The Seven Churches Of Revelation

By

Vance Havner

The Seven Churches Of RevelationA Series By Vance Havner

Table Of Contents

1. Repent Or Else, An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Ephesus: The Church Of Lovelessness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3. Smyrna: The Persecuted Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

4. Pergamos: The Church Of Laxity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

5. Thyatira: The Church Of Liberty And Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

6. Sardis: The Dead And Lifeless Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

7. Philadelphia: The loyal Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

8. Laodicea: The Lukewarm Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

Related Articles included in “The Seven Churches Of Revelation”:

9. Unto The Angel Of The Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

10. If Any Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39

11. What Is A Great Church?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

12. Jesus Is Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

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1. Repent or Else!An Introduction

(Revelation 2:5,16)

THE LAST word of our Lord to the church is not the Great Commission. The Great Commissionis indeed our program to the end of the age but our Lord's last word to the church is "Repent." Thatwas.. His command to five out of seven of the churches in Asia and that proportion still holds fiveout of seven Christians and churches today need first of all to repent.

The present religious world is marked by three movements. There is a wave of religious interest, awave of mass evangelism and a wave of church activity. But none of these, nor all of them puttogether, add up to revival within the church.

There is a wave of religious interest. National organizations sponsor "Back-to-Religion" campaigns.Civic groups put on "Go-to-Church" drives. I visited a church that was observing "Go-to-ChurchSunday." (I had always thought any Sunday was "Go-to-Church Sunday.") Books are being writtenby the dozen based on the Gospels, the early church, the Roman persecutions. Certain Biblecharacters have "made Hollywood." I notice that when I mention such characters nowadays a lot ofpeople look intelligent who hadn't done so before-and they haven't been reading the Bible, I fear.Editorials on Christianity appear along with liquor ads in the same periodicals. Auditoriums arecrowded to hear religious ragtime and gospel boogie. Politicians take time out to say a good wordfor God.

People are talking religion but many of them are not willing to face the cross of Christ and all thatit means for the saint as well as the sinner. Like those who stood at the cross long ago, they say, "LetHim now come down from the cross and we will believe Him." They are willing to accept the joyand peace that salvation brings but they are not willing to admit that they are sinners and build theirhopes on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Sometimes it is a fad, like reducing orantiques. We should buy up whatever opportunities it affords but of itself it does not mean revival.

There is a wave of mass evangelism. We thank God for it. It sends a backwash of blessing into thechurches, for church members are converted and sinners are saved. It is part of God's program, anda great part; but the extensive movement needs to be joined with a corresponding intensivemovement in the local churches. Both are set forth in the Scriptures. Our Lord preached to themultitudes and He made disciples out of a handful. There must be the double movement, for eitherwithout the other is incomplete.

Let me illustrate. In a city-wide campaign some members of a certain church are stirred andawakened; some are saved and others brought to a new experience, of dedication. They return totheir church where most of the members, the officers and workers, have not been moved at all. Theseawakened members are like hot coals in cracked ice – the church has had no revival and is in nocondition to receive them. It is like putting a new baby in a refrigerator or, as another has put it,turning a newborn child over to someone who, however well-intentioned, lacks the love of themother who gave the child birth. Moody was asked, "Would you put live chicks under a dead hen?"

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True church revival is where the church hatches aid – mothers her own chicks. It has been said thatit is hard to win to the church those not won through the church.

The proper combination is a local church aflame with revival sharing in mass evangelism. When Mr.Moody held his great campaign in Boston, Dr. A. J. Gordon was being used of God to reviveClarendon Street Baptist Church. Moody's evangelism poured new members into Gordon's churchand gave it a "blood transfusion" but at the same time, under Gordon's leadership, the church wasbeing readied to nurture the converts.

The ideal is to have the local church be the center of evangelism. The Welsh Revival was anawakening within the churches that spread from church to church. Today we are seeing God workin great meetings. It has been pointed out that the movement is from evangelism to revival, that itis aimed at the outsider and does not dwell on the need of Christians, for that is not its mission.Along with mass evangelism we still need to see a movement from within the churches. Evangelismis not revival. There are local and occasional revivals, of course, but no general and genuinerepentance leading to a clean break with the world, the flesh and the devil.

There is a wave of church activity today but that is not revival. Church membership, church building,church attendance and church work are at an all-time high but the morals of the country are at an all-time low. That does not make sense. Churches are busy but so were the churches in Asia, yet fiveof the seven needed a revival. When church membership grows statistically but the church membersdo not grow spiritually in proportion, that is not revival. The greatest need of the church today is notmore members, more buildings, more money. The supreme issue is not even missions or evangelism.It is repentance and revival.

It is regrettable that the words "revival" and "evangelism" have become synonymous in our thinking.They do not mean the same thing at all. Evangelism is the proclamation of the gospel in order to winthe lost. Revival is a work of the Spirit among God's own people whereby they get right with Godand with each other. It is sometimes said that there is not much in the New Testament about revival.One would not expect to find much in Acts. They did not need a revival – they had a "revival!" Thenormal New Testament Spirit-filled church is in the Acts. But in the first three chapters of Revelationwe have the church in need of revival. Strictly speaking, revival is an Old Testament term: "Wiltthou not revive us again," "Revive thy work, O Lord." The New Testament word is "Repent."

Revivals should not be necessary. God intended that His people should grow in grace withoutperiodic spells of backsliding and repenting. But so long as we have such a malarial brand ofChristianity, a fever and a chill, a fever and a chill, we shall need revivals. Nor is a revival a mereemotional upheaval. The way out of a stupor is not by getting into a stew. God does not intend thatwe live in a fever of excitement all the time. The farmer must break up his fallow ground, but if hedid only that he would never plant or cultivate or reap. Surgery may be necessary at times but it isnot normal to live in a hospital. What we call revival is simply a return to normal New TestamentChristianity. Most of us are so subnormal that if we ever became normal we would be consideredabnormal!

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Revival means self-examination on the part of Christians – repentance, confession of sin,renunciation of sin, restitution, submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, separation from theworld, and being filled with the Spirit. Finney says, "Revival is the renewal of the first love ofChristians, resulting in the conversion of sinners to God. It presupposes that the church is back-slidden and revival means conviction of sin and searching of hearts among God's people. Revivalis nothing less than a new beginning of obedience to God, a breaking of heart and getting down inthe dust before Him with deep humility and forsaking of sin. A revival breaks the power of the worldand of sin over Christians. The charm of the world is broken and the power of sin is overcome.Truths to which our hearts are unresponsive suddenly become living. Whereas mind and consciencemay assent to truth, when revival comes, obedience to the truth is the one thing that matters."

Too many "revivals" begin with the assumption that the present church membership is in good shape.That is usually wide of the mark. Some hold that the regular activities of the church will take careof the spiritual needs of the members. They should but one needs only to take a good look at theaverage membership to be cured of that illusion. Others fear that setting a high standard for churchmembers will frighten away some prospects. It might. After the death of Ananias and Sapphira, thesuperficial dared not join the church; multitudes believed and were added to the Lord.

The church needs time out to tune up. We are so busy building a bigger orchestra that we cannot stopto tune our instruments. What good is a big orchestra if two-thirds of the members never show upfor practice or else are off key when they perform? We are too busy chopping wood to sharpen theaxe. Just as we are often too busy to have a physical check-up, so the church is often too occupiedto submit to spiritual examination. Yet we never needed one more. We never need to go to themourner's bench more than when we feel least like it. We are lengthening our cords withoutstrengthening our stakes. Our intensive program must match the extensive. We must improve the sortwhile we increase the size.

We need to face the Christ of the Candlesticks, the Lord of the Lampstands, calling the church torepentance. Too many Christians have an incomplete and inadequate vision of dur Lord. You willremember that Rip Van Winkle awoke from his long sleep to find that times had changed. When hewent to sleep, King George III was the ruler of the American colonies. When he woke up, GeorgeWashington was President of the United States. Unaware of all that, Rip began to whoop it up forthe King and got himself into trouble. He was yelling for the wrong George!

Some today are trying to follow a Galilean Teacher but a lot has happened since Jesus walked onearth in the days of His flesh. Calvary has taken place and the resurrection and Pentecost. We are notdealing now with only a meek and lowly Jesus going about doing good, with nowhere to lay Hishead, and upon whose breast John laid his head. That chapter is past. We are dealing now with acrucified, risen, ascended, glorified and comin Lord with His countenance as the sun, His eyes likefire and His voice like the sound of many waters, and before whom John fell as dead.

In the Gospels we have Christ, the Example (and that is important for if we are to walk as Hewalked, we must know how He walked). In the Acts we have the Christ of Evangelism, the completegospel message. In the Epistles, we have the Christ of Christian and church experience. But in theRevelation we have the Christ of Revival and the Coming King who will return to destroy the

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powers of evil, put the devil out of business and reign forever. And while He still says, "Come untome and I will give you rest," and while He still says, "Go ye into all the world," His last word to usis a call to repentance.

A lot of Sunday-morning Christians, who want to sit with folded hands and listen to a mild discourseon the Teacher of Galilee, need to be aroused from their stupor by a vision of the flaming Christ ofthe Candlesticks. Eight times in these messages to the churches He says, "He that hath an ear, let himhear." Eight times in the Gospels He says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.'" Some of us haveears... period. "Hearing we hear not." We sit at church looking but not listening. God grant us earsto hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches! And eyes to behold the Lord of the Lampstandsbidding us "Repent ... or else!"

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2. Ephesus: The Church Of Lovelessness

"... thou hast left thy first love." (Revelation 2:4)

EPHESUS IS THE only one of the seven churches of Revelation concerning which we have muchscriptural information and that is recorded largely in Acts, chapters eighteen through twenty. Paulvisited the city first with Priscilla and Aquila and left them there. Later the eloquent Apollos cameto Ephesus preaching the baptism of John. Aquila and Priscilla heard him and of course theydiscovered that he had an incomplete and inadequate message. However, they did not stamp out ofchurch in a huff and label him a modernist. They probably invited him to go home with them to achicken dinner. (You can do a lot with a preacher after a chicken dinnerl) Anyway, they straightenedhim out so that he began to preach the gospel.

Later Paul returned to Ephesus and preached in the synagogue for three months. But soon oppositionbegan. Paul wrote concerning Ephesus: "For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and thereare many adversaries" (I Corinthians 16:9). Opportunity brings opposition and it took three formsin Ephesus. First, there was a hardening of heart among the listeners. The same sun that melts icealso hardens clay and the gospel either humbles or hardens the human heart, so a preacher shouldbe prepared to expect both. Paul moved over to the school of Tyrannus where he taught for twoyears. He carried on a threefold work. For a living he made tents. He "reasoned," that is, he was anapologist as well as an apostle; his message was ". . . repentance toward God, and faith toward ourLord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21). And he taught from house to house, warning everyone night andday with tears, so he was a pastor.

Soon the opposition took a new form. This time it was an old trick of the devil, imitation -- "If youcan't beat them, join them." Some Jews tried to cast out demons in the name of Jesus. But the demonsaid, "Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are ye?" The devil is probably saying that to a lot ofmodern exorcists who are trying to produce gospel results without gospel power. These imitators atEphesus took a beating at the hands of the evil spirit instead of defeating himand any man whotackles the Adversary without the power of God will fare no better.

Out of all this there came a revival. All the elements of a true awakening are here (Acts 19:17-20).Fear fell on them all. The name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Many professed believers, who hadbeen mixed up with these black arts, confessed and made a clean sweep of everything. Judgmentbegan at the house of God. It would be about the same thing if some modern church members wouldown up to dabbling in seances and dark magic. Many of the spiritualists also came clean and aboutten thousand dollars' worth of bad books were burned in public. A revival always produces a bonfireand if we really had such a revival in our churches it would take a forty-acre field to accommodatethe tons of books, magazines and all other paraphernalia of the devil that would go up in smoke. Nowonder we read next, "So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." God's word alwaysprospers when an awakening like that hits town. Indeed, during this two-year ministry of Paul, allProconsular Asia was evangelized. That included all the territory of the other six churches inRevelation, so everything began with this mighty work in Ephesus.

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The opposition took a third form. Ephesus was devoted to the worship of Diana and there was a bigbusiness of making silver shrines for this goddess. Paul preached the gospel and when the Ephesiansbecame Christians, they had no further use for silver shrines for Diana. That stirred up Demetrius,the silversmith, who called all his fellow craftsmen together and threw the whole city into an uproar.We read that "there arose no small stir about that way." Here was a spiritual awakening that stirredup the devil because it hurt the devil's business. I am afraid of any religious movement that does notarouse the bitter opposition of entrenched evil. You will remember that our Lord once cast thedemons out of a man and the demons entered the hogs. The hogs committed suicide and the hog-owners asked Jesus to leave the country. When the power of God casts out the devil, all hog-ownerswhose business is affected will raise a protest. A real revival today would cause a commotion in thetraffic of evil. The liquor business, for instance, would suffer. Of course the liquor business is notexactly hog business but it is swill business.

I would remind you, however, that Paul did not shake Ephesus by lecturing about Diana. Hepreached Jesus Christ the Lord and when people came to know the Lord they had no further use forDiana. That principle still holds, although manychurch members don”t illustrate it well these days.

When Paul left Ephesus there was a growing missionary church there. Thirty-odd years later ourLord calls it to repentance. It was still a remarkable church but it needed a revival. Someone has saidthat the church today does not need efficiency so much as "Ephesiansy," meaning the truth containedin Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. But there is a Second Epistle to the Ephesians here in Revelation.By now Ephesus needs a revival and our Lord tells them three things. He tells them what is right inthe church, what is wrong in the church, and what to do about it.

He begins with commendation because He always commends where and when He can. He says, "Iknow thy works ...": Ephesus was a working church. "I know ... thy labor ...": it was toilsome work."... and thy patience...": they did not go by fits and starts, but were persistent. ". . . and how thoucanst not bear them which are evil ...": the church used discipline. Ephesus was a wicked city andthey did not let bad men corrupt the church from the outside or the inside. They knew that they wereas sheep among wolves (Matthew 10:16) but they were also on guard against wolves among thesheep (Matthew 7:15). Paul had warned the elders of Ephesus: "Take heed therefore unto yourselves,and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church ofGod, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shallgrievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise,speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:28-30). He anticipated troublefrom without and within so the church was forewarned and forearmed.

