Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the book of Revelation. This will be study #13 of Revelation, chapter 1, and we are going to be reading from Revelation 1, verse 4:

John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;

We have been spending some time looking at the number 'seven,' and we have seen how the Bible identifies that number, that word 'seven,' with perfection, and we have to keep in mind, purity or purification is involved with the word 'seven." That is, the spiritual meaning of that number will point to purity or perfection.

Now let us look at a couple of passages or verses that relate to this idea of 'seven' churches. God could have given any number of churches and, certainly, there were more than 'seven' in Asia (and we will look at some verses that will show that a little later), but He chose 'seven' for a reason. In the Old Testament, we find a couple of verses' one in Isaiah, chapter 4 that I would like to take a look at, in Isaiah 4, verse 1:

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

"In that day" is often used by God to refer to the Day of Judgment, which we have to keep in mind that judgment began at the house of God; the judgment process began there, and so it can be said that the period of judgment began at the begining of the Great Tribulation period, and now, of course, it has transitioned to include the whole world. But "in that day seven women shall take hold of one man..." The 'one man' here is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a few times referred to as 'the man' or 'one man' in the Bible, without further description. The context is what reveals that it is the Lord Jesus in view. For instance, in Jeremiah, chapter 5, verse 1, it says:

Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.

Now Jerusalem is being used here as a figure of the church, the corporate body of the New Testament churches and congregations, and God is bringing judgment upon Jerusalem of old to typify this, and He has brought judgment upon the New Testament church of our day. The Lord is saying, "Go seek in the midst of the churches and congregations. Go find the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, my Spirit. Go seek, and if you find 'a man' there (and of course it is Christ that executeth judgment and seeketh the truth) and if you find Him, if you are able, I will not bring the judgment upon you. I will pardon it."

But the fact is that God's judgment upon the churches was the removal of the Holy Spirit, the removal of that 'one man' whose presence brought righteousness and truth into the midst of the congregations. His removal left them without righteousness, without truth. And since He could not be found, no pardon was given was given to the churches and congregations of the world, and this is the idea here in Isaiah 4, verse 1:

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

That is, the 'bread' of the Gospel. Christ is the 'bread of life' and it is the truth of the teaching of the Bible - true doctrine. The churches, typified by 'seven' women, as we see the number 'seven' is applied to them in our verse in Revelation 1, and they are a woman because the church is pictured as the Bride of Christ. The churches, supposedly, are that Bride, but, of course, it is only the true believers that are saved by the work of Christ before the foundation of the world that actually make up that 'Bride,' but the churches picture that bride, and so they are typified by 'seven' women, and they take hold of 'one man,' the Lord Jesus.

And, yet, they do not want His bread; they do not want the actual truth of the word of God. They want their own bread, their own ideas, their own doctrine and their own gospel. They want things their way and not God's way. Of course, this is in evidence just about everywhere! God says a woman is not to teach or usurp authority over a man and, certainly, not to be a pastor, elder or deacon, and the church says, "We know better."

God says the marriage relationship is not to be broken; there is not to be divorce for any reason at all. The Lord hateth putting away, and the church of our day says, "We know better. There are exceptions." In making those exceptions, they ruin the marriage institution.

God says a man can do no work when it comes to the matter of salvation. It is completely up to God Himself: "I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy," and the church says, "Well, no, a man certainly can choose Christ and accept Him and become saved." And we can just go on and on down the line of doctrines where the churches and congregations want their 'own bread.'

It is not limited to the church, but in this context, it is, because God is referring to 'seven' women, but that proud nature of those within the churches and congregations can also apply to individuals outside that are not truly saved, who want things their own way. It basically boils down to men wanting their own kind of gospel and not liking the Gospel of God, the Gospel of the Bible.

It is the same with the next statement, "We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel." They want their own righteousness is what this means, as apparel has to do with clothing or covering, and God uses that idea of 'covering' to represent the 'covering' of sin. The Elect people are covered by Christ's covering - His righteousness. God's people realize that all of our righteousnesses are 'filthy rags.' They cannot cover us in the least bit. We look only to Christ and His covering.

