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And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass[.]
The letter is from Christ, it is addressed to each of them, and has some very important things to say. We’re in the Book of Revelation. These letters are written to real churches, in real time. They’re staffed with real people, who live in real cities, commit real sins, and do real good works. But that’s not all they are. There are seven of them. Seven is the number of completeness in the Bible. It represents the whole. And the Book of Revelation is a book about the day of the Lord. It’s about the end time.
John was in the Isle of Patmos, a prisoner for the word of God for the faith he had professed. And in that time he was transported, in vision, into the day of the Lord; and he saw things which he was told to record and was given these seven letters to write to each of these seven churches. These seven churches are a model of the entire church at the end time.
So, when we read this letter to Thyatira we can see what one first-century church was like, and we can wonder at the state of our church as we approach the return of Christ. The letter continues in Revelation 2, and verse 19…
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And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass[.]
The letter is from Christ, it is addressed to each of them, and has some very important things to say. We’re in the Book of Revelation. These letters are written to real churches, in real time. They’re staffed with real people, who live in real cities, commit real sins, and do real good works. But that’s not all they are. There are seven of them. Seven is the number of completeness in the Bible. It represents the whole. And the Book of Revelation is a book about the day of the Lord. It’s about the end time.
John was in the Isle of Patmos, a prisoner for the word of God for the faith he had professed. And in that time he was transported, in vision, into the day of the Lord; and he saw things which he was told to record and was given these seven letters to write to each of these seven churches. These seven churches are a model of the entire church at the end time.
So, when we read this letter to Thyatira we can see what one first-century church was like, and we can wonder at the state of our church as we approach the return of Christ. The letter continues in Revelation 2, and verse 19…
God doesn’t speak to man very often, so when he does, it pays to listen. This is one of those occasions. John was a prisoner on the island of Patmos. He was in jail, I suppose. He was a political prisoner because of the faith of Jesus Christ for the witness and the testimony he had given. And he was transported in vision, and he heard in vision a great voice behind him and he turned around and saw someone who was so awesome in his appearance that John fell on the ground like a dead man as a result of seeing him. And this one that he saw reached down and picked him up and said, Fear not, I am the first and the last, I am he that lives, and was dead, and, behold, I am alive forever more, and I have the keys of hell and death.
Now, if you’re going to know someone with a set of keys, the one who has the keys to hell—that is, the grave—and death is the one to know because he can get you out.
And he continued to say, Write the things which you have seen, and the things that are, and the things which shall be hereafter.
All this is in the mysterious Book of Revelation, the first chapter, verses 17 through 19. And this last statement in verse 19, is one of the keys to understanding the Book of Revelation.
I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying,Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.
Thus begins that mysterious book: the Book of Revelation. The one that we look at and wonder, what does all this mean? what are the signs? what are the symbols? how do we understand it? Actually, its relatively simple in places because all it is, is a letter. A letter to seven churches. And the seven churches are named. These are really quite specific in their address. They go to seven and only seven, and one might ask, Why only seven? And, Why these seven? For in truth, there were a number of other churches in Asia at the time this epistle was written. It was written to these churches by name and to no other. Why?
Halloween is an odd event—very odd, in a way, because in its origins it was not evil; it was actually good. A number of you probably know that Halloween
is All Hallows Even
; in other words, All Hallows Eve—the evening before All Hallows. And All Hallows
is All Saints day. And, originally, All Saints Day (November 1st) was the day when all the saints were honored. In other words, it's a time that the Church had set aside to honor those people who had lived exemplary lives, who had blessed others by their lives, and were considered saints by the Church at that time.
October 31st, though, among non-Christian Celtic people, was a different matter altogether. It was the festival of Samhain. What you may not know is the fact it was also New Year's Eve in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon England at that time. It was actually the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. It took place in the autumn, as a matter of fact. It was an occasion for fire festivals, they lit huge bonfires on top of hills to frighten off the evil spirits, and also it was a time when laws and land tenures were renewed.
It harkens back, in a way, to the Old Testament. You'll recall where, in the year of release, all the captives were released. People who have been enslaved because of having been a thief and caught and sold into slavery were turned loose, in the seventh year. That was always in the autumn, not in the spring. In that Jubilee year, all the land again went back to its original family owner—the one who received it by lot. Here they had, in the autumn, a time when all the laws and land tenures were renewed.
