Revelation 2

He abolished death; he destroyed him that had the power of death; he was the destruction of the grave; he hath finished sin, and made an end of it; he hath vanquished the curse of the law, nailed it to his cross, triumphed over them upon his cross, and made a show of these things openly. Yea, and even now, as a sign of his triumph and conquest, he is alive from the dead, and hath the keys of death and hell in his own keeping. Bun.—Stand still now in spirit, and think that the door is unclosing for thee, and that the great things of eternity are about to be revealed to thy apprehension. A solemn moment! Flesh and blood thrill with awe and fear, like the apostles at the Transfiguration, as they enter into the cloud. But if thou art a sincere believer and follower of Christ, HE is HERE, and the light of his countenance shall stream in upon thine eye, and the divine music of those words shall break upon thine ear: “I, the Good Shepherd, the Rock of Ages, the Man who drunk to the dregs of the cup of death, I, the Resurrection and the Life, even I have the keys of hell and death.” E. M. G.

19. John is commanded to write: the things which he had seen, i. e., the vision given to him of the Son of man; the things which are, i. e., wonders in heaven; and the things which shall be hereafter, i. e., future judgments, defeats, and victories. D. F.—This vision is the natural introduction to all that follows, and indeed defines the main purpose of the whole book, inasmuch as it shows us Christ sustaining, directing, dwelling in his Churches. We are thus led to expect that the remainder of the prophecy shall have the Church of Christ for its chief subject, and that the politics of the world, and the mutations of nations, shall come into view mainly in their bearing upon that. A. M.

1. UNTO the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; 2 I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast 3 found them liars: and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, 4 and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left 5 thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of 6 his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolai- 7 tanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. 8 And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the 9 last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, 10 but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. 11 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

WHAT Christian is there who does not feel pierced through by the words, “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love”? Sometimes we are uplifted by high-wrought feelings till no service seems too hard, no self-denial too severe; our resolution appears sufficient for a repetition of all previous trials and many besides them. In the warmth and earnestness of our feelings old temptations fall off like a garment, and we are more disposed to wonder that we were ever enslaved than to fear that we shall be enslaved again. Selfishness, impurity, cowardice, falsehood, indolence—these seem impossible thenceforward for ever. And then comes the languor which is almost sure to follow; the return to our ordinary ways and habits; the gathering of old temptations with new ones added; the discovery that these high impulses have not made, after all, any great difference in our character; the want of delight in worship, public or private; the loss of keen sensibility of conscience. Resolutions once made with great fervor seem the fruit of mere excitement. And so we are in danger of being untrue to our first love; because when we come into this world our eyes are not strong enough to pierce below the surface and see the truth of God behind the unreality of things, and our memory is not able to retain the impression of our purer and better moments. We must not allow ourselves to be cast down, nor to despair because our hearts seem colder at one time than at another. The test of the cold heart is the yielding to sin; and, if we are clinging to Him and to his will, we may be quite sure that what we take for coldness of heart is a trial, not a treason. It is not inconstancy to our first love that we are not so passionate as we were, if we have not given our hearts to any other love or swerved from the duties which love imposes. The will does not really lose its strength to obey because the hour for feeling is past and the hour for real obedience has come. The power to serve is still left, though the service no longer seems easy or delightful: and the knowledge to serve remains behind as well as the power. F. T.

