Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Thyatira pt.#2 - Exploring Revelation
Jun 2nd, 2020
Exploring RevelationArt Sadlier
Categories: Commentary;Prophecy;Book Study

We were introduced to the Church of Thyatira last week. We take up the study again in Rev.2:20.

We are introduced to a woman called Jezebel - who is this Jezebel?

The very name Jezebel is associated with evil. In the Old Testament we find a woman named Jezebel. She was the notorious daughter of Ethbal, the Pagan King of Sidon. His subjects in Tyre and Sidon were Baal worshippers.

Jezebel married Israel's wicked King Ahab. She brought her pagan priests with her to Samaria and proceeded to introduce worship of Baal and Asheroth to Israel. She built pagan temples and set up groves in the hills, where Baal worship could be carried on. The worship of Baal was centered around immorality.

As we come to our text, the Old Testament Jezebel was dead a thousand years,but the demons that controlled her were now working in the new Jezebel of Thyatira. This new Jezebel was polluting the church with moral and doctrinal impurities. She propigated her evil teachings with little or no opposition from the church.

No doubt she taught some truth along with her error, false teaching is always salted with truth. Vance Havner said, "we once had a clock that didn't run, but even it was right twice a day".

The greater sin was found in the true believers that tolerated Jezebel to continue in the church.

Jezebel was responsible for two evils in the Church of Thyatira.

FIRST, "to seduce my servants to commit fornication". That probably has a double application, referring to physical sexual fornication. PHYSICAL fornication is departing from loyalty to the one to whom you are committed. SPIRITUAL fornication is departing from the worship of God to something else that takes his place.

This is prophetic of what happened to the church by in large, in the ERA after 596 AD. That is the ERA when the Roman Catholic Church came into existence, so we equate Thyatira with Rome.

It was during those years that the Vandals and the Goths overran Europe and brought their idolatrous pagan worship with them. The church in the spirit of compromise, seeking to win these pagans to profession of Faith in Christ, adopted part of their pagan idolatrous religion. The result was that the church became partly Christian, partly Judaistic, and partly Pagan.

If you go to St. Peters Basillica in Rome today, you will see statues of pagan gods such a Zeus. The Catholic Church, even in recent years, has compromised with pagan religions, supposedly to win them to Catholicism.

It was during this time that the Roman doctrine of tran-substantiation was introduced. Tran-substantiation teaches that the bread and the wine of the communion table actually becomes the flesh of Christ and the blood of Christ. This is alleged to happen the moment the symbol goes into the mouth.

In other words, every time a person takes the Lord's Supper, Christ is sacrificed again. This clearly says that Christ's sacrifice on Calvary was not sufficient to atone for sin, He must be sacrificed again and again. This is an error which totally robs the gospel of its power to save. Any Catholic who accepts the teachings of Rome cannot be saved|

Do you see the significance of Christ's Words, "to teach and seduce my servants----to eat things offered to idols"

How could these things happen in the Church of Thyatira? They simply allowed a woman's experience to take precidence over the Word of God. Even today, the Pope is considered infallable and what he says takes precidence over the scriptures.

There is a parallel between the fourth church, Thyatira, and the fourth parable of Math.13: NEXT WEEK we will deal with this parallel.

The Revelation on Which This Summons Was Based
Jun 2nd, 2020
Morning MeditationF.B. Meyer
Categories: Meditation;Inspirational;Book Study

"I am the Almighty God" ("El-Shaddai"). What a name is this! And what awful emotions it must have excited in the rapt heart of the listener! God had been known to him by other names, but not by this. And this was the first of a series of revelations of those depths of meaning which lay in the fathomless abyss of the Divine name, each disclosure marking an epoch in the history of the race.

In God's dealings with men you will invariably find that some transcendent revelation precedes the Divine summons to new and difficult duty; promise opens the door to precept: He gives what He commands, ere He commands what He wills. And on this principle God acted here. It was no child's play to which He called His servant. To walk always before Him -- when heart was weak, and strength was frail, and the temptation strong to swerve to right or left. To be perfect in devotion and obedience, when so many crosslights distracted, and perplexed, and fascinated the soul. To forego all methods of self-help, however tempting. To be separated from all alliances that others permitted or followed. This was much. And it was only possible through the might of the Almighty. Abraham could only do all these things on the condition, on which the Apostle insisted in after-days, that God should strengthen him. And, therefore, it was that there broke on him the assurance: "I am the Almighty God." It is as if He had said: "All power is Mine in Heaven, and upon earth. Of old I laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of My hands. I sit upon the circle of the earth; and its inhabitants are as grasshoppers. I bring out the starry hosts by number, calling them all by names, by the greatness of My might, for that I am strong in power: not one faileth. Hast thou not known - -- hast thou not heard -- that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary?"

All this is as true today as ever. And if any will dare venture forth on the path of separation, cutting themselves aloof from all creature aid, and from all self-originated effort; content to walk alone with God, with no help from any but Him -- such will find that all the resources of the Divine Almightiness will be placed at their disposal, and that the resources of Omnipotence must be exhausted ere their cause can fail for want of help. O children of God, why do we run to and fro for the help of man, when the power of God is within reach of the perfect heart? But this condition must be fulfilled ere that mighty power can be put in operation on our behalf. "To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written." In Abraham's case, that name, graved on the glistening jewel, was "I am the Almighty God"; for Moses it was "Jehovah"; for us it is "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ".