Lessons for Today from the Revelation Churches

Lessons for today from the Revelation churches. That is the topic we'll discuss today on the Christian worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host of the program, and our website is thechristianrealview.org. Well, thank you for joining us this weekend for another edition of the Christian Real View as we talk about lessons for today from the Revelation churches. Now, last week on the program, if you heard it, Pastor John MacArthur joined us to discuss Christ's call to reform the church.

That's also the title of his new book with a subtitle of Timeless Demands from the Lord to His People. And this is based on the messages or letters that Christ gave to seven churches in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey late in the first century, recorded in the final book of the Bible in the book of Revelation in chapters one through three of Revelation. Now, MacArthur talked about these churches being illustrative of churches throughout history, and two of the seven of these churches were remaining faithful, but the other five were in various stages of decline and compromise. And here's what MacArthur said, quote, These messages should be A1 on the list of any pastor who wants to know what his church should be and what his church should avoid. These are the words of the Lord to his church, unquote.

And we'll play a little more of that sound bite to open the program here coming up in a minute. So with that degree of significance in mind that these messages that Christ gave to the churches are important, very important for the church today. This weekend on the Christian Real View, we're going to examine what Christ's messages actually were to each of these churches.

Last week, we talked more about some of the modern issues, the current issues facing the church, but we're going to go back and do each of these churches today on the program. And what the church today, and individual Christians, by the way, should be learning and applying from Christ's messages to these Revelation churches. Now, Revelation was written toward the end of the first century AD, around 94 to 96 AD. Apostle John wrote it.

He is old at this time. He has been exiled to a small island called Patmos, which is 50 miles out to sea in the Aegean Sea to the southwest of the town of Ephesus, which is one of the churches that he wrote to. And by the way, he had been arrested in Ephesus and then exiled to Patmos.

So he had been there recently. And so Revelation, these first three chapters, are these letters from Christ to these churches. Christ told them to John, and John gave them to the churches. And then Revelation goes on to be a series of visions that John gets from God, from Christ, about the future history of the world. So an incredibly important book, lots of eschatology, the end times in Revelation. And it's a challenging book to interpret, but the overall narrative, the overall theme of the book is that God is the one who is going to control, is controlling history.

In the end, he is victorious over all the forces that have come against him throughout history. So I want to play that opening sound bite in case you missed the program last week. John MacArthur set up some background as to Revelation and these letters to the churches. So I'll play that sound bite, then we'll get into more of the actual messages to the churches.

Here's John MacArthur. What is so unique about the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 is, you know, people talk about, you know, what was the purpose of those? Were those real churches? Of course, they were real churches. All those cities were real cities in Asia Minor.

In fact, the letter, the sequence of the letters follow the postal route in the ancient realm of Asia Minor. They were real churches in real places, but they're illustrative of churches through all of history. And so they transcend just their local identification, and that's why they've been placed in the book of Revelation to be a last, really a last call to the church from the Lord of the church that would extend all the way through history until his return. As you get past those letters, then you get into the part of Revelation where it talks about his coming. So up until he comes, these are the words of the Lord to his church, and we know that because he says at the close of those, let him who has ears hear what the Lord says to the churches.

So we know it's a transcendent message, and there were two churches, the church at Smyrna and the church at Philadelphia that were good churches. They were churches that didn't have a fatal flaw. They don't get a warning.

They get a commendation. They weren't big. By no means were they mega churches. They didn't have famous pastors. We don't even know who their pastors were, but they were faithful, faithful to the Lord, faithful to his word. And the other five churches were in some element of decline to the degree that the Lord literally pronounced judgment on them.

And they get worse as they go. It starts out with Ephesus having left its first love, and the Lord says, If you don't return, I'm going to come and wipe you out. I'm going to blow out your candle.

