation 2:5) is similar to the remedial action He orders Sardis to follow in Revelation 3:3’s command, “Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard...”, which is a call to look again at the Reformation and its abandoned advances with respect to the form of worship, its prophetic model (historicism) and so on.

The grand lesson from Ephesus for today is this:

Do not let the cares of this life, nor even earnestly contending for the faith, be a cause for neglecting to love God and His children, lest the Lord bring increasing levels of affliction upon us.

There is a reason why the Philadelphian church age bears its name in contrast to the other ages preceding it, and that is all of them, starting with Ephesus, failed to properly obey Christ’s “new commandment” of brotherly love.

The Ephesian church epoch ended in AD 303, with the sudden onset of the very brief, but terrible, Smyrnean era, which is summarised next.

2. The Smyrnean Church Age

(Smyrna means "myrrh", i.e. bitterness; this consisted of the "ten days" (ten year) Diocletianic Persecution, AD 303-313)

"...and ye shall have tribulation ten days" (Revelation 2:10)

Revelation 2:8-11 contains Christ’s letter to Smyrna, representing the second church era and the one that was to suffer the church’s most grievous persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire thanks to the cruel and demonically instructed (if accounts of his consultation with a witch be correct) actions of Diocletian, egged on by the extremely wicked Galerius, with whom he co-reigned along with Constantius starting in AD 293.

At that time, the Roman Empire had developed into a bureaucratic monolith with centralised, evolved power and increasing demands for tax revenue to sustain it; it was a tyranny, in other words, resembling in no small degree a prototype socialist state, complete with price controls to curb inflation and government-mandated attempts at rewriting historical narratives of the empire, to make them conform to Diocletian’s preferred view of history.

In the midst of all the crises the overdeveloped Roman state had brought upon itself, the emperor Diocletian and his inner circle targeted the Christians (as directed by the witch) as special enemies of the state because of their rejection of Rome’s traditional Pagan heritage.

The Diocletianic Persecution consisted of bible-burning, the demolition of meeting houses, a ban on public gatherings to worship the Lord, the seizure of assets (thus impoverishing many Christians, but perhaps revealing an ulterior motive for attacking them, given the need for revenues to feed the machine of state) and finally, attempting to force Christians to bow to the Pagan gods of Rome.

The eastern Empire (e.g. Greece) was worst affected by this persecution, with the suffering being far less severe in the western Empire, and from that we might presume that the main body of the Lord’s people at that time resided in the eastern Empire rather than in the western.

However, for its intensity and duration, the Dioclesian exceeded all the persecutions of the preceding Ephesian church age and lasted, precisely as Christ foretold it would, ten years (i.e. the “ten days”, days being prophetic years, of Revelation 2:10), from February 303 until February 313, when Constantine the Great came to power and annulled it with his Edict of Milan, thereby instantly ending the very brief but very painful Smyrnean church era and ushering in the Pergamos church state.

Smyrna, in the throes of all its great sufferings, was spoken to very tenderly by Christ and commended for its works, consoled for its loss of temporal wealth (by being assured of spiritual and eternal riches), warned of imprisonment and death for its faithfulness, and commended for its stance against “the synagogue of Satan”, which I take to refer to false professors, especially those promoting the heresies of the preceding Ephesian era, chief among which by the time of the Diocletianic Persecution was Arianism.

The lesson for all of church history from Smyrna is this:

No matter how severe trials and tribulations are, remember that they are nothing in light of the glory and joy to be revealed in us in the next life, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18)

The Lord’s address to Smyrna ends with the promise of a crown of life to its overcomers, which, in addition to the inalienable fact that all true believers in any church age shall receive a spiritual crown of life, was also a metaphor pointing to the happy change in temporal fortunes for the church when the Pergamos era would begin.

3. The Pergamos Church Age

(Pergamos ("lifted up") started with the Constantinian Reprieve and contained the emergence and growth of the Antichurch; ca. AD 313 - ca. mid 700s)

Revelation 2:12-17 reveals Christ’s message to the Pergamos church state, which for various reasons was aptly named Pergamos, signifying “lofty”, “elevated”, etc., since this era broke forth with not just a merciful release from the Diocletianic Persecution, but also with the elevation of the church to honour and temporal power within the Roman Empire under the protection of Constantine.

However, that ascent to the temporal heavenlies, so to speak, was to be brief and would be followed by the collapse and fragmentation of the western Roman Empire in the AD 470s, leaving a vacuum with regard to centralised, unifying, stabilising authority; in short order, that hole would be filled by another agency maturing in the city of Rome during the latter phases of the western empire: the Papacy and its Antichurch.

“Satan’s Seat” is therefore said to reside within the Pergamos church state, that being a metaphor for a period - not an exact physical location (though that would come too in the form of the city of Rome) - in which a new instrument of Satan would be founded, or seated; that instrument, the Roman Catholic “church”, would ensconce itself within professing Christianity, claim exclusive ownership of Christianity, eclipse the true church transcendent, and begin to persecute the brethren.

The Antichurch’s growth was tied to the claims to supremacy of the bishops of Rome who prior to the Pergamos era were never known by any other title, but who began in AD 366, in the wake of the Constantinian reprieve and the peaceable period that brought, to become referred to as Papa, that is, Pope, the first being Damasus I; the use of this term should and would have set alarm bells ringing amidst biblically informed Christians, since Christ explicitly forbade any spiritual teacher to be formally titled as “Father” (in the sense of wielding power over conscience, as Gill notes¹):

"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." (Matthew 23:9)

Here again we see why the name Pergamos so befits that era; whereas it formally had respect unto the short-lived lifting up of the church within the Roman Empire, now it additionally refers to the lofty, high, proud, elevated claims of the occupants of the Papal chair, making Pergamos another double metaphor in Revelation.

However, it was not until the Popes took the title “universal bishop”, starting with Boniface III around AD 606 (still within the Pergamos church era), that the Papal office would complete its apostasy from the original bishopric of Rome and fulfil the horrible apostasy of that office so elegantly described in the symbolism addressed to the "king of Tyre" in Ezekiel 28.²

Christ, meanwhile, rebukes His Pergamos faithful, or a substantial proportion thereof, for two great sins:

1. Tolerating them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, which doctrine reduces to desiring money as payment for dispensing blessings, miracles, absolution of sins, etc.; this doctrine is generally tied to the “Papa doctrine”, that is, spiritual leaders who claim special Divine authority to bind and release the consciences of men also tend to plunder the resources of those in their thrall, to furnish fine cathedrals and palaces, and to provide sumptuous living; today’s Mega-church “apostles” make the same claims and do the same things with the money they bleed from their followers.
2. Tolerating them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which as mentioned previously, was using the name of Christianity as cover for, and to justify, fornication and perhaps also sexual abuse, or to create oppressive spiritual conditions in the name of piety (what else!) in which marriage was withheld, despite being the biblical recourse for sexual urges.

