0979. The Overcomers II

The Overcomers II

This is our second study upon the seven Churches of Asia, and by way of introduction we are giving the reader a splendid quotation from the pen or A. C. Gaebelein:

"These two chapters are extremely rich in prophetic and spiritual truths. 'The things which are,' the second division of this Book, is now before us. The churches mentioned in the two chapters, and never after, actually existed. They can easily be located geographically and traced historically. We do not attempt this as it has no spiritual value. These messages of course had a deep and significant meaning for the different local assemblies. That there are many spiritual lessons written in these messages, is also true. However, all this must take a secondary place. The primary thing is the prophetic interpretation. The seven churches represent the entire Church on earth, as already stated, and the conditions of these seven churches foreshadow the different periods of the Church on earth from the Apostolic times to the ending days, when the Lord calls His saints to meet Him in the air. There were many hundreds of churches in existence throughout the countries where the Gospel had been preached. But messages from the Glorified Son of Man were not sent to all of them. Only seven, and closely connected in the province of Asia, were selected by the Lord. The Son of Man is the omniscient Lord and as such He knows the end from the beginning. He knew the entire history of the Church from the beginning. He knew the coming persecutions, declensions, revivals, the perversions of His Truth, the denials of His name, the depths of satan and the final apostasy. In the days of His humiliation that future was not hidden from Him, for in the Kingdom parables He revealed the religious conditions of this Christian age (see Matthew 13). With the Divine knowledge, what this age would bring forth and how it would end, He looked with His all-searching eyes into the conditions of the different churches. He saw in seven of them conditions which were in embryo, the conditions through which the whole Church on earth would pass, so that we have in these seven messages, which uncover the state of the different churches, the moral and religious history of Christendom.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR