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SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA MINOR
Revelation 2:1-3:22
Part 4: THE MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH AT THYATIRA—The Church of
the Papacy (606 A.D. -1520 A. D.)
Introduction
The Thyatirian church symbolized
the darkest and most corrupt period of Christian history. The church
was one of the most corrupt of the seven churches. It symbolized a time
when the institutional church had become very powerful and very corrupt.
A church will become corrupt wherever:
1. there are domineering, power-seeking ‘church bosses’
like Thyatira’s Jezebel.
2. Christians begin to accommodate themselves to the moral laxity and
impurity of the surrounding society.
3. Christians slip into idolatrous mind-sets of allowing ambition, selfgratification
and pride to remove God from the throne of their lives.
4. church structures become more important than Christian love, service,
faith and perseverance.
When a church becomes characterized by any of the above four conditions
then that church, regardless of its denomination or its history has
become Thyatirian in character. Each of the letters to the churches
in Asia Minor is different in content but all have a common
outline that serves a common purpose which is to provide spiritual direction
to a people who are called to live by faith in Christ “in
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but not of the world”. The content
of the letter may be divided
as follows:
1. The recipients (v. 18)
2. The speaker__Jesus (v. 18)
3. The commendation for works (v. 19)
4. The complaint: allowing a Jezebel to teach (v. 20-21)
5. The warning to the compromising and corrupt (v. 22-23)
6. The counsel: to the faithful
(v. 24-25)
7. The promise: to the overcomer (v. 26-29)
Since the minister is responsible for the church, the Lord addresses
this letter to the Pastor. It is the duty of the Pastor to proclaim
the truth to the church when it begins to compromise with the world.
Note how serious compromise is to Christ. Although the church at Thyatira
is the smallest church, it is the recipient of the longest letter.
The compromise with sin, Satan and the world that began in Pergamos
becomes full scale in Thyatira. If the church at Pergamos married the
world, the church at Thyatira was not only married to the world but
had become entrenched in it. This letter
makes evident that the end product of compromise is full scale idolatry
and immorality.
Christ declares that He is the Son of God, the One to Whom a person
owes his life. Therefore, a believer is not to give his life
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over
to the world nor to anyone else. He is to:
• give his life to the Son of God
• believe Christ
• follow Christ
• obey Christ
• become attached to Christ
• love Christ
No believer is ever to compromise with the world in any way. There must
be no attachment to nor love for the world.
[Luke 9:23; 14:26-27; Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:24; 1 John 2:15-16]
There are churches today that name the name of Christ but are totally
involved with the world. There are Christians who call themselves disciples
of Christ but
are really disciples of Satan and the world.
Revelation 2:18 “And to the angel (messenger) of the assembly
(church) in Thyatira write:
" These are the worlds of the Son of God, Who has eyes that flash
like a flame of fire, and Whose feet glow like bright and burnished
and white-hot bronze.”
In Rev. 2:20, the woman is called Jezebel because her works so closely
parallel those of the Jezebel in the Old Testament. (1 Kings 16:31;
18:1-21,29) That Jezebel caused Israel to be wed to Baal. When Ahab,
the king of Israel, married her, he married
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