Both of those doctrines are actually marks of false teachers in the book of Jude (verse 11 for the error of Balaam and verses 7-8 for the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes), and remain commonplace among false prophets today; in the case of the incipient Antichurch, Gill asserts a proliferation of fornication and brothels arising out of the ban on the clergy from marriage, which may have started with AD 305’s Synod of Elvira (during the brief Smyrnean era; this synod banned Christians from marriage to Jews and pagans, among others, and banned priests from intercourse on the eve of services), so even before the first Bishop of Rome to be called Pope appeared (in AD 366), spiritually lethal corruption had taken hold of many within the professing church.

Today, in addition to the ongoing cashflow that the western Antichurch and its harlot offspring among mainstream apostate Protestantism all enjoy, the false prophets of the Charismatic mega churches likewise leech those who desire an “authentic experience”, an ear-tickling, an entertainment at Sunday service instead of offensive, cutting-to-the-bone rebukes and warnings from the Word of God; that is to say, false teachers are a judgment from God on those who will not endure sound doctrine or who are too lazy to study and heed the Word of God to show themselves approved unto Him.

In addition to the Antichurch’s capture of the consciences of more and more people, and the ongoing Arian assault (largely in the eastern Roman Empire), there were other heresies bubbling up in the western empire during the Pergamos era, some of which would be absorbed into the Antichurch itself, with others fizzling out:

• Apollinarianism (mid 300s), which held that Jesus was a human avatar occupied by God.
• Macedonianism aka the Pneumatomachi (4th Century), which held that the Holy Ghost is created, among other heresies.
• Nestorianism, (5th Century), which asserted Jesus was a natural man whom God transformed into the Divine; this emerged from the debate about Mary as “mother of God”.
• Eutychianism (5th Century) held that Jesus was barely human and largely subsumed by God the Son; it thereby damaged the doctrine of imputed righteousness, which requires Christ to be a fully human yet sinless man.
• Pelagianism (5th Century), a suite of errors, including that man is created neutral and can choose to be good or evil, with salvation being initiated by the supposed free will of man; this contributed greatly to Semi-Pelagianism, a prototype of today’s Arminianism and the bedrock of the Antichurch’s teaching of salvation by works.
• Semi-Pelagianism (5th Century) held that man’s ostensible free will acts in synergy with God’s Spirit in the process of conversion (a view retained by Arminianism today). NOTE: Both Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism are so dangerous as to have warranted their own special treatment in Revelation 8’s description of Wormwood, the star of the early church era that "fell from heaven" and embittered the doctrinal waters, a work it still performs today through the lethality of Arminianism's Antigospel.

Perhaps the greatest issue in the Pergamos church era was that true Christians, as today, were all too willing to accept as fellow believers anyone who professed Christ, and seem to have largely failed to exercise discernment or to refute error in their ranks; this would most profoundly have been the case with respect to admitting pastors into the church (and this also applies to true believers who are not biblically qualified to be pastors); all of these derelictions of duty are once again prevalent today and may stand as an obscure cause of ongoing personal affliction suffered by believers at the present time.³

Therefore we must take heed that we exercise discernment concerning the professions of others, and be in no rush to accept as brethren, much less fellowship, with all and sundry who make a profession of faith, instead waiting to see what fruits of righteousness and adherence to instruction they keep (Proverbs 10:17), lest we bring on the condemnation the Lord declared upon the apostate Israelites in Ezekiel 44:

"And thou shalt say to the rebellious, even to the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; O ye house of Israel, let it suffice you of all your abominations, In that ye have brought into my sanctuary strangers, uncircumcised in heart, and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in my sanctuary, to pollute it, even my house, when ye offer my bread, the fat and the blood, and they have broken my covenant because of all your abominations." (Ezekiel 44:6-7)

This, of course, is exactly what Christ instructed the Pergamos era believers to do: repent of their failure to discern and to exclude from fellowship, that is, to reject as Christians, all false teachers and their followers.

The Lord also warned that He would fight against those frauds with the sword of His mouth, which I take to reduce to two things:

1. The open refutation and condemnation of their errors weighed against the Word of Go, to their shame, which is what happened to some degree amongst the faithful few during the long centuries of the Pergamos and Thyatirean church ages, but to a considerable degree at the Reformation that followed, and,
2. The coming judicial removal of their heirs (i.e., their future fellow false teachers) from this scene of time by temporal governments under Christian helmsmanship when the Philadelphian church era begins.

Pergamos was also the historical scene of the Lord’s martyr Antipas, yet no such person named ever existed in recorded history.

Gill on this is illuminating:

Antipas is the contraction of Antipater, and is the same with Antipapas, or Antipappas, which signifies one that is against the Pope, an opposer of that "holy father"; and so intends all those that made head against him [archaic English for opposing], upon his rising and revelation, and when he assumed the power he did to himself; such as the Waldenses and Albigenses particularly, who set themselves against him, openly declared that the Pope was Antichrist, and that his government was tyrannical, and his doctrines the doctrines of devils⁴, abominable and fabulous[by which Gill means manmade] They bore a faithful testimony against all his corruptions and innovations, and became martyrs in the cause of Christ, many thousands of them being slain for his sake within the dominions of this firstborn of Satan. (John Gill on Revelation 2:13).

However, I think it is more subtle than that; the Papacy was only coming into view during the Pergamos church era, but the principle of true believers being persecuted by apostate Christians (especially Arians) really took hold in this period and I believe that is the primary meaning of the Antipas construct.

Yes, it would eventually entail tremendous persecution from the decrees of the Popes, and thus those who opposed his gross apostasy would be veritable instances of the term Antipas, but their prototypes would consist of true believers standing against, and suffering persecution as a consequence of, the surging tide of apostasy in high places within professing Christianity.

The Lord’s message to Pergamos ends with a hint or clue as to the church’s fate in the Thyatirean church age to follow, in that it would be given:

• Hidden manna to eat;
• A white stone;
• A new name written with the white stone.

As Gill wisely noted, the hidden manna⁵ reference is an apt pointer to Revelation 12’s wilderness state of the Woman (who is a symbol of the true church transcendent, not the nation of Israel as some futurists mistakenly assert), which was set to commence at the start of the Thyatirean church era in the mid 700s; the hidden manna itself represents that which sustains the Woman in her exile, i.e., sound doctrine; and, being a dual metaphor, applies more broadly to that very same doctrinal nourishment, which applies to the church in all ages.

But I think, more particularly the hidden manna supplied to those of the Pergamos era who would judge, and become separate from, the false teachers of the Antichurch, is no less than spiritual sustenance in the form of sound teaching (since teaching is how the faithful pastorate feeds the flock) supplied to them while they would start to abide in the metaphorical wilderness.

As hidden manna, it was kept from the view of the Antichurch's members, on account of it only appearing in the spiritual wilderness where the Woman of Revelation 12 (i.e. the true believers) abode.

And as manna, it was simple, non-luxurious wilderness sustenance, that is, it lacked the richness of the teaching supplied in the Reformation era that began when Sardis appeared.