"...and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars." Thechurch had dealt with evil doctrine and had refused to let false teachers poison the membership. Thechurch has a right to screen out the bugs while it lets in the light. We do that in our houses and weshould do it in the house of God.

Again our Lord said, "And [thou] hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast labored,

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and hast not fainted." They had been faithful to the Lord in a hard situation and had not grown wearyin well-doing. A lady complained to her maid, "You are so slow. Don't you ever do anything fast?""Yes'm," she replied, "I gits tired fast." We faint easily in the Lord's work and say, "Behold, what aweariness is it!"

What a church was Ephesus with all this to its creditl Could anything possibly be wrong? Yes, andafter telling them what is right with them, our Lord tells them what is wrong: ". . . thou has left thyfirst love." He had told His disciples, concerning the last days before He returns, "And becauseiniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matthew 24:12). Abounding lawlessnessand abating love! What could describe better this present age! Lawlessness does not merely exist,it abounds. It is more extensive and more excessive. This generation loves everything butrighteousness and fears everything but God. Juvenile delinquency, broken homes, crime waves,anarchy in art, music, literature, world-wide communism-if Paul could write long ago that "themystery of lawlessness doth already work," what would he say today! Only the restraining power ofthe Holy Spirit in God's people keeps lawlessness from totally engulfing the world and, once thechurch is removed, you might as well try to dam up Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to hold backthe floods of iniquity from completely submerging mankind.

In the midst of abounding lawlessness, love abates. In fact He really says, "The love of most, of themajority, will grow cold." And Ephesus, for all her works and toil and orthodoxy and discipline andperseverance, leaves her first love. He did not say, "Zeal shall wax cold." Ephesus had plenty of zeal.A man may give his goods to feed the poor and his body to be burned and have no love. Our Lorddid not say, "Doctrine shall grow unorthodox." It has, but that was not the trouble at Ephesus. Onemay be as straight as a gun barrel theologically and as empty as a gun barrel spiritually. In fact, itmay be that in their very opposition to evil men and false teachers these Ephesian saints had left theirfirst love. Our Lord commended them for the stand they had taken against the deeds of theNicolaitanes which He said He also hated. But so often it turns out that fundamental and orthodoxChristians become so severe in condemning false doctrine, gnashing their teeth at every sniff ofheresy, that they end up without love. One may do a right thing in a wrong way. The same Paul whowrote, ". . . though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel . . . let him be accursed,"also wrote the love chapter to the Corinthians. Unless we can get that combination we shall betheological Hawk-shaws and doctrinal detectives, religious bloodhounds looking for heretics butwith hot heads and cold hearts.

Moreover, Ephesus proves that religious activity without love calls for repentance. I have wonderedwhat would be left nowadays if we eliminated from our church work all that is not the spontaneousexpression of our heart's love for Christ. Deacons and Sunday school teachers and choir singersshould ask themselves, "Why do I do what I do in church? Because I ought to do it, becausesomebody has to do it, because I was chosen to do it?" If the love of Christ is not our compellingmotive, God will not accept our service.

And we preachers had better ask, "For all my labor and perseverance and orthodoxy andcondemnation of evil, is it the love of Christ that constrains me?" If not, then all eloquence and

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prophecy and knowledge and faith and benevolence and even martyrdom are dust in a windy street.What is this first love? It is the Christian's early love for Christ. The believer is married to Christ(Romans 7:4). Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "... I have espoused you to one husband, that I maypresent you as a chaste virgin to Christ ..." -- that is Corinth or Ephesus or any other church at itsbeginning. Then he added: "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through hissubtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" -- there is Ephesusor any church without its first love. Nowadays the marriage relationship does not mean as much asit used to and neither does the Christian's relationship to his Lord, so the home and the church bothsuffer. There are Christians and churches that boast of being mature when really they are spirituallyfrostbitten. We have developed a prejudice against feeling and emotion until amens would be noscarcer if they cost a hundred dollars apiece -- and the real truth is, we have left our first love. Ourtheme-song ought to be:

Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord?This accounts for a lot of church troubles. When we love the Lord we love the brethren. When webreak up the fallow ground of our hearts we uncover roots of bitterness. Paul wrote, "Love thinkethno evil," that is, love does not keep account, does not keep books, of every little slight and hurt andcriticism. Some Christians grow ulcers and bring on nervous breakdowns and live at high tension,harboring resentments that fester and poison body, mind and spirit. They need to return to first loveand have a book-burning like the one they had at Ephesus in the early days.

But love for the brethren, love for the church, love for church work, all grow out of love for the Lord.We talk much about church loyalty while we beg and coax and almost bribe church members tocome to church. People go where they want to go. Where their hearts are their heels will follow.Deeper than church loyalty there must be Christ loyalty and that must grow out of love to Christ. TheLord of the Lampstands, the Christ of the Candlesticks is asking, "Lovest thou me?" We are notready to feed the sheep until we love Him. Hudson Taylor said the primary qualification for amissionary is not love for souls, as we so often hear, but love for Christ.

There is a reckless enthusiasm about first love. It is not cold and calculating. A young lover buys hissweetheart a gift he cannot afford. When you were a young Christian you could not do too much forthe Lord. Like the poor widow at the treasury, you wanted to put in everything. Mary of Bethany didnot count the cost of that high-priced perfume. Only Judas grumbled about it. He would, for therewas no love in his heart. There are church Scrooges who are always afraid they will overdo it, whonever give a dollar without wanting to sing, "When we asunder part it gives us inward pain." Theycomplain that they cannot figure out their tithe. If it was coming their way, they'd figure it out!

I am glad my mother didn't say, "I can't afford to sit up all night with this sick child. It mightendanger my health!" I am glad my Lord did not say, "I cannot afford to go to the cross." True loveand first love are not stingy and when your heart is filled with it, nobody will have to beg you toserve God.

So our Lord stands among the churches and what He wants most is our love. Without that, all our

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orthodoxy and church work can never satisfy Him. He stands now as He stood in that great churchat Ephesus and He tells us, as He told them, what to do. Remember, repent and repeat. Let usremember how we loved Christ as young Christians when we were the happiest people in the world,before we met too many Bible scholars and saw too many church members! Remember oursweetheart love for the Lord before it degenerated into cold orthodoxy and mechanical church work.Let us repent, turn, confess, go back and ask God to fill our hearts with the love of God shed abroadby the Holy Spirit. Let us repeat, do again the first works as we used to do when our orthodoxy wasthe hot faith of a loving heart and our church work was a labor of love and not just labor.

We preachers need to remember that all these messages of our Lord to the Asian churches weregiven first to the angel of the church, the messenger, the pastor. We need to recall our first love,when we were converted, called to preach, when we were in our first pastorate, before we had seenso much evil and had been disappointed in men we once respected and had the Spirit quenched inus until our consecration threatened to become cynicism. Many preachers do not need a new churchor a new degree-we have more degrees now than we have temperature -- so much as a refreshercourse in our Lord's three R's.

There is one more R: "Or else I will... remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."It is revival or removal. With every one of these five churches it is a matter of Repent or else -- andthe else is judgment. With Ephesus it meant removal and I have seen many a preacher, many aChristian, many a church disapproved, on the shelf, no longer usable.

God help us to remember, repent and repeat, that there may be revival and not removal!

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3. Smyrna: The Persecuted Church. . . but thou art rich. . . ." (Revelation 2:9)

THE MESSAGE TO Smyrna is the shortest of all the letters to the seven churches. Its four versesare all-comprehensive, however, for it begins, "These things saith the first and the last..." Our Lordis going to bid them, "Fear not," so He begins by saying in effect, "I was here before there wasanything to fear and I will be here after all the things you fear have passed away." He is Alpha andOmega -- and all the alphabet between!

He says further that He is the One "which was dead and is alive." He is not the One who was aliveand is dead! That is true of Mohammed and Buddha and every other religious teacher; but our Lordis not in that category for His tomb is empty.

To the saints at Smyrna the Christ of the Candlesticks says, "I know thy ... tribulation..." TheseChristians had a rough time of it. This "tribulation" does not mean the common trials to which allflesh is heir. Some dear souls think they are bearing their cross every time they have a headache. Thetribulation mentioned here is trouble they would not have had if they had not been Christians. It isthe consequence of their identification with Christ. What do we know about that today? Our word"tribulation" carries the idea of a beating. We use the term often nowadays: "He took a beating."Have you ever "taken a beating" because you are a Christian?

Then our Lord adds, "I know thy ... poverty..." The Smyrna Christians had been persecuted by theJews who had in turn incited the pagans against them. Their property had been confiscated. They had"suffered the loss of all things" and had taken cheerfully the spoiling of their goods. And they werereviled: "... I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are [of] thesynagogue of Satan." Our Lord said, "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you,and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake" (Matthew 5:11). You will noticethat there are two qualificaticas to this reviling: it must be false and for His sake. A lot of thingspeople say about us are true! And it must be because of our identification with our Lord.

Tribulation, poverty, reviling -- such was the lot of the saints in Smyrna. But there is a littleparenthesis that speaks volumes, "but thou art rich." Laodicea was a poor rich church. Smyrna wasa rich poor church. Better be a rich poor church than a poor rich church. They said that Laodicea wasrich when it was poor, that Sardis was alive when it was dead and that Smyrna was poor when it wasrich. There is a lot of difference between saying we are rich and being rich. The rich farmer was afool in the sight of God. No man is any richer than his soul. "As thy soul prospereth" is God'sstandard. "The soul of prosperity is the prosperity of the soul."

Our Lord's word for "rich" in this passage is the source of our word "plutocrat." These Smyrna saintswere the Lord's plutocrats. They were rich in the eyes of Him who, though He was rich, for our sakesbecame poor that we through His poverty might be rich. Smyrna had no money in the bank but plentyof treasure in heaven. Now of course a church is not rich spiritually because it is poor materially.

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Some churches have no treasure either on earth or in heaven! But we must be poor in spirit, asthough we had nothing, willing to lose it all for Christ's sake if need be. Not every Christian is calledupon to sell out and follow Jesus, as was the rich young ruler, but he should be willing to do it, toregard all that he is and has as the Lord's. He is not his own but is bought with a price and "to haveis to owe, not own."

It is not easy to preach on Smyrna nowadays. The average American congregation is in no mood toappreciate such a church. In a day of quick prosperity and give-away shows, it is not easy to interesta well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed Sunday morning crowd in the Smyrna brand of loyalty. Weare more like Laodicea, rich and increased with goods and needing nothing. It does not cost muchto be a Christian now. We sing about the reproach of the cross and hurry home to a big dinner andTV. What have we given up for Christ? Besides, everything is measured in terms of success andprosperity these days. We are not interested in what it costs to be a Christian but in what we get bybeing one. "What shall we have therefore?" is the big idea, not "Such as I have give I thee."

I am often amused and amazed at the way we equate Christianity with success, popularity andprosperity. We may not admit it but we use the same old gauge the world uses, except that weemploy religious language. It would appear that "gain is godliness" with us in spite of Paul's formulathat godliness plus contentment equals prosperity. In spite of everything, a Christian in a Cadillacis regarded as more favored of God than a saint in a jeep. We could read again to great profit James'exhortation about the snooty usher who led the millionaire to the best seat in the house while thebrother from across the railroad tracks was relegated to Standing Room Only.

In this day of "Health, Wealth and Happiness in Ten Easy Lessons or Money Refunded," Christianityhas become to many simply a better way to get rich or have a big time. We would make a bellboyof the Lord and a Santa Claus of the Almighty. Such fads, we are told, do a lot of good but maybedon't go far enough. I don't want to start out with anybody who is not going all the way! We are nothere just to be happy or a success. We are here to glorify God -- and that may involve sickness aswith Lazarus or even death as with Peter.

The saints at Smyrna had not been given a pep-talk on "How to Win Friends and Influence People."They had no testimony on "How Faith Made Me Mayor of Smyrna." They were not promiseddeliverance from tribulation, poverty and reviling. In fact, the worst was yet to come. Death layahead, martyrdom, as with Polycarp, who died there sealing his testimony with his own life. OurLord's silence in this letter is eloquent. He does not explain why they must suffer so. His briefmessage leaves so much unanswered. God can trust some saints with silence. Like children we areso inclined to ask "Why?" But if in your case there are leaden skies, no explanation, no deliverance,remember Smyrna. You will not be loaded with more than you can bear. Adversity is not always amark of God's displeasure. No church suffered more than Smyrna, yet He said, ". .but thou art rich."

To these suffering saints the Lord of the Lampstands has two words of admonition: "Fear none ofthose things which thou shalt suffer. . . . Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown oflife." Not fearful but faithful! Faithful not merely until death but unto death, to the dying point. Here

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is a note that is lost today. We are so busy making the saints comfortable and happy that we forgethow little the New Testament says about all that. It is easier to lecture on "How I Affirmed FaithThree Times Before Breakfast and Became President of the Company Before Forty." It does notalways work out that way. More than one Christian has been passed up because of his convictionswhile some back-slapping worldling was promoted. More than one true preacher has been shuntedto a hard-scrabble circuit while politicians who couldn’t preach for sour apples has been elevated totop man in the synagogue. It pays to serve Jesus but not in the coin of this realm every time. It didnot pay John the Baptist, James, Stephen or Paul. It did not pay the heroes of the last verses of theeleventh chapter of Hebrews. It did not pay Smyrna at any cashier's window on earth. The Laodiceacrowd fared well but they nauseated the Lord while the poor saints of Smyrna were His plutocrats.

This does not mean that adversity is necessarily the hallmark of godliness. But loyalty to Christ atany cost is. In the case of Smyrna the cost was tribulation, poverty, reviling. They were precious inthe Lord's eyes, not merely because they were poor and persecuted but because they were faithful tothe point of poverty and persecution and even death itself.

All this sounds terribly out-of-date now. Christians are not supposed to run into trouble today. Weare diplomats, not soldiers, and we specialize in liaison, not loyalty. Nowadays we are expected toget along with everything and everybody, including the devil himself. It is the era of the oblique, theage of indirection, and we cultivate the "Art of Almost Saying Something." Head-on collisions areto be averted at all costs. The saints in Smyrna were old-fashioned. They should have had a summitconference with the Jews and a Panmunjom with the pagans. Better make a few concessions, appeasea little, and save one's hide! We are doing that today with communism at the cost of our moralintegrity. And we are doing it with the world, the flesh and the devil at the cost of our spiritualintegrity. But, "...whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it" and we may not save our hides.