In the Celtic religions, the dead were supposed to visit their homes on this night. As a consequence, you get the sinister aspects of the festival. And, of course, you had the Celtic Church right alongside of the Roman Church; and the gradual melding that took place in these things over time created something along the lines of Halloween. And though it really became in later times a secular holiday, at the same time it has also retained a lot of those sinister overtones.
Halloween was thought to be the most favorable time for divinations, for marriage, for health, for death, and for luck. And it was the only day when the help of the Devil was invoked in such matters.
I think that is fascinating. For people who call themselves Christians—who are believers in Christ, people who try to serve God—you can almost see how it would be tempting, in certain circumstances (and I want to talk about that a little later), to get some guidance from that side of the spirit world.
Halloween is a night of great evil. But really, it's a night of great evil only because the Devil is invoked in some of the customs and some of the practices. If it were nothing but a harvest festival, it probably wouldn't amount to much. The question is: Is there really a Devil, and are there demons in a spirit world that come out on Halloween or at other times? I recently received a letter from a long-time correspondent, and he had what I think is easily the most comprehensive set of questions about the spirit world and the paranormal that I have ever received in my life. I mean, to answer it would require me to write a book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Spirit World But Were Afraid To Ask. And he gave me a really good list. He asked me about spirit sightings, dreams that come true, UFOs, abductions, strange lights, hauntings, healings, psychics, miracles that seem to have nothing to do with God and yet are miracles, and a whole long list. And he asked that, somewhere along the line, I would do a sermon or a tape or something on the subject. And so you owe this sermon today to my friend who wrote to me about this.
The Book of Revelation is a book with a very specific purpose. John who wrote it tells us it is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly come to pass. But, why bother? Why show them things which should shortly come to pass? Well, the logical answer is because he expects you to do something about it. He thinks that If I tell my servants things that are shortly to come to pass, they can be prepared, they can change their lives, they can clean up their act, they can straighten up and fly right.
You know, it’s not a bad idea if God is about to do something drastic to society because things are not going the way they ought to go, and he let you know so you can get yourself straightened up. I think that is something we all could appreciate. So, John wrote all this stuff down that he went through and he wrote a letter to some people about it. And he said that he bore testimony of all the things he saw. And I guess because it was a vision, and it had to do with things he saw, the imagery of the Book of Revelation is highly visual. What John saw was a nightmare. What we want to know about that nightmare is: What does it all mean?
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass[.]
Thus begins the mysterious Book of Revelation. Though, why it should be mysterious remains an open question. After all, it is a revelation. It is expressly given to reveal information about certain things that are going to happen. How would you feel if you received a letter from a friend that said, I’m going to reveal some things in this letter.
But when you’ve finished the letter, you really don’t know what he’s talking about.
Why is this Book of Revelation so mysterious?
Well, there are reasons for it. One is that the book is 2,000 years old. It’s written in another language. It’s out of a foreign culture. It’s an account of another man’s visions and dreams. When you think about all those things, why shouldn’t we have some trouble with it, even though it was intended to be clear enough to the people who had first got the book?
Was Jesus a liberal or a conservative? Looking around the political landscape today, you would sort of think that he must have been one or the other because there are people out there who are Christians who would take very strong positions on the political left or right. Since they’re Christians and they’re supposed to be following Jesus, then one of those groups must be wrong about something. Jesus can’t be both places, can he? Now, I feel fairly sure that the words liberal
and conservative
did not mean the same thing when Jesus was carrying out his earthly ministry as it does today. In fact, today both terms are basically pejorative. I mean, you say somebody’s a liberal
, you’re insulting them. If you say he’s a conservative
, well that’s putting him down. Well, what do they mean, even today in the political climate? If you go to the dictionary and look them up, you get one definition. If you listen in on the talk shows and pundits, you might get something else.