SEVEN Churches are selected in the province of Asia, where the apostle John, in his later years, wielded a patriarchal influence. These were not all the Churches in the province, but seven are taken to represent the whole visible Church; and such seven, as in their diversities of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, zeal and lethargy, give opportunity for the most various counsels, reproofs, and promises with a view to the profit of the Church in all time coming. D. F.—Here, as everywhere, the word of God and the history of the apostolic Church evince their applicability to all times and circumstances, and their inexhaustible fullness of instruction, warning, and encouragement for all states and stages of religious life. P. S.—What notable contrasts do these seven offer—a Church face to face with danger and death (Smyrna), and a Church at ease, settling down upon its lees (Sardis); a Church with abundant means and loud profession, yet doing little or nothing for the furtherance of the truth (Laodicea), and a Church with little strength and small opportunities, yet accomplishing a mighty work for Christ (Philadelphia); a Church intolerant of doctrinal error, yet too much lacking that love toward its Lord for which nothing else is a substitute (Ephesus), and over against this a Church not careful nor zealous, as it ought to be, for doctrinal purity, but diligent in works and ministries of love (Thyatira); or, to review these same Churches from another point of view, a Church in conflict with heathen libertinism, the sinful freedom of the flesh (Ephesus), and a Church or Churches in conflict with Jewish superstition, the sinful bondage of the spirit (Pergamos, Philadelphia); or, for the indolence of man a more perilous case than either, Churches with no vigorous forms of opposition to the truth in the midst of them, to brace their energies and to cause them, in the act of defending the imperiled truth, to know it better and to love it more (Sardis, Laodicea). These Churches are more or less representative Churches, having been selected because they are so; the great Head of the Church contemplates them for the time being as symbolic of his universal Church, implying as much in that mystic seven, and giving many other indications of the same.

The seven Epistles are all constructed precisely on the same model. They every one of them contain: 1. A command in exactly the same form to the seer that he should write to the Angel of the Church. 2. One or more glorious titles which Christ claims for himself, as exalting the dignity of his person, and thus adding weight and authority to the message which he sends; these titles being in almost every case drawn more or less evidently from the attributes ascribed to him, or claimed by him, in the manifestation of himself which has just gone before (1: 4-20). 3. The actual message from Christ to the Angel of the Church, declaring his intimate knowledge of its condition, good, or bad, or mixed, with a summons to steadfastness in the good, to repentance from the evil—all this brought home by the fact that he was walking up and down in the midst of his Churches, in readiness to punish and in readiness to reward. 4. A promise to the faithful, to him that should overcome—the heavenly blessedness being presented under the richest variety of the most attractive and often the most original images. There is not one of these promises which does not look on to, and perhaps first find its full explanation in, some later portion of the book. 5. Finally, the whole is summed up with an exhortation which shall give a universal character to these particular addresses, a summons to every one with a spiritual ear that he should give earnest heed to the things which were indeed spoken to all. In the addresses to the four last Churches the position of 4 and 5 is reversed. . . . It is recorded of the admirable Bengel that it was his wont above all things to recommend the study of these Epistles to youthful ministers of Christ’s word and sacraments. And indeed to them they are full of teaching, of the most solemn warning, of the strongest encouragement.

1. Ephesus, the chief city of Ionia, “light of

Asia,” as the Ephesians themselves styled it, asserting in this style that primacy for Ephesus which Smyrna and Pergamos disputed with it, had now so far outstripped both its competitors that it was at once the civil and ecclesiastical center of that “Asia” with which we have to do. Wealthy, prosperous, and magnificent, a meeting-place of oriental religions and Greek culture, and famous on many grounds in heathen antiquity, it was most famous of all for the celebrated temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world, about which we read so much, Acts 19 (read pages 135, 136). But Ephesus had better titles of honor than these. It was a city greatly favored of God. Paul labored there during three years; Timothy, Aquila, Priscilla, Apollos, Tychicus, all contributed to build up the Church in that city. And, if we may judge from Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, and from his parting address to the elders of that Church, nowhere did the word of the gospel find a kindlier soil, strike root more deeply, or bear fairer fruits of faith and love. John too had made it the chief seat of his ministry during the closing years of his protracted life; from whence he exercised a wide jurisdiction over the whole of “Asia.” From a church to which so much was given much would be required.

Who walketh. The seer had indeed already beheld the Lord “in the midst of the seven candlesticks,” but not “walking” in their midst. The word expresses the unwearied activity of Christ in his Church, moving up and down in the midst of it; beholding the evil and the good; evermore trimming and feeding with oil of grace the golden lamps of the sanctuary.

3. The original as it stands in the best critical editions: “And hast patience, and didst bear for my name’s sake, and hast not grown weary.” The Lord here praises the angel and in him the Church at Ephesus, that he and it had borne the burden and heat of a long day’s toil without fainting or waxing weary.

