It was decline of the faith and acting the plan of the kingdom, (into which we have been called and its glory)—that became the ruin of the church. Who should worship in the divine and heavenly assembly (and of whom, indeed, should it be composed), but those who were separate out of a world still guilty of the death of Christ and to be judged for final unbelief and resistance to Him?
As to the seven churches.
"But thou art rich" marks the declension in Smyrna. Then Balaaμ.-Then promise to the faithful in Thyatira to have power over the nations which showed the gist of her ambition. Next the quiet settlement of Sardis. The church in a mild and godly trust in Christ's name and word and the kingdom forgotten in Philadelphia. And Laodicea rich in this world and the world well pleased, and then she spued out.
What a difference between the apostasy of the dispensation and the failure of the Testimony.