But this is not so with the churches and congregations of the world. No, they have developed their own salvation plan. They have developed their own program of getting people into Heaven, and their own righteousness, based upon their own works of 'accepting Christ,' of 'walking down an aisle,' of 'saying a sinner's prayer,' of 'partaking of the Lord's table,' of 'being baptized,' of 'church membership' and so on, all following the confessions and creeds and adhering to what the church says: "Do these things, and you are in good standing with God," they say. Oh, no, you are not! No, you are not! You are in good standing with the church, and the church cannot get anyone into Heaven. You can be sure of that.

As a matter of fact, there will be many popes and bishops and priests and ministers and pastors and elders and deacons that will never themselves get into people, and yet they promised 'life' to the members of their congregations, when they, themselves, never had it. They lacked it their own selves. Really, they dug a pit and many fell into the pit that they dug. They set a course with their mouths, promising people that we will come to the shores of Heaven, when, really, they went greatly astray and (will) end up in the depths of the sea with all their sins upon them and the wrath of God finally destroying them forever more!

This is sadly and tragically the case of our present day church. They are typified by these 'seven' women, and, yet, even though they want their own bread and their own apparel, notice what it finally says: "only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach." Despite it all, despite such an independent and proud nature - that everything must be their way - they insist upon being called 'Christian.' They want to keep the name of Christ, and is that not amazing, when we look at the churches today and the way they trample upon the word of God (and the word is Christ)? Some of the liberal churches have so cut up the word of God; they make it say whatever they want it to say. They try to fit it to modern culture and ideas.

For instance, with the homosexuality movement today and with its wide acceptance in the world, the church looks rather old and traditional, and just outdated. And, so, "Well, we can fix that," some of the more modern, liberal churches say. They just simply decree, "Well, God has never taught against homosexuality. Homosexuality is just as accepted in God's eyes as marriage between a man and a woman. Certainly men can marry men and women can marry women."

Why in the world do they keep the name of Christ? Why do they call themselves 'Christians' when they have no regard (and we must say this because it is the truth) for the Bible; it is just something they keep as a reference book and, yet, they do not refer to it, in reality, or at least not in truth. We wonder if the reason they keep it is due to the association that the Bible has with Heaven; the Bible says no one gets to Heaven apart from the Lord Jesus Christ: "There is none other name given amongst men whereby we must be saved." It is only through Him. The Bible is clear about this.

Of course, some churches trample over that idea, too, but they keep the name 'Christ' and 'Christian,' and maybe a few of them do just to draw individuals that are attracted by that name. Yet, although they insist on being called by the name of Christ, certainly, they do not follow Him, and they do not follow the word of God at all.

There is another verse we want to look at with the number 'seven' in it, and that is in the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 15, it says in verse 9:

She that hath borne seven languisheth: she hath given up the ghost; her sun is gone down while it was yet day: she hath been ashamed and confounded: and the residue of them will I deliver to the sword before their enemies, saith JEHOVAH.

We wonder about this verse. It is a little hard to understand. Why is God speaking of Judah or of Jerusalem as "she that hath borne seven?" We understand, actually, the rest of the verse, "She has given up the ghost," that is, the Spirit of God, just as the Bible teaches that when God began the judgment on the churches and congregations, the Holy Spirit came out of the midst, and so she gave up the ghost.

And "her sun is gone down while it was yet day..." Notice it is her sun, and God did extinguish the light of the sun in the churches throughout the Great Tribulation period, the entire period of judgment of 23 years. He revealed this in Revelation 8 when He speaks of the 'third part' of the sun being darkened, and that was important because it was not the whole sun; God still had a plan to evangelize the world outside of the churches through the Latter Rain. It would be after the Latter Rain, at the conclusion of the Great Tribulation (immediately after the Tribulation), the sun of the whole world was darkened, and we are currently living in that time.

So it is significant that Jeremiah 59 says that "her sun is gone down while it was yet day." It was still the day of salvation, and God had not yet completed His saving work in finding all the lost Sheep, all that great multitude, to complete the salvation of all the Elect. "...she hath been ashamed and confounded: and the residue of them will I deliver to the sword before their enemies, saith JEHOVAH." That is a typical verse describing the wrath of God upon His people, and that applies to the Great Tribulation.

