The Imperfect Seven: Christ's Letter to the Churches of Asia

Begin with the Facts

Any honest study of a text from God's Word must begin with the facts. A command of the facts must include a careful examination of the words used in the text, not only in a reliable translation but in the original languages. The facts of the text must then be placed in their proper context--not only the circumstances surrounding the composition of the text but also the intended audience and the author. In the strictest sense, all of Scripture is written by God Himself and all is written to an audience both immediate and undetermined.

When we consider that the Book of Revelation is written to a specific audience, we realize what should be obvious from the outset: its message is recorded for eternal preservation, implying its future applicability to the entire Church age for an undefined period of time, albeit "shortly." Quite possibly, therefore, John--as the last surviving Apostle and the one who had lived the longest at nearly 100 years old--might have realized in his commission to write this letter that his beloved Lord Jesus would not be returning in his lifetime, as he had likely believed, especially given Christ's words to Peter about him, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me" (John 21:22-23).

This sobering fact of sole responsibility to transmute Christ's final revelation to His Church necessitates John's own utmost faithfulness in both recording the message and delivering it to its intended audience, the Seven Churches of Asia. What if all writers took their responsibilities so seriously that their work would withstand nearly two millennia of study? It is nothing short of remarkable that we are still reading the Book of Revelation to this day as we await the promised return of Jesus Christ.

For those who minimize the message of the book, we would insist that it is also unmistakable that the Book of Revelation is identified from the beginning as prophecy: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand" (Revelation 1:3). And what is this prophecy? When we read Christ's "blessed" promise as the context immediately following Revelation 1:1--"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass"--we realize the demands placed upon our faith, that even at this late date nearly 2000 years later, every prophecy will be fulfilled to the letter.

The fact is, if the opening words of the Book of Revelation mean what they say--that specific prophetic events must come to pass--we cannot justify the three approaches to the Book of Revelation that minimize the book's ultimate purpose.

Dismantling Three Views of Revelation

The Preterist view, which assumes that the prophecies have been fulfilled in historical events now past, does not take into account the central prophecy of the book itself: that Jesus Christ is coming again. "Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so. Amen" (Revelation 1:7). Make no mistake: this is the hub of the wheel from which all other events are but spokes. Even those who would, as Jesus warned, prophesy falsely that "He is here" or "He is there" cannot claim that every eye has seen Him. Jesus Christ has not yet returned to Earth the second time.

Nor can we merely adopt the Historicist view that the Book of Revelation is a roadmap of sorts which prophesies the entirety of church history from the time of Christ's ascension until His return. Such a view not only injects unwarranted vagueness into the book's prophecy; it fails to account for the timeline that dovetails with all other apocalyptic passages in Scripture, including not only the writings of Daniel but also the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the Gospels, especially the Olivet Discourse. While the Book of Revelation does contain parallels to tribulation across the Church age, it identifies a unique seven-year period of tribulation that is yet to come.

If we erase this specific timeline by elongating the timeline to include the entire Church age, we make the secondary application of Biblical prophecy the primary application. Prophecy must be specific to be fulfilled at all, as we see in the prophecies surrounding Christ's First Advent, of which Simeon, Anna, and the Wise Men were fully persuaded. The fulfillment of prophecy depends upon its timing, or the parallels are poetic rather than prophetic.

The Idealist view has the least defensible position of all: that the Book of Revelation is essentially a book of symbolic poetry dramatizing the battle between good and evil across the ages. Despite the obvious symbolism within the book, the facts alone require us to walk past this interpretation briskly: again, the central fact of the Book of Revelation is the bodily return of Jesus Christ. This return fulfills multiple prophetic antecedents that dovetail into actual historical events. To regard these prophecies as mere poetic symbolism not only contradicts Christ's command to keep the prophecies of this book; it undermines the fact of His bodily return.

Beyond this, the Idealist view also violates hermeneutics and literary theory. A symbol is the tangible object or event that creates by its impact ripples of deeper, intangible meaning. A cross necklace symbolizes taking up my cross for Christ because He literally bore the Cross for me. To claim a symbol's effect without recognizing its cause is to reduce one's reading skills to absurdity.

We are left with the Futurist view as the one most consistent with the stated purpose of the book. This view does not preclude the partial fulfillment of tribulation prophecies such as the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, but it promises future fulfillment of prophecies that must be understood literally to be believed at all.

The Architecture of Effective Communication

The Book of Revelation, although considered a blend of epistolary, prophetic, and apocalyptic genres, not only begins in Chapter 1 as a letter written by John as he received it from the Lord Jesus Christ; it continues as a letter throughout all 22 chapters. Understanding this fact sheds a rhetorical light on the entire message of the book, requiring us to analyze all three parts of the rhetorical triangle--the speaker, the audience, and the message--as related to all three rhetorical appeals: ethos (ethical), pathos (emotional), and logos (logical). Ethos, or the ethical appeal, stems from the credibility of the speaker and persuades the will to choose between right and wrong. Pathos, or the emotional appeal, acknowledges the audience's unique identity as rooted in its underlying values and beliefs. Logos, or the logical appeal, contains the central claim itself.

