The second chapter of the book of the Revelation, and we shall read at verse one. Revelation Revelation on verse one. um Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write, these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works and thy labor and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars. And thou hast borne and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast labored and hast not fainted. Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love. Now please come down to verse eight. and unto the angel of the church in Smyrna. Look at verse ten. This is part of what he was to write. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the devil cast- shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. Verse 12. And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write, These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges. I know thy work and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is, and thou holdest fast my name and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr who was slain among you where Satan dwelleth. Now come down to verse eighteen. And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write, these things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass. I know thy works and charity and service and faith, and thy patience and thy work, and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants and to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. If we go in the chapter a little further, please, and verse twenty five. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron. Now, chapter 3 and verse one. and unto the angel of the church in Sardis write these things, saith he that hath the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. Now will you please come down the chapter again and read address seven. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, these things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth and shutteth and no man openeth. I know thy works. Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. For thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Verse 10, because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly. Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. And then read further down at verse fourteen. uh and unto the angels of the church of the Laodicean. These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Come down, down to verse twenty. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. May God bless to us these readings from his precious word. In Revelation chapters two and three we have seven letters, and these letters were addressed to seven respective companies of God's people in the province of Asia Minor. We already glanced at the chapters on Friday evening. But this evening, I want to take these seven epistles in a little more detail. Please notice, to begin with, that there are seven of them. And as you know, seven in the Bible is the number of divine completeness. We saw in our meeting, didn't we, on Friday evening, that in the Bible, right from the very first chapter, we have quite a number of theories, theories of different kinds, each of them sevenfold. In Genesis one and two, for instance, we have seven days. In Leviticus chapter twenty three, we have seven feasts. In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, we have seven parables. In the twenty fourth and twenty fifth chapter of Matthew, we have seven illustrations. And then in Revelation two and 3, 7 letters. Now, I want you, dear friend, again to think of what these set forth, because these sevens are not placed in the word of God at random. God has placed them there, and placed them there too in the order in which we find them in our Bible. When we read them in a cursory way, we may not notice very much significance about them. But when we settle down to them and read them prayerfully and studiously, and compare them with other scriptures, we learn that each one of these series is prophetic. Now, that is something that cannot very well be denied, because I have pointed out five series in all, and it can be shown, I think, very plainly and very simply, that each one of these series has a prophetical outlook. We, first of all, have the seven days, and the seven days come upon the very first page of our Bible. These days come at the very beginning of time, and it could easily be shown that they set before us in a prophetic way the seven great dispensations of time. You see, it is fitting that they should come in Genesis chapter one. right at the very beginning of time, we have these seven pictures of the whole course of time, the whole course of human history. Then when we come over to Leviticus chapter twenty three, we have got the feast, and these feasts give to us a prophetic history of the purposes of God, not from creation this time, not from the beginning of time now, but rather from the cross to the coming kingdom. All that period of time from the cross of Calvary, right until the kingdom is manifested in glory, it is set forth in that sevenfold manner in Leviticus chapter twenty three. Then we come over to the Gospel according to Matthew, and in chapter thirteen, as we saw, we have those seven parables. And our Lord himself tells us that they are the parables of the mystery of the kingdom. They begin with the sower, the Lord Jesus, going out to sow the seed, and they continue right on down until the very end of this present dispensation. Then in Matthew chapter twenty four and twenty five, we have seven parables, or perhaps better to say seven illustrations, and these are illustrations of the coming of the kingdom. You see, the parables in chapter thirteen are parables of the mystery of the kingdom, but it's in chapters twenty four and twenty five they are illustrations of the coming of