(Rev. 2; 3)
(3) Pergamos. In the course of this world's history we find in scripture that, when it had become wholly corrupt through self-will and idolatry, God in calling out Abram revealed the principle that those who henceforth were to be brought into relationship with Him as His people must necessarily be separated from the world. He, as it were, refused to be longer regarded as the God of this world, sin having made it what it then was, and alas! is still; and so. His people must bear a true testimony to His name in their position in it.
This principle was fully established in a visible manner in His dealings with Abraham's children according to His gracious promise, the judgment of death marking them off from the rest of the world, and separating them externally to God according to His word. “He brought them forth,” as we read in Deut. 8, “out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, and led them through—that great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions and drought, where there was no water. He brought them forth water out of the rock of flint; he fed them with manna which their fathers knew not that he might humble them and that he might prove them to do them good at their latter end.” And when all this gracious dealing was past in which He had sought to teach them what boundless resources they had in Him, He led them into the land of promise casting out the idolatrous nations before them in the same grace. For although in the wilderness they had chosen to put themselves under the claims of law, yet this did not keep the Lord from in grace establishing them in the blessings, although it led Him thereafter to deal with them as to their continuance in these very blessings on the altered ground of their responsibility. It was as He said to them in Deut. 8:18-20, “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which be aware unto thy fathers as it is this day. And it shall be, that if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God and walk after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face so shall ye perish because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.” No power which was arrayed against them could hinder their taking possession as long as they maintained their separation, but what was indeed their danger was contained in the wiles and seductions of those from whom God's judgment had cut them off.
The Lord refers to all this in verses 13 and 14 (Rev. 2), leading our thoughts back (in ver. 14) to the time when, through the efforts of the world to deceive and stumble, every obstacle possible was thrown in the way to binder His people's entrance into their proper blessings and privileges; and He does this to point out to us by these material symbols that again the world is the deadliest foe, being, as it is by His cross declared to be, the “throne” of him who is our Lord's most envenomed enemy, by whom its allurements are now used to keep our hearts from heavenly things. Far better in such a scene to suffer, as His faithful martyr, the full extent of Satan's power over the creation which was made subject to it through sin than in the least degree to compromise the name or the suffering of the blessed One who refused all its glory. When our hearts are truly alive to His honor in this evil world, we know well that nothing so dishonors Him as our yielding in any measure to the voice of worldliness; and therefore we can understand His terribly solemn word in verse 16, when such unfaithfulness has obtained a place. “Repent or else I will come unto thee quickly and will fight against them (those teaching or recommending any worldliness) with the sword of my mouth.” He has revealed Himself (in ver. 12) as the true leader of His people, the captain of the host of the Lord (as in Josh. 5:13-15) to lead us into the enjoyment of heavenly blessings in the true Canaan, the fruit of His own death as the true paschal Lamb. How terrible then to find Him turning His “drawn sword” with the two edges (see Heb. 4:12, 13) against any among those who profess His name!
But to him who “overcomes” in this scene, who preserves, amid all that is fleshly and worldly, the true spirit of the wilderness in its separateness and dependence upon God, the sweetest rewards are promised. He will have “the hidden manna” for his sustenance; and blessed as it is to know Him who is (according to John 6) “the true bread from heaven,” which Moses gave not, yet it is not even the common though blessed portion of Christians in Him as thus the great antitype of Israel's manna which is conveyed by the word, but rather is it participation in that full measure of the preciousness of Christ humbled here which has been reserved in secret for the Father's contemplation and delight, laid up in the golden pot within the ark of the covenant in the holiest of all! (Heb. 9:4; Ex. 16:32-36.) He will receive also “a white stone and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (ver. 17); and this too is in contrast with Exodus and is another link in the chain of analogy. For it is not a national testimony like that which was laid up in the ark of the testimony (Ex. 40:20), but a personal one from God to the soul of him who overcomes; and, better still, it is the witness, not of responsibility and of sin, as Israel's was, but of blessed purity and of the closest intimacy of divine affection. Shall not these things, beloved brethren, win our hearts to faithful separateness while we are left here for conflict?
Thyatira. In wonderful grace God has from time to time taken up the very things which have been introduced into the world's order as the fruit of man's sin and departure from Him, and has turned them into His means for conveying blessing to man, thus necessarily making them speak of Christ in some of His blessed features or glories, because it is in Him—in what He is and will yet be manifestly—that all blessing for man is continued.
