Revelation 2:18-29 - To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:  These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.  I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.  Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols…

…I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.  So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.  I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.  Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come.  To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations- He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’- just as I have received authority from my Father.  I will also give him the morning star.  He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

[See the Introduction to the Seven Letters to the Seven Churches in Revelation]

This is the longest of the Seven Letters in Revelation, and refers to the longest period of church history, which ran through the Middle Ages until the Protestant Reformation (nearly 1000 years).  The Bible says that when Jesus returns, he will reign upon the earth for 1000 years, commonly called “the Great Millennium,” before the New Heavens and New Earth replace the current universe (see Revelation chapters 20-21).  The period of Thyatira represents the Enemy’s own version of a “millennium,” a thousand-year period where darkness prevailed.  In English-speaking countries, we often refer to this period of history as the “Dark Ages.”  For many Bible-believing Christians today, this era is long forgotten, the period when the Roman Catholic Church was the only visible form of Christianity in the world (along with the Eastern Orthodox Church, which during this time was mostly under the political control of Muslims).  Even so, this period constituted nearly half of the entire 2000-year history of Christianity and profoundly shaped the culture and the world’s view of the “church.” 

Thyatira was a city in the days of Jesus and the apostles, located in modern-day Turkey, and the early church had a group of believers there.  This was a smaller city than some of the others to whom Jesus addressed the Seven Letters, but it was an important spot on the trade routes and was known for its guild of craftsmen, who dyed purple cloth. The name “Thyatira” in Greek means something like “continuous sacrifice” (”thyo” was a Greek word for “sacrifice”).  The first-century church in this city had some serious problems, as we shall see, but God used this group of believers as an illustration of problems that would characterize Christianity overall for hundreds of years after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Jesus Identifies Himself – In each of the Seven Letters, Jesus opens by identifying himself in a way that relates to the needs of that period of church history.  Here he calls himself the “Son of God” and the one “whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.”  For the first-century believers in Thyatira, these designations for Jesus had immediate relevance, because the primary pagan religion of their city was the worship of the false sun-god Apollo, whom they called “the Son of Zeus,” the chief of the Greek false gods; Apollo was often pictured in their pagan idols with flames of blazing fire coming from his face.  The early Christians in that city lived surrounded by images of the supposed “Son of Zeus” with blazing fire emanating from his head.  It must have been striking for them to hear Jesus declare that HE is the only true “Son of God,” and that HE is the one who has eyes of blazing fire. Jesus was calling the main pagan deity of that city a cheap substitute for Him, the real Son of God.       

Son of God – Today it may seem obvious to Christians that Jesus is the “Son of God.”  Even so, there are two reasons that this designation of Jesus had special prophetic significance related to the period of Thyatira.  First, the period of Thyatira corresponds roughly to the rise of Islam in Arabia and its rapid domination of the entire Middle East, North Africa, Spain, and parts of Eastern Europe.  Mohammed’s main complaint against Christianity, as recorded in the Koran, was the idea that Jesus was God’s “Son.”  The Koran describes Jesus as a prophet, and even admits he is the “messiah,” but in several places pronounces an eternal curse on “anyone who says that God has a Son.”  This title of the Lord Jesus – “the Son of God” – was the main point of contention between the Church of this period and the main political/military power that opposed it and tried to eradicate it.  It is very interesting that Jesus looks forward to this long stretch of church history and pronounces himself the “Son of God.”

The second reason that the title “Son of God” is significant for this period relates to an internal problem within Christianity.  This requires a little background explanation.  In 431 A.D., during the era of Pergamum, at a meeting called the Council of Ephesus, the institutional church officially gave the title “Mother of God” (”theotokos“) to Mary, Jesus’ mother, who of course had been dead for almost 400 years.  This pronouncement was in response to an important Archbishop named Nestorius, who insisted that they should call Mary the “mother of Jesus” or “mother of Christ,” but said that it was going too far to speak of her as “Mother of God.”  He believed that Jesus was God before the incarnation, so it did not make sense to call Mary the “mother” of something that existed before she was born.  Nestorius taught that Mary was the mother of Jesus’ earthly body (and human attributes) instead. 