And in time, at the start of the Thyatira age, the church’s process of removal to said wilderness would be complete and its sojourn there would begin in earnest, whereupon it would continue to feed on the hidden manna, supplied to it by faithful pastors whose professions of faith had been tried and proven by the faithful few (which reiterates the point above that the Lord's children must always test professions of faith, rather than simply accepting as Christ's all who claim to be such).

The white stone is, according to Gill, an allusion to a Jewish custom in which those approved for the priesthood were given “the stone of the sanctuary” and therefore symbolises Christ owning the outcast, or separated, body of faithful few believers as His true priesthood, His true servants, and those alone with whom the doctrines of salvation reside, and therefore as those alone who have kept the His Name and His faith, as He earlier said of the Pergamos church age in verse 13 (“thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith”) throughout their very long sojourn in the spiritual wilderness and, as would be the case with the Lollards, Hussites, et al.

Finally, the new name reduces to a special assurance from God, on a personal basis, perhaps particularly to His faithful pastors, during the long Wilderness sojourn, that they are His children, given the potential for demoralisation at the sheer lack of godly influence they would enjoy in this world, and even more so, at the glacial progress of the Kingdom of Heaven during the Woman’s exile; and of course, the Lord also assures all His children of their salvation, to varying degrees, in all ages.

And so the major lesson for today from Pergamos is this:

Do not readily accept anyone’s profession of faith as valid without first exercising discernment (which may take some time), with particular scrutiny on those who aspire to be pastors. Consistent failure to do this has brought countless sorrows on the church transcendent and facilitated the emergence of the Antichurch with its persecutions of the faithful few and its progeny of harlot offspring still bedevilling the name of Christianity to this day, including the vast majority of so-called Protestantism.

4. The Thyatira Church Age

(Thyatira means "a daughter", perhaps suggestive of the Woman (the true church) which began her 1,260 year sojourn in the spiritual wilderness (Revelation 12:6) when this era opened; this timespan covers the Antichurch’s supremacy, its schism into 2 parts (Catholic and Orthodox), the Dark Ages and the pre-Reformation era; ca. mid-700s-1517)

Revelation 2:18-29 contains the Lord’s message to the Thyatirean church era, which I believe began in the days of Pope Paul I, who was pontiff during the so-called Patrimony of St Peter, a watershed event that I take to mark the commencement of the dark Thyatirean era and the commencement of both the Beast from the Sea’s reign (Revelation 13) and the 1,260 year mission of the Lord’s public protest-witness (Revelation 11:3).

The Lord’s message to Thyatira begins with Christ describing Himself once more as the Son of God, drawing attention to the symbolic appearance of His eyes of flaming fire and feet as fine brass, which I believe was meant as a timely reminder that Jesus alone is the sole Mediator between God and men, and that there is no Queen of Heaven⁶, Mediatrix or Co-Redemptrix.⁷

He then lists that which is laudable in the Thyatirean church state, most of which is given in distinct and therefore deliberate contrast to the attributes of the dominant Antichurch:

• Its works, which started out in good stead at the beginning of its sojourn as the Woman in the Wilderness of Revelation 12, hiding from the flood that emerged from the Dragon’s (Satan’s) mouth, that flood being the heresies and false charges of Rome.
• Its charity – selfless love for God as motivation for good works, as opposed to doing good works in the hope of demonstrating merit with God and reducing one’s time in Purgatory.
• Its service – adhering to the Word on all points of doctrine and practice, rather than being bound by the traditions of men that make the Word of God of none effect (Mark 7:13).
• Its faith – adhering to salvation through faith in Christ’s merits and redemptive work rather than reliance on our own “good” works, church membership, the Mass, sacraments, etc.
• Its patience – enduring throughout the Dark Ages all the unpleasant obscurity and marginalisation surrounding the true church with longsuffering out of its agapē love for God.
• Its latter works, said by Christ to be superior to its first works mentioned, which points at the Thyatirean church ending in a better condition than it was in when it started, which was indeed the case thanks to the efforts of Wycliffe, Hus and other pre-Reformation voices of witness for Christ and protest against the errors of Rome.

For all that commendation, however, Jesus had a complaint against His church in the Thyatirean age, and that amounted to its weak stance, for most of that era, against Jezebel, a moniker of contempt for the western fork of the Harlot Antichurch and its doctrines, especially the idolatrous aspects, which were still not roundly condemned and exposed as they should have been by the true church transcendent during the wilderness sojourn until it, or most of the members thereof, repented of this remissness at the end of the Thyatirean era and began to boldly take a stand.

To this spiritual Jezebel was given space to repent, presumably during the period of witnessing by the late-era Thyatirean believers against her errors, but she refused to do so, and for this the Lord said He would cast her into a bed (Revelation 2:22).

Gill takes this to refer to a bed of sickness, signalling her terminal decline, but I think the near total recovery of the Papacy since the Reformation argues against that, despite Rome’s decline in popularity in recent decades (losing its votaries largely to atheism; but note that Rome is working hard to make a comeback and has been positioning itself with open arms as the bastion of traditional Christianity in the West now that the Islamic hordes have overrun our lands).

Personally, I think this bed this spiritual Jezebel is cast into by the Lord probably refers to a bed of fornication and denotes the doubling down of her seduction of the kings of Europe in the face of the Reformation that would follow the close of the Thyatirean church era; at that time, she was quick to concoct the Counter-Reformation and seek all manner of enticements to make herself all the more alluring to mankind, including the commissioning of great artworks and other initiatives designed to appeal to the sensory perception of the carnal man; but the recompense for the ensuing spiritual adultery was to be “great tribulation” inflicted upon all those kings (nations and peoples) who succumbed, and this I take to refer to the surge in wars afflicting the western nations in the centuries following the Reformation, including the so-called Protestant lands who so quickly forgot the Reformation and turned back into dalliance with Rome through the ecumenical apostasy of their mainstream denominations.

Christ then adds in Revelation 2:23 that He will kill her children “with death”, so that all the churches will know that He is the One that searches the reins and the hearts, to give to every one according to their works; and I take her children to refer to her harlot offspring, that is, to the apostate forms masquerading as Protestant churches; denominations that started out as Reformed, but which one way or another partook of the Antichurch’s fornication, yielding spiritually dead successor or “offspring” forms addicted to Rome’s soteriology or major elements thereof, as was the case, for example, with the Pelagian-Arminian-Wesleyan faction within the Church of England, and even worse, the broader Church of England, whose late archbishop Robert Runcie once disgustingly welcomed the Pope as “Your Holiness”.⁸

The Lord then has kinder words for His Thyatirean children who had not just never partaken of communion with the Antichurch, but who always rejected it as Christian at all, and that message is to hold fast until He comes, the sense not being to wait until His Second Coming, but to await a special visitation from Him which would indeed come at the end of the Thyatirean age with the Reformation, which He later styles as “the morning star”, and He promises them rulership with a rod of iron that would dash the nations in pieces like a potter’s vessel; in plainest terms, Christ was promising the Thyatirean church era two things that would occur in the Sardian age to follow:

1. The morning star that was the Reformation would come at Sardis’ beginning (hence it is called the morning star), and,
2. Temporal rule over the nations for the church transcendent would follow later, which I (and Gill et al) take to be timed to occur at the end of the Sardian era, as it transforms into its Philadelphian state; this is a near future event as of 2026 and will be a pivotal development in world history as well as church history, fulfilling Daniel 2:44 and Psalm 2:8-10, among other passages.

