Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #21 of Revelation 2, and we are going to begin by reading Revelation 2:16:

Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

In the previous verses, we saw how this particular church at Pergamos had some who held to the doctrine of Balaam, as well as to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which God hated.  So this is why this command was issued to repent, or else.  We are conditioned to understand it to be a threat when we hear: “You do this, or else.” 

Of course God was laying down His Law as He gave the commandment to the churches and congregations that they were obligated to obey.  They were duty-bound to keep His commandments, and to turn from these things in order to remain faithful in their proclamation of the Gospel to the world.  If they continued to turn out of the way by following the doctrines of Balaam and the Nicolaitans, which were not the true Gospel, then God was saying that if they did not repent He would come against them quickly and fight against them with the sword of His mouth.

He was not just talking to the church at Pergamos, but He was talking to all the churches of the New Testament age that permitted these types of doctrines to be taught in them.  If they did not turn from them, then God would come quickly.  We have looked at this in the past, but when the Lord says He is coming quickly, it means He will come at the first possible opportunity in His overall timetable and plan of salvation for this world.

He would first allow space to repent, which was the entire 1,955 years of the church age, from 33 A. D. to 1988 A. D.  Within that time, the churches were permitted to operate as God, in a sense, was looking for their repentance.  But, finally, the allotted time expired, and the church age ended when God came to visit to see if they had repented, but they had not repented.  Then what did the Lord do?  He began to immediately fight against the churches and congregations of the world.  God was in active opposition to the New Testament churches.  He fought against them by removing His Spirit from the midst of the churches, and by loosing Satan to enter into the congregations to rule as the man of sin, and now the “abomination of desolation” was in the holy place, so God began to fight against them.

The word “fight” used in Revelation 2:16 is translated as “war” in Revelation 19 in the context of Judgment Day upon the world.  It says in Revelation 19:11:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

That word “war” is a translation of the same word translated as “fight” in our verse in Revelation 2:16:

Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.

It is an interesting thing that it says, “the sword of my mouth,” which is a reference to the Word of God.  If we read a little further in on Revelation 19, the Lord Jesus is pictured as coming on a white horse, and it says in Revelation 19:13-15:

And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

Once again, the context of Revelation 19 is Judgment Day.  The treading of the winepress relates to Revelation 14 where we read of blood coming out of the winepress for the space of sixteen hundred furlongs.  But the important thing that I hope we all take note of is that in Revelation 19 the Lord is doing battle with the unsaved of the world, and He also has a sharp sword that comes out of His mouth.  He is also warring, as we saw in verse 11: “…and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.”

Why is that significant?  In Revelation 2:16 we read, “Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.”  And we understand that this means that at the end of the church age, the Lord brought about the Great Tribulation when judgment commenced upon the churches and congregations of the world, and that was the point at which the Lord began to war against them with the sword of His mouth with the information He was revealing as He opened up the Scriptures that had been sealed.  They were now opened to the understanding of the people of God, and the information that came forth revealed the end of the church age, the judgment upon the churches, and the fact that Satan had been loosed, and God’s Spirit had left the churches.  It revealed an awful 2,300 evening mornings during which virtually no one was being saved. 

It was just the worst scenario concerning the churches and congregations because no one was being saved within the churches over the 23 years of the Great Tribulation period (or ever again).  There was no literal battle.  There was no literal warfare.  There was no literal sword.  It was all a revelation of spiritual truth and the spiritual judgment wherein the Holy Spirit left the churches, and Satan entered into them.  Because this relates to spiritual beings, no one could see the Spirit leaving, nor could they see Satan entering in.  God is Spirit, and no one could see Him in the midst of the congregations when He was there.  And Satan is a fallen angel and spirit being, so no one could see him as he entered into the congregations.  It was all spiritual, and invisible to the naked eye.  No one could discern these things through their physical sight.

Again, let us just take note of these similarities.  There is warfare mentioned in Revelation 19, and Christ has the sword protruding from His mouth to do battle, but the battle is against the world.  Of course the similarity is that it is the same cup of wrath.  The cup of wrath the Lord gave first to the people called by His name as judgment began at the house of God is the same cup that was then given to the nations of the world when the Great Tribulation ended, and there was the transition of judgment from exclusively on the churches to now include all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.  Since God uses the same language of judging and making war, and He uses the same picture of fighting against them with the Word of His mouth, and since it is the “same cup,” as we are instructed in Jeremiah 25, we would expect the judgment on the world to be of a similar nature and character as the judgment on the churches. 

And that is exactly what we have learned.  Judgment Day begin on the world on May 21, 2011.  And God did similar things by shutting the door to heaven, and by putting out the Gospel lights, spiritually, so that no one could become saved in the world.  He would no longer utilize the Holy Spirit to create a new life within any more sinners in the world.  It was a very similar judgment, and God is fighting, or making war, against the unsaved inhabitants of the world, and against the kingdom of darkness, and it is all spiritual at this time.