the kingdom. We learn in those two chapters how the kingdom will ultimately come. And then we turn over to Revelation chapters two and three, um and here we have these letters addressed to the churches, and when they are placed together, just in the order in which God has given them to us, we observe this, that they present us with a panoramic history of the Church of God or of Christ here upon earth, right from the days of the apostles until the close of church history. Now, there's one thing that we do notice in reading these different chapters of the Word of God. We notice that each series is presented from its own particular viewpoint. I do not want to illustrate that further, but if you look at the passages, you will see that each one of them is view matters from its own standpoint. And then again, we notice that when we compare the one with the other right through all five of them, we find this, that between them there's not a single clash. There's not a single contradiction. You see, a more there may be observed throughout. Although, as I said, things are looked at from a different standpoint in each one of them, yet there's perfect harmony throughout the whole five series that I have mentioned. Now, why do I say this? I say this, dear friend, because post-millennialism and a millennial, both of them, they present to us, uh, an order of events which clashes not with one of these series, but which clashes with every one of the things. I want you to think of that, and I want that to sink into your mind, dear friend. We are looking at that which is prophetic. We are looking at that which is, which is set before us a- as a picture of what is to come. That is to say, in these passages, we have not so much doctrine, the doctrine, but we have, we have forecast previews of what is to come, said before us by God in this beautiful, illustrative manner. And as I have shown you, between all of these series, there's perfect harmony, there's perfect agreement, there's perfect unity. But if you take up post-millennial, you'll find it will clash with every one of the five. And if you take up amillennialism, you will find the same thing. It clashes with every one of the five. It denies that there are any dispensers. It denies that Christ will have a kingdom upon earth. Post-millennialism teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ will not be revealed and manifested until after the millennium, after the golden. That the world is just gradually going to get better and better and better. As a result of education and culture and refinement, the world is going to get better, and finally the ideal state the golden age will be ushered in, and when it comes to an end, that then Christ will return. You see, dear friend, what I want to show you is that there is absolutely no analogy between these teachings and these different series of prophetic events that I'm trying to bring before you. I say again, there's absolutely no analogy. And therefore, my dear friend, the question is, which are we going to accept? Which are we going to accept? And I think it is not very difficult for us to answer that question. We are going to accept the order which is given to us by the divine inspiring spirit of God. Now, I want you to notice another thing, which to me at least is very interesting, and I can only mention it and pass on because, you know, our progress through the book of Revelation so far has been rather smooth. But I want to mention this because I think it just reveals to us the, the order of the word of God. If you take the seven days in Genesis one and two, you'll notice that they are divided into two parts. The seven days are divided into two parts. In the first part, you have four days, and in the second part, you have three. Now, what is the difference between the two? On the first four days, God created things inanimate. But on the last three days, God turned, and God created living. So there's a marked difference between the first four and the latter three. Then you come over to the book of Leviticus, and in Leviticus chapter twenty three we have these seven things. Now, how are they divided? We notice that they're just divided in exactly the same way. For at the beginning of the spring, the children of Israel celebrated four feasts. Then there was a lapse of approximately four months, and after that they celebrated the remaining three. Four feasts at the beginning of the summer, in the early spring, three feasts at the latter end. Now if you come over to the gospel, over to Matthew chapter thirteen, um and in Matthew thirteen we have these seven parables of the mystery of the kingdom. Notice this about them. The first four parables were spoken in the open air, and they were spoken to all and sundry who were listening. But the last three parables, they were spoken in the house, and they were spoken only to the disciples. Did you see the difference? You can move over to chapters twenty four and twenty five, which is our Lord's last great discourse before he went out to die. And in that great prophetic discourse, you can just notice the very same thing. And our Bible itself, it marks the division of his discourse. The Lord speaks four of those illustrations or parables in chapter twenty four. And then you come to chapter twenty five and you notice how it begins. Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins. And you can see almost at a glance that though it is the same discourse, there's a break, and here is a new beginning. Four illustrations in the one chapter, three illustrations in the next chapter. Now you come over to Revelation 2 and 3, and here, as in the 13th chapter of Matthew, we have got the development or the progress of evil in this present dispensation. And don't you remember that in Revelation two there are letters to four churches, and then in Revelation three there are letters to the the remaining churches. Now, this you will notice about those letters. The letter to Ephesus, it shows us certain evil creeping in. Then you have the letter to Smyrna, then you have the letter to Pergamos, and then the fourth one, the letter to Thyatira. And when you come to the fourth one, you come to Thyatira, you see moral corruption at its very worst. You don't see it at its worst in Ephesus or in Smyrna or in Pergamos, but you see it at its very worst. You see it in its sharpest shoes in the church at Thyatira. So that there are four churches, and then after that you have 3 churches in, in the next. An idea of that. Can you explain if this book which we call the Bible, if it is just a bundle of disconnected fragments, how can you, how can you explain the, the fact that each one of these seven is divided up into four and three? Now I leave that with you, because I said I don't want to go into that in detail. There's another thing that I want to mention, and that is that there's a very close comparison between the seven parables of the mystery of the kingdom in Matthew thirteen and the seven letters of Revelation two and 3. And you think for a minute or two, and you will see it yourself. Well, what did the Lord say in Matthew thirteen? He said this, that he was going to speak to them in mystery. Now, what did he say at the close of Revelation chapter one when introducing the seven letters? He said this, the mystery of the seven stars is such and such. You see, that's both passages are spoken of as mystery. Then again, don't you remember that our Lord, in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, said, who hath ears to hear, let him hear. And when you come over to Revelation, chapters two and three, those same words, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear, are repeated time after time throughout the 3 chapters. So that you can see almost at a glance that the two passages are very closely related one to the other. Both of them have got to do, as I said before a few minutes ago, with the growth or the development of evil during this present dispensation. Now, dear friend, think for a minute or two just of the first four parables in Matthew chapter thirteen. What is the first part? The first parable, you remember, is about a sower that went out to sow, and he sowed his seed. He sowed his seed in four grounds. Out of the four grounds, how many brought forth fruit? Only 1. Only 1. 3 of the grounds brought forth no fruit or bad fruit. There was only one out of the four. And then again, regarding the good ground, we notice this, that some brought forth a hundredfold, some brought forth fiftyfold, and some brought forth only thirtyfold. What is the great lesson in both of those things that I have just now mentioned? It is this. There was decline. There was decline. You see that in the fact that there was only one ground out of the four that bore fruit. And you see it further, that so far as that ground was concerned, some only brought forth thirtyfold. Decline. That's what marks that first part of it. My dear friend, keep that in mind and come over to Revelation three. What is it that marks the first letter, the letter to Ephesus? What is it? Oh, at Ephesus, they had very many excellent features, very many excellent characteristics, and the Lord gives them credit for every one of them. But then he says this to them, he says, nevertheless, I have against you. You notice that the little, the word somewhat is in italics and should be omitted. Nevertheless, I have against you because thou hast left thy first letter. What do we notice in the first letter in these two chapters? We notice decline, decline, decline. So you can see the comparison between the first parable on the one hand and the first letter on the other hand. Both of them were marked by decline. And oh, dear brethren and dear sisters in Christ, how this ought to come home to your heart on tonight. It is so easy to decline from the ways of God. It is so easy to leave one's first love. It is so easy when in the first glow of your Christian affection to bring forth a hundredfold, and then decline in your spiritual life until you're bringing forth only thirtyfold. We all need, as the days are passing, to guard against spiritual decline. The Lord help us to see to that matter. Now we come to the second of these parables. And the, in the second parable, the enemy is there. We notice that the enemy is there. And the enemy, of course, is the devil. And what is the enemy doing? In the second parable, the enemy is sowing tares. He's sowing tares. What were tears? Tears were just an imitation of the real thing. That's what tears are. And while the man slept, the enemy came, and the enemy took his tears, and the enemy was again. That's what is prominent in the second parable in Matthew thirteen. My dear friend, would you tell me this? What is it that is prominent in the second letter in Revelation chapter two? What does it say? Listen, here's what it says. The devil will cast some of you into prison. There's the devil again. There's the devil. Trying to get at our church. Trying to alienate our church from the love of Christ. Trying to bring a block upon its testimony. It's the devil. In the one passage, it's the enemy, and the enemy was the devil. In the other passage, it says the devil, the devil will cast some of you into prison. He cast them into prison in order that he might discourage them, that he might dishearten them, in order that they might be tempted to turn away from Christ. How we require to guard against that. My dear brethren, the devil is not there. And he is a very subtle fool. And he is more than a match for any of us, or more than a match for all of us combined. He is so subtle and