There is no threat of removing the candlestick: that was settled. Judgment,
setting aside the assembly, was fixed. But this body would be treated as
the world, not ecclesiastically as a corrupt assembly. (compare 1 Thess. 5)
However, some had preserved their integrity, and would be owned; and they
would walk with Christ as those that had done righteousness. This was the
promise too. They had confessed His name practically before men, before the
world, and theirs would be confessed before God when the nominal assembly
was treated as the world. They were real Christians in the midst of a
worldly profession, and their names would not be struck out of the
register, then ill-kept on earth, but infallibly rectified by heavenly
judgment. It has been remarked that, simultaneously with bringing in the
Lord's coming, the ear to hear comes after the distinguishing the
overcomers. Such a remnant only is looked for. I cannot doubt that we have
Protestantism here.
The assembly of Philadelphia has a peculiarly interesting character.
Nothing is said of its works, but that Christ knows them. But what is
interesting in it is that it is peculiarly associated with Christ Himself.
Christ, as in all these last assemblies, is not seen in the characters in
which He walked in the midst of the assemblies, but in such as faith
peculiarly recognises when ecclesiastical organization has become the
hot-bed of corruption. Here it is His personal character, what He is
intrinsically, holy and true, what the word displays and requires, and what
the word of God is in itself-moral character and faithfulness. Indeed this
last word includes all: faithfulness to God within and without, according
to what is revealed, and faithful to make good all He has declared.
Christ is known as the Holy One. Then outward ecclesiastical associations
or pretensions will not do. There must be what suits His nature, and
faithful consistency with that word which He will certainly make good. With
this He has the administration; and opens and no man shuts, and shuts and
no man opens. See what His path was on earth: only then graciously
dependent, as we are. He was holy and true, to man's view had a little
strength, kept the word lived by every word that proceeded out of God's
lips waited patiently for the Lord, and to Him the porter opened. He lived
in the last days of a dispensation, the holy and true One, rejected, and,
to human eye, failing in success with those who said they were Jews, but
were the synagogue of Satan. So the saints here: they walk in a place like
His; they keep His word, have a little strength, are not marked by a
Pauline energy of the Spirit, but do not deny His name. This is the
character and motive of all their conduct. It is openly confessed, the word
kept, the Name not denied. It seems little; but in universal decline, much
pretension and ecclesiastical claim, and many falling away to man's
reasonings, keeping the word of Him that is holy and true, and not denying
His name is everything.
And this element is noticed. Christ, the holy and true One, is waiting.
Here on earth He waited patiently for Jehovah. It is the character of
perfect faith. Faith has a double character-energy which overcomes, and
patience which waits for God and trusts Him. (See the first in Heb.11:
23-34: the latter in vers. 8-22.) It is the latter which is found here; the
word of patience kept.
But as regards the former substantive qualities, keeping the word and not
denying Christ's name (though with a little strength) in presence of
ecclesiastical pretension to a successional God-established religion,
promises were given. Christ would force these pretentious claimants to
divine succession to come and own that He had loved those who kept His
word. An open door was given at present, and no man could shut it; just as
the porter had opened to Him, so that scribes and Pharisees and priests
could not hinder it. In the future they would have to own themselves
humbled, and that those who followed the word of the holy and true One were
those He had loved.Meanwhile His approbation was sufficient. This was the
test of faith-to be satisfied with His approbation, content with the
authority of His word.
But there was a promise also as to the Lord's judgments in the earth.
Christ is waiting till His enemies be made His footstool. We must wait for
it to see the world set right. We have to go on where the god of this world
has his way, though under divine limitation. The thought that good is to
have its rights in this world is to forget the cross and Christ. We cannot
have our rights till He has, for we have none but His. Judgment (since
Pilate had it, and Christ was the righteous One before him) has not yet
returned to righteousness. Till then Christ waits, though at the right hand
of God; and we wait. It is not persecution and martyrdom, as in Smyrna. It
is as hard a task perhaps, or, at any rate, our task now-patience and
contentedness with Christ's approbation, keeping His word, not denying His
name.
But then there were other and blessed encouragements. There was an hour of
temptation coming upon all the world to try those who belonged to earth,
who dwelt there as belonging to it. Some might be spared, victorious in the
trial; but those who kept the word of Christ's patience would be kept from
it. On the whole world it would come; and where were they ?-Out of the
world. They had not belonged to it when in it. They had been waiting for
Christ to take His power-waiting His time to have the world. They belonged
to heaven, to Him who was there; and they would be taken to be with Him
when the world was to be in the time of terrible trial. There was a special
time before He took His power; and not only would they reign with Him in
result, but they would be kept from that hour, and had the assurance of it
in the time of their trial. And hence the Lord points them to His coming as
their hope; not as warning that the unrepentant would be treated as the
world when He appeared. He came quickly, and they were to look for the
crown then, holding fast what they had, feeble but spiritually associated
with Him as they were, lest any should take it.