A conservative
defined is supposed to be someone who is disposed to preserve existing conditions and institutions, or to restore traditional ones, or to limit change. Now, when you look at the political landscape, I’m surprised anyone wants to accept the label of conservative
—especially Christians. Oh sure, we want to preserve or restore traditional values and institutions. We think traditional morality is a good thing. We think the family is a wonderful thing and we want to preserve and restore those things. But surely we don’t want to preserve the status quo. Nor do we wish to limit change. Surely, not Christians. Conservative
is a useless label, frankly, unless we understand what it is we are trying to conserve. You don’t understand what I’m saying? Well, how long has abortion been the law of the land? It’s been that way for a long time now. Now, since that is the status quo, aren’t the people that are fighting to preserve abortion conservative? They are trying to conserve what is, they are trying to conserve this institution of abortion which is now the status quo, the law of the land, what’s expected.
You know, there are a lot of good people in this country that are Democrats and a lot who are Republicans, and Christians, in my opinion, are making a big mistake by sticking out a Christian political position—a position on the political right or the political left. Dedicated Christians are—by nature or in the nature of things—ideologues and, consequently, we just don’t have the pragmatism to work effectively in the political arena. There’s a lot of lying that goes on in there. The people who go in to the political arena and try to tell the truth are very likely to turn themselves into victims. Christians can turn up at the meetings of both political parties. And if they did turn up in both places they might be able to heal some of the terrible political divisions in the country. But the problem is: if you take a look at us Christians in the world, we have to be about the worst peacemakers around. We can’t make peace among one another, why in the world should anyone think that we could ever make peace among political parties? But nevertheless, Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And if you’re really serious about abortion, the place to deal with it is at the intellectual level in both parties. You will never get anything done about abortion one way or another by making it a party issue. I would think that would be clear by now, but I don’t see any signs of it starting to dawn on anyone.
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I am independent politically, as a disciple of Jesus—an evangelist, as it were—as a preacher of Christian values. I don’t feel it’s my job to be in one political party or the other. Now, liberals and conservatives in this world are defined by political values. If you are Republican you are conservative and if you’re a Democrat you’re a liberal, supposedly. But that brings me back to my original question. And this is why I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. What about Jesus? Was Jesus a liberal or a conservative? In the Sermon on the Mount, which has to be the most fundamental of Jesus’ teachings, He had this to say…
What in the world is God doing? I suspect there are those who would say, Not very much. The world looks like God wound it up, started it spinning, and then walked away from it.
And if you should ask, How is the Gospel doing in the world
, someone might reply, Not very well.
After all, most of the world is not Christian, and never has been. All those dead people who never heard of Jesus in their lifetime—where are they?
Now I realize I am making some people uncomfortable with these questions, but they are honest questions that deserve an honest answer. Paul gives us some insight with his words to Timothy.
I had a friend once who allowed that human beings were, to God, like fish eggs. We were sitting in the sun on a bass boat trying unsuccessfully to catch something and he was trying to make sense of the world. A fishing boat is a great place for philosophizing. I know
, he said, that there is only one way of salvation, and that is by the name of Jesus Christ. But I also know that the vast majority of the people who have ever lived have never heard that name.
My friend speculated that God, in order to bring a few sons to his kingdom, had to put billions of us here on the earth to allow for wastage. I had to admit that the idea had a perverse logic to it. But what did it say about the kind of being who would create a system like that for man? For we are not fish, we are human. We suffer. We hope, we love, we create.
Is the God we read about in the Bible the sort of person who would waste people in their billions to achieve his objectives? It is one thing for God to give man the freedom to accept or reject life with God, but another thing altogether to subject man to the kind of suffering we see in this world without giving the man hope of something better.
The apostle Paul was concerned about the wastage of people. It was unlike God, he thought, to just throw people away, to cast them to the wolves. There is a long passage in Romans where Paul agonizes over the question of the Jews. We would like to think that men like Paul had all the answers, but it is apparent that is not the case. Paul struggled with this, thinking out loud in his letter to the Christians in Rome. He tried to take what he knew about God and his plan, to create an explanation for his lack of success in taking the Gospel to the Jews. In city after city where Paul went, the Jews rejected the Gospel while Gentiles flocked to it. It didn't make sense to Paul. You can read the entire section beginning with Romans 9. For now, I want to focus on Romans 11.
