Audio only:
Revelation doesn’t open with dragons. It opens with seven report cards—from Jesus himself.
Jimmy traces the Roman road that linked Ephesus to Laodicea, explains why these seven churches, and unpacks praise, rebuke, the martyr Antipas, and a prophetess Jesus names Jezebel.
Then he takes on a popular prophecy chart: that the seven churches are seven ages of history, with us as the last, lukewarm church. Jimmy shows that idea isn’t in the text—and why the dates keep shifting so the teacher always lives in the final age.
Real churches. Real sins.
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
The book of Revelation opens not with dragons or trumpets, but with seven messages to seven churches.
And every one of them gets a kind of report card from Jesus himself.
So who were these churches . . . and what did Jesus have to say to them?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
As of this very episode, we’re now in our third year of the podcast, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast
The Seven Churches of Asia
Revelation 1:4
John to the seven churches that are in Asia.
The book of Revelation is addressed to “the seven churches that are in Asia.”
Now, today we think of Asia as a giant continent that includes places like India and China.
But in John’s day, “Asia” was a single Roman province—known as Asia Minor—in the western part of what is now Turkey.
And in Revelation 1:11, John tells us exactly which seven churches he means:
Revelation 1:11
Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.
So those are the seven : Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.
Why Seven?
Here’s an interesting puzzle, though.
There were actually more than seven churches in Asia at the time.
One of them was the church at Colossae—famous because St. Paul wrote one of his New Testament letters to it.
That’s the letter to the Colossians, and it opens with Paul greeting
Colossians 1:2
To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.
Another church was at Hierapolis, which is less well known but was also up and running.
We know that because Paul refers to it in the letter to the Colossians, where he is commending a man named Epaphras, and he says:
Colossians 4:14
I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis.
We also have evidence of other churches that may well have existed in Asia Minor at the time.
So why does John speak of just “the seven” churches of Asia?
Well, the number seven is enormously important in Revelation.
It shows up 275 times in the book’s 404 verses. If they were distributed evenly, more than two thirds of the verses in Revelation would contain the number 7.
Clearly the number carries symbolic weight, even though scholars debate exactly what it means.
One idea is that seven stands for completeness—like the seven days of a complete week—so John may have picked seven churches to represent the condition of churches everywhere in his day.
For example, in the late A.D. 200s—a little before the year 300—a Church Father named Victorinus of Pettau wrote a commentary on Revelation, in which he said:
Commentary on the Apocalypse 1:7
[John] mentions seven churches by the explicit use of their own names to which he has sent letters. He does this not because they are the only churches, or even the most important of the churches, but because what he says to one, he says to all. For it makes no difference whether one speaks to a cohort, in number only a few soldiers, or whether one speaks through it to the entire army.
So—on this view—the 7 churches are a symbol of churches everywhere. They have the same kinds of strengths and weaknesses and face the same kinds of challenges.
Other authors think the number signals the divine authority of his message.
But why these particular seven churches?
Part of the answer may be that John had personally visited them, and the Christians in these 7 knew exactly who he was. He could just introduce himself as “John,” without any further explanation.
Like when he addresses the book—which is in the form of a letter—by saying:
Revelation 1:4
John to the seven churches that are in Asia.
Now, John was one of the most common male Jewish names at the time. There are multiple Johns in the New Testament: John the Baptist, John of Zebedee, John Mark, John, father of Peter; John the high priest, John the elder.
And—no doubt—there were also many Johns in the Christian community who were not mentioned in in the New Testament.
So the fact that the author of Revelation can introduce himself as just John—without saying anything about which John—suggests that he was known to the audience he was writing to.
There’s also a very practical reason he could have written to these 7 churches, too.
These seven cities are strung together along a single loop of the Roman road network, in the exact order John lists them. MAP—chart the route that the courier would have taken as I describe it
A courier carrying the book would sail from the island of Patmos to Ephesus, the nearest port, and then work his way north through Smyrna to Pergamum. Then he would swing around and come back down from Pergamum to Thyatira, then Sardis, then Philadelphia, and finally to Laodicea, dropping off a copy of the book of Revelation at each church in turn.
