How different the messaging of the risen Christ to the churches at the end of the first century and now, nearly twenty centuries later. Seven messages to seven churches of Asia and only two were fully commended back then. Yet, in contrast, if you listen to many Christian media personalities to include mega and other church pastors today, Christ has hardly anything negative to say about what is going on in churches supposedly devoted to His Lordship. The ratio of five messengers and churches called to repentance to two fully commended has amazingly flip flopped in these latter days despite all of the same issues Christ raised being evident and far worse in countless churches!
As the Lord has had me write many times, it is as if He were in fact dead and not risen for all of the effect His written Word and living presence has among churches that profess to be Christian.1 Or else, how can you truly believe Christ is in your midst and sin in disobedience with impunity to His face as many do? Or are you actually believing the lie He has changed since what John recorded in His Revelation in spite of the fact it is written He is “the same yesterday, today and forever,” (Hebrews 13:8, NKJV)? His judgment among the churches is intensifying in these latter days because He has not changed nor abandoned what He inspired His apostle Peter to soberly write (1 Peter 4:17-18).2
Thus, Jesus Christ remains as He spoke to the messenger of the Laodicean church, “the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God,” (Revelation 3:14, NKJV). He is consistently and forever the standard and measure of truth so that those that know Him cannot help but say, “Amen” to whatever He says! Too, Jesus Christ is the standard and measure of faithfulness to God to the death; the ultimate “Witness” to what God requires in those faithful to Him! Finally also, He is positioned at the preeminent Head of creation and His Church as Creator, Savior, and Redeemer to the glory of God as the apostle Paul also declares (Colossians 1:13-18)!
Jesus Christ perfectly knows what a local church is supposed to look like as His design of the Church He assembles that transcends cultures, times and trends; reaching as she does into eternity (Ephesians 5:25-27)! For this reason, knowing the works of the church at Laodicea, He announces because they “are lukewarm,” “I will vomit you out of My mouth,” (Revelation 3:15-16, NKJV). This church was neither “cold” from lack of love for Christ as the church at Ephesus (Revelation 2:4) or “hot” with fervor and activity, but not through the Holy Spirit as the church at Sardis (Revelation 3:1-2) which were both painfully obvious in their need for correction and without repentance, judgment.
However, in being lukewarm the church at Laodicea like many large and suburban churches today are totally oblivious to their indifferent condition and are so sickening to the Lord in the manner of a stomach disturbance, He will violently vomit them out of His mouth! The cause of their lukewarm indifference toward the Lord and the faith is wealth. They were monetarily and materially well off and needed nothing they thought. And while being rich does not have to undercut the typical sense of dependence on Him most believers have who are not rich, the Laodiceans had allowed this to be the case for them. They could not see themselves as Christ did (Revelation 3:17).3
Speaking in the authority and infinite wisdom He presented Himself to this church, the Lord offers them “counsel” to obtain from Him “gold refined in the fire” so they might really be “rich” and other items to reverse their spiritual condition (Revelation 3:18, NKJV). Refined gold represents the faith-filled hard, but abundant life of one of His self-denying, cross bearing faithful disciples (Luke 9:21-26, 12:13-21, 18:18-30; John 10:10; 1 Timothy 6:6-16; 1 Peter 1:3-9)!4 As sick to the point of vomiting them out of His mouth as their self-satisfied indifference has made Him, the Lord acts to “rebuke and chasten” this church in “love” as He does all. He then charges them to be “zealous and repent;” to hear Him outside knocking and open “the door,” (Revelation 3:19-20, NKJV).
Once more too, the Lord speaks to him that would overcome and affirms one of His consistently made promises to reign with Him as a reward for faithfulness; the one who overcomes “granted” by Him to sit on His throne with Him as He “overcame” and sat down with His Father on His throne (Luke 22:28-30; Acts 5:27-32; 2 Timothy 2:11-13; 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:4-6, 3:21, 5:5-10, NKJV). He then issues His standing directive to those in the church at Laodicea and where you attend with “an ear,” “to hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” (Revelation 3:22, NKJV). Clearly, a wealthy church flush in money, but spiritually indifferent does not impress the Lord. The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 Read my February 9, 2014 post, Is There No King Among Us?, under the category, Call To Repent.
2 See the June 10, 2018 post, God’s Judgment Upon His House, under the category, Bible Prophecy and God’s Creatures.
3 While spiritual indifference may produce the busy works of religion, it never produces righteousness! This is why God can never be pleased with spiritual indifference
as He spoke through the prophet, Amos, to the eighth century B.C. ten northern tribes of Israel including specifically and harshly, wealthy women and judged them
(Amos 3:9-4:5, 5:10-15, 21-24, 6:1-8). It is also why Christ speaks in an attitude of revulsion toward it manifested in the first century A.D. church at Laodicea and all
that would follow them in guilt to the end. Such churches with thousands of dollars in the bank (in many cases for nothing but a rainy day to spend lavishly on them-
selves) have looked smugly at needy ministries like this one from our inception and refused to support us not realizing in their blindness that Christ ever looking and
booking, is going to judge them for this!
4 I write about the way of biblical disciples of Jesus Christ in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics. Get a print copy or digital download of the book at
major internet booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ChristianBooks.com and Apple (digital only). You can also get a print copy in the Strong Man Store.
