01.01. Chapter 01 - Philadelphia: What is it?

Chapter 01 Philadelphia: What is it? My purpose in this book is to follow a gracious movement of God and to show the Scriptural principles that characterize it. I also will discuss the difficulties and oppositions to this movement. My aim will be to exercise people with relation to it and to help those already exercised to settle questions that may disturb them. (The people involved in this movement commonly are called “brethren” or “Plymouth Brethren” although they do not accept any such name, Ed.)

I do not propose to discuss any history of this movement, for a history would prejudice minds in opposite ways by the introduction of names. We tend to make men commend the truth rather than making the truth approve the men who follow it. Therefore, I will look only at principles, with their necessary results on our conduct, only referring to history when necessary to explain their importance to us.

Each person then must apply the principles for himself. But with divine light and an unprejudiced soul truly before God, the application should be reasonably easy. It will test us, of course, as to whether we really are following God’s path. Let us not seek to escape the test but find the blessing which God has for us in it. When special times of sifting come, the sense of spiritual weakness and the love we have for one another would make us gladly seek escape. But, escape would be unwise and unbelieving. Satan is the sifter of God’s wheat, and it is a serious thing to let him win, because sifting is God’s method for purification. Take Simon Peter in the Gospels: he is in special danger, foreknown by the Lord as specially likely to fail, and yet Peter cannot be spared the sifting. “I have prayed for you,” says the Lord, not that you won’t be sifted, not even that you may not fail, but “that your faith fail not; and when you are restored, strengthen your brethren” (Luk 22:32). Here, good was to come from Satan’s sifting, even for one who might seem to have failed completely under it.

What comfort there is in this for us! If the Lord is ready to put into our hands any work for Himself, what wonder if, first of all, He is pleased to let us, like Peter, find in sorrow and suffering the value of Satan’s sieve in breaking down our carelessness and self-confidence.

Going on to the question at the head of this chapter, I propose to look briefly at the Lord’s addresses to the seven ’churches’ in Rev 2:1-29; Rev 3:1-22, which addresses are prophetic of seven successive conditions of the Church at large, covering the entire period of time from the apostles’ day until the Rapture. A great proof of this is the exacting correspondence between the prophecy and its historical fulfillment. Let’s briefly look at the first five churches.

EPHESUS, to which, in its fresh eagerness, Paul gave the doctrine of the Church, here heads a history of decline. Outwardly, things still look good. The departure is realized only by God. First love is no longer there. This is the beginning of the end, a root upon which many evil fruits will develop if there is not recovery.

SMYRNA shows us the double attack of Satan on the Church in this weakened condition. Outwardly, there is persecution by the Roman Empire. Internally, there is the introduction of Judaism into Christianity which develops as the enemy’s seed, the “synagogue of Satan” — the mixing together of true and false in a legal and ritualistic system claiming earthly possession and promise, and already slandering (blaspheming) the faithful remnant.

PERGAMOS shows us the lost pilgrim character of the Church. They are “dwelling where Satan’s throne is.” The Nicolaitans, religious subjectors of the laity, now act as such, while Balaam-teachers seduce God’s people into idolatry and evil alliances with the world. In THYATIRA, we see the above fully developed in Romanism. That which Balaam-teachers did before as individuals, a woman (type or picture of the professing church) does now, speaking as a prophetess with the claim of divine authority. But God brands her with the terrible name of ’Jezebel,’ the idolatrous persecutor of the true prophets in Ahab’s day. However, development of this evil line ends here. A remnant begins to be marked out again (“the rest in Thyatira”) which prepares us for a different condition of things in the next address.

Accordingly, in SARDIS, we don’t see Jezebel or her corruption. Things have been received and heard, but they are ready to die. The general state is death, but with a “name to live” and “a few names that have not defiled their garments” in this place of the dead. We have here the national (government-controlled) churches of the Reformation, with their more-Scriptural doctrine, but which is difficult to maintain in the midst of what (the world claiming to be the true Church) is spiritually dead, with only a name to live. This brings us to PHILADELPHIA. If the previous interpretations are correct, Philadelphia must be something that has developed in the years since the Reformation, outside of the spiritually-dead state churches.

Philadelphia has the Lord’s approval in a way that no other of the seven churches has, except Smyrna, with which, in another way also, Philadelphia is linked. Here the synagogue of Satan once more appears, as in Smyrna. There seems to be some revival of the Judaistic-principles typified by this, or at least something brings these principles to the front of the Lord’s address.

It is understandable why Christians would shrink from appropriating to themselves the Lord’s commendation found here, although that very approval must cause every Christian to desire the character which our Lord can thus commend. But, since no circumstance can make it impossible to fulfill the conditions necessary for His approval, there surely must have been Philadelphians (people with a Philadelphian-character) in every generation since these words of Scripture were written.

It is blessed to see that what the Lord approves in Philadelphia is given in such plain words: keeping His Word, not denying His Name, keeping the word of His patience. All this seems simple, and it is to one who is simply leaning on the Lord! Yet, if we apply it carefully, not letting ourselves off easily, these words will search us out to the very bottom.

Although there always have been individual Philadelphians, a Philadelphian-movement is another matter, and this is what we should look for as occurring sometime after the Reformation. Although we shouldn’t flatter ourselves with being what we are not, we must consider that, if there is such a movement, what is our personal relationship to it? This may cause us anxious inquiry, and it would be very disappointing if a satisfactory answer was not available.

If the Lord has given me in these addresses, clues to His relationship to the successive phases of the Church on earth, then I must ask myself where I fit into this. If I do not belong to that line of development that ends in Thyatira (Papal Rome) and I do not belong to the state-churches of the Reformation, or those churches similarly constituted, then I must find my place either in Philadelphia or in Laodicea (the seventh church).

Now, if the Holy Spirit is at work in the midst of such a state of things as Sardis implies, not merely to sustain a remnant, but in testimony against evil, in what direction will He work? It will be to separate the spiritually living from the spiritually dead. He will lead Christians to seek out their own company, giving expression to the ’love of the brethren’ — the meaning of the word Philadelphia. This work of the Holy Spirit has characterized, in varying degrees, many movements that have arisen since the Reformation, which movements taught and practiced, more or less, the separation of Christians from the world and the communion (fellowship) of Christians as a visible reality. Every protest against the misery of an unsaved church-membership and every attempt to maintain the difference between the Church and the world has proclaimed the related truth of the Church’s practical unity. Philadelphia — brotherly love — is a word that covers all this seeking to make visible the true Church, so long thought to be invisible because of being hidden in the world and in the religions of men.

Thus, ’Philadelphia’ stands for a well-defined movement in the history of the professing church, which movement has assumed many different characters. These differences may be used to deny the nature of Philadelphia as defining any distinct path for God’s people today, but this is only a superficial view of the matter. Other considerations will make us modify this first conception and make us realize that the Word of God, here as elsewhere, requires complete honesty in our obedience to it, to get His blessings. Let’s now consider the first warning that the Lord gives us in the address to the church of Philadelphia (Rev 3:7-13).