The Smyrna Christians did not escape the first death but they were promised deliverance from thesecond death, the lake of fire. We are terribly afraid of the first death these days but if we feared thesecond death as we fear the first we might have a revival. We fear those who can kill the body butnot Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Our greatest problem is not atomic butAdamic and our greatest danger is not the first death but the second. The Smyrna believers couldhave compromised with Jews and pagans and saved their property and lives but some things aremore precious than life itself. Such Christians need no revival. They have the very essence of revival,loyalty to Christ at any cost.

The scarcest article today is plain faithfulness. "Good and faithful servants" are at a premium.Multitudes receive the Word with joy but when persecution arises because of the Word they areoffended because they have no root in themselves. One little taste of what was regular fare at Smyrnaand they show up in their true colors. There is nothing Hollywood about old-fashioned, in-season-and-out, feel-like-it-or-not dependability, but God has a lot to say about it. A Smyrna Christian, trueto Christ whatever happens, is a plutocrat in the eyes of the Lord.

We may not be called upon to die for Christ. There would be quite a thinning out of church members

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if we were. It is not the same thing as singing:

Faith of our fathers, holy faith, We will be true to thee till death.

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. Thatis the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to a new life. But do we consent to that?Are we willing to be God's corn of wheat to be planted where He wills? Can we honestly say,"Whatever the cost, by the grace of God, I will not fear but will be faithful to Christ, come whatmay"?

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4. Pergamos: The Lazy Church

"...thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam..."(Revelation 2:14)

PERGAMOS WAS a wealthy, fashionable city of temples, a medical center dedicated toAesculapius, the god of healing. It boasted a great library, second only to Alexandria. It was devotedto emperor worship and Caesar was its god. But there were some faithful Christians there and oneof them called Antipas had suffered martyrdom for his faith.

Pergamos was such a wicked city that our Lord called it the place "where Satan's seat is" and "whereSatan dwelleth." But that is a good place for a church. The gospel light needs to shine in a dark place."... They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick" (Matthew 9:12). So we read thatPergamos was not only the place where Satan dwelt but our Lord said to the church there, "I knowwhere thou dwellest." The devil was in Pergamos but God had His pinch of salt in all that corruption.

He knows where we dwell. That has its sobering and searching side, for if we are living where weought not He knows about it and we had better get up and get out. On the other hand, God knowsour circumstances. There are many saints living in homes – where it is not easy to be a Christian.There are faithful believers who must work where they hear men and women blaspheme God all daylong. Some are invalids, often tempted to give up the good fight. You are saying, "Preacher, it is easyfor you to tell us all that but you do not understand how it is with me." But there is One who doesunderstand and He says, "I know where thou dwellest."

But this was spoken to a church and our Lord begins His message with a threefold commendation:"I know thy works ... thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith. ..." Would that Hecould say that of every church! "You are a working church; you are true to the name of Christ; youare loyal to the faith." That is a lot to say but a church can have all that and still need a revival. I'veheard it more than once: "This church is all right; it is sound in the faith and hard at work." So wasPergamos and yet our Lord said, "Repent ... or else."

What was wrong? "... thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam." There were Balaamitesamong them and while the church as a whole did not believe nor practice the doctrine of Balaam,she allowed in her fellowship those who did. Our Lord distinguishes between the church and theseBalaamites: "Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with thesword of my mouth." But it is the church that He commands to repent. The trouble at Ephesus waslovelessness; at Pergamos it was laxity. They were trying to be broad-minded and tolerant towardthe Balaamites when they needed to use discipline.

What is Balaamism? We go back to the Book of Numbers to read the story of Balaam (chapters 22-24). Balaam is one of the strangest of Bible characters. Speaking of him, Spurgeon quotes

To good and evil equal bent, And both a devil and a saint.

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Joseph Parker called him "the Simon Magus of his day." MacLaren wrote: "Balaam tried to makethe best of both worlds, so he ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds." We never get awayfrom Balaam in the Bible for at the very end of the New Testament we are still reading about the wayof Balaam, the error of Balaam and the doctrine of Balaam. He had unusual gifts and uttered someof the most eloquent things in Scripture. But he wanted to be true to God and at the same time rakeoff some dividends on the side. He had his price. Balak, King of Moab, hired Balaam to curse Israel.Balaam tried three times but wound up blessing Israel instead. Then he decided that if he could notcurse them he could corrupt them. So he advised Balak to set a trap by inviting the men of Israel tothe sensual feasts of Baal-Peor where they fell into sin with the daughters of Moab (Numbers 25:1-3;81:16). As a result God slew twenty-four thousand Israelites and Balaam was slain (Numbers31:8). He had said on Pisgah as he surveyed the tents of Israel, "Let me die the death of the righteous,and let my last end be like his"; but God did not grant that request. Balaam was willing to die thedeath of the righteous but not willing to live the life of the righteous.

Balaam probably encouraged the idea that since Israel was God's covenant people, they could do asthey pleased and nothing could harm them. In the church at Pergamos there were some who held thatone could be a Christian and live like the world. That was dangerous doctrine in a wicked city whereSatan dwelt and it led to fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols. The church at Jerusalemhad taken a stand on that long before and Paul had dealt with it at length in his letter to theCorinthians. He took up these same twin evils and ended by saying, "... if meat make my brother tooffend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend" (I Corinthians8:13). There were Balaamites in the church at Pergamos who saw no harm in mixing with the sinnersand sharing their heathen practices. "When in Rome do as Rome does. After all, we are under theblood and we will die the death of the righteous whether we live the life of the righteous or not." Itis what we now call Antinomianism, turning liberty into license.

We never had more Balaamites in our churches than now. We call them "worldly Christians." BillySunday used to say, "You might as well talk about a heavenly devil." They argue from half a verseof Scripture, "All things are lawful for me ..." and never add the rest of that statement. "All thingsare lawful unto me but all things are not expedient ..."; they do not help me on my way. "... all thingsare lawful for me, but 1 will not be brought under the power of any"; some things will enslave mefor even a hobby can hobble me if uncontrolled. "All things are lawful for me but all things edifynot," they do not build me up. These Balaamites never subject their habits to this threefold test ofexpediency, enslavement and edification. They will agree that "The Lord knoweth them that are his"but they do not like what follows, "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart frominiquity" (II Timothy 2:19). Christian people do not live any old way. The Lord's sheep hear Hisvoice and follow Him. The man who makes sinning his business has neither seen nor known God(I John 3:6). The Balaamites who ask "What's wrong with cards?" for instance, might as well ask,"What's wrong with meat offered to idols?" If they would take the time to read the eighth chapter ofFirst Corinthians and substitute "cards" for "meat," they might get their eyes opened for the principleis the same not only concerning cards but any other practice of the world.

The other evil mentioned here is fornication and it too has not disappeared from the church. Too

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many church members are living in rioting, drunkenness, chambering and wantonness for us to passover all this in our preaching as though it did not exist. There are sensitive parishioners who resentit when the preacher calls on Pergamos to expel the Balaamites but who can at filth and obscenity.God help them to see the Lord of the Lampstands with His sharp, two-edged sword saying, "... I ...will fight against them with the sword of my mouth."

Here is where the church comes in. You will notice that our Lord said, in effect, to the church atPergamos, "If you do not deal with these Balaamites, I will." Nothing so besets us today as falsetolerance. We have gotten the notion that it is noble and Christian to put up with Balaamism andpoison the life of the church. It is the sin of laxity, allowing a condition to exist that should becorrected. We sin when we tolerate what God condemns and look some other way instead of dealingwith it. "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil..." -- not tolerate it. We are to abhor that which is evil,not put up with it. We are to abstain from every appearance of evil, not give it a chance to grow. Weare infested with worldliness and we should guard the church against whatever may infect it. "... alittle leaven leaveneth the whole lump." We must regard the rights of the church as well as those ofthe individual. Sometimes we become sentimental about offending one person and so sorry for himthat we risk the health of a whole church. It is possible physically to lose one's life by refusing tohave one diseased part of the body removed. Something similar is possible in a church. And don'tforget that "one bad apple can spoil a barrel of good apples."

It is not good for the offending individual to harbor him in his sin. Paul sentenced the immoral manin the Corinthian church to Satan for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit might be saved in theday of the Lord Jesus. Paul's main objective was not to punish the man but to save him. He was notout to get rid of him but to reclaim him -- and he did. Churches used to discipline their members bothfor the welfare of the delinquent and the church. We endanger both now by doing nothing about it.I was pastor for five years of the oldest Baptist church in the South, organized in 1683. I used to lookover old church records of a hundred years ago. They excluded members in those days but usuallythe next few pages of the record would reveal that the erring member repented and was reinstated.We do the Balaamites harm, as well as ourselves, by a false tolerance. They imagine that they aresafe when they really await the judgment of our Lord with His two-edged sword. If we dealt withthem they might judge themselves so that they would not be judged. We boast of accepting the NewTestament as our rule of faith and practice. Nothing is plainer in the New Testament than what todo about worldliness -- but we do nothing about it.

The spirit of Balaam gets into many a church and religious body in many ways. Balaam tried to standin with God and at the same time collect a reward from the ungodly. Many a church, like Balaam,offers fine prayers on Pisgah on Sunday morning but is not above striking a deal with Balak onMonday. No wonder somebody wrote:

They're praising God on Sunday; They'll be all right on Monday, It's just a little habit they've acquired.

Abram would not let the King of Sodom reward him lest he say, "I have made Abram rich." Today

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the church takes money from strange sources and lets the devil subsidize the work of God. Nor canall the eloquence of Balaam cover it up.

The essence of Balaamism is worldliness, Christians and churches mixing in unholy fellowship withthis age. It is a very popular doctrine nowadays that one can be faithful to the Master and also flirtwith Moab. But the Scriptures ask, "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" There can be nosymphony between Christ and Belial -- and none between Christ and Balaam! Any church of thePergamos sort needs revival but it will never have revival until it repents of false tolerance and doessomething -- about worldliness. That is just what most of them will not do for they wish to bepopular. When will we learn that a true Christian and church cannot be popular with this world?

You cannot be a Christian and a Balaamite. You cannot sing, "There is no other way but the way ofthe cross," if you are unwilling also to sing, "Then I bid farewell to the way of the world." Youcannot take your stand "beneath the cross of Jesus" if you are not "content to let the world go by."You cannot properly "survey the wondrous cross" and not sacrifice "the vain things that charm youmost" to His blood. You cannot sing, "My Jesus, I love Thee" and mean it until for Him all thefollies of sin you resign. You cannot sing from your heart "Whiter Than Snow" if you are unwillingfor the Lord to "break down every idol, cast out every foe."

The Lord of the Candlesticks stands among the churches now and whether we practice Balaamismor tolerate it, He commands us, "Repent ... or else." "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spiritsaith unto the churches ..." (Revelation 2:7).

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5. Thyatira: The Church Of Liberty

. . . thou sufferest that woman Jezebel . . . (Revelation 2:20)

THYATIRA WAS A center of trade, especially in royal purple. Lydia, who was converted underPaul's ministry in Philippi, was a woman of Thyatira and a seller of purple. Thyatira was noted forits trade guilds. The coppersmiths had a guild, the dyers had a guild, whatever trade one belongedto had a guild. These guilds were connected with the heathen religions and pagan feasts which wereso immoral that no Christian could afford to compromise his testimony by mixing with them.

Our Lord begins His message to the church in Thyatira with commendation as He did with Ephesus.And again we feel like saying, "What a church!" The Christ of the Candlesticks credits them withlove and ministry to others and faithfulness and patience. He adds something which He did not sayto Ephesus: "... and the last to be more than the first." They were making progress; it was a growingand going and glowing church. What more could He ask? Yet they needed to repent. If we hadvisited Thyatira, we would not have said they needed a revival. But our Lord knew what was wrong.

He always does. I preach in churches week after week. I do not know what is wrong with them. I donot need to know. I do not want anyone to tell me what is wrong. I’ve learned long since that if theWord of God is preached in the Spirit, God will so apply it that people will think somebody told thepreacher what was wrong! It’s the Word of God applied by the Spirit doing the work, not theopinions of the preacher. Every conceivable church trouble and the remedy is covered in these lettersof our Lord in Revelation.

What was wrong at Thyatira? Our Lord does not generalize, He particularizes: "... thou sufferest thatwoman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commitfornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols." Nathan said to David, "Thou art the man." Israelwas defeated at Ai because one man, Achan, had gone wrong, and there was no victory until he wasdealt with. Paul pointed out one offending brother in the church at Corinth. He could have said,"There are so many good people in Corinth, we will skip this case." But of course he knew nothingabout such optimistic positive thinking in those days. Would you return to a dentist who told you,"Yes, you do have one bad tooth but you have many good ones and I am going to pass up the ailingmolar and shine up the others"?

"That woman Jezebel" sounds frighteningly personal and specific nowadays. Who would dare to"name the trouble" in Thyatira in this era of sweet tolerance?

Who was this Jezebel? Our Lord used an Old Testament name to describe the troublemaker inThyatira. The Old Testament Jezebel was, of course, the notorious wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Shewas the daughter of the king of Tyre and Sidon, a Baal-worshiper. After she married Ahab she setup the worship of Baal in Israel and later her daughter, Athaliah, married King Jehoram andcorrupted Judah in the same way. Jezebel was one of the cleverest and most dangerous women inhistory. She persecuted the prophets of the Lord, and murdered one hundred of whom were hiddenin a cave by Obadiah. She threatened Elijah and scared him so badly that even that rugged championof righteousness fled for his life and under a juniper in the wilderness asked God that he might die.

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A good woman is the best thing on earth. Women were last at the cross and first at the open. tomb.The church owes a debt to her faithful women which she can never estimate, to say nothing of thedebt we owe in our homes to godly wives and mothers. But an evil woman is the most dangerousthing on earth. It is highly significant that so many false religions and modern delusions were begunby prophetesses. Not only do false teachers "lead captive silly women," but silly women prophetesseslead many astray.