But what about, "She that hath borne seven languisheth?" (To 'languish' is what the rest of the verse means, to lose the Holy Spirit and to have the sun darkened.) We can find the answer to this when we turn back to 1Samuel, chapter 2. In 1Samuel 2, Hannah is praying to God, rejoicing that she has been granted a child, Samuel, and Samuel is a type of Christ. (We will not go into that, as EBible has done a study in 1Samuel and it very clearly shows Samuel as a type and figure of Christ in the early chapters.) So Hannah is rejoicing, just as Mary rejoiced upon hearing she would give birth to The Messiah. So Hannah's prayer of rejoicing prefigures that of Mary. We read in 1Samuel 2, in verse 5:

They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.

Now Hannah was barren. She was grieved by this because her husband had another wife who had several children. This is the picture that God often uses in the Bible, the barren woman giving birth, just as Sarah gave birth to Isaac, and Isaac was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember his father Abraham was going to offer him up? And that pointed to the time when the Father would offer up the Lord Jesus. Of course, that was done before the foundation of the world, but the demonstration of that was in time, in 33 A.D.

Well, here it is Hannah who is barren, because when she gives birth to Samuel (and he is a figure of the child that will be born to Mary, the Lord Jesus) and the statement is made "the barren hath born seven." Why 'seven?' Hannah only gave birth to one, to Samuel. Because that child represents Jesus and Jesus is absolute perfection. He is the pure and holy and perfect sacrifice, the Messiah, eternal God Himself in the flesh. So Hannah is pictured as giving birth or having borne, 'seven.' In Jeremiah 15 (and let us turn back there) and it says, again, in verse 9:

She that hath borne seven languisheth...

This is because the church is typified in the Bible as having given birth to Christ. Remember the woman in Revelation 12? She gives birth to the man child, and then after the man child is caught up to Heaven, the dragon goes after the woman and she finds her refuge in the wilderness for a period of time. That woman is a picture of the believers. The believers took up residence in the churches and congregations, as God decreed. It was His will to use the churches throughout the church age. But, finally, the Lord is able to make this statement that "she that hath borne 'seven'," that is, the one that Christ came through (as He came through the body of believers and as they were identified with the churches) now 'languisheth.' Now the Spirit of God is removed from it, and the light of the Gospel is gone. This is how we can understand this.

So, we see that even though we are reading about the beginnings of the New Testament church in Revelation 21, chapter 1, as John is writing to the 'seven' churches that are in Asia, we know from the Bible already that we can expect that the 'seven' churches, or the corporate body of congregations the world over, will eventually fail, and God will remove Himself from them.

But let us look at this reference to Asia, the 'seven' churches in Asia. If we turn to Acts 19 we will read about Asia several times. The word 'Asia' is found twenty times in the New Testament, and a few of them are in Acts 19. It says in verse 10:

And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Notice it says "all they which dwelt in Asia," and then in verse 18 and 19 of Acts 19:

And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.

That is, in Asia the word of God was growing tremendously. And then in verses 26 and 27:

Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus...

Now this is a silversmith complaining about the progress of the Gospel, and speaking against Paul and those that are carrying the word of God. And, again, in verse 26 and 27:

Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.

Well, here we can see that the Gospel was progressing greatly in the early days in the first century in Asia, and, yet, God is only writing to 'seven' churches. Certainly, there were more than 'seven,' but He is using the number 'seven' to represent the perfection of churches that would come as a result of the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is typified by that number 'seven,' and in their relationship to Him, God also uses the number 'seven.'

Now one verse that we will just look at to see what these 'seven' churches are; the 'seven' churches are named in one verse, in verse 11 of Revelation, chapter 1:

Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send *it* unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

Those are the 'seven' churches. That actually would be a good verse to memorize, if you are interested in knowing exactly which 'seven' churches are being referred to, and God will go on in chapters two and three to address words to each of the angels of the 'seven' churches that are in Asia.