I'm going to judge you. And that's where it started. They left their first love, and then you see the churches at Pergamos and Thyatira, and they tolerate sin, and they love the things of the world. And then you go all the way to Sardis, and you get a church that's formed, but it's dead. And then you get Laodicea, which is the church that the Lord vomits out of his mouth. So there's a progression from a church losing its first love to being a church the Lord vomits out of his mouth. These things should be a number one on the list of any pastor who wants to know what his church should be and what his church should avoid. These are the universal, timeless letters of the Lord of the church to his church. I'm actually pretty amazed how many pastors in this contemporary climate look for direction for their, quote-unquote, churches everywhere, but in those seven letters. And they're so powerful, so confrontive, so, on the one hand, encouraging, and on the other hand, threatening, that they should make any pastor tremble to do everything he can to be sure that he avoids those things that the Lord condemns in his church, and they settle into a place of obedience and blessing.

But it's, you know, it's not popular. The book has just come out, Christ's Call to Reform the Church, and I start off by talking about, have you ever been to a church that repented? Have you ever heard of a church that repented? That's not something that anybody's really heard of, but that's what the Lord says, repent or else. He said it over and over to these churches, repent, repent, repent. Churches don't repent, but they should, and this is a call for all pastors in all churches to take a look at the book of Revelation and consider what the Lord says to his church. Okay, that was John MacArthur from our interview last week, and I played it again just to give some background as we look into these seven churches today, but also just to make the point how, to use a modern word, how relevant this topic is for today. I mean, here we have Jesus Christ giving a, you could call it maybe a performance review from a term from the business world, of these seven churches.

How are they doing? And what he said to them back then are the kinds of things that we need to hear for the church today, so we can adjust, so we can repent and return, so we can analyze what's going on in the church today and see how it compares with what Christ would say to the church today. So with that as a background, Revelation starts out by saying the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his bondservants. So God gave this revelation to Christ to show to his bondservants the things which must soon take place, and he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant, John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Then there's this verse three, there's a blessing for reading revelation. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near. And Revelation starts out with this blessing for those who read and heed Revelation, and you probably noticed if you read the book, at the end there's also a curse for anyone who would change any of it, or by extension anything in Scripture. So that's what bookends the book of Revelation, and Revelation also offers these soaring, awe-inspiring, amazing descriptions of Christ. It gets into one of them in the very next section of the first chapter, Revelation 1 verse 4. John to the seven churches, here he goes, he's going to start writing to these seven churches the message from Christ.

To the seven churches that are in Asia, again this is Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, the western side of Turkey today. Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne. I believe that's a reference to the Holy Spirit, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth, to him, Christ, who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood. And he has made us to be a kingdom, priest to his God and Father, to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him because they've rejected him, so it is to be.

Amen. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty. And that's verses four through eight. Again, these soaring, awesome descriptions of Christ and his sovereignty, his kingship, his rule. He's the beginning and the end.

He was and is and is to come. There's all kinds of these throughout the book of Revelation, and when you read that and when you grasp that, you have a more elevated view of who Christ is. And then he gets to, as we read a few more verses from the first part of Revelation, then it gets into the setting in verse John, as he's about, in the first chapter, as John's about to address these churches. Verse nine, I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

He was exiled there. I was in the Spirit in the Lord's day Sunday, and I heard behind me a loud voice, like the sound of a trumpet, saying, Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches. And here's the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea. Now, these are seven churches, as MacArthur was saying, in very close proximity to each other.

If you can kind of imagine the letter N, a lowercase n or maybe a horseshoe. And this is, it starts in the lower left with Ephesus. And then as you move a little bit to the north on the left side, you get to Smyrna and then further north, you get to Pergamum.

And that starts to hook around the top and go back south to Thyatira and then further down the right side to Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. And he addresses the church in that order. They're relatively close to each other, and they're all living in a very secular, immoral society, much more than our own and part of the Roman Empire, worshipping Greek and Roman gods. That's the culture of these letters to the churches. We'll come back and go to them one by one after this on The Christian Real View. Social justice is a gospel issue. This has become the mantra of many evangelicals, rectifying perceived inequities of race, gender, sexuality, poverty, immigration, amongst others, is considered a top priority.