Whoever this Jezebel of Thyatira was, our Lord says that she was a prophetess, she claimedinspiration and some new revelation; she "taught and seduced" Christians to commit fornication andeat things sacrified unto idols; and she dealt in "deep things of Satan," some highbrow philosophyfrom the world of darkness, some "ism" of the devil. In Pergamos the trouble was Balaamism. InThyatira it was Baalism. There was something mysterious and high-sounding about it and it appealedto some of the Thyatira Christians just as some present-day isms attract some church members. Wehave a lot of people who will not believe the plain Word of God but who will fall for any ism withdoublejointed words that nobody can pronounce, much less understand. There is some truth in suchheresy, of course; there has to be enough to hold the lies together. We used to have an old clock thatwouldn't run and it was right two times every day. The Word of God is right any time of the day!

Jezebelism is very popular these days. Jezebel is often very charming, for even Satan is disguisedas an angel of light. She may sound very intellectual and cultured and refined and it may seem mostunchristian to oppose her. Sometimes she teaches a Sunday school class or sings in the choir. Shetakes a very lofty view and ridicules what she calls literalism and legalism among old-fashionedChristians. She advocates instead a liberalism that leads to libertinism. She would mix the altar ofBaal with the worship of Jehovah, the mystery of iniquity with the mystery of godliness. She thinksa Christian can belong to all the clubs of this age and attend its pagan festivals. She believes, forinstance, that a "converted" night-club singer can keep on singing in night clubs if she will end eachprogram with "I'd Rather Have Jesus."

There is nothing new about Jezebelism. It has been with us from the beginning and is responsiblefor all the mixture of paganism and Christianity in Romanism as well as in our Christmas and Eastercelebrations. It has so permeated our religious life that a lot of dear people are horrified if it ispointed out, for it is often accepted as part of our religion. It hates prophets and when Elijah standson Carmel and calls for a showdown, Jezebel would like to murder him on the spot.

Any philosophy that makes it easier to sin is of the devil. Some church members boast that they havegrown out of their narrow views into a broader outlook. Some call it a "mellowness" of spirit. A lotof things, however, grow mellow just before they spoil. It is very significant that the situation inThyatira was the very opposite of that in Ephesus. In Ephesus they were very orthodox and on theirguard against false doctrine, but they had left their first love. In Thyatira they had love -- there wasplenty of Agape among them --but they were so sweet and pleasant that they tolerated everything,including Jezebel. It seems to work out that way to this day. Conservative, fundamental Ephesusbecomes belligerent instead of militant and loses her love contending for the faith. But Thyatira, forall her love, develops a pleasant amiability and wants to get along with everything and everybodyincluding the devil himself. In such a church Jezebel has no trouble setting up an altar to Baal.

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Jezebelism led to spiritual adultery and we need to beware today of any teaching that makes God'speople unfaithful to Him. He is a jealous God. Throughout the Bible He uses the marriagerelationship to set forth the union of Himself and His people Israel in the Old Testament and that ofChrist and the church in the New. In either case He calls unfaithfulness adultery. In Jeremiah Hesays, "Turn, O backsliding children, for I am married unto you..." The book of Hosea is built on thistheme. In the New Testament we read that the believer is married to Christ (Romans 7:4). Paul wroteto the Corinthians, "For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to onehusband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (II Corinthians 11:2). And James putsit bluntly: "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmitywith God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4:4).

When we marry, we take vows and assume responsibilities and make promises. When we confessChrist as Savior and Lord, we do the same thing. There are church members aplenty who would notthink of being untrue to their marriage vows but who have no conscience about their vows to Christand the church. They would have all the privileges of the gospel with none of the responsibilities.That is why they prefer preachers who offer much but demand little of prospective disciples.

We need to sing with fresh meaning "O Jesus, I Have Promised," and especially that verse:

O let me feel Thee near me, The world is ever near;

I see the sights that dazzle, The tempting sounds I hear: My foes are ever near me,

Around me and within;But, Jesus, draw Thou nearer, And shield my soul from sin.

The trouble with the Christians in both Pergamos and Thyatira was that they put up with Balaamismand tolerated Baalism instead of standing with the Lord in direct opposition. They probably thoughtthey were exercising charity and forbearance but they were terribly mistaken. Today we are livingin a tragic hour when getting along with everything and everybody is the accepted policy in both thenation and the church. Peaceful coexistence with communism, for instance, an impossible idea ofthe communists themselves – has drugged the free world. We have weakened our moral integrity bystooping to recognize godless anarchy. We have conferred dignity on criminals and given demoniacsthe status of honorable men as though there were any honor among thieves. We are under anhypnotic spell and morally paralyzed by the notion that compromise and appeasement can buy peaceand security. Our will to resist has been numbed. It is impossible to get along with evil or live atpeace with iniquity unless we pay their price. There can be no Panmunjom with demonism, noThirty-eighth Parallel with lawlessness.

In the religious world the same delusion prevails. Christians cannot peacefully coexist with theworld, the flesh and the devil, with Balaam and Jezebel, with worldliness and false doctrine. Wecannot tolerate what our Lord condemned. Somehow the idea has gotten around that it is unchristianto take a stand against heresy. Some of us need to read the New Testament again. Dr. J. B. Phillips

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says that the New Testament writers condemned false teachers and that it may strike us at first as oddand even unchristian. Paul wrote, ". . . If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye havereceived, let him be accursed"; and what he is really saying is, "Let him be damned." We are told toreject a heretic after the first and second admonition (Titus 3:10). Even the loving John forbadehospitality to false teachers lest we be partakers of their evil deeds (II John 10, 11).

One reason why Balaam and Jezebel are making such headway in churches today is that so manyhave the notion that it is noble and Christian for the church to take under her wing all shades ofdoctrine in an all-inclusive tolerance. It is not unchristian to oppose heresy. It is unchristian not tooppose it. Our Lord hated the doctrines and the deeds of the Nicolaitanes and if we harbor andprotect them, we stand with them and not with Him. We are not to leave our first love contendingfor sound doctrine as Ephesus did; but neither are we to leave sound doctrine under a mistakenconcept of love.

The early church knew nothing of modern "tolerance." They knew that Satan was often disguisedas an angel of light and they were not for playing ball with mock angels. According to the modernpolicy of sweetness and light, our Lord should never have denounced the Pharisees. Paul wouldnever have differed with Peter at Antioch. Page after page of the New Testament would never havebeen written, nor would Martin Luther have ever disturbed the status quo of Romanism.

The churches of Pergamos and Thyatira were Get-Alongers and they tried to adjust to the situationinstead of adjusting the situation. We follow in their train today. The voice of the prophet is silenced.Elijah no longer stands on Mt. Carmel saying, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" We haveavoided a showdown by working out a mixture of both opinions. We have become thermometersmerely registering the prevailing temperature of the times instead of thermostats in touch with agreater power by which we change the temperature of the times!

The Lord of the Lampstands threatened Jezebel and her crowd with severe judgment: "Behold, I willcast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repentof their deeds." If He takes that attitude toward such evils, how can we be tolerant of them?

To the true believers in Thyatira our Lord said, "But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, asmany as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I willput upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come." To allChristians today these are our orders. Do not be led astray by siren voices, new isms and"revelations." Beware of people who think they have seen visions when they have only hadnightmares. Do not be hoodwinked and taken for a ride and sold down the river by new "trends" and"approaches," popular de luxe brands of Christianity streamlined to suit a generation that cannotendure sound doctrine. We have but one responsibility: "none other burden" but to hold fast the oldfaith till Jesus comes.

This is Jezebel's day but our day is coming: "And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works untothe end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as thevessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will givehim the morning star." The Morning Star is the Lord Himself. He is not only our Rewarder, He is

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our Reward. Do not let any stars down here beguile you, movie stars or any other. Fix your eyes uponthe Morning Star and seek to turn many to Him that you may shine as the stars forever and ever. Itis a day of stars and we hitch our wagons to many unworthy satellites. Some are wandering stars towhom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. We have a Star, a finished work and a finishedrevelation. Let us hold them fast and hold them forth till Jesus comes!

Until He comes we are not left without chart or compass. We have a Book. Sometimes air pilotsmust fly by instruments when they cannot see. God's people go by faith and not by sight. Wheneverything else fails and we cannot see our way, we can still mount up with wings as eagles and flyby the instrument of the Word of God.

Many years ago, in an old-fashioned camp meeting, the minister closed the service late at night andstarted on foot to where he was staying quite a distance away. It was before the day of flashlights andhe did not have a lantern. An old farmer saw his predicament and gave him a flaming pine torch. "Itwill see you home," he assured the preacher. But the minister was dubious. "But what if it goes out?"

"It will see you home."

"But what if the wind blows it out?"

"It will see you home."

"But if the rain puts it out?"

The old farmer spoke with finality – he knew the enduring qualities of a pine torch.

"IT WILL SEE YOU HOME." And it did.

Long ago my Christian parents placed in my boyish hands the Word of God. They assured me thatit would be a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." There were later years when I almostdoubted it. I feared that the storms of life might extinguish it. I wondered whether it would hold out.I was tempted to try some of the fancier flashlights of modern make. But I have long since ceasedto fear.

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;

'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far. . . .

And grace – and the Book – will see me home.

And I am resolved to hold it fast till Jesus comes!

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6. Sardis: The Dead And Lifeless Church

". . . thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead." (Revelation 3:1)

OUR LORD has no commendation for Sardis as a church. He has praise for a faithful few but to thechurch He says, "... thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." We are not to get the impressionthat Sardis was a defunct affair with the building a wreck, the members scattered, the pastor readyto resign. It was a busy church with meetings every night, committees galore, wheels within wheels,promotion and publicity, something going on all the time. It had a reputation of being a live, wide-awake, going concern. That is, it had such a name in Sardis. It had such a name among the brethrenand in the neighboring churches and at headquarters. But it had no such name with the Lord. He said,"... thou ... art dead."

The organism had become a mere organization. Sardis was dead but never would have admitted it.After Samson lost his power we read that "he wist not that the Lord was departed from him." Hesaid, "I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself." How much of our religious activitytoday is Samson shaking himself, going through his calisthenics, and unaware that the Lord has lefthim!

One night at prayer meeting a discouraged church member stated his request in the presence of thevisiting minister: "Pray for us here. The blower is still blowing but the fire is out!" The blower wasblowing at Sardis but the fire was out. It was known as a live church but it needed a revival. A lotof "live churches" today, dead in the sight of God, need to repent.

The Christ of the Candlesticks states the trouble at Sardis thus: "I have not found thy works perfectbefore God." That is to say, they were doing plenty of things but nothing was fulfilled, carried outto its true meaning, nothing reached its real objective. They prayed but they did not get through toGod in their prayers. They worshiped but it rose no higher than the roof. They sang but it was justsinging, not the incense of heart – praise to God. They gave but it was "vain oblations."

Isaiah lamented in his day, "... there is none ... that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee [God]..."We are stirring up ourselves aplenty in church these days. We never had more "rousements." The bigchurches do it by stepping up their activities. The little churches across the railroad tracks go intosanctified epilepsy. But we are not stirring up ourselves to take hold of God. We are not gettingthrough to heaven with our works. Going to church is a good thing if we meet God there. Worshipis a good thing if it is in spirit and in truth. Tithing is a good thing but the Macedonians first gavethemselves to the Lord and it is possible to be Pharisees boasting, "I give tithes of all I possess,"giving God a dime of our dollar and an hour of our day on Sunday but never giving Him ourselves.Our Lord was not preaching on tithing when He said to the Pharisees, "... these ought ye to havedone, and not to leave the other undone." He was majoring on "the weightier matters of the law,judgment, mercy, and faith," and He made it clear that if we do not major on them, all our tithing isworthless. Prayer is a good thing, but if we regard iniquity in our hearts the Lord will not hear us.Faith is a good thing, but it has no virtue save as it connects us with God.

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Now Sardis engaged in all these things but fulfilled none of them. There was form but no force. Itwas "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." There was a form of godliness without thepower thereof. This does not necessarily mean formalism. A church may be very informal and yethave a form of godliness. It is a form of godliness when it is merely a front, a facade, with everythingin the show window but nothing in stock.

The Lord of the Lampstands does not tell Sardis to give up these things. He says, "Be watchful, andstrengthen the things which remain..." In other words, make them mean something. Put breath intothese dry bones, meat on the skeleton. All that you are doing is good if you complete it, put life intoit, carry it out to its full objective. Sometimes churches try to achieve this purpose by eliminating thechoir or dispensing with collections or disposing of the deacons. That is not the way to do it. Allthese things have their place but we must make them mean what God wants them to mean.

If we had visited Sardis they would have shown us how well fixed they were. They would haveboasted of their large membership, their finances in good shape, every organization functioning, amighty program of activity. But while the membership was growing the members were not growing.There was quantity without quality. The salt had lost its savor. They had a name to be alive but weredead.

Recently I visited a famous spring where thousands of gallons of purest water gushed from amountainside. Nearby there was a public fountain but when I tried to get a drink I found the fountainwas out of order. It looked like a fountain, it had the name of a fountain, but there was no water.With all that water around me I could not drink because the instrument provided to dispense it wasnot functioning. And many a church, for all the grace of God that is available, is a dry fountain. Ithas the name of a church, even the name of a live church, but it is dead.

The church at Sardis needed to repent, to confess its deadness, to put away sin, to be filled with theSpirit, to put life and meaning into all these things they were doing. All of their work was but thestriving of the flesh. They were not channels of the power of God.

Some of us remember the old mills operated by a water wheel. A creek emptied onto the wheel andthe wheel set the mill in motion. Suppose the miller should come down some morning and find onlya trickle of water because the stream was dogged. How foolish he would be to try to turn the wheelby his own strength! But he could use his energy to good advantage up the creek clearing out theobstructed channel. So often in the church we toil in our feverish strength to make the wheels goaround when we should instead spend that time moving the hindrances and keeping our lives opento the flow of God's Spirit.

Our Lord says further to the church at Sardis: "Remember therefore how thou hast received andheard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, andthou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. " Here again it is a matter of "Repent ... orelse" -- and the "else" is, "I will come as a thief." How different from other promises of His return!There is a note of warning because Sardis is not ready for His coming. Here is a good test for any

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church or Christian: How does the prospect of His coming make you feel? Do you dread it or do youwelcome it? Some say that all we can do is to be ready. But the early Christians were not only ready,they were expectant. I do not find much of that today. Do we "love His appearing"? We believe itdoctrinally but does it thrill us, motivate us, so that we purify ourselves because He is pure? WhenHe says, "Behold, I come quickly," do your hearts respond, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus"?

