Welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. This is study #36 of Revelation, chapter 1, and we are going to be reading Revelation 1:11:

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.

We were looking at the beginning part of verse 11 the last time we were together. We saw, again, that the Lord Jesus is introducing Himself as "Alpha and Omega, the first and the last," and we will not discuss that again; God will bring this up again, at another point. This is the second of four instances in the Book of Revelation where Jesus is called "Alpha and Omega."

Then it goes on to say, "and, What thou seest, write in a book," and this was God's instruction, His command, to the Apostle John that the things that he would be shown would be written down in a Book. We talked some about that in our last study, and we saw how God has not changed from this point in the first century A.D. than from the days of Jeremiah (and we looked at Jeremiah 36), and Jeremiah was instructed to write those things down that God was sharing with him.

Now I would like to look at this a little bit more before we continue, that is, this idea of God compiling a Book, and instructing His prophets to write the things of God---the visions, the revelations---in a Book. The Book, we know, is the Bible.

The word *book,* our English word *book*, is found in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and the word *book*, singular, appears 189 times in the Bible. Many of those references are pointing to God's putting together his compilation of this one Book, the Bible.

The word *Bible* comes from the Greek word *biblion* or *biblios* (as it is found sometimes), which is translated as *book* in our English language, and we can hear how close the words are. You know, we are getting quite a lesson in entomology---we are learning many Greek words---and we find out how similar they are to our English words. The Bible is helpful in a great many ways, and that is just a minor way, but it also helps us with our own language.

Well, about 1,500 years before John received these words from the Lord, the man Moses was given similar instruction in Exodus 17:14:

And JEHOVAH said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.

This is only one example of the Lord speaking with Moses and instructing him to write down things, as God used Moses to write the first five Books of the Bible, which are known as the Pentuteuch. But it also says in Deuteronomy 31:24-26:

And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, That Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of JEHOVAH, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of JEHOVAH your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.

So the Lord moved Moses to write down these words, and then He finished with that portion of the Bible. After giving Moses that information, five Books were completed, but the Bible would continue on---this putting together of the word of God---would continue for centuries, for some 1,500 years, into the first century A.D. (I am not trying to be exact, but that is an approximate figure), before God would come to John and begin to give him the words of the Book of Revelation. Then, finally, Revelation itself would be completed, the sixty-sixth Book of the Bible, and then the word of God would be perfect. There would be nothing added to, nothing subtracted from, this Book any longer; this would be the exact words that God would have mankind to know.

We read in Isaiah 30:8-10:

Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of JEHOVAH: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits:

Now verses 9 and 10 do not really have anything to do with the focus of looking at God commanding to "write it in a book," but they are such good verses---giving us wise counsel for our days---that I thought I would read them.

Let us go back to Revelation 1, and it says in Revelation 1:11:

...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.

Here, God is indicating what you write down, His word, is to be sent to the seven churches. We looked at the number *seven* early on, when it came up in the Book of Revelation, and we saw how it points to *perfection* or *purity*, as the word of God is likened to something "purified seven times," indicating the perfect nature of the Bible, that it is without error---there is no fault, no misspoken words, no misstatements, nothing that fails to harmonize with anything else.

Can you imagine that? A Bible, like this Book that we have, that is enormous; it has all sorts of words in it, and it is sixty-six Books, varying in length. There are just so many words, and God used so many prophets of old, different men: Moses and John and Peter and David, and all sorts of different men, over the centuries, and many of them never knew one another personally and, yet, they all wrote with "one accord."

How is that possible? How is it that Moses and the things he wrote could be so perfectly in tune with the Apostle Paul and the things that Paul wrote? "Well," someone might say, "`Paul studied Moses and that is why they are alike." And I suppose that is fair to say, but to match perfectly and to have perfect agreement, and perfect unity? That is what we find in the whole Bible, through Genesis, and Exodus and all the Books of Moses, to the writing of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, and so on, and to the Chronicles of the Kings, and Samuel, and Daniel, and into the New Testament with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the book of Acts, and all of the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.

We find a perfect unity, a perfect harmony, that is just impossible for men to achieve. Just try it. Of course, nobody will, but let us say you got together fifty different individuals, and you gave them each an assignment and told them what to write, and you said, "Alright, now here is what I want you to write," and you had them go write it down, and you would find mistakes, errors, and things that do not agree with one another.

Of course, one big problem is that what you would have them write is from the mind of a man, and another problem is that you cannot control them, and make sure that everything they write is adhering, absolutely perfectly, to your standard. But God is not man; He is God, and His words, to begin with, are pure and without sin or error of any kind, and God is also able to move men, to direct them to the degree that every single thing they wrote---every word, every jot, every tittle---was exactly what He wanted them to write; nothing more, nothing less, and no errors of any kind.

If you ever hear anyone talk about "scribal errors," stop listening to them, because they do not understand the Bible. There are no errors and no scribal errors of any kind in the original text that God has given us. It is a beautiful, wonderful, glorious, perfect work, and it is what God has given us, and this word was to sent to the seven churches, and it is also sent to us today. Amazingly, in the 21st century, almost 2,000 years later, here we are reading what God moved the Apostle John to write, and our fathers have heard these things, and their fathers before them, and their fathers, and generation after generation have lived and died, come and gone, while the Bible was being proclaimed and sent forth throughout the earth. Many of our forefathers were privileged to have heard the word of God, to one degree or another.