Yet for the institutionalized Church in Europe, among whom the operation of the Holy Spirit was diminishing, there was a desire to elevate Mary to the level of a spiritual being to take the Spirit’s place.  They wanted to portray Jesus as a purely spiritual being, downplaying his humanity, and to give Mary this title as part of the process of elevating her in their theology.  In 431, they excommunicated Nestorius and all his followers, even though these churches reached from Iraq to China.  This new title for Mary, whom the Bible depicts as a simple Jewish girl who was faithful to the Lord, paved the way for so-called “Christians” to worship and pray to Mary, as they had elevated her to the same level of God.  Strangely, this title also paved the way for the Roman Catholic Church to teach that the bread and wine in a communion service literally change into the flesh and blood of Christ.  The “Mother of God” title related to a particular theory about Jesus’ nature being a single spiritual essence that could take different physical forms.  We shall return to the problem of the Catholic view of communion later, in the next teaching.  At the end of the period of Thyatira, when Protestant Reformers began to reject the Catholic idea that the communion bread literally turns into a piece of flesh, the Catholics at first called them “Nestorians.” 

As the period of Thyatira began with a proclamation that Mary was the “Mother of God,” it is interesting that Jesus designates himself here as the “Son of God” – not the “Son of Mary.”  Jesus’ divine nature had no earthly mother.  When the angel appeared to Mary before she became pregnant with Jesus, he told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”  (Lk. 1:35).  He did not say, “You will give birth to God.”  Her role pertained only to Jesus’ incarnation, his humanity – not to His participation in the Godhead from Eternity past.  When the angel appeared to Joseph to explain what was happening, he similarly downplayed Mary’s role, saying, “What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 1:20).

When Jesus calls himself “the Son of God,” he repudiates the Medieval Church’s worship of Mary, their theology that put her on the same level as God.  The very title “Son of God” carries within it the whole Gospel story.  From Eternity, our Eternal Creator sent His own Word to take flesh and live among us, to take on our humanity so that He could reveal the Eternal Creator to us perfectly, so that He could atone for the sins of humanity, and so that He could overcome death itself for us through the resurrection.  Jesus is the “Son” because he left his glorious position and humbled himself, taking on our humanity (Phil. 2:7).  He did not come to earth as an angel or spiritual entity, but had the full physical form of humanity, and literally experienced a painful physical death (Phil 2:8).  Jesus is the Son “of God” because he is not just another religious teacher, holy man, or martyr, but is a being who came directly from Eternity, from outside our sinful world, to bring us Eternal life.

This is the only place in the Seven Letters where Jesus calls himself the “Son of God.”  Other titles and self-designations repeat throughout the Letters, but Jesus reserves this title for addressing the Church of Thyatira.  He repudiated the great attacks that would come against this concept during that period – on the one side from Islam, with the Koran’s curse on anyone who utters the phrase “Son of God,” and on the other side from the dead, institutionalized Church, which was more interested in Mary than in Jesus Himself. 

“. . . whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.”  In the Old Testament, Daniel gave the same description for the heavenly being he saw: “his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.”  (Dan. 10:6)  Ezekiel also saw heavenly creatures whose “feet gleamed like burnished bronze” (Ezek. 1:7).  These symbols speak of Jesus’ righteous judgment against sin. His fiery eyes see everything.  In the Bible, bronze, like fire, was associated with purification and cleansing from sin (see Ex. 27:2, 30:18; Lev. 6:28; Num. 16:39, 21:9) and God’s staunch resistance to man’s sin (Lev. 26:19; Deut. 28:23; 2 Sam. 22:35; Jer. 1:18, 15:20; Ezek. 40:3; Zech. 6:1).  Jesus describes himself this way because of his judgment on the rampant corruption within the church during the period of Thyatira – which is the subject of the next lesson.  His “feet” are bronze because judgment is approaching rapidly.

next sermon in this series: Church of Thyatira pt.2>>>

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