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[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Destruction of Values

In sex, gender, and sexuality, what is normal? What is normal marriage? Normal family? Western Civilization once knew. But no longer. Academics, philosophers, and politicians are waging a passionate ideological war to establish a world in which NOTHING is considered normal—where even SUGGESTING that one thing is normal and another is abnormal is considered an act of hatred and violence. That conflict is eating away at the foundations of civilization itself.

Join us for this episode of Tomorrow’s World, where we expose the war against normal.

Ideological Attacks and Radical “Theories”

A warm welcome to you from all of us here at Tomorrow’s World, where we help you make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible.

In Jeremiah 10:23, we see a statement made of profound importance: “O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.”

Our topic today illustrates the truth of that statement and the civilization-wide tragedy that unfolds when we ignore it.

We asked at the beginning—in gender, sexuality, marriage, and family, what is normal?

Many can no longer answer this question, thanks to a long-running war against all things “normal.” In fact, we are in the final stages of that war in the West, which we will demonstrate today.

We used to know what “normal” was. At least we thought we did, right? Marriage was a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman, defining family and creating the healthiest environment for childrearing. Mankind was organized into males and females, and sex was to take place between a male and a female, and that was an obvious matter of biology.

That was our world as recently as 20 years ago. But today, simply ASKING what is normal is offensive to many—and may offend some of you. That’s because we’re living in the final stages of a war against normality. Social engineers have mounted an aggressive campaign over multiple decades, seeking to eradicate ANY idea that some things are normal and some abnormal.

And as normality is losing this war, an abnormal world is quickly filling the space left behind. It is this NEW world that our children will inherit—in which there is no such thing as “normal” and it’s the highest offense to suggest that there should be.

How did we get here? How bad is it? Can it get worse? And finally, what does God think of a culture in which anything normal is the enemy?

While the combatants attacking normality are not as coordinated and conspiratorial as many think, there ARE common doctrines and goals that drive and unite them. Originating in the infamous Frankfurt School in the 1920s, so-called “Critical Theory” in various forms has become all the rage. The 1970s saw the rise of Critical Legal Theory, and more recently, Critical Race Theory became the hot topic of discussion.

No less pervasive in its influence on modern culture is QUEER THEORY. Queer Theory seeks to “deconstruct” common ways of thinking, to overturn widely held norms, and to define all of society as a power play between the “oppressed” and their “oppressors.” Developed in LGBT Studies and Women’s Studies programs at universities across the Western world, Queer Theory focuses on deconstructing SEXUALITY AND GENDER—and, consequently, everything affected by those facets of life, such as family structure.

Academics steeped in these ideas seek to subvert what has been considered normal and celebrate what were previously “abnormal” ideas and practices. To them, it is not enough for society to merely accept or allow the fullest spectrum of sexual behaviors and “gender constructs.” Their goal is to “queer” the discourse entirely, meaning to change mainstream thinking so that nothing is even thought of as “normal” or “not normal” any longer.

For example, Dr. Roberta Chevrette of Middle Tennessee State University has written of the need to “‘queer’ family communication” (Theories of Human Communication, December 22, 2016, p. 235)—changing discussions WITHIN FAMILIES so that heterosexuality is no longer treated as normal in those families. The goal of these social engineers is to change societal thinking so that all forms of sexual activity are considered equally “normal.”

Weaponizing Language and Changing Terms

The prejudice against normal, healthy sexuality and gender expression can be seen in, essentially, a new vocabulary. Are you familiar with its words? Because your college-educated children probably are—and, increasingly, your younger children are, too. More importantly, those designing school policies and programs definitely are.

One new word is heteronormative. As of mid-2023, Merriam-Webster defines it as “of, relating to, or based on the attitude that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural expression of sexuality” (“Heteronormative,” Merriam-Webster.com), and an Internet search is enough to show you that “heteronormative thinking”—that is, thinking that the normal expression of sexuality is between a man and a woman—is no longer “right thinking.” In fact, if you think that sexual relations between men and women are more normal than others, you are considered guilty of heterosexism.

Similarly, if you are a man or a woman who, like almost all humans beings, still considers yourself the same gender the doctor observed you to be at birth, it is not enough to call yourself a man or woman anymore. Now, you must be a cisgender man or cisgender woman, to distinguish you from a transgender man or transgender woman. If you are, say, a man who thinks referring to himself as a “cisgender man” instead of just a “man” is strange, watch out—now you’re engaging in cisgenderism. Also, you had better not think it is normal for someone in a male body to think he is a man, because if you do, you’re practicing cisnormativity. How dare you think ANYTHING—ANY sexuality, ANY relationship between sex and gender, ANY family structure—is NORMAL?

For a glimpse at how normal sexuality and family structure have been recast as evils, one need only look at—believe it or not—Black Lives Matter.

While the Black Lives Matter movement made global headlines in the wake of George Floyd’s death, some interested in the cause were distressed by what they found on the organization’s “About Us” webpage. There, under the heading “What We Believe,” they saw Black Lives Matter declare, “We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege,” “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” and “We foster a queer-affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking” (“What We Believe,” Black Lives Matter, sourced from Web.Archive.org).

While that page was removed in the days leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the question remained: What does ending discrimination and violence against black people have to do with transgender ideology? Why would supporting black lives require standing against “heteronormativity” or traditional family structures?

The answer is that the war against normal has successfully woven itself into nearly every effort to create social change. As critical theorists irrationally recategorize human relationships as expressions of coercive power, any attempt to address injustice then also has to be made to connect with all other injustices, real or perceived. Believing there is a normal family structure, a normal human sexuality, and a normal understanding of sex and gender is increasingly equated with power structures designed to oppress.

To today’s social engineers, if you believe that family is best grounded in a marriage between a man and a woman, sex between that man and that woman represents normal and natural sexuality, and that it actually is possible in virtually all cases to identify a child’s gender at birth, well then you’ve aligned yourself with the likes of Mussolini and Hitler or the Ku Klux Klan. Presuming someone’s gender based on their appearance is labeled an act of ignorance at best and violence at worst. If a young girl is plagued by thoughts that she might be transgender, to help that girl feel more comfortable being a girl is committing the sin of “conversion therapy.”

But as bad as things are, we are far from how bad they can get.

Ultimately, the war on normality is a war on BOUNDARIES. Human beings crave sexual “freedom,” unbound by any rules, definitions, laws, and even shame—to define sexuality based solely on individual desires. So, the boundaries keeping sex within marriage must fall, the boundaries defining marriage as between one man and one woman must fall, and the boundaries defining differences between sexes or genders must fall.

There is, however, at least one boundary that remains—one land the War Against Normal has not yet conquered, but that is under siege and could fall at any moment—the age boundary.

Targeting Children with Perversions

Thankfully, many still consider childhood a time for protection from the incursions of modern sexual “liberty.” Yet many of our self-appointed superiors deem that this boundary, too, must fall.

Consider the flood of sexual content into school libraries. In the United States, the American Library Association found that nine of the top ten school library books most challenged in 2021 were challenged due to their sexual content and explicit nature (“Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists,” American Library Association, ALA.org, March 26, 2013). The MOST challenged book, which we will not name, so as not to risk promoting it accidentally, contained imagery that any reasonable person would consider pornographic. Not long ago, any teacher who shared such a book with a child would have been labeled a pedophile and a predator, and that teacher would have been disciplined or dismissed.

Consider, too, the phenomenon of Drag Queen Story Hour, in which men who dress as women—often in exaggerated and sometimes sexually suggestive clothing—read to children in libraries and other venues. Such events are designed to blur sexual and gender lines and family attachments in children’s impressionable minds so that they grow up thinking that everything is just as “normal” as everything else.

Don’t take our word for it. Take theirs. In the academic journal Curriculum Inquiry, “critical pedagogy” researcher Harper Keenan and a drag queen organizer of events known as “Lil Miss Hot Mess” collaborated on a paper titled “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood” (“Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queerimagination in early childhood,” January 25, 2021, pp. 440–461).

The authors are COMPLETELY PLAIN concerning the goals of Drag Queen Story Hour. “Ultimately, we suggest that drag pedagogy offers one model for learning not simply about queer lives, but how to LIVE QUEERLY.”

They note that drag is “implicitly transgressive” and that “While drag has some conventions, it ultimately has no rules—its defining quality is often to break as many rules as possible!” they note that drag “is all about bending and breaking the rules,” often, “turn[ing] rejection into DESIRE, transforming the labour of performance into the pleasure of PARTICIPATION.”

They tell us “Drag Queen Story Hours offers a QUEER RELATIONALITY with children that BREAKS from the reproductive futurity of the normative classroom and nuclear family.”