And, of course, we are greatly privileged in our day to live at a time when God has unsealed His word and revealing truths that have never previously been known down through the centuries---truths that God has saved for the end of time.

Well, when we look at the "seven churches which are in Asia," the number *seven* is pointing to perfection. The churches are named: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Now when we look up these names, we try to search them out and look for a meaning, as we know that many names in Hebrew and Greek have meanings---they are words that teach us things.

What we find is that of the seven churches, there are only three that we can say we have a fairly good idea of what the names mean. Ephesus is one that I cannot find out what the name means, and sometimes more so in the Greek than the Hebrew, it is more difficult to find out the meaning of the name; and the same with Pergamos and Thyatira and Sardis---I am not sure what those names mean.

But *Smyrna* is the identical word and spelled identically to the word translated as *myrrh*, and Philadelphia (and this may be one you have heard of since we have a city in the United States called Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), means "brotherly love." It is to love brothers, and, so, Philadelphia is known as the "city of brotherly love."

Laodicea is a compound word that seems to come from two Greek words: one is *laos*, meaning *people*, and the second is *dike*, which seems to mean *judgment*. So, "people of judgment" is one possible meaning. I am not sure.

That is just something interesting for us to know, and I do not know how we can understand anything spiritual from this (at this point), but that is what those names mean, and those are the places were we cannot find the meaning of some of the names.

Let us continue with Revelation 1:12:

And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;

Now John is turning because when the voice began to speak, it spoke behind him. The Lord told us that in verse 10: "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet..." So John turned to see the voice and, being turned, he then saw seven golden candlesticks.

The word *turned* is interesting, as it is a word that is sometimes translated as *converted*, but, that does not seem to fit the context here in any kind of spiritual way; John is already a true believer. The word also relates to repentance, but, actually, this may just help us understand what *repentance* and being *converted* really means, and that is to *turn*. When we are going the way of the world---the way of our own wants and desires---God commands us to repent, to turn, and to repent (if we are granted God's grace to be able to do that from the heart, where He has given us a new heart, and that is really what we all need repentance from), it does not matter so much if we turn from an "outer sin" if the inner flow of our heart is all manner of wickedness, and only the salvation which is accomplished by God Himself can turn an individual.

And, of course, God is not working in that way right now. We could still pray, "Oh, Lord, having had mercy, have mercy, because I see some sin in my life, and could it be you would turn me from that sin?" And even in that, we would have to pray, "Oh, Lord, could it be that you might have already turned my heart, that I might be able to turn from this sin?"

But, anyway, the idea of repentance is "to turn," and here John is turning to see who is speaking (that great voice that he heard behind him), and when he turns he sees "seven golden candlesticks." Now the number *seven*, again, is the *perfection* of what is in view, or the *purity* of it. And also "golden candlesticks;" gold is a pure metal---it has gone through the fire to be purified, and here are the "golden candlesticks" in John's sight.

Now let us take a look, as God directs us in this way, into the Old Testament, to look at "golden candlesticks." The Lord has several things to say about it, and Exodus 25 is one place where we read of the *candlestick*, singular, that was made for the tabernacle, and we read about this in Exodus 25:31-37:

And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same. And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side: Three bowls made like unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick. And in the candlestick shall be four bowls made like unto almonds, with their knops and their flowers. And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick. Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it shall be one beaten work of pure gold. And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it.

And I will stop reading there. Here, God is referring to a (singular) candlestick that has seven lamps, and we find in Revelation 1, in our passage, that there are "seven golden candlesticks." We also find golden candlesticks made by Solomon for the temple that Solomon had made, in 1Kings 7:48-49:

And Solomon made all the vessels that pertained unto the house of JEHOVAH: the altar of gold, and the table of gold, whereupon the shewbread was, And the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side, and five on the left, before the oracle, with the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs of gold,

And then it continues...so, here, there are ten golden candlesticks that were made for the temple. We can learn some things about the golden candlesticks, but, still we do not have *seven*, and that is because God is teaching by the number *ten* that points to *completeness*, and He is teaching by the number *seven* which spiritually speaks to *perfection* or *purity*.

We can know, absolutely, what the golden candlesticks represent because God helps in a big way by telling us directly, a little further in Revelation 1:20:

The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks...

Now, again, what is a *mystery*? A *mystery* is something that God has hidden in His word, as God has hidden many things, and He refers to the hidden truths of the Bible as a *mystery*. So, what is the *mystery* of the "seven candlesticks?" It goes on to say in Revelation 1:20:

...The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

Now we have the Biblical definition for "the seven golden candlesticks" that John turned and saw. They are representative of the seven churches themselves, the churches that were named in verse 11. As God sent the word that He gave to John to the seven churches, we are not to understand that it was limited just to them. The sending of the word of God to those churches pictures the sending of God's word to His people that were in the churches during the church age, and are represented and typified by these seven churches. That is where the focus of God was for over 1,955 years of the church age, so, of course, He is discussing it here as the Book of Revelation is beginning, and we are starting to get into some of the matters that the Lord wanted to talk about and to communicate to us.

So the "seven golden candlesticks," once again, are the seven churches of God.