Then the Lord of the Lampstands has a good word for the faithful few: "Thou hast a few names evenin Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they areworthy." "A few even in Sardis!" Many churches are like an ailing lung with only a few cells doingall the breathing. The real life of the church is in a few faithful people who keep it from being ananimated corpse.

God is in the Remnant business today. He always has been. He is not converting the world, He istaking out a people for His name. And in almost every church there is a remnant, a Gideon's Band.You will remember that Gideon's army was reduced from thirty-two thousand to three hundred, whenthe careless and cowards had been eliminated. That sort of screening would leave about the samepercentage today! Malachi thundered against the evils of his day and most of his listeners answered,"Wherein have we done these things? You are scolding us; we haven't done anything wrong." Butthere was a remnant: "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another." Any Sundaymorning in church it is easy to distinguish the Whereinners from the Remnant.

God works through what one of our leaders used to call the Master's Minority. The hope of revivallies with that few. But even they need to beware of the peril of becoming Pharasaic, a "holier-than-thou," snooty, self-righteous clique, mistaking separation from sinners for separation from sin. Thebest people need to humble themselves and pray and seek God's face and turn from their wickedways. The revival under Hezekiah began with the leaders in the top brackets.

Our Lord works with a few. Where two or three gather in His name He is present. If two shall agreeon earth as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done for them of the Father in heaven. Oneshall chase a thousand and two shall put, not two thousand, but ten thousand, to flight. If anydedicated nucleus in any church started out each winning the one next to him and that new convertwinning another, by simple arithmetic we know that the church building would not hold the increasewithin a few weeks.

But this dedicated remnant in Sardis had a distinguishing characteristic: "Thou hast a few nameseven in Sardis which have not defiled their garments. .." They had kept themselves unspotted fromthe world. Having the promises they cleansed themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit,perfecting holiness in the fear of God. They named the name of Christ and they departed frominiquity. Our righteousness is Christ Himself but we have responsibility to keep our garments clean.Our own self-righteousness is as filthy rags, but while the believer is clothed in the righteousness ofChrist he is not to be so smug in his standing that he forgets to pay attention to his state.

In a hospital operating room everything is spotless. The surgeons, nurses, instruments must be clean

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because they deal with infection. We live in a world infected and infested by the microbes of sin, andwe who bear the vessels of the Lord must keep ourselves clean, and for the sake of others we mustsanctify ourselves. Suppose doctors and nurses said, "We are medical ministers by position; we donot need to bother about our condition"? Too often Christians, all of whom are God's ministers, takepride in their position but do little about their condition.

There are also some who, while they do not spot nor stain their garments in gross iniquity,nevertheless do not walk in white. They walk in gray. Somebody has said that morally and spirituallyblack and white have become a smudge of indefinite grey. Grey is the color of compromise - -it isneither black nor white. It is a very popular color nowadays in the realm of religion. Grey is alsosuitable for a funeral but it is poor garb for a Christian. Our garments should be neither spotted norgray. We should walk in white down here that we may walk with our Lord in white hereafter.

Some of us are trying to rally a Redeemer's Remnant, a Masters Minority, a Few in Sardis. It is notpopular these days. Strait is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life and few there be that findit. Will you be one of that faithful few?

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7. Philadelphia: The Loyal Church"... thou bast kept the word of my patience. . . : ' .(Revelation 3:10)

THE CHURCH AT Philadelphia, like the church at Smyrna, was not bidden to repent. They hadmuch in common.

The Lord of the Lampstands begins His message by announcing Himself as "... he that is holy, hethat is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, andno man openeth."

That takes us back to Isaiah 22 where God's prophet thundered against a certain official namedShebna. He was a politician and a crook, feathering his own nest, and God threw him out with avengeance and in his place installed Eliakim, of whom He said, "And the key of the house of Davidwill I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shallopen." Eliakim thus prefigured our Lord, who is the one and only rightful heir to the throne of David."... the government shall be upon his shoulder ... Of the increase of his government and peace thereshall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it withjudgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever ..." (Isaiah 9:6, 7). It was the message ofthe angel to Mary: "... the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shallreign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:32, 33).Over the dying Savior on the cross hung the inscription: "Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews."

Indeed He was and is the King of the Jews. The key to the house of David is His. By law, by lineageand by the eternal will of God, Jesus is the heir to the earthly, visible, actual throne of David. UntilHe reigns, God's chosen people can have no true head. Christ alone has the keys to David's houseand when He shuts it, no man can open.

He is the Keeper of the Keys. He has the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the keys to God's presence,the keys to eternal life, the keys to the storehouse of divine truth, the keys to heaven. He has the keysto all our circumstances. Paul called himself "a prisoner of Jesus Christ." He has the keys of hell anddeath, as He declared at the beginning of His messages to these churches (Revelation 1:18).

He has the keys to the doors of Christian service. He says to the saints in Philadelphia: "I know thyworks: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. ..." Paul spoke of opendoors in Ephesus and in Macedonia. Laodicea is the Church of the Closed Door but Philadelphia isthe Church of the Open Door. Between the resurrection and Pentecost we read that the disciples were"behind closed doors for fear of the Jews." Much of the church is behind closed doors for fear today-- and before closed doors too, in China and elsewhere. It is a day of closed doors but our Lord is theChrist of the Open Door. When the church repents and obeys Him she will be the Church of theOpen Door.

Every one of these letters in Revelation is addressed first to a minister, the "angel" of the church, and

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the message to Philadelphia particularly has a message of encouragement to preachers. We ministerssometimes forget that our Lord runs the preaching business. We are tempted to pull wires and do alittle "politicking" and we try to slap backs and "know the right people" and "make contacts" in orderto promote our ministry. If we spent less time recommending ourselves to the brethren and moretime showing ourselves approved unto God, the Lord would open doors no man can shut.

I would like to bear witness that I have proved this Philadelphian promise of the open door throughyears of ministry and it has never failed. Promotion comes not from the south, east or west, but fromGod; and if we commit our way unto Him and trust Him, He will bring it to pass. No man or groupof men hold the keys to Christian service. The Lord of the vineyard is still in charge and His eyesrun to and fro throughout the whole earth to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heartis perfect toward Him. God's man is not dependent on religious talent scouts nor is his ministry inthe hand of ecclesiastical officials. His headquarters is heaven and his itinerary is made up by theLord of the Open Door.

He goes on to say to the Philadelphia Christians: "... for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept myword, and hast not denied my name." If we keep the last half of that verse He will keep the first half.He will open the door if we keep His Word and do not deny His name. There is both a positive andnegative duty enjoined, to keep His Word and not to deny His name. God will make a way for anypreacher, Christian or church that so honors Him. It is not a matter of great strength, not great abilitybut great dependability. Samson had great ability but poor dependability. A little strength faithfullyused means more than much strength flashily and fitfully used.

He says further: "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, andare not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know thatI have loved thee." He will make their enemies sit at their feet eventually. What a word ofencouragement to faithful preachers. Sometimes, when we are mistreated, when adversaries conspireagainst us, we feel like taking a hand. But the battle is the Lord's and vengeance is His; He willrepay. "Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee." I hearda fine black preacher say, "The greatest friend of truth is time." Error is always in a hurry, but God'sman can afford to await the vindication of time. And if he is not vindicated in his own lifetime,eternity will settle the score. But more than one prophet who has been excommunicated and reviledhas lived long enough to see his enemies sit at his feet.

There is another promise to the Philadelphians: "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience,I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try themthat dwell upon the earth." Whatever the immediate application, there is here a foreshadowing of thegreat tribulation that shall follow our Lord's return for His saints. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan says, "Itsfinal fulfilment will undoubtedly be realized by those who, loyal to His word, and not denying Hisname, shall be gathered out of the world at His second coming before the judgment that must usherin the setting up of His Kingdom on the earth." There are two "keeps" here. Because they kept theWord of His patience, He will keep them. They kept and are kept.

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The Philadelphia period is concurrent with the Laodicean era. Both exist today and true Christiansare to keep the Word of His patience. What a blessed term, the Word of His patience! His enduringWord, the unconquerable cause which persists and perseveres through all combinations ofopposition, the gospel which is bound to win; we are to endure as it endures and as He endured.Sometimes it looks as though the church is defeated and the cross has failed and evil holds sway –"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne" – and the hardest thing to believe is thatwe are on the winning side. But we have the Word of His patience and we shall need more patiencethan anything else for God is not in a hurry. We nervous, impatient, poor mortals would have it overwith today but God takes His time.

We have a glorious prophetic picture in these verses. The great tribulation shows up in verse 10. Andour Lord's return breaks through in verse 11: "Behold, I come quickly..." He had declared it to thechurch at Sardis but with a threat of judgment. Here it is a blessed promise of deliverance. His returnmeans different things to different people! Here He couples it with a commandment: "... hold thatfast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." Prophetic doctrine is always joined with practicalduty. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness andlet us put on the armor of light" (Romans 13:12). "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved,what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?" (11 Peter 3:11). "Andevery man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (I John 3:3).

... hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." The Christian has a double deposit.Paul writes that the Lord is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him and two versesfurther on he bids Timothy keep that good thing which was committed unto him (11 Timothy 1:12,14). We have given God something to keep and He has given us something to keep. There is a two-way transaction. We have a trust, we are stewards of the grace of God. Paul says the gospel wascommitted to his trust (I Timothy 1:11) and he admonishes Timothy, ". . . keep that which iscommitted to thy trust . . ." (I Timothy 6:20).

We need to recover that old hymn now hidden among mothballs, "A charge to keep I have, a Godto glorify; a never-dying soul to save, and fit it for the sky." How up-to-date it is!

To serve the present age, My calling to fulfill;O may it all my powers engage, To do my Master's will!

Arm me with jealous care, As in Thy sight to live, And O, Thy servant, Lord, prepare, a strict account to give!

The devil would steal the treasure we hold in earthen vessels and men would take it from us too sowe ever need to "... hold fast that which is good" (I Thessalonians 5:21); "Hold fast the form ofsound words ..." (II Timothy 1:13); "... hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firmunto the end" (Hebrews 3:6); "... hold fast our profession" (Hebrews 4:14); "...hold the traditions ..."(11 Thessalonians 2:15). "...hold fast that which thou hast..."

Why? "...that no man take thy crown." The crown is not eternal life nor our righteousness in Christ:neither man nor the devil can steal these for no man can pluck us out of the hand of the Father or the

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hand of the Son. We are saved by faith but rewarded according to works and men can cheat us of ourreward. They can cause us to drop some things we are to hold fast, they can rob us of time and stealthe joy of our salvation and quench the Spirit within us, and unless we watch and pray and hold fastwhat we have, we shall most assuredly lose our crowns.

If ever our souls need to be on guard it is today. The temper of the times demands it. The world ischloroformed by the prince of darkness and Christians slumber in spiritual stupor. Our naturesdemand it. We are lazy and inclined to float downstream instead of to swim against the current.Forgetting the things which we have heard we drift away from them. The heart must be broken upand sown with good seed and cultivated if there is to be a good harvest; but we are disposed to letthe weeds grow. And some have so interpreted the grace of God as to minimize our personalresponsibility to watch and pray lest we enter into temptation. Dr. Torrey said: "We hear much ofthe rest of faith, but there is a fight of faith in prayer as well as in effort. Those who would have usbelieve that they have attained to some sublime height of faith and trust because they have neverknown any agony of conflict or prayer have surely gotten beyond their Lord and the mightiest victorsfor God, both in effort and prayer, that the ages of history have known."

Another old hymn in the mothball collection ought to be put back into circulation:

Are there no foes for me to face? Must I not stem the flood?

Is this vile world a friend to grace, To help me on to God?

Sure I must fight, if I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord;

I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, Supported by Thy Word.

Our crown can be stolen by discouragement. There are human wet-blankets who have never feltGod's power in their own lives and discredit it in others. Elijah and John the Baptist were two mostrugged characters but discouragement overcame them. If we would run well the race we must beimmune to the peril of low spirits on one hand and high spirits on the other and let neither depth norheight steal our crown.

Success can do it. We must let heaven and not earth reward us. The king of Sodom must not boastthat he has made Abram rich. Many a prophet has been promoted into silence. Success can featherour nest so comfortably that we forget how to fly. Abraham's servant, when tempted to stay a whileat the home of the wife he had found for Isaac, said, "Hinder me not, seeing the Lord hath prosperedmy way. ..." If God has prospered your way, you better be on your way!

Men can steal our crown by entangling us with so many concerns that the good crowds out the best.The apostles refused to take up financial burdens in the church in order that they might givethemselves to the ministry of the Word and prayer. A multitude of small religious activities can so

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absorb us that we lose our crown in a whirl of glorified piddling. Even the common pleasures of lifecan easily get out of hand. Better be called "unsociable" and "not a good mixer" than to lose one'scrown. Every man must study his own case and whatever endangers his crown he must avoid. Ifothers can do it and keep their crowns, never mind; do not be their judge -- but do not let them beyours! We must be on our guard against the dull, enervating atmosphere of the world around us. Itis easy to adjust to the prevailing temperature. What a race of chameleons we are! We are like thelady who wanted a set of books, any kind of books, just so long as they matched the furniture in thelibrary. The early church did not try to achieve peace of mind by accepting the status quo, theychanged. We are to accept the inevitable, but a lot of things are not inevitable and if we don't changethem they will change us.

One's own family may steal his crown. The believer's worst foes may sometimes be in his ownhousehold. Our Lord made it plain that He came to divide families (Matthew 10:34-37) and He saidour love for our human dearest must be as hate compared to our love for Him. That gives no comfortto those who would compromise with the devil for the sake of peace at home. Some relatives havea way of smothering our fire even if they use no worse method than keeping us at home from churchon Sunday by an ill-timed visit.

So it goes, and eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. And never forget that the man most likely tosteal your crown is yourself. "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life"(Proverbs 4:23). You are in no greater danger from anyone or anything than from yourself.

Watch the sacred deposit. "Hold fast that which is good." Another gem from the mothball collectionbelongs here:

My soul, be on thy guard; Ten thousand foes arise;

The hosts of sin are pressing hard To draw thee from the skies.