so crafty. Oh, dear young Christian, I would speak especially to you. The moment that you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, the devil lost you. You were no longer his property. He was robbed of his prey. Christ delivered you. Christ snatched you from his, from his very jaws, you might say. If he will never have you again, never, dear friend, he'll never have you again. Even if you backslide from your blessed Lord and grow cold and maybe lose months or even lose years of, of your Christian life, if you're saved, dear friend, you have got everlasting life, and you'll never be Satan's property again. What can Satan do, dear friend? Well, there's one thing he can do. He can try to spoil your usefulness for God, and he can try to cause you to live in such a way that you will forfeit your reward of the judgment. Oh, then remember that you have an enemy, and that enemy is the devil, and he will take any way at all possible in order to win you over from your allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. But then, another thing we notice, that in the letter to Smyrna, which is the second letter, the Lord speaks of some, and he doesn't tell us whether they were in the assembly or outside the assembly, but he says this about them. He says they call themselves Jews, and they are not. Just the same, you see, as the tares are an imitation of the wheat. Even so, here in this second letter, you have got men, and these men were only an imitation. And so we today, we require to be on our guard against all imitation. Because, dear friend, imitation will not do for God. God must have reality. I leave that now, and I pass on. The third parable, you will re- recall in Matthew thirteen is that of the mustard seed. And the mustard seed, when it's cast into the ground, it's the smallest of all seeds. And yet the Lord says that tiny little seed which is cast into the ground, it grows and it grows and it develops and it spreads until its branches are going out in every direction, and the fowls of the air come, and they make their nests or their, they take their, their seats in the branches in the shade of that great tree. What is that? Ah, my dear friend, that mustard seed, that was Christianity. And at the beginning it was very small, very, very small. But then as it grew, as it grew, it became large, large. False profession entered into it. And the result of that was that the day came that all reality and all sincerity and all spirituality, practically all, were sucked out of that which professed to be a witness for God. And in the place of these titles, what, what, what were there? There were just formality, just formality and mere religion. And the thing grew, and the thing developed, until it became what is known as Christendom. Christendom. And now it is not a little tree, now it is a great tree that spreads abroad to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west. And the birds of the air, those unclean birds, which represent, no doubt, the emissaries of the devil. They can come and they can lodge in the branches, and they can perch themselves in the branches of that great tree, and they feel perfectly at home there, perfectly at home. You see, Satan's emissaries find feel perfectly at home there. That's what is all around about us here, brethren and sisters. That's what, that's Christendom. And I do not need, do I? Do I do not need to remind you of what the Lord's word to you and to me is? The Lord's word is, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. The Lord's word to you and to me is that we are to come out from as that of foster Christendom. Well, dear friend, keep that in mind and come now to the third letter in Revelation chapter two. What have you there? The letter to Purdom. What did the Lord say? He said this, he said, I know all about you, Saint of Pergamos, what you're doing and how you're living. And he said, among other things, I know where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is. Satan had a seat actually there in what professed to be the church of Pergamos. Just the same as Satan's emissaries were quite happy and quite at home in the great tree in the third parable of Matthew thirteen, even so, Satan himself was quite at home in that professed church to which the third letter of Revelation two was written. Oh, then you see the need for cleaving fast to him and for coming outside the camp onto his peerless name, and remaining outside the camp in loyalty to him, our rejected Lord, until he comes again to take us home. Now there's only time to mention, to mention one other parable, and that is the fourth one. And in the fourth woman, please, in the fourth parable, please notice this. It is a woman that is prominent. And also notice that she takes leaven. She takes leaven. Always it is the symbol of evil in the Bible. She takes leaven. And dear friend, she hides that leaven in three measures of meal. The meal speaks of the pure doctrine of the Bible, the pure doctrine of God's word, and the fact that there were three measures would suggest to us the truth about the Father and about the Son and about the blessed Holy Spirit. This what this female, she takes the leaven, and in a very subtle, crafty manner, she puts it right down into the meal where it can't be seen, and there it's hidden. And you know what happens? Little leaven and little leaven leaven it the whole lump. But it works in a hidden way. It works, and it works, and it works until the whole is leavened. Ah, dear friend, that's a picture of what has been taking place all down the ages of the Christian era. The leaven, the evil. Right at the very beginning, it was taken and it was hidden in the pure meal of the Word of God. And it was there working even in the apostles' day in a hidden manner, because you remember what