It was thus with royalty, as with other things, for 1 Sam. 8:5 shows us (to go no further back) that this order was established among the idolatrous nations before it appeared among the Lord's people: and it was no doubt the degeneracy of moral strength in men individually which made them seek a common center of union who would be a visible symbol of power, while the increase of evil too forced them of necessity to acknowledge some supreme authority. Alas for man! “God is not in all his thoughts,” but self is; and so we see when such necessity arose among men, as later it did in Israel, that in this, as ever, he has shown his incapacity to rise above man in these thoughts; even giving up, as Israel did, the communicated thought of God as supreme over man in order to gratify his own desires by placing man there.
But God has His own purpose to bless man in and by His beloved Son, and He is great enough in His grace to communicate His blessings or the knowledge of them by means of those very things which mark the folly and weakness of men. And so here, for when made to speak of Christ there is no sweeter symbol of His power and glory in millennial days than royalty conveys.
Just because “the king” is introduced in the history of God's dealings with men as the fruit of the weakness into which men have sunk, so will they depend entirely upon Him, and so will every hope henceforth center in His stability and power. And in this light we see the ruinous result which must follow the destruction of His position or glory; all depending on Him, if He is undermined everything must come down with a crash.
For a brief period in its checkered course has the earth seen, in David and Solomon, those who were the only ones ever counted worthy to foreshadow “the Lord's anointed” (Psa. 2; 72); in His royalty and in spite of many blemishes, inseparable from the men, it was a bright season amid surrounding darkness. Too soon did it give place to the fruit of man's heart and will, and, before many reigns were over, it was entirely substituted by the foulest corruption and wickedness, all the more appalling because emanating from that throne which had been established for the help and guidance of men.
The life of Jezebel stands out from the black page of the divine history of man as the embodiment of the corruption of royalty, and, even if the Lord has to refer to the reign as Ahab's when singling it out by His prophet as an example well describing the evil for which sure destruction would fall upon all Israel (Mic. 6:16), yet He lets us know in 1 Kings 21:25, that He is not blind to the source of Ahab's wickedness. “There was none,” He says, “like unto Ahab which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.” Those who were faithful to the God of Israel were nothing to her as we know, and she reckoned even the life of Jehovah's prophet of no account if it offered any barrier to the idolatry and lust which she unscrupulously indulged.
To these scenes we are recalled in the epistle to Thyatira (Rev. 2:18-29), to learn (I doubt not) that the root of these things has come up in the church's history, and that oven the position, and power, and glory of Him, on the due acknowledgment of whom as supreme everything for her and for the world depends, have been not only ignored but in effect utterly overturned by her grasping the place of power in the world, and assuming to teach and to rule, but, as He shows, in reality only to indulge the lust and the idolatry which are to be found now as ever springing from the human heart and will. The Lord (I may say) is never called or revealed as King of the church; but He is King as to His claim over the whole world, and therefore the church by usurping (as she undoubtedly has done) the place of power in the world has not only denied that claim but denied every right and glory of the Lord; acting in the spirit of Jezebel, reversing the Lord's order as to the woman (Gen. 3:16; 1 Tim. 2:11-13; Eph. 5:22-24: compare Isa. 3:12), and seeking to identify the rule of Christ (in her boast) with her own wicked ways in a world which is still unpurged from its wickedness. His position and glory have therefore been destroyed by her to the full extent to which they were committed to her responsibility to guard, and who can wonder in view of such ruinous unfaithfulness that the Lord should pronounce, as He does in verse 21-23, His judgment upon all as the moral close of her history in responsibility? “I gave her space to repent of her fornication,” He says, “and she will not repent. Behold I will cast her into a bed and those that commit adultery with her into great tribulation except they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with death: and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and the hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” (Compare Rev. 21:13.)