He could then go from Laodicea to Ephesus and sail back to Patmos to let John know how the trip went.
So the geographical relationship of these churches on the Roman road system likely determined the order in which they are addressed.
Messages, Not Letters
Chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation then give us a series of messages to these seven churches.
People often call them the “letters” to the seven churches, but they don’t actually fit the form of a first-century letter.
At that time, letters began with a formula greeting from the sender to the receiver, like we see at the beginning of the first letter to the Thessalonians, where we read:
1 Thessalonians 1:1
Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians.
Or the beginning of the letter of James, which opens:
James 1:1
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion.
Or the beginning of the book of Revelation itself:
Revelation 1:4
John to the seven churches that are in Asia.
So Revelation itself—as a whole—is a letter, but the messages to the 7 churches aren’t.
They don’t begin the way letters do. Take the beginning of the message to the Ephesians, which starts:
Revelation 2:1
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: “The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.”
Here the standard formula for opening a letter is missing. Instead, we have a direction to John to write a message to someone called the angel of the church in Ephesus.
So these aren’t letters; they are short, personal messages tucked inside the larger letter of Revelation.
And—as we saw—each one is addressed to “the angel of the church” in a given town.
Now, the Greek word for Angel, Angelos, can simply mean Messenger, so you could translate the beginning of the first message as:
Revelation 2:1
To the messenger of the church in Ephesus write: “The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.”
The question would then be who that messenger is. Is it a human messenger or a heavenly messenger, or what we would call an angel?
If it’s a human messenger, then it would likely be the leader of the local congregation—the one with the responsibility for making sure that God’s message is delivered to the church. In other words, it would be the local bishop.
This view was popular among the early Church Fathers, and it’s popular among many scholars today.
One reason is that the 7 messages indicate things about the messengers that you wouldn’t expect to be true of an angel, like the fact they indicate that the messenger is flawed and can need to repent. For example, the messenger of the church of Ephesus is told:
Revelation 2:5
Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Earlier in Revelation, John saw Jesus with 7 lampstands, and he was told
Revelation 1:20
The seven lampstands are the seven churches.
So here, Jesus is warning the messenger of Ephesus that if he doesn’t repent, he will remove the church of Ephesus—or at least remove it from the messenger.
We know that because the commands remember, repent, and do are all singular in Greek. They are directed to a single person, not a group of people.
Similarly, the second person pronouns in this passage—from where you have fallen, I will come to you, and your lampstand—are also singular. They are “you,” not “y’all.”
And, yes, they do say “y’all” in Greek. The English translators just usually ignore that.
In any event, in these messages, Jesus is addressing the singular messenger of the church here, not the church congregation as a whole.
But it’s hard to see how a good angel would be envisioned as needing to remember from where it had fallen or repent and do the works it did at first or have its lampstand removed.
So this is more natural if you take it as a reference to the human leader of the congregation.
On the other hand, many other scholars argue that the messengers are really angels.
These scholars can point out that the term angel normally means a heavenly messenger—not a human one—in Revelation.
In that case, the messenger of the church would be its guardian angel.
But there is not a consensus on which interpretation is correct. Scholars are divided on this point, and there is no clear consensus among them.
So both the bishop interpretation and the angel interpretation are possible.
In addition to each message beginning with a standard instruction to write to the messenger of each church, each message also ends with a standard instruction to the reader, which says:
Revelation 2:7
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
This indicates that the messages are jointly from Jesus and the Holy Spirit since Jesus is the one dictating, but what the message says is also said to come from the Holy Spirit.
Commendation and Condemnation
The messages tend to follow a pattern.
Jesus usually gives the local church a word of commendation—or what they’re doing right—followed by a word of condemnation—or what they’re doing wrong.
Take the church at Ephesus. The message to Ephesus, in Revelation 2, opens with praise:
Revelation 2:2-3
I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men but have tested those who call themselves apostles, but are not, and found them to be false; I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.
So here Jesus compliments the Ephesian messenger for his works and his endurance of persecution.