In follow up to the two-part post, Christ’s Message To His Faithful, under the categories Bible Prophecy and Encouragement I concluded this past February 23, 2020, the Lord has led me to write this post specifically to Gentile Christians of any ethnicities that may have been offended He might actually retain a kinship love for His own ethnic people, the Jews. Though some would try to rebuke me on what they consider biblical grounds, the Lord rebukes and calls all that are guilty to repent from willfully forgetting biblical Christianity is of Jewish origin--He is first of all the promised Jewish Messiah and as He asserted to a Samaritan woman, “salvation is of the Jews,” (John 4:19-26, NKJV).1
Though Christianity after the end of the 1st century to this hour appears to have become a distinctly Gentile thing because the Jewish number of believers became so small, nothing could be further from the truth. The numerical dominance and power of Gentile Christians and their churches does not mean God had permanently cast aside the Jews, intended their full cultural assimilation to the abandonment of their own or cared nothing about their tiny presence in the midst. Only the most arrogant of Gentiles could believe this in willful defiance of Scripture and thus, scoff at any prospect Christ might speak to His Jewish brethren in their midst and would even attempt to replace Israel.
However, their historic small numbers and being dispersed throughout the earth has nothing to do with a plan by God to eliminate the Jews as His chosen people or replace Israel with the Church. The Lord Jesus affirmed what the Old Testament prophets beginning with Moses foretold that a day would come when the Jews would be scattered to the nations by God as judgment for disobedience and unfaithfulness to Him to include rejecting His Anointed (Deuteronomy 28:15-68; Luke 13:34-35, 19:41-44, 21:20-24). Specifically in Luke 21:24, the Lord indicates the Jewish dispersion and trampling of Jerusalem by the Gentiles is tied and limited to “the times of the Gentiles,” (NKJV).
The times of the Gentiles about to be up is the period of time God has allotted for the punishment of the Jewish people, global dominion of Gentile nations and proclamation of the Gospel to them before His predetermined end (Hosea 5:14-6:3; Matthew 24:14). Indeed, God has foreknown the number of Gentiles to be saved from eternity as the great Jewish apostle to us Gentiles, Paul, intimates in Romans 11:25! And without coincidence, the apostle’s strongest statements about the proper attitudes saved Gentiles ought to have toward God and the Jews is made in his letter to the church at Rome that later became the largest professed Christian Gentile persecutor of the Jews.
Not arrogance and proud boasting, but humility, fear and thanksgiving to God for His grace and mercy to save from among us Gentiles; loving concern for the salvation of the unsaved Jew, love, admiration toward and support as needed for the Jews that are our brothers in the faith Paul instructs are our proper attitudes (Romans 11:11-24, 15:25-27). Always consistent, Christ through this same apostle teaches that our spiritual unity and equal standing in Him does not now, somehow obliterate our ethnicity, social condition or gender (Galatians 3:26-29; Colossians 3:9-11). As a result, Christ does not lose sight of His Jewish people within His Church nor should we in all joy for them.2
Therefore, the Lord had me uncover and unpack the truth of His continuing vigilant observance of His Jewish faithful among all in Revelation 3:7-13; the truth obscured because interpreting eyes for centuries have been European Gentiles in dominance that refused to believe the Lord would care to make sure His Jewish brethren among them heard from Him too.3 Being part of a despised ethnic minority, I fully understand how the sin of racist superiority works to discount those considered inferior and of no account. Consequently, I praise and thank God for giving me the illumination, interpretative wisdom untarnished by Eurocentric or my own prejudices and courage to declare the encouragement the Spirit gives to the Jews amidst all of the Lord’s faithful in the churches.
Among all that enter the approaching hour of testing as Christians will be Jews to be martyred or protected in accord with the sovereign Christ’s criteria of previously proven faithfulness.4 Among all of those raised from the dead or translated alive to immortal glory at His Second Coming will be Jews (Daniel 12:1-3; Mark 13:14-27; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)! Stunned in great sorrow at first, but relieved in His forgiveness will be the unsaved, elect Jewish remnant who had been marked out, protected and preserved for the Day of their Messiah’s appearing (Ezekiel 9, 20:33-38, 39:21-29; Zechariah 12:10-13:1; Romans 11:26-36; Revelation 1:7, 7:1-8, 11:15-12:9, 13-16, 16:12-16, 19:11-21).5 The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 The Lord has had me write to remind us Gentiles of these truths in several previous posts. See for example, the two-part post that begins on January 28, 2014, Jesus:
The Jewish Messiah, under the category, Holidays.
2 So much for any rebuke on biblical grounds for discussing ethnicity at all in His Church much less Christ as the consummate Israelite who eternally loves His people
whoever they stand among. I wrote about the corrupt abuse of Galatians 3:26-29 and Colossians 3:9-11 as it concerned gender in the September 8, 2019 post, Con-
fusing The Issue, under the category, Call To Repent and urge you to read it.
3 These are the same folk in religion that guilty, presented the world a white, blue eyed, feminized Jesus with long flowing blond hair in their image, false justification
from the Bible for their cruel enslavement of my forefathers and the mis-timed “rapture” with supporting fiction in part, to avoid enduring anything like the same kind of
painful suffering their kindred nations have dealt and will yet deal out upon others until Christ intervenes in judgment at His coming and Kingdom (Daniel 2:31-45).
4 The Lord led me to proclaim a timely six message series, The Hour Of Testing, now available in the Strong Man Store that instructs Christians on God’s biblically taught
purposes behind why He tests His people and fully explores the prophetic implications tied to the coming hour of trial our Lord speaks of in Revelation 3:10. Listen
to the series sample.
5 Read the June 12, 2016 post, The Day Of Israel’s Comfort, under the category, Bible Prophecy. How wonderful beyond words as the Lord showed me that even in His
glorious coming, imagery depicting the correspondence between Him and their forefather, Joseph, is used Jews can relate to (Genesis 37:31-36; Revelation 19:13)!
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