he said. He said, the mystery of iniquity do already work. It's working already, beloved saints of God. It's working already, but it was working in a hidden manner, and it has been working all the early ages. That leaven has been working. And we see it today where? In Christendom, where do we see it? We see it, dear friend, in Christendom, we see it in full bloom in Roman Catholicism. That's where we see it in full bloom. Because remember that here in this chapter, we're not thinking of the heathen world. We are here thinking of that which professes the name of Christ. We are thinking, in other words, of Christendom. And as the age comes to a close, the leaven becomes more and more and more manifest, more and more apparent, and it will be that to the end. Will be that to the very end. Now, dear friend, what have you got in the fourth letter in Revelation three? We have got there a female. Her name is Jezebel. You see the correspondence? Here's another one. And what is she doing? She's doing the very same thing as that other woman in Matthew chapter thirteen. Jezebel teaching my servants, it says, teaching my servants to commit idolatry and to commit fornication. That's what she's doing. She's busy, she's busy with her evil teaching. And the evil teaching, as you understand, is the leaven. And so the leavening process is going on, and it's going to go on until it comes out in full bloom, and it will come out in full bloom, dear friend, in Revelation chapter seventeen. That's where it will come out in full bloom, in Revelation chapter seventeen, when that star woman, the whore, she representing people Rome, she will sit upon the beast, the political power, the revived Roman Empire, that is to say the ecclesiastical power will control the political and international powers. And that's what Rome has always been wanting, and that's what the climax is going to be. Oh, dear friend, let us, let us get down to our Bible. The Bible's a wonderful book. Things, as I said, in the Bible are not just jumbled up any old way, indeed they're not. It's a book of divine order. But look, dear brethren and sisters, there's something more that I want to mention to you before I bring the meeting to a close. We have here illustrated upon our chart these seven churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Seven of them altogether. And seven, as we have already seen, is the number of divine completion. And we have here something in the form of a mystery in these seven letters. That's what we are doing in the closing verse of chapter one, the mystery of the seven stars and of the seven golden candlesticks. It's the something mysterious about it. That is to say, there's a meaning in these letters that you won't see upon the surface. There's a meaning in these letters that will only be manifested in the course of time. And now that we are living in the very last days of this present dispensation of the grace of God, as we look back, it is very easy for us to see the meaning of these letters, the hidden meaning that is in them. These seven letters, dear friend, give to us a history of the Church of God upon earth, from the days of the apostles right down until the coming again of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you may doubt that, because I have met brethren who did doubt it. But, friend, there's no use of doubting it or questioning it, because all you have got to do is look back, and the analogy is clearly there. I say the analogy is there, and you can't, there's no use of denying it because it's there, dear friend. First of all, you have got the letter to Ethel, and in it you have got a little bit of decline. What does that represent? It represented what took place in the apostolic age. Decline from the ways of God began to set in. Isn't it a remarkable thing in that connection that out of the seven places, the seven churches that are named, we only read in the historical account that is in the Book of the Acts, we only read of the planting of one of these seven churches. You never read about the planting of Laodicea, or about the planting of Philadelphia, or about the planting of Thyatira. You only read of the planting of one of these seven churches. And which one was that? That was Ephesus, the one that comes first. And you see the order. That's the only one which we read about the planting because that the seven letters placed together represent the church. And so you have the planting of Ephesus, and that takes us back to the institution of the church, to the planting of the church upon the day of Pentecost. And dear friend, that which marked Ephesus was decline from the noble. That was the apostolic age. Now, you leave that age and you come to the next one, represented by Smyrna. What was it that marked Smyrna? It was this. Saints were suffering. And the Lord said to Smyrna, he said, you're going to suffer ten days. And so this represents the next age. The age that began, I would suggest, about the year sixty AD and continued until the rise of Constantine in 313. And let me say that that was the suffering period of the church's history. You remember how Nero began the persecution? And right on down until about the year three hundred and thirteen. history, profane history tells us there were in all ten great persecutions, ten great general persecutions of Christians. And you go today to Rome, and you go down underground into, and you visit the catacombs of Rome. There you see the burial places of thousands and thousands and thousands of those beloved saints who lived in that suffering. There, dear friend in Rome, to this very day is a testimony as to the truthfulness, the authenticity and accuracy of the written word of God. That was the suffering period. That was the second period. And then we come to Pergamus, and in Pergamus we