Ne'er think the victory won Nor lay thine armor down;

The work of faith will not be done Till thou obtain the crown.

"Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive afull reward" (II John 8).

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8. Laodicea: The Lukewarm Church". . . thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot...... (Revelation 3:16)

THERE ARE A few references to the Laodicean church in Philippians and Colossians. It was knownto Paul; it had some connection with the church at Colosse and Paul was concerned about it. It wasin a city of wealth which accounts for its spiritual condition. Our Lord had no word of commendationfor it. His accusation is threefold: "... thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot..."; "...I would thouwert cold or hot"; ...because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of mymouth."

These are not very elegant words and there is no way to dress them up. The condition of theLaodicean church was nauseating. They were a little too cold to be hot and a little too hot to be cold,a little too bad to be good and a little too good to be bad. Cold water is not nauseating, neither is hotwater, but lukewarm water is sickening.

One night years ago after a service in a small-town church, a brother took me to my hotel. Hethought I had been persecuting the saints too severely and said, "Well, we're not so good in this town,but we're not so bad either. We try to make an honest living, pay our debts and behave ourselves.We're not so good but we're not so bad." I replied, "But don't you remember ... that is the kind ofpeople who made the Lord sick?"

The trouble at Laodicea is summed up in two phrases, "... thou sayest ... and knowest not. ..." ". . thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods and have need of nothing..." They had everythingthey wanted, they were independent, they didn't need a thing. A church like that always needs arevival. I am wearing myself out these days preaching to churches that need nothing, to hear themtell it. Such smug self satisfaction grows out of ignorance: "... and knowest not. ..." Now comparetheir own estimate of themselves with our Lord's analysis of their true condition: "... thou artwretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." Try that on some comfortable Sunday-morning congregations and see what happens! Actually, these Laodiceans were "wretched,"burdened down not with debt but with money. They were "miserable," and "pitiable". As proud ofthemselves as they were, the Lord felt sorry for them.

And of all things, they were "poor"! And so is any church that is not rich toward God and has notreasure in heaven, no matter how many Cadillacs park outside. Smyrna was a rich poor church andLaodicea was a poor rich church. I'd rather be a rich poor Christian than a poor rich Christian!

They were blind, short-sighted. They had no vision of God, of their own hearts, of the world's need.We are trying to get a lot of Christians to see the world's need, trying to get volunteers to say, "Heream I, send me"; trying to get stingy churches to send the gospel out, but we are starting at the wrongplace. Isaiah did not say, "Here am I" until after he had first said, "Woe is me!" We are not going tobe concerned about the sinfulness of the land until we see the uncleanness in our own hearts. "Woeis me" comes before "Here am I."

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To cap the climax, the Lord of the Lampstands said to Laodicea, "Thou art naked." Now Laodiceawas a clothing center and I am sure that if there was anything in which these church members tookspecial pride, it was their well-dressed congregation. It was probably the swankiest crowd inProconsular Asia. But "... all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we haveto do," and His eyes saw only rags of self-righteousness although they were garbed in purple and finelinen. Is it not so today: for all our Sunday morning finery, in His eyes we are stripped of all, justbeggars in rags?

While we may need the gift to see ourselves as others see us, we need most to see ourselves as welook in the eyes of our Lord on Sunday morning. But He not only sees our need, He supplies thatneed. "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus"(Philippians 4:19). The Christ of the Candlesticks says to Laodicea, and to us, "I counsel thee to buyof me gold tried in the fire...." Our Lord Himself was tried in the fire. Our own lives are to be triedin the fire at the last day and if we build with wood, hay, and stubble instead of gold, silver, andprecious stones, all we have done will go up in smoke. The only way to build a fireproof life is touse fireproof materials. We have an awful lot of cheap Christianity today, flimsy, superficial stuffnot built to last. We think we are rich but so much of our "wealth" is like the play money childrenbuy in a nickel-and-dime store. What a poverty of true spirituality there is in many a prosperous,popular First Church of Laodicea!

Our Lord says further: "... and [buy of me] white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that theshame of thy nakedness do not appear..." Imagine offering to supply clothes to Laodiceal Surely thatwould sound like carrying coals to Newcastlel How long would a preacher last nowadays if he toldwealthy, well-clad parishioners that what they needed most was gold and garments? But we are inthe Laodicean Age of the poor rich and they ought to know both how poor they are and how rich theymay be, whether they like it or not.

". . . and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see." The Bible has much to say aboutopening eyes. Elisha's servant saw the encompassing hosts who had come to seize the prophet. Elishasaw angels encamping round about them. He prayed for his servant, "Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes,that he may see." A little later he prayed God, "Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness." SoGod opened the eyes of the servant and closed the eyes of the Syrians. We need today a true visionof our real circumstances, our allies and our adversaries, so that we may say, "... they that be withus are more than they that be with them."

Our Lord opened many blind eyes in the days of His flesh. One man, after the first touch, saw "menas trees walking." Some of us need another touch-we are living in a fog. Another had clay appliedand washed in the pool of Siloam. Some of us have had the truth applied but we have not done thenext thing: we have not walked in obedience, and we are still blind.

But the figure here is eyesalve. The world, the flesh and the devil offer lots of patent-medicine eyesalve that blinds us all the more. Only the Great Physician can open our eyes to full vision.

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The Christ of the Candlesticks then offers the corrective for lukewarmness: "As many as I love, Irebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent." There is a note of tenderness here. If He didnot love them, He would leave them alone. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Love is theopposite of lukewarmness and His love will give us hot hearts if we obey His call.

"Be zealous," be boiling, He commands. You cannot be lukewarm if you really believe and love andserve Him. But better be frozen, better make no claim at all to being a Christian, than be lukewarm.Dr. G. Campbell Morgan says, "Lukewarmness is the worst form of blasphemy." Our Lord did notsay that He would spew them out of his mouth for being too hot. Too much fire is better thanlukewarmness. Somebody asked Bishop Candler: "Do you think the Holy Rollers will get toheaven?" He replied in effect that he thought they would if they didn't run past it! Nobody ever sawan engine run on warm water. And nobody ever saw a lukewarm church with power. Anything isbetter than a tasteless tepidity. The cause of Christ has been hurt more by Sunday-morning bench-warmers who pretend to love Christ, who call Him Lord but do not His commands, than by all thepublicans and sinners. They say they are evangelical but not evangelistic. They glory in beingfundamental – modernists and modern – fundamentalists, disciples of the Lowest CommonDenominator. They traffic in unfelt truth and refuse to get excited over religion. Their ideal serviceis "a mild-mannered man standing before a group of mild-mannered people, exhorting everybodyto be more mild-mannered." MacLaren spoke of those who glory in "sober standards of feeling inmatters of religion," but who were better described in far less polite language by our Lord when Hesaid, "because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

In vain they tune their formal songs; In vain they strive to rise;

Hosannas languish on their tongues And their devotion dies.

It is the Age of Laodicean Lukewarmness and the Lord of the Lampstands is saying to it, "Be zealousand repent." Too many are living close enough to the church to be warmed by the church and closeenough to the world to be chilled by the world, and our Lord says, "It were better if you were cold."There is more hope for an African heathen who has never heard the gospel than for an Americanpagan who has professed to believe it but has never actually yielded to Christ and been set on fireby the Spirit. No true New Testament Christian can be lukewarm. He does not have to go in forwildfire. He need not roll in the aisle and foam at the mouth. He does not have to freeze in formalismnor fry in fanaticism. But he can be boiling because the heavenly fire burns within him.If you have never been set on fire, offer God a surrendered heart and let Him kindle a sacred flameon that altar. If your fire has died down, rake off the ashes and stir up the gift of God, rekindle theflame, until you come to a boil. But, whatever you do, do not be lukewarm. It were better if you hadno fire at all.

To every one of these five ailing churches our Lord says in effect, "Repent ... or else." The "else" inthe case of Laodicea is, "... I will spue thee out of my mouth." There are Christians whose fervor has

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died down to a bed of coals when it should be a flaming fire. Sometimes they are Ephesians whohave left their first love and if they will not repent the Lord will remove them. Others have neverbeen anything but lukewarm, professors who have never possessed, they have been warmed by theinfluence of the gospel but never truly saved. They belong in another category. Search your ownheart and learn your true condition.

One of the saddest features of this whole business is that the people who need to arouse themselvesmost on this point are the ones who are least conscious of their danger. MacLaren says, "A numbedlimb feels no pain. As cold increases, the sensation of cold, and of everything else, goes away."Those who need most to go to the mourner's bench are usually those complacent souls who watchothers go and never dream that they should have been the first to walk the aisle. The fact that youare reading this and never dreaming that it means you is perhaps the best evidence it does mean you.

Sometimes we speak lightly of those nervous and excitable dear souls who rush forward on everyinvitation. To be sure that can be overdone, but at least they will not likely become lukewarm! I ammore troubled over some who can weather any meeting and sit through countless invitations withoutever suspecting that they should have been the first to respond. How many nice, comfortable, lovelypeople rest smilingly in church pews, their consciences drugged, their wills paralyzed, in a self-satisfied stupor, utterly unconscious of their danger while the Lord of the Lampstands warns them,"I am about to spue thee out of my mouth."

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

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9. Unto the Angel of the Church . . . "(Revelation 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14)

ALEXANDER WHYTE IN his Bible Characters applies the seven messages of our Lord inRevelation 2 and 3 to the angels, the pastors, of the seven churches in Proconsular Asia. It is a wiseapproach. While the messages certainly are directed to the local churches and while they apply aswell to individuals and to stages of church history, we sometimes overlook the fact that, first of all,they are given to the local pastor. These are the seven stars in our Lord's right hand mentioned inchapter I, Armin Gesswein says, "We see in Revelation 1:20 that pastors are in His hand as keys tochurch revival."

It is true that if any man will hear His voice and open the door the Lord will come in, into his life andthrough him into the church in revival. Any man can start a revival. Nevertheless, the pastor occupiesa peculiar place in the economy of God. We are witnessing to day great interest in the place of thelayman in the program of the church. It is a great and needed emphasis and long overdue. EveryChristian is a missionary. The early persecution in Jerusalem made every believer a minister, a heraldof the gospel. It has been said that "The early church was a company of lay witnesses but it hasbecome a professional pulpitism financed by lay spectators." We "hire" a church staff to do "churchwork," then we sit on Sunday morning and watch them do it. It is high time that something,persecution if necessary, broke up our complacency and made missionaries out of mere churchmembers.

But we are prone to get going too fast and run clear off the reservation in such matters and it is wellto balance this emphasis with another. Without making any false distinctions between "clergy" and"laity," we must remember that ministers are Christ's gift to the church. The Pastor is not to lord –but he is to lead, and there is a difference between the under-shepherd and the sheep. The office ofa bishop is a special ministry and they who labor in the Word and doctrine are worthy of doublehonor (I Timothy 5:17). They are to be obeyed as having the rule over us and we are to follow themas they follow Christ.

All efforts to reduce the preacher to "just one of the boys" are of the flesh and of the world.Sometimes preachers themselves help this movement along. Some act as if they did not want anyoneto suspect that they are preachers. Some old-timers may have acted like monks but the answer is notin acting like monkeys. When I was a boy I regarded the minister as God's man and never thoughtof rude, coarse, back-slapping familiarity. Fathers sometimes make the mistake of trying to be merelypals to their boys. They mean well but fathers are not meant to be merely pals but parents; when theylost their parental authority and the respect of their children they have sacrificed too much. Likewise,a minister may become a hail-fellow-well-met at the expense of his spiritual influence andleadership.

In these seven messages of our Lord the angel, the messenger, the pastor, holds a special place as oneof the stars in His right hand. The pastor should be the key to revival. Revival may start elsewherein the church but the fire should begin in the pulpit and blow toward the congregation. And it willif the preacher stirs up the flame of God within him. The spiritual life of the church does not usuallyrise higher than that of the minister.

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Let him therefore read these letters as addressed to him first of all. Let him apply the conditionsdescribed and the corrections prescribed to his own life. "Am I an Ephesian minister? Am I orthodoxand busy but with a cold heart?" It was when God convicted Christmas Evans of a cold heart that hereached a turning point in his ministry. And think what happened when John Wesley's heart was"strangely warmed" after he had tried for years to "take off with a cold motor!"

Let "the angel of the church" enquire further: "Am I a Pergamos preacher, tolerating in my life whatGod condemns? Am I putting up with what I should put out? Do I warn my people about Balaamand am I jealous over them with a godly jealousy because I have espoused them as a chaste virginto Christ? Is there spiritual adultery in my heart or in my church, the love of the world which isenmity with God? If so, there should be repentance on my part and on their part. What am I doingabout that? Am I true to my Lord, hearing what the Spirit says, or am I silent for the sake of peaceand popularity?

"Am I a Thyatira preacher? What about Jezebel? Is there the infiltration of false doctrine in my lifeor in my church, some high-sounding but unscriptural philosophy that makes it easier to sin? Am Ienamored of some ism? Do I suffer a Jezebel to teach in my church? Is there a subtle movement toset up an altar to Baal alongside the altar of Jehovah? Am I trying to co-exist peacefully with whatthe Lord of the Lampstands threatens to judge severely? How can I be lenient toward what displeasesHim?"

It may be that the preacher is a Sardis sort, having a name to live but dead, living in a fever ofactivity, dashing from Dan to Beersheba, pronouncing an invocation here and a benediction there,helping the dead bury the dead -- and dead himself while he wilts not that the Spirit of the Lord hasdeparted from him. The worst of it is that such deadness often goes with a reputation for being a live-wire preacher in an active church. Such a minister is anything but a lazy, lifeless sort. He may be theleading go-getter among all the preachers in town.

Finally, let the angel of the church beware of a Laodicean ministry, neither cold nor hot butlukewarm. Perhaps more are to be found in that bracket than in any other. That well-stationedpreacher, rich and increased with goods and needing nothing, replete with top salary, fine home, bigcar, a high seat in the synagogue and rabbi several times over -- who is harder to arouse than thebishop of Laodicea? His greatest peril is that he is unaware of his peril, his greatest need a sense ofneed. It will take a spiritual earthquake to put him in the market for gold tried in the fire, new raimentand eyesalve that he may see.