4. On the question, when the Apocalypse was given, we have a certain amount of implicit evidence here, in this reproach with which the Lord reproaches the Ephesian Angel; such as has its value in confirming the ecclesiastical tradition which places it in the reign of Domitian, as against the more modern view which gives the reign of Nero as the date of the composition of this book. It has been well observed that in Paul’s Epistle to the Church of Ephesus there are no signs, nor even presentments, of this approaching spiritual declension with which the great Searcher of hearts upbraids it here. Writing to no Church does he treat of higher spiritual mysteries. There is no word of blame in the Epistle, no word indicating dissatisfaction with the spiritual condition of his Ephesian converts. He warns them, indeed, in his parting charge given at Miletus, against dangers threatening them at once from within and from without (Acts 20: 29, 30); but no word indicates that they by any fault of theirs were laying themselves open to these. Those who place the Apocalypse in the reign of Nero hardly allow ten years between that condition and this—too brief a period for so vast and lamentable a change. It is inconceivable that there should have been such a letting-go of first love in so brief a time. Place the Apocalypse under Domitian, and thirty years will have elapsed since Paul wrote his Epistle to Ephesus. The outlines of the truth are still preserved; but the truth itself is not for a second gengeneration what it was for the first. The latter has the same watchwords as had the earlier, but they do not rouse as they did once. The virtue which they once had has gone from them. Apparently there is nothing changed; while in fact everything is changed. How often has something of this kind repeated itself in the Church! T.

Left thy first love. No evil is more marked among the Christian Churches of this day than precisely the absence of this “spirit of burning.” There is plenty of liberality and effort, there is much interest in religious questions, there is genial tolerance and wide culture, there is a high standard of morality, and, on the whole, a tolerable adherence to it—but there is little love and little fervor. Where is that Spirit which was poured out on Pentecost? Where are the cloven tongues of fire, where the flame which Christ died to light up? Where? The question is not difficult to answer. His promise remains faithful. He does send the Spirit, who is fire. But our sin, our negligence, and our eager absorption with worldly cares, and our withdrawal of mind and heart from the patient contemplation of his truth, have gone far to quench the Spirit. Is it not so? Are our souls on fire with the love of God, aglow with the ardor caught from Christ’s love? A. M.—The real object of the subsequent life, as a struggle of experience, is to make a fixed state of that which was initiated only as a love. It is to convert a heavenly impulse into a heavenly habit. It is to raise the Christian childhood into a Christian manhood—to make the first love a second or completed love; or, what is the same, to fulfill the first love, and give it a pervading fullness in the soul; such that the whole man shall be for ever rested, immovably grounded in it. H. B.

5. “And repent, and do the first works.” Christ does not say “Feel thy first feelings”—that perhaps would have been impossible, and even if possible, might have had but little value in it—but “Do the first works,” such as thou didst in the time of thy first devotedness and zeal. Not the quantity, but the quality, of the works was now other and worse than once it had been. Will remove thy candlestick. The removing of the candlestick from a place implies the entire departure of Christ’s grace, of his Church with all its blessings, from that spot, with the transfer of it to another; for it is removal of the candlestick, not extinction of the candle, which is threatened here—judgment for some, but that very judgment the occasion of mercy for others. And so it has proved. The candlestick has been removed, but the candle has not been quenched; and what the East has lost the West has gained. How awful for Ephesus the fulfillment of the threat has been every modern traveler who has visited the ruins of that once famous city has borne witness. T.

Forgetfulness makes us as if things had never been; and so takes away from the soul one great means of stay, support, and encouragement. When choice David was dejected, the remembrance of the hill Hermon was his stay; when he was to go out against Goliath, the remembrance of the lion and the bear was his support; so when those that have had the power of the things of God upon them can think of this when they are withdrawn, it will have some kind of operation upon the soul. And therefore you shall find that the recovering of a backslider usually begins at the remembrance of former things. “Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent and do thy first works.” Bun.