Before we delve into this fascinating interplay of rhetorical communication, we must realize that seeing the entire book as a letter implies that a specified audience is the intended target. Consider these facts: Revelation 1:4 records John addressing the seven churches of Asia, and Revelation 1:11 records Christ Himself addressing these same churches, as follows: "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia." We know these seven churches are Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. We also must notice that John is commanded to write them a book, not merely a one-page letter, and that book must contain what he sees: the symbolic and prophetic visions of all 22 chapters.

Why does this matter? It matters because we often mistakenly think of only Chapters 2 and 3 as letters, and, therefore, often fracture what is structurally one letter into eight unrelated fragments: the seven letters addressed individually to each church and one remaining section of nineteen chapters: Chapters 4-22. Yet Christ clearly expects the entirety of the book--artificially divided centuries later into 22 chapters--to be heeded and "kept" (Revelation 1:3) by each of the seven churches. This fact exposes another common misconception: that the Church is not mentioned after Chapter 3. But such a fallacy not only presupposes that the Tribulation timeline does not apply to the Church; it also supposes that the letters to each church bear no causality to the Tribulation timeline--even though the last of the churches, the Laodicean church, perfectly describes the apostasy requisite to the Tribulation.

But here again we return to the facts: if the entire book is directed to all seven churches, the Church is present on every page! This is true not merely because the letter was addressed to these seven churches; it is true after the era of these churches has passed by virtue of the book's rhetorical structure. As an epistle containing apocalyptic prophecies that remain yet unfulfilled, the message of the Book of Revelation is immediately relevant to every age and ours most of all as we await Christ's return. The epistolary structure of the book, rather than limiting its audience, broadens it by virtue of the very message it contains.

Lest we assume this is merely an academic distinction, let it soak in that the entire Church needs to know the prophecies of the Last Days. This fact should serve as both a wakeup call to those who dismiss the book and a warning that its events apply to the Church today and not merely to the Jews in a seven-year period of "Jacob's Trouble." Understanding the audience of the Book of Revelation--then and now--and the prophetic nature of the message precludes writing this book off as events that will only take place after we are gone. John himself refers to his relationship to these churches as their "brother and companion in tribulation" (Revelation 1:9). This notion that Christians will not endure tribulation is misguided at best and self-serving at worst. Those who are dogmatic about the Book of Revelation entailing events that happen after the Church has been raptured are not taking into account the architecture of the book or its integrity as a letter.

They are also not taking into account the architecture of the rhetorical triangle. Aristotle's description of the two-way flow of communication that should ideally occur from the speaker to his audience through his message decodes the Book of Revelation as a message demanding an immediate and obedient response. A letter in the Greek world of the Apostles' time employed all the methods of persuasion available to move an audience from doubt to belief and from inertia to action. When we read not only Chapters 2 and 3 but also the entire Book of Revelation as a letter, we realize the beauty of this rhetorical architecture. We also see Christ's communication as a masterpiece of persuasion not only in the letters to each church but also in the book as a whole.

Of what are we to be persuaded, we might ask. If we are not persuaded by the blessing opening this book that this is prophecy (Revelation 1:3), we certainly ought to be persuaded by the end of the book that we cannot add to this prophecy or take away from it without invoking a curse on ourselves (Revelation 22:18-19). And when we are persuaded that every word of this book of prophecy shall come to pass, we also must be persuaded to keep its commands (Revelation 1:3). And why are we to keep them? We must be persuaded above all else that Jesus Christ is coming again--with clouds where every eye shall see Him. His coming will be public, triumphant, and final. There are no loopholes.

Conclusion

If we can come to grips with these facts, we will see that the message of this most intriguing of books remains the same in every chapter: Jesus Christ is the reference point not only of the Book of Revelation but of all history and all prophecy. Because this is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the theme of Revelation is holiness and the tone is victorious. If we can remember these things, we will not fear the worst that may come. And we will not find our fingers itching to reword things we don't like--to pen novels of our own invention. Far too much ink has been spilled on fiction already. It is time to cast aside the costumes of charade and behold the truth found within God's Word itself.

Seeing the entire Book of Revelation as a letter allows us to see these separate letters to the churches for what they are: persuasive messages of the highest alert possible. If each church does not heed the words of the incomparable Christ (Revelation 1:13-17), it will reap its respective judgment. The message is loving, but it is nonetheless urgent. It is loving because it is urgent. When we look at each church separately as the audience of its own letter from our Lord, we will learn the tragic facts that history bears out: only two of the seven churches escaped rebuke and the threat of final removal from Christ. If we do the math, we are left with a sobering question: should we conclude that not quite 29% of professing believers are actually ready for Christ's return?

In upcoming posts, we will examine the structure Christ uses for each letter and the context in which each church receives that letter. A general overview reveals that Christ is no respecter of persons, and the church of Ephesus--arguably the best taught church in history and the Apostle John's own church--receives perhaps the saddest indictment of all: it had lost its love for the Lord Jesus Himself. We will examine Christ's persuasion and His audience's failure to heed His words in the weeks to come.

See also

Revering the Revelation of Jesus Christ