So let the minister examine himself and in whichever category he finds himself, let him rememberthat the Christ of the Candlesticks bade all five of these angels and churches to repent. A revival inthe pulpit would soon spread to the pew: Let the preacher remember and- repent and do again thefirst works. Let him put out Balaam and Jezebel. Let him strengthen the things which remain. Lethim buy gold and garments and eyesalve. Let him have a revival in his own soul. It is with theminister as with the church; it is repent or else. As with Ephesus it is revival or removal. Thepreacher who will not be revived will be removed, a castaway disapproved.

But Smyrna and Philadelphia were not told to repent and the preacher can find a pattern there.Faithful unto death in spite of poverty and persecution, that is a model for any preacher whose mainconcern is to show himself approved unto God. And there are Philadelphian preachers who have not

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much strength but they keep the faith and the Word of His patience and do not deny His name. Theyare angels of the Church of the Open Door. They do not look to men for "openings," they look to theLord of the Open Door. They report first to higher headquarters than any base on earth. Paul reportedto Jerusalem but he had first cleared everything with God. The Philadelphian preacher does not pullwires and seek promotion from south, east and west nor chase after "key men." He knows the Keeperof the Keys who can unlock any door.

Any door, that is, except the closed door of the Laodicean church and the Laodicean heart.Sometimes it is the door of a preacher's heart that is closed to the Lord of the Lampstands. "If anyman" can mean the angel of the church. Sometimes it is he who must open doors that have beenbolted against the Lordship of Christ. And when the Lord comes into the pastor's heart He comes intothe pastor's church and there begins a revival.

Moreover, it is the beginning of a life of spiritual abundance for the Lord of the Open Door is alsothe Guest who becomes the Host "I ... will sup with him and he with me." That minister in whoseheart and life Jesus is Lord of all is the richest of men – for all is his and he is Christ's and Christ isGod's.

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10. "If Any Man . . . ""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." (Rev. 3:20)

WHEN WE STUDY our Lord's messages to the churches of Asia we make some amazingdiscoveries. We learn a great many things that are just the opposite of what we are accustomed tothink. For one thing, every one of the five churches that were bidden to repent, every church thatneeded a revival, was what we would call a prosperous and successful church. If we had visitedEphesus or Pergamos or Thyatira or Sardis or Laodicea, we would have said, "This church does notneed a revival. It is busy and progressive; why disturb it? It may have some faults but no church isperfect so why not leave well enough alone?" Any preacher who would dare to stand in any of thosechurches and call it to repentance would be termed an impertinent disturber of the peace. Yet thatis exactly what our Lord did in every case.

On the other hand, we would probably think that Smyrna and Philadelphia needed a revival becausethey were poor and persecuted. Surely something must be wrong with a church that is not popular,prosperous and progressive by the standards of this age. Yet for these churches our Lord had no wordof rebuke and no call to repentance.

These messages of our Lord are not limited in their application to seven churches in ProconsularAsia centuries ago. They cover every kind of church situation today. Any church can find that itspicture has been taken long ago and put on exhibit in the second and third chapters of Revelation.We need to find which picture in the gallery fits our church. It may be a composite, a combinationof two or more, but it is there. We do well to ask: Is my church an Ephesus, orthodox and busy butwithout love? Is it a Pergamos, a worldly church, tolerating what it ought to condemn? Is it aThyatira, allowing false teachers to lead its people astray? Is it a Sardis, known as a live church butdead in the sight of God? Is it a Laodicea – neither cold nor hot but lukewarm? Whichever type itmay be, it needs to repent. It needs revival.

But sometimes we "get lost in the crowd" and forget that there is an individual application to thesemessages. For one thing, each of them is addressed to an individual, the angel, the messenger, thepastor, of the church. Every preacher needs to check himself by the same questions we have justasked about the church.

At the end of these messages we find our Lord standing at the end of the church age saying. "If anyman..." A church is made up of people, after all, and the churches are no better than the members.

What kind of church would this church be, if every member were just like me?

Just about every type of Christian is set forth in these seven types and we can find our pictures in thisgallery. We can see ourselves, preacher and people, as we really are in the eyes of – the Christ ofthe Candlesticks. We may be encouraged but we shall not be flattered. We will be reminded of thelady who remonstrated to the photographer, "These pictures don't do me justice." He replied, "Lady,what you need is not justice. You need mercy!"

There is the Ephesian Christian, orthodox and hardworking, on the lookout for false doctrine and a

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contender for the faith, but without love in the heart. How tragic this is, for we ought to contend fortruth and condemn heresy. We have a sacred deposit to guard. "While men slept" the devil has sowntares in the world and unbelief has infiltrated the church and wolves in sheeps' clothing abound.

Thank God for stalwart souls who have exposed the Nicolaitanes – they need exposure right nowin a day of pleasant tolerance. But orthodoxy without love has often brought the cause ofconservative Christianity into disrepute. Of course, in all fairness it ought to be said that not all Biblebelievers are crabs as some critics would have us believe. We need not weaken our doctrine to besweet Christians. Only sound doctrine translated into life makes a Christlike believer anyway.

There is no real saintliness that is not rooted and grounded in the truth. It is a day of ear-itch insteadof heart-burn and we need not be disturbed by some who boast that they "never stoop tocontroversy." We do not stoop when we contend for the faith in love. The trouble is, we may leaveour first love fighting error and end up with hot heads and cold hearts. To win a theological argumentand come out of it with a harsh and unloving spirit is to be defeated after all. It is unhappily true thatsome of the most cantankerous and cold-hearted Christians are loudest in their censure of falsedoctrine. Nobody in pulpit or pew needs a revival more than a bitter-spirited fundamentalist with hisdispensations right and his disposition wrong.

In Pergamos and Thyatira we find the very opposite of this type. Here are these broad-minded,tolerant church members who never take a stand against Balaam or Jezebel, against worldliness orfalse doctrine. They think the status quo in the church should never be disturbed, that we shouldaccentuate the positive and never deal with or discipline delinquency. The same policy in our homesthat dares not frustrate Junior – and turns out teen-age gangsters – is the church policy of theselenient souls who would condone what the Lord condemns. They argue that we must not pull up thetares lest we uproot the wheat, not knowing that in our Lord's parable the field is the world, not thechurch, and that gathering tares has nothing whatever to do with church discipline.

We have Americans today who would tolerate subversives in our nation and we have churchmembers who take the same stand in the church. Before we can ever have revival, they must repentand line up with Elijah on Carmel instead of being Fifth-Amendment Christians who "answer nota word." Such people may not be guilty of Balaamism or Baalism themselves but they are parties toit by their silence.

Then of course, there are in our Pergamos and Thyatira churches those who do practice these twinevils. Our church rolls are loaded with worldlings – baptized pagans who love the world and thethings of the world, whose gods are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.Some have never been saved and some are backsliders. Some have been infected with false doctrine,the liberalism of Jezebel. It is appalling how little our church members know of what they aresupposed to believe. Some do not know what they believe, others do not believe what they believeand many do not practice what they believe.

Many of our people do not believe some of our great doctrines and others privately hold strangebeliefs and run after fads and isms contrary to the Word of God. Some hide behind the argument thatthe New Testament is our rule of faith and practice, which indeed it is, but they mean their ownversion of the New Testament revised to suit their own notions and way of living. Before we canhave revival we must renounce evil, whether in doctrine or deed. It is true that when we are filled

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with the Spirit we will lose our taste for these things; but we cannot be filled with the Spirit until weare emptied of these things. Even God cannot fill something that is already full.

Then we have Sardis Christians who have a name to be alive but are dead. They are in a whirl ofreligious activity and attend a lot of meetings-but spiritually they are animated corpses. Finney said,"They are often employed about the machinery of religion and pass for good Christians but they areof no use in a revival." They may be elders, deacons, choir-singers, Sunday school teachers, with areputation for church, faithfulness, with awards and banners and prizes for religious achievement –but it is all dead works. They are often the last people to wake up in a revival because they mistakeperformance for experience. They need to repent, confess their dead works, start right in fullsurrender and be filled with the Spirit.

Finally, we have the lukewarm Laodiceans. We have always had our full quota of these. They areoften in comfortable circumstances, smug and self-righteous, and they do not need a thing. For manyyears I have given all sorts of invitations but there are some dear souls who never move. There neverhas been an invitation devised that would touch them. They are like the man in the Kansas revivalwho told the preacher that he did not want to go to heaven or hell, he simply wanted to live right onin Kansas.

They ought to be the first to walk the aisles when invitation is given but they are the last, if they evergo. They are too cold to boil and too warm to freeze. There they sit and once in a while, after thepreacher has preached his heart out, there may be a flicker of the eyelid and some Laodicean maybegin to show faint signs of coming to and look as if to say, "You don't mean me, do you?" We domean them and our Lord means them and if there is to be revival they must come to a boil.

All the way through, revival is an individual matter.. God deals with people one at a time. The Lordof the Lampstands ends His messages saying, "Behold I stand at the door and knock." This is notChrist at the door of the sinner's heart ut the Lord at the, door of a church. It is all right to sing,"There's a Stranger at the Door. Let Him in" as an invitation to sinners, but there is another song thatis true to the context:

O Jesus, Thou art standingOutside the fast-closed door,

In lowly patience waitingTo pass the threshold o'er.

Shame on us, Christian brothers,His name and sign who bear,

O shame, thrice shame upon us,To keep Him standing there!

It is Christians who hinder revival by keeping the Lord outside the church door. Sometimes we haveeverything in our churches but the Lord.

He is not waiting for a committee to pass a resolution. He is waiting for one man to open the door.One man can start a revival. It need not be the chairman of the deacon board, although maybe itshould be. It can be the poorest man in the church. Any man can open the door.

He said, "If any man hear my voice..." We do not hear Him because we are not listening. Two little

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girls were looking at the great picture of Christ at the Door. One asked the other, "Why don't theylet Him in?" The other replied, "Maybe they're down in the basement and can't hear Him!" Too oftenwe are down in the basement of our lower selves, the cellars of sin, and we hear not His voice. Thebig question today is not, "Is God speaking?" but "Are you listening?"

"I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me." He comes in as the Guest. He abides asthe Host. First He sups with us, then we with Him. At Cana He was the Guest. Then the wine gaveout and He became the Host. At Emmaus He entered the disciple's home as a Guest. Soon He brokebread and became their Host. It is true that we open our hearts to Him when we are saved. But fromthen on He does not sit at our table, we sit at His. He prepares a table for us even in the presence ofour enemies, and like lame Mephibosheth we eat, crippled as we are, at the King's table and partakeof His bounty.

This picture of our Lord outside the door at the end of the church age, appealing to the individual,raises some important questions. We are in the era of Laodicean lukewarmness. We are at the endof the church age. Will we see a great revival in the church at large, among believers everywhere?I do not know. Nobody knows. Will we see revival within local churches to a marked degree? Ofcourse there are few if any local fellowships where the whole membership repents and is revived.There are cases where the active members, the official body, the working force, have an awakening.But such revivals are occasional and spotty, here and there. There can always be such a revival wherethe church will pay the price.

Does our Lord at the door mean that the last chapter of church history will record no mighty generalmovement toward God or even local churches being revived but that we can only expect individualshere and there to hear the voice of the Savior, and open the door? Of course He always deals withthe individual, with one at a time; but will revival from here on be limited to one man here and therewith local churches and the church at large refusing to pay the price?

Certainly that is what we see at present. Even in the great religious movements of today, localchurches often are unmoved and many times the church at large goes its way without real repentance.However that may be, we have an individual responsibility to hear the voice of the Lord at the door.We can begin with ourselves. If the church then joins us – and Him – there will be revival. Insteadof debating whether or not there will be a general awakening, we can attend to our duty and see whathappens.

You can start a revival in your church by starting one in your life. When you let the Christ Outsidethe Door into your heart to take over as Host, you let Him into your church as well.

The way is "Repent ... and receive." Or He will remove. It is "Repent ... or else."

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

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11. What is a Great Church?

"And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread,and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by theapostles. And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessionsand goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with oneaccord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness andsingleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to thechurch daily such as should be saved." (Acts 2:42-47)

THAT WORD "GREAT" carries many meanings. We throw it around a great deal. We do not oftenmean what the Scriptures mean, for God's standard of greatness is utterly foreign to that of thisworld.

When we say "a great church," we may mean large buildings, wealth, ornate ritual, many members,influence, prestige, historic importance, a famous minister. But a great New Testament church meansnone of these. Let us look at the early fellowship, the primitive pattern. What was great about that?We are great today where they were small and we are small where they were great.

We read first: "And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus..." (Acts 4:33). This power was the Holy Spirit. The church came into being by the power of God.Pentecost was the day of the Holy Spirit. A true church operates only by His power, yet it may bepossible to build up a very impressive religious organization called a church by some other power.Big buildings may be erected, large memberships gathered, impressive services put on, much moneyraised, many good things done – all without the Spirit. Some churches would never know thedifference if the Holy Spirit went out of business. A scripturally great church is a Spirit-filled church,but we rarely use the term. We boast of organization and efficiency but our efficiency without Hissufficiency is only a deficiency.

You will observe that this was witnessing power: "And with great power gave the apostles witness... Our Lord said, "... ye shall receive power ... and ye shall be witnesses ...." (Acts 1:8). There is alot of work in our churches but not much witnessing. The Holy Spirit produces witnesses and all thechurch work in the world is beside the point if it is not the work of witnesses by life and lip.

Notice further that by this power the apostles witnessed to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Theydid not talk about themselves, they talked about the Lord, and the heart of their testimony was thatHe had risen and was alive forevermore. Plenty of people around Jerusalem knew that He had died.The apostles knew that He was alive. The whole gospel turns on that, not that Christ came or taughtor lived but that He died for our sins and rose again for our justification. Americans are not so muchgospel-hardened as gospel-ignorant. I doubt that most church members know what it is.

The early church was a church of great power. If your church is not a Spirit-filled church, operatingin Pentecostal power through witnesses testifying to a risen Christ, it is not a great church eventhough it may be as big as the Pentagon. No matter how many members; no matter how much moneyit raises; no matter how loudly the organ plays; no matter how famous the preacher or how elaboratethe service; no matter how many Meat-loaf Marthas and Potato-salad Priscillas toil in the kitchen;

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no matter if so many meetings are held that the members almost meet themselves coming back fromthe last one -- if the church is not a Spirit-filled church it is but Sardis having a name to be alive butdead.