At the close of the Thyatirean age, the Woman would still be exiled in the Wilderness, despite the promised dawn glow of the Morning Star that was the Reformation; her years in exile, from Revelation 12, were to be no fewer than 1,260 from the start of the Thyatirean church era, which had begun in the mid 700s and was therefore nowhere near complete as of 1517, when the Reformation, and with it, the Sardian church era began.

Accordingly, the Reformation was to be an incomplete event, a mere partial success, a step forward, a glimmer of dawn light, a deadly blow against the Papacy, but not yet the full brightness of Christ’s Coming that is to consume the Man of Sin and all false religion with it; for that, we must wait a little longer, until the Sardian age transforms into the Philadelphian and the glorious spiritual reign of Christ becomes established.

The grandest abiding lesson from Thyatira is this:

Believers must always have an answer and be ready to proactively refute error, which means immersion in doctrine is a duty, but in doing so must understand that it may take a while before we see any fruits for that particular labour and therefore we must be patient and accept that all things happen in God’s time.

5. The Sardian Church Age

(Sardis means "emboldening" and / or "a remnant", and this is the present church age, from the Reformation until the present day, ca. 1513- ca. end of the current decade)

Revelation 3:1-6 describes Christ’s message to the Sardian church state which, as of mid 2025, is the one we still abide in (for detailed reasons why this is not yet the Laodicean era, as so many wrongly think, see my article, Why the Age of Missionaries was NOT the Philadelphian church era).

Overall, and unsurprisingly, Jesus is generally not complimentary to His Sardian church, lambasting it as spiritually dead, despite its name for being alive, which will come as a shock to many who regard their churches as lively, full of the “old time religion” with salty sermons and vibrant prayer meetings, etc. But this is no surprise to the few who still hold to the Reformation more rigidly.

There is a somewhat fatalist tone to Christ’s message to Sardis, with His exhortation to it to strengthen the things that remain and that are ready to die, and to remember what it first received and heard, and to repent, or else He would visit it in a chastening fashion.

This is to be interpreted in an extremely sobering manner, as the wording is intentionally alarmist; it means that the Reformation and its advances, i.e., “how thou hast received and heard”, has been largely forgotten or forsaken, and therefore we late-era Sardians are to remember it, to look at it again, to revisit the teachings and writings of the early-era Sardians (the Reformers and 17th Century English Puritans), not just with respect to the doctrines of salvation, but also with regard to the Reformers’ historicist eschatology (which, as I belabour continually, has been supplanted by the Romish counterfeit within Protestantism that is futurism), and with regard to the correct form of worship, as well as turning away from the manifold errors that have crept in with regard to such issues as the charismata and Bible versions.

Firstly, we are to be watchful, meaning, we are to waken up from our death slumber to become vigilant in terms of (a) the decline in doctrine and practice from the Reformation, (b) the lack of brotherly love between us, (c) discernment of false doctrines, false teachers, false eschatologies, and (d) discernment of the epoch in which we live.

Secondly, we are to strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die, meaning, we are to consolidate our stand for the Reformed faith and against the sins of our era, for it is this stand that shall come, and indeed is coming, to the fore as the Lord’s public witness falls under increasing duress for going against the paraphernalia of the atheistic Left; this shall come to a head, as foretold in Revelation 11:7, when the Lord’s public witness, having served as unpopular missionaries sent into the broad street of the metaphorical Great City (the western world), from the Woman’s wilderness habitat, for almost 1,260 years, will come into conflict with the Beast from the Bottomless Pit (secular, atheistic socialist power), which shall “kill” the Lord’s public ministries, that is, use civic means to silence them; hence, to reiterate, “the things that remain”, but that “are ready to die”, that we are commanded by Jesus to strengthen, reduce to chiefly to:

1. Our Reformed doctrines and form of worship (exclusive psalmody, etc.), and,
2. Our public ministries, especially our witness against the sins of the present age, a witness that is coming under attack by the Left for being “hate speech”.

Christ citicises Sardis for its works not being perfect before God (Revelation 3:2) in contrast to the required watchfulness and redoubling of our diligence in preserving the Reformed faith and witnessing against sin, hence He orders us to remember what Sardis was originally taught (the Reformed faith) and to “hold fast” and “repent” (Revelation 3:3), that is, to tolerate no further compromise with error (e.g. Arminianism) and to repent, that is, to turn away from our doctrinal decline, our offensive forms of worship, our corrupt eschatologies (especially futurism) and our paucity of filial love between one another.

But then the Lord places a threat on Sardis if we do not exercise the awakened vigilance that He requires:

"I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee" (Revelation 3:3)

And sadly, because this threat is made, it must come to pass and indeed, Christ is probably visiting Sardis "like a thief" in four ways:

1. Eschatological blindness fell on Sardis in the mid 1800s, just as the dilution of the Reformation was reaching critical mass. The church, for its newfound enthusiasm for bad eschatology (such as Scofield’s and Darby’s), was given over to eschatological fantasies and not permitted to perceive the content of Revelation 10’s seven thunders until the time for Sardis to recover would be at hand, when “knowledge would increase”, as per Daniel 12:4. The blindness was and is so severe that Sardis does not even know it has been blinded!
2. The killing of the church’s public witness through hate speech laws⁹ designed to pander to Sodomites and Muslims.
3. The very near future limitations and hindrances on free participation in transactional engagements for all who will refuse the Mark, the Mark being any affirmation of support for the Image of the Beast, the Image in turn being the objects of worship of the beast system. In its superlative and final form the Image consists of all the pet projects that the atheistic, hyper-socialist scarlet system demands we genuflect before, i.e., LGBT, abortion, mass immigration, tolerating Islam, etc., so that the principled few will have poor social credit scores and find it harder to get along in society than the compliant masses will. I believe this is to be only a very short-term affliction, that it will not be a total exclusion from commerce (lest the church perish from the face of the earth), and that it will be tied to the digital IDs and digital currencies that are in the works for 2026-2028 in all the western nations, including Trump’s MAGA America, sad to say.
4. Collateral impacts from most of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16 which, as some of the old writers deduced, are to fall in the wake of the Lord’s public witness being silenced here in the West.

Sadly, very few Sardians are even aware of this rebuke and threat from Christ, given that almost everyone who understands that the letters to the churches in Revelation are a chronology tragically thinks this is the Laodicean age.