Let us go back to Revelation 2, and let us move on to Revelation 2:17:

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches…

Once again, this was the constant refrain that the Lord has placed after each one of the addresses to the seven churches.  We are presently looking at the third address.  We have looked at Ephesus and Smyrna, and now we are looking at Pergamos, and God has been saying the same thing after each address: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches…”  It is a reminder that His Words are parabolic, and you must look for the spiritual meaning.  Not only that, but you must have “ears to hear.”  God has to have given you spiritual hearing, and He only does that through salvation, and by His good pleasure as the Spirit opens up your understanding to truth.  It is the Spirit that guides us into all truth, as John 16 tells us.  If you, I, or anyone wants to understand what the Lord is saying, we must first go the Lord to make sure we have ears to hear, and then we beseech God, “O, Lord, help me to understand.  Make me to know what you are saying, and to hear these things that the Spirit is saying because they are spiritual.  Of myself, I cannot understand anything, and it takes your working in me to give me a new spirit.  And even after I am saved, I can be ‘hard of hearing’ to certain degree, so I ask that you continue to help me by granting me understanding.” 

It goes on to say in Revelation 2:17:

…To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna…

Once again, we find that just about every time He addresses the churches, the Lord speaks of “overcoming.”  As a matter of fact, He may say this in all instances.  For example, it says back in Revelation 2:7:

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

Then it says in Revelation 2:11:

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

In both of these cases, God is adding something different.  First, “To him that overcometh, will give to eat of tree of life,” and, secondly, “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death,” and in both cases, it is speaking of being born again.  If one is born again, you will eat of the tree of life and live forever, and you will not be hurt of the second death.

Now we are reading this a third time, as it says in Revelation 2:17:

… To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna…

Once again, this would only apply to someone who is born again, and who overcomes.  Is it someone who overcomes by their belief or their faith?  It does say in 1John 5:4:

For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

But we know that we are saved by the faith of Christ.  He is our faith.  He is the One who has overcome the world.  He is the One who overcame by being victorious in paying the penalty for sin on our behalf, and He overcame death by rising from the dead, and so on.  The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who overcomes, and He has granted us justification through His faith, and He has granted us the ability to live by His faith, and we have “overcome” only through His faith.  That is, it is all His faith, and not our faith.  That is what makes us born again, so it can therefore be said, “To him that overcometh,” referring to the one God has saved entirely through Christ by the grace of God, and through no work of that individual.  

Again, He says, “… To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna…”  The “hidden manna” is a phrase God uses to describe the Word of God.  But first, let us look at “manna,” and then we will think about why the Lord says it is “hidden manna.”

We first read about “manna” in the Old Testament, and it is Strong’s #4478.  It would be interesting to look that up because it is spelled identically to Strong’s #4479, which is the Hebrew word for “what.”  That is exactly what “manna” means.  It says in Exodus 16:12-15:

I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am JEHOVAH your God. And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which JEHOVAH hath given you to eat.

They saw the manna, and they basically said, “What is this?”  The word “manna” is identical to the word “what.”  Historically, it was a very mysterious thing that God worked among the Israelites as He fed them with bread from heaven, this mysterious manna they could find every day, except for the Sabbath day.  The day before the Sabbath, they could gather enough for two days.  They could take this manna and bake it to make bread, and God sustained them throughout their wilderness sojourn by this “bread from heaven,” manna.

In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus referred to this in the Gospel of John.  It says in John 6:31-34:

Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

That sounded good as Christ was speaking to these people, but He continued to talk.  You know, a lot of people who read the Word of God find things that excites, interests, or attracts them, but as they continue to read the Bible, or to hear teachings from the Bible, they ultimately find things that are disagreeable, and it has no attraction for them, and that causes them to want to leave the Word.  We have seen this over the years.  There are people that were initially drawn to the Bible, but then as God would open up a certain truth, it was offensive to them.  But Jesus kept talking, and He said in John 6:48-61:

I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?

Yes, they were offended, and many people have been offended by the Word of God over the many centuries as God declared His Word to this world.  Many people in the churches were offended during the church age by certain teachings, and many people at the end of the church age were greatly offended by the teachings that God had sealed up and then revealed at the time of the end during the Great Tribulation.  There were things that were very offensive to them, like the truth that the church age was over, and that the true believers were to leave their churches and congregations.  They were offended by the doctrine of annihilation, instead of a place called “hell,” as God corrected that doctrine.  And they were offended by the truth that Christ had died and made payment for sin at the foundation of the world, and not at the cross, and by the revelation of things like this being the Day of Judgment, and many other hard things: “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”  And large numbers of people have gone away and left the Word of God.  They have left the things the Bible says.

You see, it is not for everyone to eat of the “hidden manna.”  The Lord had hidden truth in His Word, and that is why Christ was speaking to those disciples in that way.  He could have spoken plainly, and He could have explained what He meant by “eating His flesh, and drinking His blood.”  But He used words intentionally so that individuals who had natural minds would listen but not understand because they did not understand that Christ spoke in parables, and without a parable He did not speak. 

We must look for the “hidden manna,” or the hidden meaning of the Word of God, the deeper spiritual meaning of the Scriptures.  Only God’s true people will consistently understand that all the Bible is “hidden manna,” and that Christ is the Word, and to eat of that “hidden manna,” we must partake of the entire Bible, looking for the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven that God has hidden in His Word.  We must dig for them as for silver and gold, and as for buried treasure, and we must search the Scriptures, comparing Scripture with Scripture, here a little, there a little.  We must put forth tremendous effort in order to find the “bread of life,” the hidden manna of the Word of God.