Introduction:

A study of Revelation 2 & 3 reveals three scriptural app1ications to the seven churches:

A. Historical - 7 local churches in Asia 90 A.D.

B. Doctrinal - 7 local churches in the Tribulation

C. Spiritual - 7 distinct church ages

[1]. Ephesus - fully purposed 33-200 A.D.
[2]. Smyrna - myrrh (bitterness & death) 200-325 A.D.
[3]. Pergamos - much marriage 325-500 A.D.
[4]. Thyatira - odor of affliction 500-1000 A.D.
[5]. Sardis - red ones 1000-1500 A.D.
[6]. Philadelphia - brotherly love 1500-1900 A.D.
[7]. Laodicia - civil rights 1900-

1.The Marriage Of Church And State (325-500 A.D.):

It should be noted that during the Pergamos period much of the "church" married the world (See Rev. 17 & 18). The message of Rev. 2:12-17 is aimed at a church that is married to the world in 325 A.D.

This church is said to dwell where Satan dwells. An interesting side note, historically, is that the high Babylonian mystical priesthood, which taught the religion of Semiramis, Tammuz, and Nimrod - the teaching of the virgin-born Tammuz, who had the sign of the cross, born on December 25th (Christmas) with the holly, mistletoe, yule log, rings, beads, Easter Bunnies, candles, etc. - was moved from Babylon to Pergamos 133 B.C. This mystical Babylonian priesthood is found in Pergamos at the time of the writing of John's book of Revelation, and yet it pictures the subsequent removal of this high Babylonian priesthood to Rome itself, in 313 A.D.

At the Council of Nicaea, when Constantine intergrated the Christian church with the world, and brought the church and state together (as you find it in the Vatican today), he took up the mystical Babylonian religion, which is found exposed in the O.T. If there is any doubt about this religion, we will find out when we get to Revelation 2:20, that this religion of black-robed priests, called "father," is as old as 1800 B.C. It is no more "Christian" than a burlesque show. This group dwells where Satan has a seat. He speaks out of the seat "ex-cathedra" - out of the chair.

A. Jerome (340-420 A.D.)

One of the major contributors to the marriage of church and state was Jerome. He made a Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible from the Vaticanus Text of North Africa. He was a strong supporter of the Roman church. He leaned heavily toward "celibacy" of the priesthood and associated doctrines. This Latin Bible helped the papacy restrict the flow of Greek language and literature to Western Europe. All the treasures of the classical past were held back in the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. For nearly one thousand years, the western part of Europe was a stranger to the Greek tongue. This great deficiency brought on the Dark Ages (354-430 A.D.)

B. Augustine (354-430 A.D.)

He was the "theologian" of the Post-Nicene Church Fathers. Augustine was the real founder of the Latin Theology. He was greatly influenced by the North African philosophy of Origen. His longest and most popular work is the City of God. This was undertaken after the (410 A.D.) lack of Rome to demonstrate that the calamities which had over taken the empire were not due to desertion of the ancient gods but were merely signs that the old worldly empire was passing to be replaced by a new empire, the Christian church. Augustine believed:

[1]. All men inherited original sin.
[2]. Predestination to salvation - totally by grace (Calvinism or Augustinianism)
[3]. Baptism had the cure for original sin (sprinkling)

C. Other Catholic Personalities

Didymus - 323-398 A.D.
Athhanasius - 297-372 A.D.
Cyril of Jerusalem - 380-444 A.D.

These men and others like them engaged in controversies over the trinity, laid the ground work for the worship of Mary and tried to get people baptized to get them saved.

II. THYATIRA (500-1000 A.D.):

This is the period of the greatest night-time in the history of Christianity, for it is the period of time when nearly everybody believes that the "Catholic" theologians are right, and the Bible is too hard to understand.

The only real preachers in this age are Bernadino of Sienna, Henry of Lausanne, Tanchelm, Leuthard, Robert of Brescia, Bruno of Segni, Rudolph of Saxony, Vincent Ferrer, and the Nestorians. Arnold of Villanova comes along a little later with Loachin of Floris, Berthold of Rumania (1210), and others: Tanchelm and Leuthard are good ones, and of course, Raymond Lull (1235) was a great missionary.

In this period of time, there is one fact that is always foremost. It is the fact that the popes who use Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, preserved in the monasteries by the monks, never win any souls, and spiritually never amount to a hill of beans.

The men who are doing the preaching on the street, and among the poor, and doing the missionary work in Africa and India, and who are winning the souls, are using either the Greek Textus Recteptus of the Greek Eastern Branch of the Orthodox Church or the Old Latin from the same text. This is the Byzantine text, which, of course, is the source of the Authorized Version (King James), 1611.

SUPPLEMENT:

(Revelation 2:20) - "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 to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols."

This verse shows the cause of the church leaving its first works. This woman, in the local church, historically, is called "Jezebel." Any real Bible student understands exactly who she is. It is a reference to the "Jezebel" of the Book of Kings; she was a prophetess, a religious leader, who followed the Babylonian worship of Baal with its attendant "queen of heaven" and the whole pagan works. This woman of Thyatira is teaching things that are wrong, and of course, as Jezebel, we can immediately identify her doctrine by what it typifies in the O.T. Let the Holy Spirit give you the references very briefly; it will be the eye-opener and shocker of your life.

