Second installment of Rev 2...

Pergamum:- this church has been less solid then Smyrna apparently, with some of the crowd deserting the gospel to following Baal. And not only this but some have also started to following the teaching of the Nicolatians, which as we saw earlier, were preaching a form of Gospel “plus”. And here is a re-instatement of the other reason, or the other outcome if you will, should you not turn around from the fallen away state. Verse 16. Yo realy don’t want to be on the losing side come the day when He comes back eh?

Thyatira:- if you were to take the first couple of verses and those alone you would think that this church has got it right. Moving onwards and upwards; furthering their walk with the Lord.

But read on. You see that although they have got many things right they are still struggling with this woman Jezebel. From the passage this woman doesn’t appear to be the soundest of characters. And much like the above she appears to be doing the same, Gospel “plus”, preaching.

Again however, we see the compassion of the Lord, in His dealing with this so called “prophetess” in giving her time to repent, to change her ways. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” ringing in my mind I wonder if this Jezebel did once know the saving message of the Gospel and if she too had fallen from the dizzying heights of God’s grace.

Again we must note that God has given her time to repent but she was unwilling. What can we note from this then?

Something I noted, is that God is not constantly throwing pearls to pigs, to use another analogy. Matthew 7v6. And we shouldn’t either be afraid to use our time wisely in choosing who and what we spend our time doing, talking to, ministering to and such. The challenge lies within this concept of knowing how much is enough. Obviously God is the only one that can break down peoples objections and barriers to the gospel. We can but ask to be used faithfully as his vehicle by the Holy Spirit. Praise God that he uses us at all! And we can rest safely in the knowledge that we don’t need to have every answer like some kind of diploma level theology student. We can rest entirely safe in the knowledge that God will supply us with the words we need to convey exactly what we need to in God’s providence and infinite wisdom. One last thing that flows from this is the responsibility of our to request that God would give us the words. Ephesian 6v19. If even Paul was man enough to ask for help shouldn’t we be?

Anyway… I’ve now written quite a lot. Didn’t get to write about my actual day… Needless to say it was pretty uneventful and nothing needs to be written about. Haha indeed!

Write to you all soon!

[listening to:- Kanye West, Tomorrow Today]
[contemplating the rainy walk home]