The tremendous chastening upon Sardis, especially the silencing of the Lord’s public witness, though seen by the ungodly as a great victory for them against us and celebrated accordingly (Revelation 11:10), will prove transformative for the church, a fiery trial that will draw us closer to Christ and to one another, and prepare us for the glorious Philadelphian age that is to follow within a few short years of our apparent defeat:

"Better is the end of a thing, than the beginning thereof" (Ecclesiastes 7:8)

And so, in the final analysis, Sardis will heed Christ’s call to keep its garments white, when He makes that call a second time to Sardis in Revelation 16:15, during the dreadful world events of the sixth of the Seven Last Plagues.

Sardis will thus overcome and be “clothed in white raiment” (Revelation 3:5, i.e. sound doctrine and practice), and shall be openly owned by Christ before His father and His angels, which via abstraction also means that the entire world, from the votaries of the Antichurch to the most rabid atheists, and the entire spectrum of false religion in between, shall be brought to understand that the Sardian overcomers are, indeed, Christ’s faithful children, and that Christ Himself is Lord, through Ezekiel 38-39’s demonstrative event in the Middle East at the Sardis age’s close, which I submit shall come around the end of the present decade (see my commentaries on Ezekiel 38 and Ezekiel 39).

The abiding lesson from Sardis is this:

Since there is no way out of Sardis except back through the Reformation, the Lord requires us to study to show ourselves approved unto Him (2 Timothy 2:15) and to obsessively maintain uncompromising watchfulness over our own hearts, our sovereign grace doctrines of salvation, the professions of others, our form of worship (the Regulative Principle), our eschatological model (historicism), and love for the brethren (to keep Christ's "new commandment").

6. The Philadelphian Church Age

(Philadelphia means "brotherly love", i.e., when at last the church transcendent emerges from its Sardian torpor and filial love shall abound to a degree unknown hitherto; this happy turn of events shall begin around the end of the present decade when the Jews return to the Messianic fold and last for "many generations" (Isaiah 58:12))

Revelation 3:7-13 outlines the glorious Philadelphian church state that begins this very decade in the midst of what shall be the most tumultuous world events in human history.

The Lord opens His address to Philadelphia by describing Himself with four era-relevant attributes:

1. He that is holy;
2. He that is true;
3. He that has the key of David;
4. He that opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens.

These attributes are pertinent to the Philadelphian age because they point to key developments, emerging from His benevolence, in the church during that era:

1. The church will become Philadelphian, that is, infused with filial love which, along with agapē love for God, is the essence of holiness (Matthew 22:37-40).
2. Truth, in the form of doctrinal purity and unity (at long last), will prevail over all error and falsehoods, within and without professing Christianity (e.g. Joel 3:18).
3. The Jews will be brought in from the cold, so to speak, owning Jesus as their David, their King, and bringing great revitalisation and joy to the church (Romans 11:15).
4. All erstwhile obstacles to the advance of the Lord’s Gospel of Grace will now be removed, a metaphorical open door being placed before the Philadelphian church with very godly believers being in power in nation after nation (albeit starting with the pre-eminent western nation) as the “stone cut out without hands” of Daniel 2:35 grows into a mountain that shall fill the whole world.

The Lord also promises that the synagogue of Satan, that is, the lying “Jews” of Revelation 3:9, will then come to “worship” before the feet of the Philadelphian church, and to acknowledge it as the Lord’s beloved; this refers to two things at once:

1. The literal Jews awakened at their promised mass conversion to Christ as their Messiah (Romans 11), being brought into the church fold and warmly received as prodigals, and in turn, expressing their heartfelt remorse for hating Christ and His servants for two millennia, and,
2. The metaphorical "Jews" that are apostate Christians (I think notably many Catholics) being compelled to admit that the true, Reformed Protestants have always been the Lord’s children, and, now that such true believers wield temporal power in nation after nation, those apostates will “worship”, that is, submit to their temporal authority, whether through gritted teeth or not – note that there is strong evidence in Revelation 18:4 that there will be a great turning away from Romanism and other harlot forms and a coming to Christ by Catholics on a scale never seen before.

The Lord then moves on to say that as a reward for keeping the word of His patience, Philadelphia is to be spared from the “hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Revelation 3:10); this may refer to the present Sardian church, just before it becomes Philadelphian, patiently refusing to take the Mark and refusing to bow to the Image of the Beast, the reward for which is being spared from the hour of temptation, which is a trial, or affliction (as the word temptation commonly means in Scripture), designed to try the ungodly, that is, to show them just how depraved they are through their failure to repent in the face of the great distresses this temptation shall bring upon them.

Alternatively, this may refer to those special trials, or, “temptations”, that shall come upon the ungodly alone during the period in which the Lord’s public witness shall lie silent; that is, this hour of temptation may be nothing less than the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16, which are designed to punish the ungodly but leave the Lord’s children fundamentally unscathed; it does not signal futurism’s bogus “rapture” to escape those plagues, but rather means either that the Lord has ingeniously designed those plagues in a fashion that will make them ruin just the ungodly or that the Lord’s people shall be given grace to endure, and presumably providential provision to survive, those plagues.

As a final alternative theory, the hour of temptation may simply refer to generically to all the different kinds of plagues, wars and tribulations brought upon humanity throughout history prior to the Philadelphian age, the meaning being that Philadelphia shall be a period of great peace and prosperity (as shall certainly be the case), with God’s temporal wrath against the nations at an end.

This interpretation is not at all incompatible with the other two, and indeed, all three may be meant.

Then the Lord warns that He will come quickly and that Philadelphia should hold fast that which it has, that no man can take its crown; this probably refers to His swift coming in a judicial fashion to bring in those terrible Last Seven Plagues as Sardis is close to the transition to Philadelphia, and it may be that when we see the provocations against God that warrant those plagues, specifically, when we see the Lord’s public witness silenced, which is the last great sin of the ungodly before relative peace is to be removed from them, and when we see them rejoice at that silencing of our faithful ministries (and, I speculate, might additionally observe a peace-in-our-time treaty in the Middle East brokered by Russia, with or without American input) then know that Jesus is about to unleash the Seven Last Plagues.

The holding fast refers, I take it, to standing firm in the face of the late-Sardian-era pressure to conform to the demands of the Image of the Beast and thereafter, as the Seven Last Plagues play out and is given as an oblique comfort, by reminding us that by then we shall be on the “home run”, so to speak, on the cusp of the Philadelphian glory age, even as the world around us descends into bedlam, and that by holding our nerve, by remaining steadfast in the faith, and not being excessively distressed or plunged into fatalist despair by world events, and by finally revisiting the Reformation and seeking to love one another as the Lord requires, then we position ourselves for the coming “crown of life” reward; this applies above all to our faithful few pastors and those ministering laity who will have been silenced by the Scarlet Coloured Beast from the Abyss (western hyper socialist power), but who will enjoy great honour, vindication and esteem when elevated by the Lord to temporal authority.

This holding fast might additionally, if not alternatively, refer to the temporal distress on earth when the Philadelphian church era technically begins, as it must emerge at the time of the terrible great hail of Revelation 16:21, a judgment that will provoke those ungodly who survive it to curse God; the great hail refers to the coming terrible last war in profane history, pitting East against West, the build-up for which is already well underway and gathering pace.

