Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

This morning we return to our expository journey through the Book of Revelation, The Book of the Apocalypse.

So, simply by the title we know this book has to do with a revealing of unknown things—more specifically, previously unknown things concerning the future.

However, we’ve already seen in chapter one, that the central focus of Revelation matches perfectly with the rest of scripture— pointing us directly to Christ.

So before we are quick to claim that the purpose of this book is to reveal future things, we must first recognize that this book reveals Christ—who He is, what He has done, and what He will do.

So the most proper answer to what this book is about, is that it is about Jesus, the Christ.

In fact, there are other topics apart from eschatology that this book addresses -- especially as we journey through the next couple chapters.

We’ll see that Jesus, by proxy of John seems to also be concerned about false teaching, sexual immorality, divisions within congregations, lack of love for YHWH and others, and even complacency toward the things of YHWH—all of which you and I need more instruction to live together better.

So in short, listen up!

This book is for you and me today, just as much as it was for the first century church.

Because of the description in Revelation of Christian martyrs and a beast who demands worship (13:1–8), many assume that the cities to which the apostle John wrote were all being severely persecuted.

It is true that most of these communities were experiencing persecution at some degree.

John himself had been exiled to Patmos, and Christians in Pergamum had been put to death by this time simply for remaining faithful to Christ.

Nero was the first Roman emperor to persecute Christians.

Yet his persecution of Christians was local to the capital city and not Empire-wide.

Nero blamed the Christians in Rome for the devastating fire that had destroyed much of that city.

It wasn’t until the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81–96) that refusing to worship the Roman emperor became a punishable offense throughout the whole Empire.

Before that time, emperor worship had been spreading throughout Rome, but it hadn’t yet been enforced.

Even with a recorded decree that all should worship the emperor as “God and Lord,” there isn’t much evidence from Domitian’s reign of widespread persecution of Christians.

Most of the persecution of Christians in the first century consisted of local challenges to specific groups of gathering believers.

Out of the seven churches addressed in Revelation, John encouraged only three (Smyrna, Pergamum, and Philadelphia) to endure their suffering and persecution.

So Revelation wasn’t necessarily addressed only to a persecuted church as some may claim; instead, it was a wake-up call to any complacent, compromising church.

Transition:

This morning I plan to give you guys an introduction to this next section of Revelation.

I want to give you an overview of the most popular spot in Revelation preachers will preach from.

Most Pastors avoid preaching a whole series through this book, but when they do a series, it is usually just a miniseries through chapters 2 and 3. I plan to go with you through this book all the way to the end; however, this is where we find ourselves this morning.

The Book of Revelation highlights the unseen realities that these early congregations were ignoring.

In later chapters, as we picture Revelation to be, vivid and terrifying visions tell of a furious battle between good and evil—a battle of which the eventual outcome has been already decided—as a form of encouragement to the churches.

Of course, we already know the end of the battle—ultimately, YHWH wins as always!

The only question remaining then was whether the members of these churches would be on God’s side or on Satan’s side.

The answer to this question was a matter of eternal life and eternal death.

The greatest threat to these churches, and might I say for our church now, was internal, not external—the spread of false teaching, spiritual compromise, and the cancer of comfortable religious complacency can and do kill local assemblies.

As the Roman authorities continued moving against the early Christians, they felt threatened by John’s powerful ministry and for good reason as history proves.

They viewed John as a dangerous leader of the heretical Jewish sect.

We’ve seen that when John was writing the book of Revelation under Christ’s command, he was banished, likely because he had boldly proclaimed the gospel, onto the barren and rocky island of Patmos, with its sharp volcanic hills, about 50 miles off the coast of Asia Minor, or present day Turkey, and is only 7.5 miles long and 4.3 miles wide in the Aegean Sea.

Thus, he was not too far from the churches to which he was writing.

Yet still during his exile, John was separated from his Christian brothers and sisters, but he was not alone-- the risen Jesus appeared to him like never before in a spectacular vision.

The seven churches chosen by Jesus in chapters 2 & 3 were located in different cities within a province of the Roman Empire called Asia Minor.

Now, it is not the Asia we think of today; rather, these ancient towns were located in what we call today western Turkey.

The seven cities are in a rough crescent about 400 miles in length, beginning with Ephesus on the coast by the Aegean Sea.

An interesting fact to mention here is that in the ruins there today, there is evidence testifying to the truth of believer’s baptism by immersion.

The ancient baptistery discovered there is about waste deep, and the only purpose for a waste deep baptistery that even historians and archaeology can figure is baptism by total immersion.

Christ selected only seven churches out of many others in Asia Minor in order to get across His message.

We’ve talked briefly in chapter one how certain numbers keep popping up in this book.

Seven is the number of perfection/completion, and Christ selected these churches because they represented various issues that He desired to address.

These seven churches Christ selected to illustrate the spiritual conditions possible in the churches until He returns.