6. “But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” Very beautiful is the tenderness of the Lord in thus bringing forward a second time some good thing which he had found at Ephesus. 7. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.” These words recur in all the Epistles; with only this difference, that in the former three they occur before, in the latter four after, the final promise. That in every case the words usher in, or commend, truths of the deepest concernment to all, we gather from a comparison of the passages, all of them of deepest significance, where the same summons to attention recurs (Mat. 11:15; 13:9, 43; Mark 7:16; Rev. 13:9); so that Irving has perfect right when he affirms, “This form always is used of radical, and as it were generative, truths, great principles, most precious prom-

“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” It is deeply interesting and instructive to observe how in this, and probably in every other case, the character of the promise corresponds to the character of the faithfulness displayed. They who have abstained from the idol meats, from the sinful dainties of the flesh and world, shall, in return, “eat of the tree of life”; or, as it is in the Epistle to Pergamos, “of the hidden manna” (2: 17). They who have not feared those who can kill the body only, who have given, where need was, their bodies to the flame, shall not be hurt by the second death (2: 11). They whom the world has not vanquished shall have dominion over the world (2: 26, 27). They who keep their garments here undefiled shall be clad in the white and shining garments of immortality there (3: 4, 5). They who overcome Jewish pretensions (and the earnest warnings of the Epistle to the Hebrews show us that this for some was not done without the hardest struggle) shall be made free, not of an earthly but of a heavenly Jerusalem (3: 12). The only Church in which any difficulty occurs in tracing the correlation between the form of the victory and the form of the reward is the last.

Paradise. We may trace the word through an ascending scale of meanings. From any garden of delight, which is its first meaning, it comes to be predominantly applied to the garden of Eden, then to the resting-place (in the invisible world) of separate souls in joy and felicity, and lastly, to the very heaven itself; and we see eminently in it what we see indeed in so many words, how revealed religion assumes them into her service, and makes them vehicles of far higher truth than any which they knew at first, transforming and transfiguring them, as in this case, from glory to glory.

8. The next in order to Ephesus of the Seven Churches is Smyrna; the next not only in the spiritual order here, but in the natural as well, lying as it

Smyrna.

ises, most deep fetches from the secrets of God, being as it were eyes of truth, seeds and kernels of knowledge.” These words proclaim to us that they are matters of weightiest concernment to the whole Church of God, which Christ is uttering here.

does a little to the north of that city. Smyrna was one of the fairest and noblest cities of Ionia. This Church must have been founded at a very early date, though there is no mention of it either in the Acts or the Epistles of Paul. T. —Smyrna was

9. These words constitute a very beautiful parenthesis, declaring as they do the judgment of Heaven concerning this Church of Smyrna as contradistinguished from the judgment of earth. Men saw nothing there save the poverty, but he who sees not as man seeth saw the true riches which this seeming poverty concealed, which indeed the poverty, rightly interpreted, was; even as he too often sees the real poverty which may lie behind the show of riches; for there are both poor rich men and rich poor men in his sight.

The synagogue of Satan. A hard saying, a terrible designation on the lips of him who uses not such words at random, but one which they, once the chosen people of the Lord, had wrought with all their might to deserve. Nothing else indeed was possible for them, if they would not be his people indeed; they could not be as the heathen, merely non-Christian, they must be anti-Christian. The measure of their former nearness to God was the measure of their present distance from him. As nothing is accidental in this book, so it is worth remarking that, as we have here “the synagogue of Satan,” so presently, “the throne of Satan” (2 : 13), and then lastly, “the depths of Satan” (2 : 24); “the synagogue of Satan” representing the Jewish anantagonism to the Church, “the throne of Satan” the heathen, and “the depths of Satan” the heretical.

10. “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.” The great Captain of our salvation never keeps back or conceals what those who faithfully witness for him may have to bear for his name’s sake; never entices recruits into his service, or seeks to retain them under his banner by the promise that they shall find all things easy and pleasant there. He here announces that bonds, and tribulation, and death itself are before as many as at Smyrna shall continue faithful to the end. But for all this they are not to fear. Presently he will declare to them why they should not fear. T.—“Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” We are to be faithful unto death, this day, and every day. We are to live a life of entire consecration; crucified unto the world and the world unto us. And if we have sufficient faith to let him day by day and in all things dispose of us, take what he will, give what he will, send where he will, we need not envy those who literally suffered martyrdom for his name’s sake. For us, too, there is laid up a crown of life. G. B.—When eternal life is promised to faith, or love, or hope, it is upon supposal that those graces, being planted in the heart, shall finally prosper. He that is faithful to the death shall inherit the crown of life. It is love that never fails that shall enter into heaven. “It is hope firm unto the end” that shall be accomplished in a glorious fruition. Bates.