Christians will also experience a loss of many comforts and way of life when this happens, and so must “hold fast” and patiently wait for temporal conditions to improve.

Christ then promises anyone who overcomes, that is, the Sardian-Philadelphians of the start of the Philadelphian church era, that they will be rewarded thus:

1. He shall be made a pillar in the temple of God;
2. He shall go out of the temple no more;
3. Jesus shall write the Name of His God upon him;
4. He shall likewise have the name of new Jerusalem written upon him;
5. He shall also have Christ’s “new name” written upon him.

These rewards in turn respectively mean:

1. The Sardian-Philadelphians shall be (a) highly honoured Christians whose names shall be revered throughout the generations to follow and (b) their testimonies, writings and preachings shall serve as enduring pillars upholding the church into the future, much more so even than those of Luther, Calvin, Knox et al who bore the shamefully largely forsaken First Reformation. But even more still what is meant here is that the kind of person who overcomes in this fashion, who is synonymous with the opening of the Philadelphian church age, will never depart from the church transcendent thereafter and rather, shall abide not scarce in number, and obscured, as the “few names in Sardis” were, but in large numbers and openly, for the edification of the church.
2. Unlike the teachings of the First Reformation, the teachings of these great overcomers of the Second Reformation shall never be lost to the church thereafter, but shall abide within it; thereby, sound teaching shall never depart from the metaphorical temple that is the church transcendent.
3. The name of “my God” (a term used four times in Revelation 3:12) points to Christ as the Father’s Son, which is an important matter for the Philadelphian state, given that it opens or begins with the Jews turning to the very Christ they historically rejected as God’s Son; the Philadelphians, in the sight of the now Messianic Jews, openly bearing the Father’s approval is what is meant by having the Father’s name written upon them.
4. The name of New Jerusalem is a mark upon the Philadelphian church state that denotes a holiness-founded transformation in temporal blessedness, which is another feature of the coming Philadelphian golden age of the church; this is not the health-and-wealth gospel of today’s charlatan “mega-church” hirelings, who teach that to be temporally blessed you must shovel money to them; rather, this is a transformation in quality of life brought about by the godly being in temporal authority (Proverbs 29:2) along with all that that means for the removal of oppressive taxation, the liberal deployment of hidden medical cures, liberty itself, and so on. This will be a little foretaste of the pleasures of heaven coming down to earth and is a pledge of the far more excellent and perfect state of joy to come in Christ’s immediate presence in the Millennium and, thereafter, the eternal day that follows the last Judgment.
5. Christ’s New Name is to be written upon them; that is, the name of King of Kings, pointing to the beginning of Jesus’ temporal rule over the nations, which befits the fact that the Philadelphian church age is one and the same as Christ’s spiritual reign that Gill and the old writers spoke of, that is, the Kingdom of Daniel 2:44 and 7:18,22, and which entails the godly’s ascent to temporal power over nation after nation, as the stone cut out without hands grows to fill the whole earth.

Philadelphia, then, marks a quantum leap in the fortunes of the church transcendent, an irreversible advance in temporal and spiritual blessedness for the Lord’s children, and an end to false religion, all of which collectively is rightly called the Brightness of His Coming (2 Thessalonians 2:8); it is certainly something no child of God in the present Sardian era, now fast approaching its close, would want to miss!

The abiding lesson from Philadelphia is this:

There is unsurpassable spiritual and temporal blessedness and joy for the church transcendent if it meticulously abides by the Word in all matters of life and doctrine, and that conversely the reason why there has been so much suffering and so many setbacks for the church since the time of Christ is its failure to be watchful on a full-spectrum basis.

7. The Laodicean Aberrancy

(Laodicea means "the judging of the people" and comes at the end of the Philadelphian age as a brief relapse before swiftly passing back into a Philadelphian condition, whereupon or shortly whereafter Christ returns, and then the first resurrection Occurs (of the just) and the Millennial state begins)

Revelation 3:14-22 covers the message to Laodicea, the final of the seven church ages which, as with Philadelphia, is still future from our time (as of mid 2025).

Christ introduces His message to Laodicea by describing Himself as “the Amen” (Revelation 3:14), in allusion to this being the final of the church ages, yet the one which many faithful Christians today mistakenly think they live in, thanks to Sardis having forsaken Reformation eschatology (historicism) in favour of Jesuit futurism.

The Lord further refers to Himself as “the faithful and true witness”, which hints at a root cause of the Laodicean condition; that is, the lukewarmedness for which Laodicea is synonymous will have been facilitated by a failure in the Lord’s public witness at that time; in plainest terms, I believe this points to a pastoral problem, not in terms of doctrine (for by then, all doctrinal issues will have been long settled and error will never again enter the transcendent church) but in terms of exhortation to filial love; that is, the generations of Philadelphian ardour preceding the Laodicean state will have been cooled so that the church is no longer widely Philadelphian. The complete suite of reasons for that are outlined in what follows, which we come to below after we review the difficult final term Christ assigns to Himself: “the beginning of the creation of God.”

This term can readily be wrested by the enemies of Trinitarianism to argue that Jesus is not eternal, but was created; however, Revelation is presented in cryptic symbolism and therefore cannot automatically be taken at face value, but must be interpreted or deciphered; the same is the case with this term, which reduces to Christ’s glory being the first cause of all that the Father created alongside the Son (John 1:1) and the Spirit (Genesis 1:1).

But why reference this point in addressing Laodicea?

It is because when the Laodicean age ends, Christ returns and the resurrection of the just occurs, along with the binding of Satan and the commencement of the Millennial state, making it clearer than ever before that all things were created for His glory, in one way (such as saving elect sinners) or another (such as damning reprobates).

Jesus is thereby styled as “the beginning of the creation of God” to signify that all of creation was brought into being first and foremost for Christ’s sake, that is, for His honour and glory as Co-Creator, Lawgiver, Redeemer, Mediator and Judge.

And now, as the church transcendent enters its final era, the Laodicean, at the close of which Christ Himself shall appear in glory from Heaven, the full Christ-glorifying purpose of the Creation shall be made much more manifest and He shall be seen as the first and foundational reason for it.

Laodicea therefore marks the final phase of the church militant upon this earth and, as such, the Laodiceans will have to recognise where they stand in history, namely, on the brink of Christ’s Second Coming.

The root of their rut, aside from pastoral neglect, will be a cessation of vigilance, partly due to pastoral carelessness; this will come from their sense of security and invulnerability, after generations of Philadelphian success and peace.

Again and again in the letters to the churches, it is dereliction of duty, which we can consider as sins of omission, that is at the root of the judgments brought upon the church transcendent and the world beyond.

And it will return to haunt the church transcendent in the Laodicean state, whose lukewarmness is a summary for being poor, blind, and the other things levelled against it by Christ.