notice a complete change. A complete change. Here's worldliness. Here the Christians were, they were settling down where Satan, it says, hath his feet. God surely never meant his dear people to settle down there. He meant his people in this world to be pilgrims and strangers, a separated people, true and loyal to their rejected Lord, right to the very end. But instead of that, these professed saints, Pergamus, they settled down where Satan had. And thus the pilgrim character was lost. And thus, dear friend, the worldly period of the church began, and that was about the year three hundred and thirteen, to which I have already referred, and that continued until about the year five hundred and ninety. The world, when the Christians settled down, and when it became a very popular thing in Rome and in Italy and all over the Roman Empire, it became a very popular thing to say that you were a Christian. There was no reproach, the reproach end. And Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. And the result was that God's people were just slumped. They were just slumped. It was the devil's artifact. It was. First of all, you see up Smyrna, you see he put them, he put them into prison, and he, he treated them very, very harshly. But that didn't, that didn't draw them away from Christ. That only made Christ more precious to them. And then the old serpent, the enemy, he said, I'll take them another way. I'll cause them to lie down upon a bed of ease, and I'll make the world a lovely place for them, just like a garden, and we'll see then how to do it. And so he did. That's just what he did. He just made this, made it approach seats, and the world seemed to be a lovely place, and it was popular to say that you were a Christian. And in that way, this got away from God. And this is the worldly period of the church. But then we come to the, to the next, uh, church. It is Thyatira. Thyatira. And here, as we have already seen, moral corruption reached its lowest depth in Thyatira. What does this represent? This represents the next stage, and that is the rise of the papacy. The rise of the papacy. I cannot, dear friend, take time to dwell upon it, though it will be very interesting. But this represents the rise of the papacy. You'll notice how the Lord here speaks. He speaks as the Son of God. That's how he is designated. Thus saith the Son of God. Why is that? It's because, because that room worships, worships him as the Son of Mary. It's a rebuke to room's worship of him as the Son of Mary. Speaks of Mary as the mother of God. Here he says, he says, and in fact he says, I'm the son of God. And notice too that the very meaning of the word here, the word pietare, it means bruised incense. Very suggestive, is it not, of the continual incense, the sacrifice of the now, which goes on in Rome continually. And then you'll notice that when it comes to the reward, he says to the those that overcome and are faithful, he says, I will give thee rule over the nations. Why is that? That's the reward. Why? Because the one thing that people Rome has always got, and what you will yet get, as we have already noticed in our meeting, is rule over the nations. You get it for a little time before she goes to her doom in hell. Yes, but there are the faithful ones. There's the faithful ones even in Rome. Oh, be clear about that, beloved. Beloved, be clear about that. There were faithful souls in Rome. Some of the lovely hymns that we have in our hymn books, remember they were written by Roman Catholics. Oh yes, dear friends. Yes, there were godly souls in Rome all their ages. And as I said, some of those lovely hymns that we sing were written by Roman Catholics. They are the ones that the Lord has in view here. He speaks to them because he says to them, hold fast till I come. You notice that? Hold fast till I come. And he says, if you're faithful, he says, I'll give you rule over the nations. Because of your faithfulness to me, you didn't want rule over the nations, but I'll give you rule over the nations when I establish my kingdom. That's the meaning of it. And here, dear friend, in Thyatira, where we have the lowest depths of iniquity, here it is that we have the first clear note of his coming again. It occurs there in the midst of all the darkness of doom. Hold fast, he says, till I come. Hold fast till I come. And after Thyatira, you come to Sardis, and you come to Philadelphia, and you come to Medicea, and in every one of them, after Thyatira, his coming is set before us. That's the blessed hope of the people of God, the imminent coming again of our once rejected Lord and Savior. He's coming again. And that star who lays us first of all amidst the darkness at Thyatira. Hold fast till I come. I want you to notice this, dear friend. The first period came to an end. The second period, it came to an end. The third, the worldly period, it came to an end. But this period, which represents this, this period of papal rule, it runs on right to the very end of the dispensation. It hasn't ended yet. It hasn't. I fully on, we come next to Sardis. Sardis, the escape. And what is represented here? What is represented here, my dear friend, is, I have no doubt about it, the Protestant age. The Protestant age. Because God worked, and there were many godly souls in Rome. Luther was one of them, but there were many, many others. And they became sick of all the abominations of that iniquitous system. And the result of that was they came out. They came out, and they were known as Protestants. And here in Sardis we have the remnant, the remnant, those that came out, those that escaped from Rome, came out and had clearer views and preached clearer views of the glorious gospel of Christ. And I want you to notice that this period, we believe, began about the year fifteen hundred twenty nine.