And it is the messenger who is still in focus in this type of statement, because the second person pronouns and verbs are all still singular—you—not plural—y’all.
Incidentally, these statements also begin the same way in the seven letters, with Jesus affirming that he knows something about the messenger.
- Ephesus: I know your works.
- Smyrna: I know your tribulation.
- Pergamum: I know where you dwell.
- Thyatira: I know your works.
- Sardis: I know your works.
- Philadelphia: I know your works.
- Laodicea: I know your works.
So in five of these cases, Jesus says he knows the works of the messenger, but in the cases of Smyrna and Pergamum, he says something else.
Jesus also typically gives a criticism to each church. For example, he tells the messenger of Ephesus this:
Revelation 2:4-6
I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
So most churches get both a compliment and a criticism, but there are exceptions to this pattern.
Two of the churches—Smyrna and Philadelphia—get only praise, while one church—Laodicea—gets only criticism.
But even with the criticism, there is mercy, for Jesus tells the Laodicean messenger:
Revelation 3:19
Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.
So Jesus still loves and cares for the messenger of Laodicea and urges him to repent.
Each message also wraps up with a promise to “he who conquers”—that is, the one who manages to live the Christian life faithfully despite all its difficulties.
The promises differ from church to church, but they’re all aspects of eternal life, like the one Revelation 2:7 gives to Ephesus:
Revelation 2:7
To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
A Window Into the First Century
One of the neat things about these messages is how tightly they fit the first-century world.
Scholars have noticed that they reflect the actual conditions of these seven cities, and archaeology has helped explain a number of the details.
We even meet some individual members of these congregations.
For example, in Pergamum, there was a Christian named Antipas who had been martyred for the faith. We read:
Revelation 2:13
I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.
It would be fascinating to know more about Antipas and how he was martyred, and this passage would have been very meaningful to the Christians in Pergamum who knew Antipas and had seen his death.
In the message to Thyatira, we learn that there was a woman the message calls “Jezebel”—after the wicked Old Testament queen—who claimed to be a prophetess but was leading Christians into immoral behavior. Jesus tells that church:
Revelation 2:19-23
I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead.
Yikes! Just imagine what it must have been like for the Thyatiran church when this message was read out!
The messenger—perhaps the local bishop—had been tolerating Jezebel. She was a woman in the local congregation who claimed to be a Christian prophetess, but she was doing sexually immoral things—apparently with other Christians.
Because she has refused to repent, Jesus says he’s going to cause her to get a serious illness, he’s also going to judge those that have committed adultery with her, and he threatens her children—presumably meaning those that have accepted her teachings—with death!
Imagine what it would be like if you got a letter from John announcing that about a woman in your church and those who were associated with her! Yeowtch!
Seven Ages of the Church?
It’s clear that the beginning of Revelation deals with events in the first century. In chapter 1 of the book, John sees a vision of Jesus, and Jesus tells him:
Revelation 1:19
Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are, and those that are to take place after this.
So Jesus tells John to write three things. First, the things that you have seen; second, the things that are; and third, the things that are to take place after this.
The first—the things that John has already seen—are found in the vision of Christ in chapter 1.
The second of these—the things that are—refers to events currently taking place in the first century, and this corresponds to the messages in chapters 2 and 3—to churches that existed in John’s day and what was going on in them.
The third thing John was told to write—the things that are to take place after this—refers to future events, and these begin in chapter 4 of the book, and they run through the end in chapter 22.
Those events include ones that are still in our future, like the resurrection of the dead. For example, in Revelation 20 we read:
Revelation 20:13
And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.
So the beginning of the book deals with events in the first century, and the end of the book deals with events that are still in our future.
The question is: How do we get from John’s day in the first century to our day in the twenty-first century and then to things that are still in the our future?
There are different schools of thought on this, and I covered them—and which one the evidence best supports—in Episode 408 of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World, so you can check that out for more information.
One of the schools is known as Futurism, and it holds that the bulk of the book—everything from chapter 4 through the end—refers to events in our future.
I think futurism is mistaken for reasons I go into in Mysterious World, and one difficulty that futurists have is how we get from John’s present in the first century to our future.