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Hope you enjoy the letter this year. Well, today in the program, we're talking about lessons for today from the Revelation churches. And we're going to go church by church and see what the specific messages are, Christ's messages to those churches in Revelation, those first three chapters, and try to apply or take for what, analyze the church today through the lens of Christ's letters to these Revelation churches. Now these churches, by the way, are actual churches, and they exemplify churches throughout history. Some folks have interpreted these as being representative of certain eras of time or actual churches from the time that they're written, let's say the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, the rise of the Roman Empire, or Laodicea is the evangelical church in America.

I don't think we can draw that strong of a conclusion. There are certainly parallels to what churches have faced throughout history, similarities, for sure, as to what these Revelation churches were facing and the way they were analyzed or examined by Christ. But I think it's better to look at them as just exemplifying what all churches are, the kinds of problems, the kinds of temptations that are going to be faced by every church from the time that this book was written. Now the interesting thing is that the Apostle John, who wrote these messages from Christ to the churches, had actually ministered probably to all of these seven churches. They weren't very far from where he was exiled on this island of Patmos. And none of these churches were large.

I mean, I'm just a guess here. They probably all were just under a hundred people in each church. So these are small churches in towns throughout modern day Western Turkey. And these churches were somewhat or actually quite healthy in the mid 60s A.D. Again, this was written in the late 90s A.D., so 30, 35, 40 years earlier.

These churches were healthy when the Apostle Paul was going on his missionary journeys and visiting this region. So just consider how quickly, as we read these messages, and how far at least five of these churches had gone astray in under 50 years. In other words, they'd gone from being solid, sound churches.

And as you read the letters, you're going to see that some of them had just gone way, way, way off. So one of the lessons here is to never think, we should never think, that things are going to continue as they always have been, whether it's in our own church or whether it's in the country. Things are constantly in flux. We live in a fallen world. Satan is at work. Sin and temptation are always knocking at the door.

And so just very quickly, these churches, at least five of them, had gone from being solid to unsound in just under 40 or 50 years. So the question is, what is Christ's message to these churches? And by extension, what is his message to us today?

Because these messages should cause more than just reflection on some moment in history. For those churches, they should cause self-reflection on our own church today, and also self-reflection in our own personal lives as well. So here are the seven churches again.

Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Those are the seven churches. Two of them only received commendations, praise from Christ. And that was Smyrna, the persecuted church, and Philadelphia, the faithful church. The other five, some received some commendations, but most of them received warnings about they're off track and they need to repent.

Some of them received no commendations at all, as we'll get into. So the first one was Ephesus, which is known as the Loveless Church. John writes this message of Christ to this church.

I'm just going to read a little snippet to each church. Revelation 2 verses 2 and 3 and verse 7, I know your deeds, Christ says, and your toil, and your perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men. And you put to test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not. And you found them to be false.

And you have perseverance, and have endured for my name's sake, and have not grown weary. Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. So the commendations here, the praise is that this church in Ephesus, which is the one, again, that John got exiled from, he was arrested and exiled from this particular church, this city. They get commended for their perseverance, that they are intolerant of false teachers and teaching.

They don't give them any time. They want to rid their church of false teachers and teaching. They hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans. Now, who are the Nicolaitans? Well, I looked in the, did a little study on who the Nicolaitans and study Bible says.

The Nicolaitans, I'm not going to read the whole thing. They were followers of someone named, not surprisingly, Nicholas. They were involved in immorality and assaulted the church with sensual temptations. Clement of Alexander says, quote, They abandoned themselves to pleasure like goats, leading a life of self-indulgence, unquote. So the Nicolaitans' teaching says they perverted grace and replaced liberty with license.

And so they were known for their license. In other words, their sexual immorality, their sensuous lifestyle, basically saying, you know, we can live the body, we can do with the body with what we want to do with the body, and that doesn't affect anything else. That is the error of the Nicolaitans, and that had become something that was affecting all these churches. But the Ephesus church hated that. They were commended for pushing back against this entry of sexual immorality, this heresy of sexual immorality into the church. But then he says in Revelation 2.4, But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.

