21st Century Christian has graciously posted some sample pages from our book on their website. I’ve embedded those pages here. If you want to read them, I suggest that you click on the link that says “fullscreen.” Enjoy!
Each of the seven letters ends with a promise to the one who “overcomes.” What does it mean to “overcome” in the book of Revelation? We can go back to the throne room scene in Revelation 5 to get the answer to that question. When John is weeping because no one is worthy of opening the scroll, he is told: “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed (overcome). He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” The word is the same in Revelation 5 as it is in the letters to the seven churches. Christians are being called to overcome as Jesus overcame. And how was that? Through faithful witness, being faithful to the point of dying for his faith. Jesus triumphed through death; the Asian Christians are being called to be willing to do the same. The world calls to them to overcome through military strength or political action. Jesus calls to them to overcome by a willing sacrifice of love for the sake of the kingdom of God.
(Letters From The Lamb, p. 53)
To the Ephesian conquerors, Jesus promised to undo the curse of Eden. He would let them eat of the Tree of Life. Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden so that they wouldn’t be able to eat of the Tree of Life. Jesus promises the Ephesians that those willing to face martyrdom will come to have what Adam and Even once had. They will eat of the Tree of Life and live forever.
The Ephesian church was told by Paul in Acts 20 that they would be troubled by false teachers, some of them arising from within the church itself. Paul wrote to Timothy (who was ministering in Ephesus) and spoke to him time and again about the false teachers that were and would be attacking the church (1 Timothy 1:3; 4:1; 6:3-5; 6:20-21; 2 Timothy 2:14-17; 3:1-5; 3:12-13; 4:3-4). Apparently the church paid attention, for Jesus lauds them for their resistance to false teaching. But he has a criticism. In Letters From The Lamb I wrote:
Jesus recognizes that the Ephesian church is a hardworking, faithful church, yet he accuses them of having abandoned their first love. It seems that in their zeal to oppose false teaching, they had forgotten all about the foundation of their faith, which is love. Paul had encouraged these very Ephesians to live “speaking the truth in love.” Apparently they focused on “speaking the truth” and forgot about the love. They had protected the gospel, but had failed to protect those to whom the gospel was addressed. They had lost sight of the very core of the message of Christ.
(Letters From The Lamb, p.51)
Without love, the truth ceases to be truth. Without truth, there can be no true love. We need both. We must resist false teachers, but never at the expense of love.
Jesus warned the Ephesians that they were about to lose their lampstand. In Revelation, the lampstands represent the churches; if Jesus removes their lampstand, it means they are no longer his church. We can be hardworking guardians of doctrine like the Ephesian church, but if we lose our love, we lose our right to be called a church of Christ. Christ’s church is a community of love. If that doesn’t define us, we’ve lost our right to exist.
The first letter in Revelation chapter 2 is the letter to the church in Ephesus. Ephesus competed with Pergamum and Smyrna for the bragging rights as most important city in the province of Asia. It was also a center for emperor worship. In our book, I wrote:
The emperor cult was prominent in Ephesus during the first century. Archaeologists have unearthed an especially large temple to Domitian, the emperor who banished John to Patmos. The temple was designed to establish Ephesus as the world center of worship for Domitian, featuring a 27-foot-tall statue of the emperor which was visible by all who arrived by sea or by land. The head and forearm of the statue are on display today in the museum at Ephesus; the forearm alone is six feet long. In this city where the Roman ruler was worshiped as the god of gods, any who refused to say “Domitian is Lord” would run the risk of imprisonment and death. We read in the book of Acts that Paul almost lost his life in Ephesus at the hands of the supporters of the goddess Diana; now the Ephesian Christians were in danger from worshipers of another false god.
(Letters From The Lamb, pp.47-48)
It was this worship of the Roman Caesar that was going to lead Christ’s church to an inevitable collision with the Roman authorities. Some would have argued that Christians could pledge loyalty to the Roman empire and still remain true to Christ. But this attitude of compromise was deadly, at least in a spiritual sense. The Ephesian church would resist this false teaching, but at a high price. We’ll look at that in the next post.
I want to take some time to share some thoughts on the first few chapters of Revelation. With our book hot off the press (I’m hoping to see a copy in the next few days), I decided it was a good time to explore some of the topics we looked at there.
One key theme in Revelation is that of the faithful witness. In Revelation 1:5 we read: “from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.” (Revelation 1:5) In looking at this verse in our book, I wrote:
In verse 5, John speaks of “Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” These three elements are important as we come to understand the Jesus that we see here in Revelation chapter 1. He is the faithful witness. The Greek word for witness is martus, the word from which we get our word martyr. We see in the book of Revelation that witnesses are often martyred for their faith, so much so that dying for one’s faith is the sign of a “faithful witness.” The Lord who calls his followers to be willing to maintain their faith in the face of death has already done the same himself. He asks nothing of them that he was not willing to ask of himself.
(Letters From The Lamb, p. 30)
The word “testimony” (which comes from the same root) also occurs throughout Revelation. (Rev 1:2, 9; 6:9; 11:7; 12:11, 17; 15:5; 17:6; 19:10; 20:4; 22:16) A key passage is this one in chapter 12: “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” (Revelation 12:10-11)
The victory lies in being a faithful witness, in steadfastly holding on to the testimony of Jesus in the face of all opposition. The Christians will conquer Rome not through military might nor political power, but faithful testimony.