Certainly there were sins in the other churches, but the ones addressed in these specific seven churches cover circumstances any church can and does face at some point.

No doubt you’ve heard some interpretations and maybe even some sermons about these seven churches.

There are some preliminary considerations to take into account:

First, The messages are not addressed to denominations or associations or para-church organizations (i.e.

Bible colleges or Missionary Boards).

The application then is either to the whole congregations or to individuals.

Second, there is a four-fold application of these messages:

These messages were given to instruct the particular churches to which they are addressed at that time.

next, the messages were given to instruct all churches.

The instruction given to the seven churches of Asia in the first century applies to every church of every century (“He who has an ear, let him hear...” Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22).

Every local church that has ever existed is similar to at least one of these seven.

and Forth, the messages were given to instruct individual believers (Rev.

2:7, etc.).

Every believer can find a wealth of edification and spiritual challenge and warning in these messages.

Finally, the messages might offer a general overview of church history over the last 2,000 years.

While this is certainly not a stated prophecy of these chapters (and I believe that any approach that focuses exclusively or even mostly on this interpretation is wrong), I do believe it is possible to see a general outline of church history here by way of application, and I do not believe this is an accident.

In fact, in Revelation 3:10

this obviously looks beyond anything that was experienced by the historical church at Philadelphia in the first century.

By the divinely inspired order of the messages to the seven churches we see the same pattern of increasing apostasy that is revealed in other ways in the New Testament.

2 Timothy 3:13 describes the course of the church age in terms of increasing apostasy:

“from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

I believe we are living today in conditions that both the Philadelphian and the Laodicean churches struggled with.

These issues overlap.

Though we are surrounded by the most disgusting apostasy today (i.e. the Unitarian Church and other churches that are accepting gay and lesbian leaders in their church) despite that, there are still many Bible-believing churches that hold to every doctrine of scripture, and are waiting to be saved out of the world before the tribulation begins.

It would be wrong to try to force every detail mentioned in these letters into a historical time-period, but the major features can be seen predominantly through our history.

Bible Commentator Theodore Epp said:

“If I were to give a title to this section I would call it ‘The Great Apostasy of the Last Days Traced from the Beginning of the Church’s History.’

We will see how Satan uses what I call ‘the whittling method’ of cutting away the essential features that make a church a church and finally makes it an arm of apostasy.

Apostasy is defection from truth, revolt against it, and abandonment of what one has voluntarily professed, or a total departure or desertion from one’s faith or renunciation of it.

This is a very serious matter; it began early in church history and will be consummated in the world after the true Church is gone.

This decline in faith can be traced through these seven churches with the climax in the great apostate church of Revelation 17” (Epp, Revelation).

Some therefore interpret and preach that these churches are prophetic descriptions of the Western church history from Pentecost to the Second Coming:

Ephesus = the Apostolic Period, A.D. 33–100 (Pentecost to the apostle John)

The apostolic church leaving its first love.

The early churches as a whole gradually began to abandon their wholehearted zeal for Christ and His Word;

Smyrna = the Period of Persecution, A.D. 100–313 (the apostle John to Constantine)

Persecution and poverty.

For more than 200 years the churches were persecuted by the Roman emperors.

Christ mentions 10 days of persecution, and there were 10 major periods of persecution under 10 principal pagan persecutors (Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Severus, Maximum, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, and Diocletian).

There was also much poverty, because during this period the believers often had to live hand to mouth and in hiding due to the persecution.

Judaism was also rampant throughout the Roman Empire and the Jews continued to hate the Christians and to torment them as they did during Paul’s day.

It is written in church history that the Jews provided the wood to burn Polycarp in Smyrna.

Pergamum = the Period of Constantine, A.D. 313–590 (Constantine to Pope Gregory)

Nicolaitanism was developed into a doctrine.

“Nicolaitan” means “to conquer the people” and (in this view) refers to the rise of the unbiblical hierarchical doctrine of church government.

By the days of Constantine in the fourth century the bishop of Rome was exalted, together with his cohorts, and Nicolaitanism was well on its way to producing the current papacy.

In the early seventh century, Gregory the Great solidified the papacy, becoming “the first of the proper popes” and later in that century, Pope Theodore I was the first pope officially called sovereign or supreme Pontiff—thus starting centuries of people deceived into worshipping the pope.

Thyatira = Papal Rome, A.D. 590–1517 (Pope Gregory to Martin Luther)

The Jezebel spirit; idolatry, fornication, and involvement in satanic things.

Jezebel brought fornication and idolatry into the churches and was associated with “the depths of Satan” (Rev.

2:20, 24).

These practices, which began in earlier periods, became settled doctrine as the first millennium proceeded and the second began.

Fornication became normal in the Roman Catholic Church because of its unscriptural doctrine of celibacy and confession to a priest.

The fornication surrounding the papacy itself is well documented and continues today.

Idolatry became prominent with the “cult of the Saints” and Mary was exalted as the chief idol.