Therefore remember from where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds you did at first, or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent. So there's a commendation for persevering, for being intolerant. There's a good kind of intolerance here of false teachers and teaching, that they hated the sensual heresy of the Nicolaitans, but they had lost their first love for Christ. And this is a huge warning here to leave your first love for Christ.

They were sound in their teaching, sound in their orthodoxy, but it was a cold, dead orthodoxy. In other words, they're putting in the time, they're keeping the rules, they're paying attention to what Scripture says, but there's a cold relationship, a dead relationship with Christ. And the lesson here is that we as Christians can go through the motions and have correct doctrine and dot our i's and cross our t's and so forth, but we can not have a vibrant love for the source of our faith, or the object of our faith, which is Christ. It's sort of like a child who is told to do something by his parents and just does it out of rote obedience, but shows no love for the parents at all.

No parent is happy with that when a child just obeys just because he has to and just goes through the motions with no love for the parent at all. And this is exactly what happened in the Church of Ephesus. They were praised for their perseverance and their intolerance of false teaching and teachers, they hated the sexual deeds of the Nicolaitans, but it was a cold and dead orthodoxy without that primary quality of a love for Christ. Church number two, Smyrna. Again, moving from lower left up that horseshoe, now we go to Smyrna, which is known as the persecuted church. Again, this is one of two churches that received only praise, no warnings. Revelation 2.9, the message is, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich. And the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison so that you will be tested and you will have tribulation for ten days.

Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. That's Christ's message to the church in the town of Smyrna. Now this church only received commendations, no negatives at all.

This church was marked by tribulation and poverty, probably literal poverty, but Christ reminds them that you may be poor in wealth, but you are rich spiritually. They were marked by persecution from Jews. A local synagogue couldn't stand that this church was proclaiming Christ. And that was a huge problem, as it is for many Jews today who do not believe in Christ.

They resist, they resent the fact that Christ is presented as their Messiah and the world's Savior. And the persecution was covering from God's own chosen people. And this is a lesson here that Christians should love the Jews. They're God's chosen people. There's a future significance for the Jews.

God chose to bring his son Jesus Christ through the Jewish people. And yet when they are God-rejecting, as any people is God-rejecting, they can be the greatest persecutors of those who follow Christ. Okay, we've made it through two churches, Ephesus and Smyrna. We'll get to the next five after this break on the Christian Real View as we discuss lessons for today from the Revelation churches. I'm David Wheaton, listening to the Christian Real View. We need to identify doctrinal error and make sure it gets out of the body.

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I hope you've been able to partake and listening to some of our new element called TCW, as in the Christian World View, short takes. And these are just bite-size audio highlights of the most recent program, and we're posting these in the podcast. If you're a podcast subscriber, it's free.

You can do that easily. Get the podcast into your smartphone. You'll hear the short takes every week. They're always about one to three minutes in length, and we're also posting them on our website. And also, we're getting into more of the social media world. We know a lot of people are there.

We're trying to use it for good things, and we're posting the short takes on social media on Facebook and Twitter as well. So if you're users of those platforms, be sure to start visiting the Christian World View pages on our social media sites. Today on the program, we're talking about lessons for today from the Revelation churches, Christ's messages to these churches, how relevant it is today, what were they facing back then, the same kind of things, slightly different forms, but it's really the same as what we face in the church today, and we'll be getting to that a little later in the program. But we've gone over the first two churches, Ephesus and Smyrna. Let's get on to the third church. We're going to go through all of these and then draw some lessons that we should be applying to the church today. What would Christ be saying about the evangelical church in America today?

We're going to get to that today in the program. So Pergamum, as we go up this horseshoe from the left side over to the right where I'm still on the left side of it, is known as the compromising church in this town, and you could go into the context of each town, we won't have time for that today if you ever study this, but Pergamum was the third town up in this postal route, and the commendation the church receives from Christ is in Revelation 2.13. He says, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast my name and did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you where Satan dwells.