Notice:

(Genesis 49:17) - The tribe of Dan is called a serpent. (Deut. 33:22) - Dan is called a lion's whelp. The tribe of Dan is like unto a lion and a serpent. If you know your Bible, You know who this typifies. Satan is called a serpent in Gen. 3 and a lion in I Peter 5.
(Judges 19) - The tribe of Dan gets a young man to be priest for its tribe.
(Judges 18:19) - This priest is called "father."
(Judges 18:20) - This "father" takes care of idols and uses them as an aid to worship.
(Judges 18:30,31) - They (Dan) are in total apostasy for nearly one thousand years. Up by Zidon, where the Phoenicians live, we find the tribe of Dan mixing with the heathen, and with priests called "father," who use idols as an aid to worship. Nobody has any doubt about Zidon. In, (Gen. 10:19) you are told that Hamites (Canaanites) settled in this part of the country and set up Baal worship.
(I Kings 16:29-33) - Ahab takes over, marries the daughter of the King of Zidon, and serves Baal, the Phoenician god. Here is Jezebel, herself, in the same passage.
(I Kings 18:26) - If that weren't enough, In this Baal worship carried on in Phoenicia, connected with the tribe of Dan, we find that these People worshipped from 10 (or 11) in the morning to 12 noon.
(I Kings 18:24,25) - They worshipped the fire of the sun; they worshipped the sun god, on his day - "Sunday."
(I Kings 18:28) - These b1ack-robed priests called "father," mutilate themselves and do penance to pay for their sins. They multilate their bodies to try to get what they want from God.
(II Kings 10:22) - These black-robed Baalite priests, called "fathers," who are in the tribe of Dan, who conduct the Phoenician Baal worship for Ahab and Jezebel, wear long robes called vestments. Consequently, they have vestrys and vestrymen for the vestments.
(Jeremiah 10:1-5) - These people, who worship Baal, the sun-god (on December 25th as his birthday), worship him with a tree cut out of the forest by the hands of axeman, and "deck the halls with boughs of holly, tra la la la la la la la la."
(Jeremiah 44:17,16,19,25) - They bake cakes to a female deity whom they call, quaintly (exactly what Pope calls her, "the queen of heaven," clearly identifying the Phoenician Baal worship for what it is.

Phoenician Baal worship from North Africa, through the sons of Ham, with its black-robed priest called "fathers," connected with the tribe of Dan, worships Sunday from 10 or 11 A.M. to 12 noon and observes Christmas. These are the original worshippers of the Antichrist. They are the Devil's crowd. This is not a Dark Age superstition, or Protestant bigotism. This is scripture with scripture, without anybody interpreting anything. All you have to do is read the passages. This is the woman, Jezebel.

 

III. SARDIS (1000-1500 A.D.):

The turn of the first millennium (1000 A.D.) marks the end of the Thyatiran period of church history. By the time of Gregory the Great (540-604) (first pope) the period is well underway, and by the time of Henry III (1046) the transition has been made from Thyatira to the Sardis period (Rev. 3:1). The Sardis period ends with the Reformation in 1500 A.D.

In this period of time the Roman Catholic Church is in full bloom. By the year 1400 this demoniac harlot whose debaucheries stained Europe with blood and filth (Rev. 17:1-6), has assimilated so many non-Christian, non-Biblical teachings that to refer to her as the "Christian Church" would be an insult to the Holy Spirit.

Additions to the church liturgy:

Worship of Mary 431 A.D.
Priest's attire 596 A.D.
Latin Language 600 A.D.
Kissing of the Popes feet 709 A.D.
Worship of images and crosses 788 A.D.
Holy water 850 A.D.
Veneration of St. Joseph 890 A.D. and dead saints 995 A.D.
Bells 965 A.D.
Fasting on Friday and Lent 998 A.D.
Mass obligatory sacrifice 1000 A.D.
Celibacy 1079 A.D.
Rosary 1090 A.D.
Transubtantion 1215 A.D.

The Sardis period deals mainly with the affairs of a religious prostitute who sold God and the Bible out to obtain power and unity in the world system in direct violation of the orders given to the church in (II Cor. 6; Heb. 13:10-14; Jn. 17:9,14; and I Jn. 2:15-16).

The only lights (Biblical lights) that continued to shine in a dark place in the Sardis period were of the Novations, Priscillians, Paulicians, Paterines, Messalines, Euchites, Nestorians, Sabellis, and Manichaeans. In the Sardis period they came to be known as Vaudois, Brethern, Bogomiles, Albigenses, Waldenses, Hericians, Bulgarians, Petrobrusians, Berengarians, Arnoldists and Cathari. Although they vary sometimes in their closeness or distance from the Catholic Creedal Statement's (and they also vary in their attitudes towards some finer points in theology), they all had six things in common:

[1]. They professed to believe the Bible alone was the final authority in all issues when any issue came up.
[2]. They would not sprinkle or baptise babies.
[3]. They did not believe the State had any business dictating to a local church in matter of religious belief or practices.
[4]. They would not pray to the saints or pray for the dead.
[5]. They rejected the Roman Catholic mass.
[6]. They all refused to use the Roman Catholic Latin Bible of Jerome, but used the Old Latin (150 A.D.) or translations of it.