We read further in the same Acts 4:33 ". . . and great grace was upon them all." The church is theproduct of the grace of God. None of us has anything that he did not receive. The grace that restedupon the early church was the fulness of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, saving grace, living grace,dying grace, praying grace, testifying grace, loving grace, giving grace. When we trust and obey, wereceive of His fulness and grace upon grace. Receiving abundance of grace we reign in life by one,Jesus Christ. We do not have to go through a graveyard to enter into rest, we reign in life.

Of how many churches can it be said, "Great grace was upon them all"? When we talk of greatchurches we say little about the grace of God. We politely refer to it in the benediction, "Now maythe grace of our Lord Jesus Christ ..." but our thoughts are often elsewhere. A church is great onlyin proportion to its measure of grace.

We have heard the Negro spiritual, "Ezekiel saw de wheel," with its little wheel run by faith and thebig wheel run by the grace of God and all the wheels up in the middle of the air. It is a good pictureof many a modern church with its "big wheels" and "little wheels" and all of them "up in the air."But if the little wheels are not run by faith and the big wheels by the grace of God, then they do notrun to the glory of God.

In the next chapter of Acts we read that, after Ananias died under the judgment of God, ". . . greatfear came on all them that heard these things"; and again, after the death of Sapphira, ". . . great fearcame upon all the church" (5:5, 11). God struck this pair dead for pretending a full dedication whichthey had not made. If in our churches today He struck dead all who commit the same sin, the deathrate would set a record. Peter thundered against lying to the Holy Ghost and sin was dealt with onthe spot. There is very , little of the fear of God in church today. Sin is excused and tolerated and nowonder the Ananias (and Sapphira) club flourishes.

People were afraid to join church after this startling tragedy, yet multitudes of true believers wereadded to the Lord. Here was a fellowship at such a fever pitch of consecration that liars could notstand it. The temperature was so high that it killed all the germs. If today the church had such greatpower and great grace, great fear would fall upon us for strange things would happen and men wouldbe conscious of the presence of a holy God who cannot tolerate sin. We have become so busy beinghappy that we have forgotten to be holy. We have gone in for fun and lost our fear. Ours is often acheap familiarity to be found in any club and nobody is afraid to join such churches.

Great power, great grace, great fear, and we read next, "... And at that time there was a greatpersecution against the church which was at Jerusalem ..." (Acts 8:1). When we speak of a greatchurch, we mean a popular or prosperous church, but this was a persecuted church. That would beunthinkable to your average Sunday-morning churchgoer. "The church should get along witheverything and everybody. Opposition is the last thing we'd think of; and society is more Christiannow and things have changed since the early church started out in a pagan world." But we have morepagans, more heathen today than ever and a true New Testament church will arouse as muchopposition as ever. The persecution may take a different form but there is not a line of Scripture toindicate that Christians will have it easier as time goes on – exactly the contrary is declared.

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What church do you know that is causing consternation among the forces of evil in the community?The persecution in Acts turned church members into missionaries for "... they that were scatteredabroad went every where preaching the word." Maybe we need some persecution to turn believersinto witnesses. We are not meeting opposition because we have come to terms with the world. Weare living in peaceful coexistence with the age, forgetting that the friend of the world is the enemyof God. Such a policy will produce a popular and prosperous church, a great church in the eyes ofmen, but it will be part of the apostate world-church shaping up before our eyes. A scripturally greatchurch-great in power, in grace, in fear-will meet great persecution for "... all that will live godly inChrist Jesus shall suffer persecution" (II Timothy 3:12).

Does all this sound too serious and sombre? There is another note: Philip was one of those scatteredabroad by great persecution. He went to Samaria to preach, "And the people with one accord gaveheed . . . And there was great joy in that city" (Acts 8:6, 8). The church of great power, great grace,great fear and great persecution brought great joy. It was a joyful church and it produced joy.

Those early Christians proclaimed "glad tidings of great joy" for the gospel is good news. "They dideat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." But this great joy is such a different thing fromwhat we try to whip up today, this pitiful "rousement" that a cheer leader can work up at any ballgame. It is the joy of the Lord, the joy of Him who said, "These things have I spoken unto you, thatmy joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11). It is the joy of Him who"for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. . . ." It smiles throughtears, is happy in persecution and from prison cries, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say,Rejoice." It is the work of the Holy Spirit and is not even distantly related to the hilarity of thisworld.

The substitute fools a great many people today but the difference is profound. For one thing, it is thejoy of obedience: "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them" (John 13:17). It rests upontwo "ifs"knowing and doing the will of God. The early church swept the Roman world with thisstrange joy that thrived on trouble and prospered in persecution. We wear ourselves out in ourchurches trying to make the saints comfortable and happy but we are not producing this kind of joy.Ours is the kind that depends on what happens, but the joy of the Lord may be ours no matter whathappens.

One thing more. This same persecution that sent Philip to Samaria sent others to Antioch: "And thehand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord" (Acts11:21). Sometimes we hear that the church today is living the Book of Numbers. Certainly some aretoo busy counting nickels and noses. It has been said, "It is time to stop counting numbers and beginmaking numbers count." But there is a place for statistics and Acts abounds in numbers andadditions. The difference is, then they were a result but today they are a goal. The early churchstarted out with great power, grace, fear and joy and the great numbers followed. They did not "shootfor three thousand" on the Day of Pentecost. They were Spirit-filled, they preached Christ and therewas an ingathering.

After the healing of the lame man, they did not launch a drive for five thousand but they preachedthe Word in spite of persecution and about five thousand believed. After the death of Ananias andSapphira, believers were the more added to the Lord, "multitudes both of men and women." After

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the seven were chosen, "... the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multipliedin Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7).

So it went – and the growth, the increase, the additions, were a result of Christian living andwitnessing in great power and grace and fear and joy. When we fulfill the conditions God will givethe increase. When the organism is functioning properly it will reproduce itself. God does not alwaysadd all that we enlist. When we try to reach goals by other methods we add from without but we donot grow from within. When Spirit-filled Christians follow the Lord they become fishers of men, andback of it all is the Lord adding such as are being saved.

Such is the pattern of a great church. A church is great in God's sight only in proportion as it is achurch of great power, grace, fear, and joy, enduring great persecution. And when is it great in allthese, great numbers will believe and turn unto the Lord. But a church is made of individualmembers and every mark of a New Testament church is also a mark of a New Testament Christian.When Christians are filled with the power of the Spirit, when they receive abundance of grace andwalk in the fear of God, when they abound with joy, they will be persecuted – but through them morewill be added unto the Lord. There will be a New Testament church in proportion as there are NewTestament Christians in it. And only a New Testament church is a great church in the eyes of God.

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12. Jesus is Lord

"For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord;and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." (II Cor. 4:5)

IF I WERE to ask any Sunday-morning congregation, "Do you believe in the Lordship of JesusChrist?" I would get an easy reply in the affirmative. But If I were to ask each individual in thatcongregation, "Is He Lord of all you are and have?" We might have a very disturbing and revealingmorning! Any church gathering can sing, "Bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him Lord of all,"but not all who are willing to crown Him with their lips will make Him Lord of their lives.

Coleridge speaks of "truths often considered as so true that they lose the power of truth and liebedridden in the dormitory of the soul." The Lordship of Christ is one of these truths. One writer hassaid that the word "Lord" is one of the most lifeless words in the Christian vocabulary. Yet Dr. A.T. Robertson said that the Lordship of Christ is the touchstone of our faith, and Dr. G. CampbellMorgan has called it "the central verity of the church."

The Lordship of Christ was the initial confession of the church. ". . . if thou shalt confess with thymouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thoushalt be saved" (Romans 10:9). When a Jewish convert in the early church said, "Jesus is Lord," hemeant that Jesus was God; and when a Gentile believer said, "Jesus is Lord," he meant that Caesarwas no longer his god.

Polycarp went to his death affirming the Lordship of Christ above the claims of Caesar. In the NewTestament it's never "Christ and . . ." because one never needs to add anything to Jesus. He is Alphaand Omega and all the alphabet between. But it is "Christ or..." the world, Christ or Belial, Christor Egypt, Christ or Caesar." Early Christianity demanded a clean break with the world, the flesh andthe devil. That lasted until Constantine made Christianity fashionable and popular. Pagans flockedinto the church lightheartedly bringing their idols and their sins with them, and the church loweredher standards to accommodate the influx.

We have never recovered from that mistake. Today, although Caesar is dead, too many churchmembers try to serve two Lords, Caesar and Christ, God and Mammon. Churches are filled withbaptized pagans living double lives, fearing the Lord and serving their own gods, drawing nigh toGod with their mouths and honoring Him with their lips while their hearts are far from Him, callingHim Lord, Lord, while they do not what He says. We are not only to worship the Lord on Sundaybut to serve Him all week.

The Lordship of Christ is the authentic confession of the Christian. "Wherefore I give you tounderstand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man cansay that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (I Corinthians 12:3). Calling Jesus Lord is theauthentic work of the Holy Spirit for the old Adam never bows to the Lordship of Christ. Nowadayswe have created an artificial distinction between trusting Christ as Savior and confessing Him asLord. We have made two experiences out of it when it is one. So we have a host who have "acceptedChrist" in order to miss hell and reach heaven, who seem not at all concerned about making HimLord of their lives.

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Salvation is not a cafeteria line where we can take the Savior-hood of Christ and pass up HisLordship, take what we want and leave the rest. We cannot get saved on the instalment plan, withfingers crossed and inner reservations, as though one could take Christ "on approval." To be sure,one may not understand all that is involved at conversion, but no man can knowingly and wilfullytake Christ as Savior and reject Him as Lord, and be saved. Paul told the Philippian jailer, "Believeon the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." He presented all three names of our Lord asMaster, Mediator and Messiah. He would not have the jailer take Christ as Savior and think over HisLordship until some later time.

We have only one option: we can receive the Lord or reject Him. But once we receive Him, ouroption ends. We are then no longer our own but bought with a price. We belong to Him. He has thefirst word and the last. He demands absolute loyalty beyond that of any earthly dictator but He hasa right to do it. "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." How foolish to say,"Nobody is going to tell me how much to give, what to do." We have already been told! We are Hisand His Word is final.

I came to Christ as a country boy. I did not understand all about the plan of salvation. One does nothave to understand it, he has only to stand on it. I do not understand all about electricity but I do notintend sitting around in the dark until I dol But one thing I did understand even as a lad: I understoodthat I was under new management. I belonged to Christ and He was Lord.

Here is the key to the sad state of many Christians and churches. There is a cheap, easy believismthat does not believe and a receivism that does not receive. There is no real confession of ChristJesus as Lord. It is significant that the word "Savior" occurs only twenty-four times in the NewTestament, while the word "Lord" is found 433 times.

A Christian is a believer, a disciple and a witness. He should become all three at the same time andbe all three all the time. The believers were called disciples before they were called Christians. TheGreat Commission bids us make disciples. God is not out just to save sinners but to make saints outof sinners. The crisis is followed by continuance. "If ye continue in my word, then are ye mydisciples indeed." Peter was still a believer but not a disciple after he denied his Lord until after hewas reinstated with the "Follow me" of Tiberias. The angel at the sepulchre said, "Go ... tell hisdisciples and Peter..." The believer comes to Christ; then as a disciple he comes after Him. Sometake a stand for the Lord and keep standing. They take a step but not a walk. I heard a missionary say,"Too many of us are singing, `Standing on the Promises' but we are really just sitting on thepremises!"

The birth of a child is an important event, but it takes twenty years after that to make a man or awoman of that child. Evangelism is thrilling business but it is only the beginning. The believer mustbe developed as a disciple and a witness. On the Damascus road Saul started right: "Who are thou,Lord? Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" He began by confessing Jesus as Lord. Thomas cried,"My Lord and my God!" John Wesley tells us that several mornings after Aldersgate he awoke with"Jesus, Master" in his heart and mouth. The Holy Spirit had done His work. Dr. E. Y. Mullins says,"In applying for membership in a Baptist church, faith in Christ and acceptance of His Lordship isa prime condition."

Salvation is free. The gift of God is eternal life. It is not cheap for it cost God His Son and the Son

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His life, but it is free. However, when we become believers we become disciples and that will costeverything we have. Our Lord lost some of His best prospects on this very point. It appears that Helost three in the last six verses of the ninth chapter of Luke. He lost the young ruler. What a prospecthe was! He had manners because he came kneeling. He had morals for he had kept thecommandments. He had money for he would not let it go. He was a good catch but the Lord, did notcatch him.

When the sick and sinful came to Jesus, He dealt with them in tenderness. But to prospectivefollowers He threw a stern challenge: "Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach thekingdom of God" (Luke 9:60); "No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fitfor the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). To the multitude He gave three "cannots" of discipleship(Luke 14:25-33). But our Lord was after disciples, not mere "joiners." Americans are notoriousjoiners. Give them a red button and a certificate and they will join anything. We would have takenthe young ruler into church immediately and made him treasurer but our Lord would have him meanbusiness.

The New Testament teaches not only faith in Christ but following Christ. "Come unto me . . ." – thatinvites the believer. "Learn of me . . ." – that makes the disciple. The Word of God knows nothingof that strange variety of Christian willing to take Christ as Savior but unwilling to confess Him asLord. He is not only Savior of the soul, He is Lord of the life.

The Lordship of Christ will be the ultimate confession of creation. We are told that one day everyknee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father(Philippians 2:9-11). I do not ask the sinner, "Will you confess Jesus as Lord?" for that he must donow or later. I ask, "When will you confess Him as Lord – now while you can live for Him or beyondthe grave when it will be too late?" A flour company had a slogan, "Eventually: – Why Not Now?"Eventually every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord, in heaven, on earth, under the earth. But whynot now?

Is He your Lord? Is He Lord of your body, your thoughts, your tongue, your temper, your spare time,Your life plans, your pocketbook, your church life, your recreation, what you listen to by radio andlook at on television? His Lordship covers everything from eating and drinking to world problems.But it is not bondage, it is freedom, for ". . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." We arefree to do everything that is good and right, in our relationship to God, ourselves and everybody else.

The heart of revival, of the deeper Christian life, of Christianity, is making Jesus Lord of your life.Have you done it? Time is short – very short.