In other words, there was strong opposition in this. There was persecution here in Pergamum, in this region, and Antipas was likely the pastor of this church who was martyred. So even in the midst of this persecution, Christ commends the church in Pergamum for not denying the faith, not saying, Oh, we don't believe that, not running, but holding fast to the faith.

That's a high commendation. But then he says in Revelation 2.14, But I have a few things against you. Hear the warnings, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. So also you have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.

There's that group again. Therefore repent, or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth. Now what is the teaching of Balaam? If you remember back in the Old Testament in Numbers chapter 22, the teaching of Balaam was that as the Israelites were coming into the land as they left Egypt, they were encountering all these nations as they came up to start conquering the land. And one of them was the people of Moab. And the king of Moab's name was Balak, and he was the king. And he was concerned that the Israelites were going to take over their region and destroy them. And so instead of trying to fight them directly, at least at the beginning, what he did was he hired a so-called prophet to try to get this prophet named Balaam to curse the people of Israel. He felt that Balaam held these powers, and if he could get Balaam to curse the people of Israel, then they wouldn't be able to overtake the land of Moab. And so he was trying, and Balaam eventually didn't want to do this, but eventually he did. And the way he did it was he tried to get the people of Israel to compromise, to intermarry, to intermingle with the ungodly culture of these ungodly nations that Israel was going to be taking over. So he tried to have them marry those who would not be equally yoked, those who didn't believe in the God of Scripture, in the God of the universe.

They believed in different gods, and he knew this would have a compromising effect on the people of Israel, and they would not be the strong force that they were intended to be. That is the error of Balaam, trying to get people to compromise with the world. It's worldliness. And so in this church in Pergamum, you have the idea of the errors are that they were becoming worldly. They were compromising with the world. They weren't denying their faith, but they were becoming worldly. And secondly, they were involved in this teaching or error of the Nicolaitans as well. They were involved in sexual immorality as well. Does this sound familiar at all to the church today? Worldliness and immorality?

Well, we'll get more into that. Let's move on to the next church, which is Thyatira. Now we're going to get to the top of the horseshoe in western Turkey, Asia Minor. They were commended in Revelation 2.19 for their love and their faith and their perseverance. Christ says to this church, I know your deeds and your faith and your love and your faith and service and your perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first.

So here's, again, commendation. The Lord commends them. You have love and you have faith and you're persevering in the midst of this difficult culture, this Roman empire that's incredibly secular.

It makes our country, our culture today look Christian compared to how ungodly it was back then, open worship of idols and so forth. But then he gets into the warning in Revelation 2.20. But I have this against you, Christ says, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bondservants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation unless they repent of her deeds, and I will kill her children with pestilence. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and the hearts, and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds. But I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them, I place no other burden on you.

Nevertheless, what you have, hold fast until I come. And again, here's another error of this church, the teaching of Jezebel. Now, this could have been a literal woman in this particular church, or it could have been referring back to the Jezebel of the Old Testament, who was full of immorality and rebellion against God. And so this church was tolerating, again, they were tolerating immorality. It was similar to the error of the Nicolaitans. So what do you see repeating over and over again in the warnings to these churches?

It's immorality, it's sensuality, it's worldliness, it's compromise. These are the things that Christ is repeatedly warning against. Let's get on to the fifth church, Sardis. Remember, as McCarthy was saying, the evaluations, the letters get increasingly more dire as we go on to these churches, except for the two that Smirnian and Philadelphia, the only two that don't get any warnings because they're remaining faithful. So Sardis is the next city down in this horseshoe.

Now we're more on the eastern side, the right side, if you will, of the horseshoe. Revelation 3.1 says, I know your deeds. He says to Sardis, Christ says that you have a name, that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die, for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of my God. So remember what you have received and heard and keep it and repent.

That word repent comes up over and over and over again. Therefore, if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. Here's the warning here to the church in Sardis. You're a social club with no spiritual life. You're full of unregenerate, unsaved people.