Remember: “the things that are” refer to the messages to the seven churches of Asia in chapters 2 and 3 and the things that were happening in them in the future century.
But if we suddenly leap over 2,000 years into the future with the beginning of chapter 4, that’s a pretty jarring jump of thousands of years, and there’s nothing in the text to indicate such a large passage of time.
So to smooth that over, some futurists have proposed that the seven churches actually represent seven ages of church history—with Ephesus standing for the apostolic age and Laodicea standing for our own final period.
In other words, the seven churches do double duty: They both describe events in the first century and they form a roadmap of future church ages to get us up to events that are still in our future.
This idea has been popular in certain Protestant circles, especially among advocates of a school of thought known as Dispensationalism.
For example, in the 1973, the popular dispensational author Hal Linsdey published a book called There’s a New World Coming, in which he divided the seven ages up like this:
- Ephesus: The Apostolic Church (A.D. 33-100)
- Smyrna: Age of Persecutions (100-312)
- Pergamum: Church-State Union (312-590)
- Thyatira: Middle Ages (590-1517)
- Sardis: Protestant Reformation (1517-1750)
- Philadelphia: Revival and Great Awakening (1750-1925)
- Laodicea: The Modern Church (1900-present)
You’ll notice that Linsey put us in the final church age—right before the end. And since Christ never compliments the church of Laodicea, that made it easy to complain about all the ills that Lindsey saw as affecting today’s church.
Today’s church is so wicked and worldly, Lindsey held, that it’s just the kind you’d expect right before the great tribulation and the Second Coming.
But not everyone agreed with the way Lindsey divided things up.
The first person to propose the idea that the seven churches correspond to seven ages of church history was the English Puritan writer Thomas Brightman .
He was a Historicist rather than a futurist, but he agreed with the seven church/seven ages view. In fact, he came up with it!
In 1609, he published a book whose English title is A Revelation of the Revelation, in which he mapped the seven ages like this:
- Ephesus: The Apostolic Church (A.D. 33-312)
- Smyrna: Heresy and Persecution (312-382)
- Pergamum: Early Middle Ages (382-1300)
- Thyatira: Late Middle Ages (1300-1520)
- Sardis: Protestant Reformation (1520-1527)
- Philadelphia: Revival and Great Awakening (1527-1547)
- Laodicea: Modern Church (1547-present)
So Brightman’s dates differ considerably from Lindsey’s, yet they both—just coincidentally—end up living in the final, Laodicean age.
And that’s true of the other advocates of this view.
They periodically have to rejigger the dates of the different church ages, and they always tend to end up living in the final age—with its really bad, apostate, wicked church—right before the end.
Critics of the seven ages view—including most Futurists and even other Dispensationalists—have pointed this out.
They’ve noted that—as time goes along—the dates have to be constantly rejiggered, and they aren’t being matched to anything objective.
They’re being conformed to a pre-determined set of ideas that include the claims that things are really bad right now and that we’re living right before the end.
This is not the sign of good Bible interpretation, which would read the text objectively instead of fitting it to one’s own subjective preferences.
In fact, this is the opposite of good Bible interpretation, which involves Exegesis or Reading the meaning of the text.
By contrast, this involves Eisegesis or Reading meaning into the text.
Setting aside the issue of what dates you would assign to the seven ages, though, there’s an even bigger problem, which is that the seven ages view has no foundation in the text whatsoever.
There’s simply nothing in Revelation that tells the reader these seven churches stand for seven ages of history.
In fact, it doesn’t even fit well with the Protestant principle of Sola scriptura or forming doctrine by Scripture alone.
The seven ages view violates sola scriptura, which is why most Protestant scholars reject it as convenient guesswork.
Conclusion
So, to sum up, Revelation opens with seven messages to seven real churches in the Roman province of Asia.
The number seven signals completeness and divine authority, and these particular churches sat along a single courier route that John knew well.
Jesus sizes up each church—usually with both praise and correction—and he calls each to keep going and conquer spiritually.
These messages give us a vivid window into the first-century Church, but turning them into a secret timeline of Church history is a bad idea.
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