Tag Archives: the seven churches of Revelation

Overall Themes in the Seven Churches (Churches 1)

Chapters two and three of the book of Revelation describe seven letters or messages from Jesus for the seven churches of Roman Asia. These messages introduce the following overall themes:

1. The Chiasm of the Seven Churches. The seven churches are structured in a typical Hebrew style (see commentary below for details).
2. Encouragement in Trouble. The messages to the seven churches exhibit both spiritual decline and a corresponding increase in the number and weight of promises made to each church.
3. Christianity’s Greatest Advance and Its Contemporary Consequences. The message to Philadelphia forecasts a time of great missionary advance. But that advance included aspects that have put Christianity on the defensive today.
4. The Message to Thyatira Is Different. The churches as a whole exhibit spiritual decline. That is also manifest locally in the messages to Ephesus, Pergamum and Sardis. But the message to Thyatira goes against the grain in a couple of ways.
5. Laodicea and the Final Era of Earth’s History. Evidence from the text supports the idea that Laodicea represents the church at the close of Christian history.

The messages to the seven churches have a common structure, similar in form to ancient letters. 1) Jesus addresses each church by name. 2) He then introduces Himself to each church, using characteristics drawn from chapter one. 3) He offers an analysis of the strengths and/or weaknesses of each church. 4) Jesus provides counsel suitable to His analysis of each church. 5) An appeal is made to listen to the Spirit. 6) Each message concludes with a promise or promises to those in each church who overcome. In messages four through seven (beginning with Thyatira), numbers five and six are reversed.

Interpreting the Seven Messages to the Seven Churches (Vision 5)

The messages to the seven churches are not apocalyptic in style like Daniel 7 or Revelation 12. They are “prophetic letters.” They are more like the letters of Paul or Matthew 24 than they are like Daniel 2. So their primary message was for seven actual churches in Asia Minor, the ones that originally received them (Rev 1:4, 11). By extension, as one would for one of Paul’s letters, these messages have value for all those who read them (Rev 1:3; 2:7, 11, 17, 29, etc.).

There is, however, a case to be made to see these seven messages as prophetic of the condition of the church from the time of John to the Second Coming of Jesus. There are several evidences to support this. 1) There were, for example, more than seven churches in Asia Minor at the time John wrote. From the letters of Paul we know that there was a church at Colossae, only a few miles from Laodicea. The letters of Ignatius (a church leader who wrote around 110 AD) go to some of the churches mentioned in Revelation but also to the nearby cities of Magnesia and Tralles. So the choice of seven churches itself seems to have meaning above and beyond the immediate situation.

2) The spiritual conditions in those churches parallel the spiritual conditions of Christianity in different historical periods from the time of John until today. In other words, embedded in these messages to seven historical churches was a grand survey of the major developments of Christian history. The church began strong in the apostolic age (Ephesus), and then went through a period of persecution (Smyrna) followed by compromise and accommodation to the Roman world (Pergamum and Thyatira). The Reformation (latter part of Thyatira) was followed by the spiritually dry period of Protestant orthodoxy (Sardis) and then a second Reformation and worldwide missionary endeavor (Philadelphia). The church today seems relatively indifferent to the claims of Christ in the New Testament (Laodicea). So the broad themes of the seven church messages parallel the broad sweep of Christian history from John’s day to our time.

3) The message to Laodicea parallels John’s appeal to the last generation in Revelation 16:15. The appeal to the world at the time of the battle of Armageddon contains a combination of four major words found elsewhere in the Bible only in Revelation 3:17-18 (seeing, nakedness, shame and garments). So Laodicea is the recipient of God’s last gospel call, placing it in some sense at the end of Christian history in John’s mind.

4) A number of features of the message to Philadelphia seem to imply the nearness of Jesus’ return in way more dramatic that other references in the seven church messages. For example, “I am coming soon” in Revelation 3:11, echoes end-time uses of the same phrase in Revelation 11:14 and 22: 7, 12, 20. So the letter to Philadelphia seems to have special significance as Christians near the end of the era.

All four evidences support and extended meaning for the seven church messages in Revelation 2 and 3, a meaning that goes beyond the original situation and includes implications for the larger trend of Christian history.