The Lord directs five cutting condemnations at the Laodiceans:

1. They will be ignorant of their own wretchedness, which means they will have stopped inspecting their own hearts and being mindful of their own sinful inclinations; this comes from lack of watchfulness and again, that neglect will substantially be traced back to the pulpit and might be facilitated by lowering their guard due to their great degree of peace and prosperity. Their wretchedness will consist of a marked decline in their spiritual lives from the lofty Philadelphia heights.
2. They will be unknowingly miserable, having lost the joy of their warm love, deluding themselves that all is well because of their safe temporal conditions (for during Philadelphia, no more persecutions will come).
3. They will be unknowingly poor, that is, spiritually poor, mentioned in deliberate contrast to their material prosperity.
4. They will be unknowingly blind, that is, ignorant of their own ignorance, imagining themselves to be still fully Philadelphian.
5. They will be unknowingly naked, that is, their shameful decline in agapē and filial love will be visible to all onlookers from the spiritual realm, and perhaps to any minority of Laodicean era believers who might not have succumbed to this final mass backsliding.

For this lapse, the Lord then primes Laodicea for a bitter but corrective affliction by reminding them that He chastens those whom He loves, and urges them to accordingly be zealous and to repent, which shall indeed follow upon the Laodicean trial.

But what shall that chastening consist of?

It can be neither persecution by the state (since all nations by that time shall be under the rule of true believers) nor by false religion (since all false religion by then shall have long been vanquished), but instead appears to be whatever Christ intended by spewing them out of His mouth (Revelation 13:16); Gill takes this to refer to “unchurching”, perhaps meaning some kind of rebuke (which in my view would be more likely undertaken either on a private, one-to-one basis by a reawakened pastorate or through preaching openly on it in abstract terms, in either case to righteously and mercifully minimise the public embarrassment of the guilty); however, I take it instead to be a temporary loss of assurance of salvation on a wholesale basis across the affected church transcendent, precipitating mass panic, given what follows:

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20)

That is, the very worst time to lose assurance of salvation – apart from on one’s deathbed – would probably be just as it is becoming obvious that Jesus is about to literally return; and indeed, since the Laodicean lukewarm declension from the lofty Philadelphian heights shall, in fact, be an infallible sign that Jesus’ return shall indeed be at the door, so to speak, everyone whose love for Him and for their fellow believers has cooled, or not yet been discerned through self-examination, will inevitably question their own salvation and become panic-stricken because, after all, discerning love for God in one’s own heart is the primary way in which a redeemed sinner should possess assurance of salvation.¹⁰

Happily, all of the Lord’s faithful children at that time, that is, the near universality of humanity on earth, though having fallen into that dismal lukewarmedness, shall hear His knocking at the metaphorical door, and repent, whereupon He shall enter into their midst and sup with them, that is, fellowship with them in such a fashion as to restore their assurance.

This knocking on the door, of course, may perhaps also be a double metaphor (as is frequently the case in Revelation) and might refer more to His literal Second Coming than to visiting His children for renewed Philadelphian fellowship.

The Lord’s message to Laodicea ends with the customary promise for the overcomers; for those Laodiceans, it is that they shall rule with Him in sinless, immortal bodies over a no-longer-cursed earth during the Millennium, along with all the resurrected saints who will accompany Him at His Second Coming.

The grand lesson from Laodicea is that even after a long period of doctrinal unity and purity, peace, prosperity, happiness and filial harmony, with Satan’s historical devices destroyed and his wings well and truly clipped, the church transcendent shall nonetheless remain vulnerable to sin. It is only in the incorruptible resurrection bodies of the Millennial reign of Christ upon His Second Coming that the church’s members will finally be free from any inclination to sin. This is a lesson the sinless perfection proponents (i.e. “consistent” Arminians) would do well to learn. Finally, Christ’s glory is the first and foremost consideration for why there was a Creation at all.

Other Hints About the Church Ages Are Found in Revelation 7

John Gill asserts that Revelation 7 consists of a thoughtful pause between the sixth and seventh seals that is presented to the church to comfort it and assure it of its enduring existence in this world in the face of the great weight of evils to come in the aftermath of the passing of the Roman Empire:

...and now, before John sees that [seventh] seal opened, a pause is made, and this vision is shown him, to fortify his mind, and all other saints, that are observers of these things, who by the opening of the following seal would see what judgments and plagues would come upon the empire, now become Christian, and what changes and revolutions would be made in it, and might fear that the church of God would be wholly swallowed up and lost; wherefore this vision is exhibited to show, that notwithstanding the devastations by the Goths and Vandals, and the rise, progress, and power of Mahomet, and the dreadful apostasy of the church of Rome, and all the miseries of it, and the plagues that should come upon the church for it; yet God would have throughout all this, and in, every age of time, a sealed number, a true church, hidden and secured, even until the seventh angel has sounded his trumpet, and time shall be no more, and the mystery of God will be finished. (John Gill on Revelation 7:1).

The Apostle John sees in Revelation 7:1 four angels standing upon the four metaphorical corners of the earth, restraining the winds from blowing on the earth, sea or tree; Gill takes this to refer to good angels, exercising a restraining influence upon the forces of evil in this world, to which I would add that Satan, as prince of the power of the air, seeks to wreck and destroy, just as a violent wind that brings tumult upon land and sea, uprooting trees and destroying property and lives, and therefore, within this context, would very reasonably be described as the wind in general, or just “the four winds”.

In this vision, those angels are commanded by the angel ascending from the east, Who is none other than Christ, the uncreated angel (as Gill calls Him), to hold the destructive agencies of Satan back until all the servants of God have been sealed in their foreheads; this, of course, is a highly figurative depiction rather than an explicit singular event within the chronology of the seven seals; it is, therefore, a vignette, a necessary tangent away from the seven seals, but one that shows that none of the great evils to be unleashed by Satan against the church in the centuries following Constantine’s reign would be able to alter the sum of God’s elect, or cost them their salvation or in any other fashion prevent Christ from building His church in accordance with God’s eternal decree concerning who is to be saved.

This entire chapter, therefore, confirms and consolidates the doctrine of election; and by implication, the doctrine of reprobacy also.

John is then given the number of those thus sealed as being 144,000, which is 12×12,000 and is again, a symbolic number for a definite, but much larger, literal number.

The symbolism is derived, Gill thinks, from there being twelve true Apostles of Christ and consequently there being assigned, symbolically, to each one of their ministries a metaphorical twelve thousand Christian converts, concluded under a named tribe of Israel, bringing in 144,000, “of all the tribes of the children of Israel”, which is not to be understood of Jewish Israel, but of the “New Israel” that is the New Testament church transcendent.

