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Bible Insights

We Need to Learn From the Seven Churches in Revelation

John’s Vision for These Churches Provides Us With Practical Insight Today

Many people love the Book of Revelation, the apostle John’s supernatural treatise of the end times. It’s an epic read of God’s awesome power and the amazing, scary, exciting events that will usher us from this world into our eternal reality.

Yet readers are often in such a rush to read those words, they breeze through the first three chapters of John’s grand tale.

In chapter 1 of Revelation we read the book’s introduction. The exiled apostle has a supernatural experience, a grand vision.

God tells him to write what he sees and send it to seven area churches, those in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea (Revelation 1:10-11).

For each church God shares words of commendation and condemnation. We do well to carefully consider what he says. Though the immediate application applies to those seven specific churches, the broader function informs our churches today.

What can we learn from these churches to affirm and reform our local branch of Jesus’s church today? First we must celebrate what we do well, without a smug sense of pride and with an eye toward maintaining and growing each strength.

More importantly we must ask if any of Jesus’s criticism for those churches rightly applies to us today. If we’re willing to read with an open mind, we will find much to correct, as well as warnings of what to avoid.

I think a third application provides even greater insight for us on a personal level. How do Jesus’s words confirm and confront us?

We need to read Revelation chapters 2 and 3, not to unveil the future, but to unmask our present. “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” Revelation 2:11, NIV.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Revelation 1-3, and today’s post is on Revelation 1:10-11.]

Read more in Peter’s devotional Bible study, A New Heaven and a New Earth: 40 Practical Insights from John’s Book of Revelation.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.