11. This “second death,” setting forth as it does the death in life of the lost, as contrasted with the life in death of the saved, is a phrase peculiar to the Apocalypse. But, though the word is not on the lips of the Lord during his earthly life, he does not shrink from proclaiming the fearful thing. T.

12. AND to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath 13 the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan 14 dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of 15 Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also 16 them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will 17 come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches: To him that over- cometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.

18. And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, 19 who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass; I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last 20 to be more than the first. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce 21 my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her 22 space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of 23 their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you 24 according to your works. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I 25 will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already, hold fast till I 26 come. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give 27 power over nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter 28 shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the 29 morning star. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

THE secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and is felt by dwelling with God, by thinking of God more than by talking of him. To each of his servants he giveth “a white stone, and in the stone a new name is written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.” F. W. R.—He that overcometh—every victorious soul prevailing by faith and by righteousness in the long and patient battle of life—shall have secret satisfactions springing up in his heart, known only between himself and his Lord. They will not consist in outward applauses, in visible successes, in any worldly compensations whatever. The chief of them all will be the silent assurances of his personal affection who is the purest, highest, holiest. Faith must dwell in her own sanctuary, see by her own light, feed on her own secret and immortal manna, be content with her own joy, cling to the white stone with the ineffable name, and wait for her spiritual justification and victory. F. D. H.

And I will give him the morning star. In the last chapter of the Book we read, I Jesus am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. The words before us are, therefore, I will give myself to him. But myself especially in one character; as the light of life; as the light which springs up in the morning after a long night of gloom and storm; as the joy and comfort of the weary watcher, the compensation for long waiting, and the prize of long struggling. It is not wholly unlike the words of Peter with reference to the prophetic word: Whereunto ye do well if ye give heed, as to a lamp giving light in a murky place, until day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts. The promise is that that day shall dawn, that that day-star shall at last rise upon our hearts. V.

12. Pergamos.** Although of high antiquity, its greatness, splendor, and importance did not date very far back. It only attained these under the successors of Alexander; of whom one made Pergamos the capital of his kingdom—the same kingdom which a later of his dynasty, Attalus III., bequeathed to the Romans. It was famous for its immense library, collected in rivalry with that of Alexandria; our “parchment” (pergamenum) deriving its name from thence; for splendid temples of Zeus, of Athene, and of Apollo; but most of all for the worship of Æsculapius, the remains of whose magnificent temple outside the walls of the city still remain. T.

“The two-edged, the sharp sword.”—We read of this sword in the first chapter and also in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents. This sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, proceeds out of the mouth of Christ.

13. Where the throne of Satan is.** A very fearful description, and indicating a very merciful recognition on the part of Christ of the difficulties and of the temptations of his people. In this case he was able to testify that difficulties and temptations, of an outward kind at least, had not overcome their constancy. They had held fast what they had been taught of Christ.

14. But what the fires of martyrdom could not do, a more secret and insidious snare might effect. They who could brave martyrdom for Christ can not always resist an enemy in their own camp— some bosom sin may do what intimidation and persecution have failed to effect. Listen, then. But I have against thee a few things. How serious a beginning! Which of us can hear unmoved when Christ says, I have against thee a few things? Thou hast there, in Pergamos, men holding the teaching of

Balaam, who taught to Balak how to throw a stumblingblock before the sons of Israel—namely, both to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication. That strange mixture of a man, as Balaam has been called but too truly, a man who heard the words of God and saw the vision of the Almighty,

Pergamos.

yet whose heart went after covetousness, and made a fatal compromise between the service of God and the service of Mammon; when he found that he was not allowed to curse Israel, and thus to possess himself of the promised reward in one way, suggested to Balak a more subtle but far more potent spell, in the form of a temptation to Israel through the lusts of the flesh. The iniquities described in the 25th chapter of the Book of Numbers, following immediately upon the unsuccessful visit of Balaam in which cursing itself had been supernaturally turned into blessing, are expressly ascribed in a later chapter of that book (ch. 31) to the secret agency of Balaam.