Each of these metaphorical tribes is then named in turn and explained thus by Gill:

• Judah, in honour of the tribe from whence Christ sprung and whose name means “praise God”;
• Reuben, in honour of the tribe whose name means “behold the Son”;
• Gad, in honour of the tribe whose name means “a troop”, which seems to point to the church militant overcoming all adversity ordained against it;
• Aser, in honour of the tribe (Asher) whose name means “blessed”;
• Nephthalim, in honour of the tribe whose name means “struggles” or “strivings”, which the church transcendent must experience;
• Manasses, in honour of the tribe (Manasseh) whose name means “forgetting”, perhaps alluding to turning away from the old life of sin, but also perhaps referring to its Sardian inclination to forget the Reformation;
• Simeon, in honour of the tribe whose name means “hearing”, that is, heeding the Word, perhaps especially in its preached form;
• Levi, in honour of the tribe whose name means “joined”, or “united”, that is, believers united in love and communion with one another and with the Lord;
• Issachar, in honour of the tribe whose name means “payment”, alluding to the blessings bestowed on the church transcendent in this world for its service;
• Zabulon, in honour of the tribe (Zebulon) whose name means “dwelling” and which, Gill thinks, alludes to God’s dwelling in the midst of His church;
• Joseph, in honour of the tribe whose name means “adding”, which Gill takes to refer to the growth of the church transcendent;
• Benjamin, in honour of the tribe whose name means “the Son of the right hand”, which I think refers to the fact that believers will enjoy honour at the right hand of God forever, with believers being at the Lord’s right hand on Judgment Day and the ungodly at His left.

However, one may also see in the above a chronology of New Testament church history, as follows:

1. Judah: It arose out of the tribe of Judah, in the form of Christ Himself, who was born into that tribe, and the Apostles, who were also of that tribe.
2. Reuben (“behold the Son”): Its foundational theme was God the Son coming into to his world as the Christ (Messiah).
3. Gad (“a troop”): In its infancy, it was engaged in many battles, first with the Jews, then with the Pagan Romans, to become established.
4. Asher (“blessed”): In its great early sufferings, notably the ten year long Diocletianic Persecution that composed the Smyrnean era, Christ declared it to be “rich” (Revelation 2:9), meaning it had the greatest blessing of all: eternal life.
5. Nephthalim (“struggles”): For most of the time during the centuries following, right up until the present Sardian age shall end, the church has been experiencing and shall experience many struggles or strivings.
6. Manasseh (“forgetting”): During the present Sardian age, as we have seen when reviewing Revelation 3, the church has largely forgotten many of the key principles of the Reformation, hence Jesus directs us Sardians to “Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard...” (Revelation 3:3).
7. Simeon (“hearing”): Happily, after failing to do at first and consequently bringing on the “killing” (i.e. civic silencing) of the Lord’s public witness in Revelation 11:7 by way of Christ chastening it in a visitation “like a thief” (Revelation 3:3), the Sardian church state shall indeed hear and heed His command to return to the soteriological and eschatological gains of the Reformation at the time of the sixth of the Seven Last Plagues (Revelation 16:15).
8. Levi (“united”): After that, the glorious Philadelphian church age begins with the Jews, suddenly having been transformed by the Spirit to become Messianic, uniting with the Gentile believers in a “life from the dead” event (Romans 15); it will also entail the Second Reformation, during which all doctrine within the church transcendent will be unified.
9. Issachar (“payment / reward”): There then follows the rest of the Philadelphian era, in which great spiritual and temporal rewards are bestowed upon the church transcendent.
10. Zabulon (“dwelling with / residing with”): The Philadelphian era will be one of great in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit amidst His children, supercharging them with filial love (hence the name of that church age).
11. Joseph (“adding / expansion / growing”): It is also during the Philadelphian era that the church transcendent shall grow at a rate hitherto unprecedented, until the Lord’s one true faith fills the whole world in what shall be a time of great “adding”.
12. Benjamin (“Son of the right hand”): Finally, after the brief Laodicean “blip”, the Lord shall return and place His children at His right hand for evermore.

Dan and Ephraim are excluded, to the benefit of the names of Levi and Joseph respectively, and Gill speculates that the reason is due to the great apostasies both Dan and Ephraim engaged in; let this also stand as a warning flag to those who subscribe to the Armstrongist delusion known as Anglo-Israelism, which seeks to designate modern day Anglo Saxon Britain as Ephraim’s literal tribe continuing, and Manasseh as the United States.

The Seven Church Ages Summarised

1. Ephesus: the Apostolic era and its immediate aftermath, ca. AD 33-303, during which early heresies and persecutions arose.
2. Smyrna: the very brief (lasting ten years), but very intense and most major Roman persecution of the church, AD 303-313.
3. Pergamos: this began with the sudden but short-lived exaltation by Constantine of the church at the expense of Pagan intrigues against it, then the collapse of the western Roman Empire and the emergence in its place of the Antichurch in the city of Rome, with the first cases of persecution of the church transcendent by a rival Christianity that stole its name and eclipsed it; AD 313 - ca. mid 700s.
4. Thyatira: the church transcendent’s retreat to the spiritual wilderness completed, with the Antichurch fully ascendant and dominating European culture, both in the east and west of the continent, in what we now call the Dark Ages, towards the end of which early signs of the Reformation were appearing in the form of the non-conformists; Thyatira spanned the period from the mid 700s until 1517.
5. Sardis: the era in which we presently (as of early 2025) abide, which began with the “morning star” of the First Reformation (of Luther, Calvin, Knox, et al), only to peter out into a forgetful deadness, in which very few have maintained and sought to advance Reformation gains but which is set to undergo a transformative persecution at its close at the behest of the Scarlet Coloured Beast from the Bottomless Pit of Revelation 11 and 17, leading to the Second Reformation that, along with the Jewish Epiphany (which must occur when the church transcendent is “dead”, i.e. Sardian (Revelation 3:1) according to Romans 11:15), will usher in the Philadelphian church era of Daniel 2:44 and Daniel 7:18,22; Sardis spans the years 1517 to around 2029/30.
6. Philadelphia: Shall begin with the Second Reformation and the Jewish Epiphany at the time when the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 are restored to life (amidst earth-shattering world events), and shall endure for an indeterminate period into the future which shall be the glorious golden age of church history, the “brightness of His coming”, “the Kingdom” of Daniel 2:44 and Daniel 7:18,22, and known to the English Puritans as “Christ’s spiritual reign” and to others as “the Fifth Monarchy” (being that which follows the fourth and final beast system of Daniel 7); this will entail the godly ruling the nations for the first time in what will be a benevolent theocracy; it begins in a major western nation, ca. 2029/30, after what will be the most tumultuous series of world events since the dawn of time (all of which are detailed elsewhere herein). Note that there can be no Second Reformation until the church transcendent studiously revisits the First Reformation, which is required by the Lord in Revelation 3:3, but which it will fail to do until it is visited in chastening, suddenly, that is, “like a thief”. I cannot be certain, but I suspect this era will last a thousand years or close thereto, based on the fact that the previous five eras span 2,000 years and the Philadelphian age would mark a kind of a “Sabbath”, since it starts after 6,000 years from the creation; notwithstanding that suspicion, I do not conflate it with the Millennium when Christ shall physically rule on earth with the resurrected saints, when the Father’s will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven, at last, without sin.
7. Laodicea: A very brief era, somewhat to be subsumed as a single generation aberrancy within Philadelphia, and swiftly to pass, whereafter the Lord shall return literally, the resurrection of the just shall take place and the Millennial binding of Satan shall commence.