But even in such a condition of things some few faithful to Him are to be found—those who value His glory and a true testimony thereof to the world before any position or power which the world contains. Not deceived by the pomp and glitter of a position of power and honor in the world as it is, nor deterred by the thunders of wrath temporal and spiritual fiercely launched forth with all the determination of assumed authority, they think of what is due to Him who has title to all power in heaven and on earth but is still the rejected One from the earth as to what is His true character. They judge all that through which they pass by this standard, walking in separation of heart and mind from all and caring only to be found in company with Him whom they know. They are “overcomers” —not able to set anything to rights, able only to acknowledge Him truly; and though this exposes them to the full weight of the rage of corrupt power, they are encouraged. For, as of old, when man's kingly power prepared a “burning fiery furnace” for those who remained true to their God, despite forced idolatry, and who refused the claim of authority to power that was corrupt and cast them into the trial, the Lord was by them in His glory to cheer their hearts (Dan. 3:25); so here the same “Son of God” (see ver. 18) appears and speaks for the encouragement of His people, and in Him they whose eyes are opened see true divine power of discernment and judgment as well as righteousness, which applies the test with an unerring hand, to which the fiercer and cruel haughtiness of man's “burning fiery furnace” is but a sorry contrast; and so they can wait for His reward.
“Unto you I say, the rest (or remnant) in Thyatira,” are His words, “I will put upon you none other burden; but that which ye have hold fast till I come. And be that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give him the morning star.”
The reward is, as ever, characteristic of the trial, for on every side the “overcomer” can see “works” which not only are unlike those of the meek and lowly One or those of the exalted and righteous One, but which also displace those, so that he cannot find a trace of them in the scene; and by that false and corrupt church he sees the name of God's Son fastened to more than all the foulness and violence which apostate kingcraft ever produced on the earth, though it is a terrible stream to stem. None but a soul filled with a true sense of His glory, and patient to abide the day which will put all these things into their due place, can hold fast what is true in spite of opposition. But he that does so and acts in such a scene consistently with the blessed ways of the Son of God will by-and-by share in the victorious power and rule of the true David, when He, whose hands are even now stretched forth in intercession and blessing; shall stretch forth His hands to grasp the “scepter of righteousness” (Heb. 1), which is no less a symbol of His glory than the reward of His perfection in grace and holiness as man, and shall vindicate God's glory on all His enemies.
Most blessedly does God bear witness in Heb. 1 to the divine glory of His Son, and in the course of that witness the throne and the scepter are seen to be the accompaniments of that glory. “Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of, thy kingdom, thou halt loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” In Psa. 45, from which these words are quoted, He is seen wielding the scepter as a consequence of His faithfulness in grace and holiness as man; as one has said, “It is Messiah in judgment and taking the throne. He had already proved that He loved righteousness and hated iniquity—was fit to govern;” and as we think of Him thus in contrast to all and especially to that most unfaithful of all others—the Jezebel-sheltering world-church—we can devoutly echo the words and the desires put by God's Spirit into the heart of the Psalmist, himself a type of the gracious One of whom he speaks: “Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee forever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall under thee.”
It is thus that the scriptures speak of His glory as the reigning One, but as if to set His glory on earth before the heart of the “overcomer” the words of the reward to him in Rev. 2:26, 27 are taken from the second Psalm which speaks of the divine and immoveable purpose by which He is made King, notwithstanding rejection by or opposition from men, and of the decree which proclaims the earth-rejected man to be Jehovah's Son and which assures Him of the world-wide dominion which the Father will give Him. It is in this way that the overcomer knows Him as One who has trodden in spirit the same path as he treads; for it is to the One who suffered under the proud and winked hand of “the kings of the earth and the rulers” that Jehovah is heard saying,” Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."... “Blessed are all they who put their trust in him.”
But He has more than His glory to present to the “overcomer,” wide though it be in its victorious sweep and fitted to establish his confidence in patient expectation. The Lord delights to bestow a present portion for the affections of His faithful servants; and therefore He, in addition to speaking of glory on earth presents the beauty of His person. “I will give him the morning star.” That which shines so brightly and cheerily in the dead and chill darkness before the dawn, refreshing the eye and heart of the lonely watcher whose eye and heart it fixes and occupies until, without setting, it melts into the full blaze of light from the rising sun—this it is which speaks of the Lord Jesus as the heart's portion for His lonely ones in Thyatira's darkness. And it is fitting; for He is calculated thus to draw out the heart's desire and to center it upon Himself. “I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright and the morning star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come.” “He that testifieth these things saith, Yea I am coming quickly. Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.”
(Continued from page 64.)
(To be continued)