And the only commendation here is a slight one to a few people who haven't compromised. In other words, even in the midst of this totally dead, lifeless church, they're still a remnant. In this church, as I read this, it looks like the mainline denominations of today. Yeah, they have activities, they have a so-called church, but there's nothing there about Christ and the gospel and sound teaching and holding sanctification and these kinds of things.

It's basically a social club amongst those who are unregenerate. Now, yes, within those churches, it's probably like there were in Sardis a few regenerate people, but they're the exception rather than the rule. And again, the church should be made up of fully regenerate people. The true church, the true church of Christ without buildings is the body of believers, truly regenerate people.

Let's get to the sixth one before this final break of the day. This is the second church, Philadelphia, that received only good, only commendations from Christ and no warnings. Philadelphia is the faithful church where Christ says, I know your deeds, behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut because you have a little power and have kept my word and have not denied my name. Behold, I will cause those of the synagogue of Satan, again, this Jewish presence in the area, persecuting these Christian churches, who say that they are Jews and are not, but they lie. I will make them come and bow down at your feet and make them know that I have loved you because you have kept my word of my perseverance. I will also keep you from the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth.

Here's the combination. What is this church marked by? They're marked by keeping, obeying, adhering to God's word and persevering in suffering. That's quite something to be commended about.

So I hope you're seeing some repeating patterns here. What are these churches commended for? Keeping God's word, persevering.

What are they warned about? Worldliness, sensuality, false teaching. When we come back, we have one more church to go, Laodicea. We'll talk about that church and some follow-up after that right here on the Christian Real View. Here's Mike Gendron previewing his DVD on apostasy. We'll see how apostasy is the result of Satan's relentless attacks on the church. We'll also look at four steps that characterize a church's drift into apostasy. Then we'll look at the history of the church, a chronological development of the Roman Catholic religion and its drift into apostasy.

And lastly, and most importantly, what are you and I to do in the midst of this great apostasy and the growing ecumenical movement? The DVD is titled Roman Catholicism's Drift into Apostasy and contains two messages. You can order it for a donation of any amount to The Christian World View.

Normal retail is $15 plus shipping. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Social justice is a gospel issue. This has become the mantra of many evangelicals. Rectifying perceived inequities of race, gender, sexuality, poverty, immigration, amongst others, is considered a top priority. But what exactly is social justice? Is working for social justice a biblical mandate, an application of the gospel? Cal Beisner has written an insightful booklet entitled Social Justice, How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel. Also included in this revised 44-page booklet is a copy of the just released Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. You can order this social justice booklet for a donation of any amount to The Christian World View. Go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Final segment of the day here on The Christian World View radio program.

I'm David Wheaton. Our website is thechristianworldview.org. Just a reminder that we just released our annual print letter.

It's going to be mailed almost probably very soon after Thanksgiving weekend. But we have it posted online. In case you don't get it or want to see it early, just go to our website or look in yesterday's TCW Weekly email. And we have some featured resource, kind of a resource catalog, so to speak, kind of a modified one, a shrunk down one in the print letter.

We don't put all our resources on there, none of space. So if you want to get someone a meaningful gift for Christmas, just highly encourage you to go into thechristianworldview.org store. And you can peruse all the different items there and find something, books and DVDs and children's resources and lots of other things there in the store on thechristianworldview.org. Okay, one more church today as we talk about lessons for today from the Revelation churches. And the final church gets the strongest warning to repent, and that's Laodicea. This is the lukewarm church. Revelation 3 says, I know your deeds, Christ says this, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. And just as an aside, there's sort of an interesting background on this, that Laodicea was known for kind of their, they didn't have a good water supply.