15. There is no occasion for distinguishing here between the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and the doctrine of Balaam. The Nicolaitans were persons who talked loudly of the liberty of Christ, and used that liberty for an occasion to the flesh. They were among those described in the Epistle of Jude as ungodly men turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. V.

17. To eat of the hidden manna. The seeing of Christ as he is, and through this beatific vision the being made like to him, is identical with this eating of the hidden manna; which shall, as it were, be then brought forth from the sanctuary, the holy of holies of God’s immediate presence, where it was withdrawn from sight so long, that all may partake of it; the glory of Christ, now shrouded and concealed, being then revealed at once to his people and in them.

18. Thyatira, a city of no first-rate dignity, was a Macedonian colony; and it may be looked at as a slight and unintentional confirmation, in a minute particular, of the veracity of the Acts, that Lydia, a purple-seller of Thyatira, is met exactly in the Macedonian city of Philippi, this being precisely what was likely to happen from the close and frequent intercourse maintained between a mother city and its daughter colonies. From this Lydia, whose heart the Lord had opened to attend to the things spoken of Paul, the Church at Thyatira may have taken its beginnings. She who had gone forth for a while, to buy and sell and get gain, when she returned home may have brought home with her far richer merchandise than any she had looked to obtain.

19. “And the last to be more than the first.” The faithful in Thyatira were growing and increasing in this service of love, this patience of faith; herein satisfying the desire of him, who evermore desires for his people that they should abound more and more in all good things. 20. The whole condition of things at Thyatira was exactly the reverse of what it was at Ephesus: there much zeal for the maintenance of sound doctrine, but little love, and as a consequence, no doubt, few ministrations of love; here the activity of faith and love, but insufficient zeal for the maintenance of godly discipline and doctrine, a patience of error even where there was not a participation in it. Jezebel. A comparison of this verse with vs. 14-16 leaves no doubt that the Jezebelites, and Balaamites, and Nicolaitans, with secondary differences no doubt, were yet substantially the same: all libertine sects, dis-

Thyatira.

claiming the obligations of the moral law; all starting with a denial that Jesus Christ was come in the flesh, and that in the flesh therefore men were to be holy; all alike false spiritualists, whose high-flying pretensions did not hinder them from ending in the foulest fleshly sins; or which rather were themselves the means of entangling them therein.

21. I gave her space to repent, and she repented not.** The fact that punishment does not at once overtake sinners is constantly misunderstood by them as an evidence that it never will overtake them (Eccl. 8: 11; Isa. 26: 10; Ps. 26: 11); that God does not see, or, seeing, does not care to avenge. Christ opens out here another aspect under which this delay in the divine revenges may be regarded. The very time during which ungodly men are heaping up for themselves greater wrath against the day of wrath, was a time lent them for repentance (Rom. 2: 4; 2 Pet. 3: 9), if only they would have understood the object and the meaning of it.

25. “But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.” It is on this condition that he will impose on them no additional burden. What they have of sound doctrine, of holy living, this they must hold fast, must so grasp it that none shall wrest it from them, till the day when the Lord shall come, and bring this long and painful struggle for the maintenance of his truth to an end. Ever and ever in Scripture, not the day of death, but the day of the Lord Jesus, is put as the term of all conflict.

26. “To him will I give power over the nations.” The royalties of Christ shall by reflection and communication be the royalties also of his Church. They shall reign; but only because Christ reigns, and because he is pleased to share his dignity with them.

28. Thus does he who is “fairer than the children of men” claim all that is fairest and loveliest in creation as the faint shadow and image of his perfections. When Christ promises that he will give to his faithful ones the morning star, he promises that he will give to them himself, that he will impart to them his own glory and a share in his own royal dominion; for the star is evermore the symbol of royalty, being therefore linked with the scepter (Num. 24: 17). All the glory of the world shall end in being the glory of the Church, if only this abide faithful to its Lord. T.