“To Whom Are the Seven Church Messages Written?”, Part 1
(The following was taken from, “The New Albany Notes on Revelation”)
This question may appear a strange one. The messages to the Churches SHOULD BE to the Church! But the question often arises among brethren as to whether these messages are to the church nominal or to the true Church, or both.
THE PROBLEM
It should be noted that this would probably not be a question if we only had the messages to the first six Churches upon which to decide. The first six Churches clearly (with the possible exception of Sardis) have a DIVIDED MESSAGE. One part of each message is to YOU; one part is about THEM. The clear implication is that the YOU class is His consecrated saints; the THEM class is the apostate or nominal Christian element. (In Sardis, —Rev. 3:4 —the division is only implied. YOU and THEM are not mentioned; but the implication is strong that those in white are the saints. All the rest are impostors.)
Unfortunately, the seventh stage of the Church does not have this division. If it did, there seemingly would be no question. Of course, we might reason, "Why should one exception cause us to re-reason on the other six?" This is the reason for this study.
THE EVIDENCES
It must be noted that Brother Russell felt that this Laodicean message was to the nominal Church. This is IMPORTANT. After all, he IS the messenger to Laodicea. Who shall tell him to whom he was delivering his message!
The last article he prepared on the subject is R5992. This came out in November 1916 —the month AFTER he died. It is clearly his latest and last word on the subject. While some might dismiss this testimony, it seems illogical to do so. However, we CAN accept it and build around it to come to the conclusion that his statement is PARTLY true; or we can accept his statement as being entirely true and that, thus, Laodicea is, indeed, an exception in this list of seven Church messages. The FORMER seems the best route for reasons yet to be explained.
All seven stages of the Church DO have statements IN COMMON in their messages.
They ALL say: "To the angel of the church in _____ write:"
To whom would these angels aim their messages?
It is fair to say that their PRIMARY function was to aid the spirit-begotten ones. Even with Brother Russell, while he proclaimed an enormously critical message toward Christianity in general, his PRIMARY work has been the edification of the saints. Even while he condemned the sorry state of Babylon, he did it primarily to say "come out of her my people."
They ALL say: "To him that overcomes. . .. "
Who can overcome?
Only the spirit-begotten. Thus, even in Laodicea, one MUST CONCLUDE that part of the message is NOT for the nominal church, but for the true. This is the time for the separation of the wheat and tares —a parable with much the same message as Revelation's "Come out of her." Would all or the bulk of the message be to the tares? This seems illogical in the extreme.
They ALL say: "Hear what the spirit says to the Churches."
This is consistently aimed at those who "HAVE AN EAR."
Could those with an ear be those who are not the Lord's?
Again, it seems not possible, thus seemingly ensuring that the "Churches" in these statements must be the TRUE Churches.
We will consider the solution to the Pastor’s insistence that the Laodicean message was to the nominal Church in our next post.