They had to bring their water in from another place, and the water to those who visited the cities was kind of lukewarm and tasted bad, and people spit it out of their mouth because they weren't used to it. And so there's a parallel there that is interesting. Because you say, this church says, I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing, and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, in white garments so that you may clothe yourself, that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed, and I salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love I reprove and discipline. Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him and he with me. He who overcomes I will grant to him to sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

And that's the way these first three chapters of Revelation conclude with this, who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to these churches. And also, I did read the one part about the overcome. Each of these letters ends with a reference to him who overcomes, and that there's this idea of being an overcomer is the idea of being a true believer. An overcomer is not a sinless, perfect Christian. It's someone who faces, it's a believer who faces the world, and through the power of the resources God gives us, genuine saving faith, the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the power of the Word of God overcomes the world.

And if he falls for a time, the overcomer gets back up, repents, and gets back on track through the power of the spiritual resources God gives us. So this is the only church, Laodicea, with no commendations. It's wealthy in money. It doesn't see itself as having really any needs because it has everything it needs.

All its wants are being fulfilled. And yet Christ said it's wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. So to summarize here, just notice that none of these churches, none of these seven churches is praised for their amazing growth, their incredible programs for the whole family. They're not praised for their music, their impact on the city where they live. They're not praised for their relevance to non-believers.

Oh, you're making your church really relevant to the outside world. They're not praised for their social justice or even serving the poor. They're not even praised for evangelism or missions. You would think these would be the things that Christ would be praising where he did have commendations.

You would think he would mention some of those things. I mean, look how much you've grown. Look at your great music that attracts people from your city. Look at the relevance, the way you set up your church to be relevant to the outside world. Look at that. Look at the way you do evangelism and missions.

Strangely enough, there's not even a word mentioned about that. Instead, it's all about your faithfulness to God's word. They're commended for that, the ones that were. Their perseverance in the midst of suffering. Overall, a love for Christ, the object of our faith, a love for one another. And then let's not forget this last one, personal holiness or sanctification that they're set apart from the way the world lives. That's what these churches are commended for. Now, we often wrongly assume that because a church today is big and has multiple campuses and the pastor is on radio and television and he speaks at these really popular conferences and that people around him and people in the community are being engaged, well, therefore, it must be a good church. And that is absolutely not Christ's message at all. That does not mean anything as to whether it's a good church. Christ says what marks a good church in strong Christians are faithfulness to God's word, not being tolerant of false teaching, perseverance and suffering, a love for Christ above all in one another, and personal holiness and sanctification. That's what Christ praises. But here's what the modern evangelical church is known for.

It's known for being above all, attractional. How can we attract the outside world? What kind of growth strategies do we have? How can we be friendly to those quote unquote seeking from the outside? How can we make our music relevant? How can our messages meet felt needs of people in their marriage or parenting or their problems? Or how can we have programs that meet every need of a family so everyone can go to their own place when they go to a church? How can we be like the world to attract the world because ultimately we want to quote share the gospel with them? That's the justification for the whole attractional method, that we want to share the gospel with them so we have to become more like them. Well, there is a big warning for this is that when the church has done this, they've compromised with the world, they've become more like the world, the sin of the world has become involved in the church.

Think about the error of Balaam, the compromise with the world. This is really the DNA of the modern evangelical movement. It's a non-separatistic of the world philosophy that we don't want to be separate from the world, and we shouldn't be totally separate from the world, but we should be separated from worldliness and ungodliness. But that's not the way the modern evangelical movement sees it.

We need to be close to the world, we can partake in the things of the world, because we need to be attractional to the world to want them to come to us. Think about just the issue even of divorce, how the church overlooked divorce and adultery, and then living together before marriage. And now what do we see? The next stage of homosexuality is being entered into, being the gay Christian movement is starting to come into the church as well. I think there would be commendations today for the evangelical church, there is a remnant for sure within it, it's a generous church, it is a church focused on evangelism and missions, but we must remain faithful so we get commendations of Christ. We should be looking to these letters to say, what did Christ say to these churches, what would he be saying to us today, how we can apply that. Thanks for listening to the Christian worldview, have a good Thanksgiving everyone, we'll talk to you next week. Think biblically and live accordingly. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Christian worldview, think biblically and live accordingly.