As long as an ecclesia is a called-out association, the Lord the Spirit waits to restore it from the lowest conceivable ebb of faith; so that if she of Laodicea had taken the warning of the ejectment prepared for her in the future, she might have recovered, and not been spued out at all.
What was to be done with a generation of such apostates from the faith and hope of the gospel? Were the gifts of the Spirit to be continued with them, by which they had been as in the mouth of the Spirit speaking to the world for the conversion of sinners; and for the building themselves up in the knowledge of the Son of the Deity? Should the light of the Spirit still burn in the lampstand, and be regarded with indifference or as useless, to so rich and prosperous a community of Christians, as they esteemed themselves?
After the Spirit’s introduction of himself by stating certain of his characteristics having some special adaptation to the Star-Angel Presbytery addressed, he forthwith declares to each of the seven, “I have known thy works”— oida ta erga sou; and then proceeds to point them out, and to approve or reprobate them, as the case may be. None of them seem to have been in so disgusting a state as this of the Laodiceans.
The third designation by which the Spirit characterizes himself, in his address to the ecclesia of the Laodiceans, is, that he is “the Beginning of the creation of the Deity”—
As all the promises are to be fulfilled in and through Jesus Anointed, according to the testimony he gave in the day of his weakness, he is endorsed also as “the Witness faithful and true.” He was “the Witness” by eminence. When standing at Pilate’s bar, he said, in answer to Pilate’s question, “Art thou King then?” “Thou sayest, for I am King.
This seventh epistle, like the others, is from the Spirit, who styles himself “The Amen, the Witness faithful and true, and the Beginning of the creation of the Deity." We have already expounded the title indicated by “the Amen" on page 187.
Laodicea, the city of the seventh ecclesia addressed by the Spirit, lay south of Philadelphia, in the way to return to Ephesus, so that it wiil be found, upon an inspection of the map of Asia Minor, that the seven ecclesias, laid in a kind of circular form, so that the natural progress was from Ephesus to Smyrna, from Smyrna to Pergamos, from Per- gamos to Thyatira, from Thyatira to Sardis, from Sardis to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to Laodicea, and from Laodicea round to Ephesus again, (from which it was distant about forty-two miles south,) which is t
14. Also to the angel of the ecclesia of Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the Witness
Besides the promises that the victor shall eat from the hidden manna, it is said by the Spirit, “and I will give to him a white pebble.” To eat from the manna would be to rise from the dead; but when risen, what then? “I will give him a white pebble.” This implies a blessing superadded to resurrection of life.
In the English version it reads, “I will give him a white stone.” In
“The Manna which hath been concealed” is a form of speech to be understood by comprehending the signification, first, of “the Manna;” and secondly, of its concealment; the latter of which will be found intimately connected with the gift of it to him that overcomes.