We have now the general promise in heavenly places marked by special
association with Christ; and they are publicly owned in that in which they
seemed on earth to have nothing. Others had the pretension to be the people
of God, the city of God-to have divine religious title; these were only
consistent with His word, and they waited for Christ. Now, when Christ
takes His power, when things are real, according to Him in power, they have
this place according to God. It was the cross and contempt below; it is the
display of God's name and heavenly city above.
Let us examine the promise to the overcomers here. He who had but a little
strength is a pillar in the temple of the God in whom and with whom he is
blessed. He was held perhaps for outside the ecclesiastical unity and
order; he is a pillar in it in heaven, and will go no more out. On him who
was hardly owned to have a part in grace has the name of his rejected
Saviour's God been stamped publicly in glory. He who was hardly accounted
to belong to the holy city has its heavenly name written on him too, and
Christ's new name-the name not known to prophets and Jews according to the
flesh, but which He has taken as dead to this world (where the false
assembly settles down) and risen into heavenly glory. The careful
association with Christ is striking here, and gives its character to the
promise. "The temple of my God," says Christ; "the name of my God ;", " of
the city of my God", " my new name." Associated in Christ's own patience,
Christ confers upon him what fully associates him in His own blessing with
God. This is of peculiar blessing, and full of encouragement for us.
Laodicea follows. Lukewarmness characterises the last state of profession
in the assembly. It is nauseous to Christ; He will spue it out of His
mouth. It was not mere want of power, it was want of heart- the worst of
all ills. This threat is peremptory, not conditional. It brought
irremediable rejection. With this want of heart for Christ and His service,
there was much pretension to the possession of resources and competency in
themselves; " I am rich," whereas they had nothing of Christ. It is the
professing assembly accounting itself rich without having Christ as the
riches of the soul by faith. Therefore He counsels them to buy of Him true
and approved righteousness, clothing for their moral nakedness, and what
gave spiritual sight; for they were, as respects what Christ is and gives
before God, poor, naked, and miserable, and specially so. This is Christ's
judgment of their pretended acquisitions according to man. However, as long
as the assembly subsists, Christ continues to deal in grace, stands at the
door and knocks presses reception of Himself in the closest way on the
conscience. If any one, still in what He was going to spue out, heard His
voice and opened, He would give him admission to be with Him, and a part in
the kingdom.
There is no coming here; nor was there for the judgment of Jezebel. That
was practically Babylon; and she is judged before Christ comes. This is
spued out of Christ's mouth, cast off as worthless to Him; but the general
body is judged as the world. The Lord's coming is in Thyatira for the
saints, and in Philadelphia too. That is its aspect as to the assembly, and
that only. Sardis is reduced, if unrepentant, to the condition of the
world, and judged as such. When the state of Laodicea arrives, the assembly
is disowned and rejected of Christ in that character: but for that His
coming is not to be spoken of. Although Thyatira goes down to the end and
closes ecclesiastically the assembly's history, yet only in the first three
is the assembly at large treated as the subject of repentance. In Thyatira
space had been given Jezebel to repent, and she did not: and the scene is
to close and be replaced by the kingdom. In this respect the last four
assemblies go together. There is no prospect of repentance of the whole
assembly, or restoration. Sardis is called to hold fast and repent, and
remember what she had received; but, if she does not watch, is to be
treated as the world. Hence, as we have seen, the call to hear is addressed
to overcomers, after the promise.
The character of Christ in connection with this assembly must not be passed
over. It brings out the passage from the various condition of the assembly
to His authority above and beyond it over the world. Christ personally
takes up what the assembly has ceased to be. He is the Amen, the
fulfillment and verifier of all the promises, the real witness and revealer
of God and of truth, when the assembly is not; and the beginning of the
creation of God-Head over all things, and the glory and witness of what it
is as from God-as the new creation. The assembly ought to have displayed
the power of the new creation by the Holy Ghost; as if any man is in
Christ, it is a new creation, where all things are of God. We, as its
firstfruits, are created again in Him. The assembly has thus the things
which remain. (2 Cor. 3) But she has been an unfaithful witness of it. Does
she possess a part in it ? It is because Christ does, and He is the true
beginning of it as really displayed. The responsible witness of it by the
Holy Ghost having failed, Christ now takes it up, coming in for its
effectual display.
But the series of preparatory events in the world must first be gone into.
And it is to be remarked, that there is no mention here of the fact of the
Lord's coming in reference to the assembly. It is promised that He will
come quickly; and the assembly is threatened with being spued out of His
mouth. But the fact of His coming for His own, or the assembly's rapture at
any time, is not stated. This falls in fully with what we have seen of
John's ministry [see note #9]
-his being occupied with the manifestation of the Lord on earth, and scarce
touching (and only when needed on leaving the disciples) on heavenly
promises. In John 14 and 17 he does it exceptionally. Here it is left out.
Even in chapter 12, which remarkably confirms what I say, the rapture is
only seen as identified with the catching up of the man-child, Christ
Himself. Hence we have no specific relative epoch noted for the taking away
the saints here, save that they are taken before the war in heaven which
leads to the last three years and a half. But on the other hand the saints
belonging to the assembly, or before, are always seen above when the
epistles to the assemblies are ended. They are waiting for judgment to be
given to them for the avenging of their blood; but they are never seen on
earth.