In their conclusion, they point out that they “have occasionally encountered critiques that [Drag Queen Story Hour] is sanitizing the risqué nature of drag in order to make it ‘family friendly.’ We DO NOT SHARE this PESSIMISTIC view,” noting, “it is less a sanitizing force than it is a PREPARATORY INTRODUCTION to ALTERNATE MODES OF KINSHIP.”

It’s not an exaggeration or hyperbole: The war against normal IS coming for our children.

You might wonder—how could things get so far? Well, a large part of the answer is that, to a great extent, the attitudes and philosophies motivating this are nothing new. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been in ancient times before us.”

Indeed, the attack on sexual barriers between children and adults goes back to philosophers and academics whose ideas helped lay the foundations of today’s Queer Theory. In 1977, supposedly “enlightened” souls such as Paul-Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jacques Derrida signed a petition to the French government to allow adults to engage in “consensual” sexual relations with children. As reported in the Guardian, these intellectuals demanded that French law “should acknowledge the right of children and adolescents to have relations with whomever they choose” (“Calls for legal child sex rebound on luminaries of May 68,” TheGuardian.com, February 23, 2001).

The same article reported on the positions of French philosopher and author Tony Duvert of the 70s, who “praised ‘the great adventure of paedophilia’ and raged at ‘the fascism of mothers.’” According to its English-language publisher MIT Press, Duvert’s 1976 book Diary of an Innocent ends with “a fanciful yet rigorous construction of a reverse world in which marginal sexualities have become the norm.”

God Set the True Standards for “Normality”

We began by reading Jeremiah’s comment to God, “O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). But the very next verse (v. 24) gives us the key to resolving the war against normal: “O LORD, correct me, but with justice; not in Your anger, lest You bring me to nothing” (Jeremiah 10:24).

God is creator of all reality! It is His design, His law, and His will that defines what is normal—or what SHOULD BE, and what WILL be normal in the world Christ will bring at His return.

Concerning sexuality, gender, and family, God made it plain from the beginning. Referring back to the Genesis account of creation, Jesus taught about marriage. In Matthew 19 we read, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,’and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4–6).

In one fell swoop, Jesus definitely affirmed the gender binary of man and woman, the biological design of male and female, and the place of sex in marriage between a husband and a wife.

While the War Against Normal seeks to abolish any sort of boundaries, God seeks to ESTABLISH boundaries and to make them clear and firm. In fact, the VERY FIRST PAGES of SCRIPTURE illuminate exactly how our Creator deals with boundary-obliterating chaos—and that is REESTABLISHING ORDER AND NORMALCY by REESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES.

The opening pages of Genesis [detail] chaos: “The earth was without form, and void” (Genesis 1:2). A world “without form”—without guiding distinctions, shapes, and ideals—is exactly the society today’s social engineers seek to create.

The Creator brought order to that chaos by establishing clear boundaries. He separated light and darkness (v. 4), the waters below from those above (vv. 6–7), and the land from the seas (v. 9). He established a distinct boundary between animals and humanity. Humans are created beings, yet unique in bearing God’s own image (vv. 25–26). He organized humans into two sexes: male and female (v. 27).

Upon ordering the world He had created, God declared it “very good” (v. 31). We enjoy the goodness of that ordered world today.

Eradicating all borders, boundaries, and limitations does not produce a better world. It only creates a more chaotic one—in which the joys God designed go unrealized, and the sufferings He intended to keep at bay become the new normal.

Still, let’s be careful. It’s ironic that so much of the world is waging a passionate war against normal, because Jesus Christ Himself will fundamentally correct the definition of what is normal when He establishes a new world at His Second Coming.

Often, those who lament the war agains normal also fail to see that the traditions THEY see as normal are tainted and broken in their own ways. The Kingdom Jesus will establish will not look like 1950s America, nor the Judea of Jesus’ day. Nostalgia for a better past is no substitute for the full transformation called for in His Gospel, and the life to which Christians are called transcends what was ever lived throughout history. To live God’s way requires a complete change in how we see ourselves, our relationships, and our obligations. And, frankly, no civilization has ever fully gotten it right. As God tells us through Isaiah: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

After Jesus’ return, the world will learn what family, sexuality, relationships, and society can be when we follow the original design and intention of our Creator. From the blessings that follow, mankind will finally understand why no one should ever exchange God’s normal for anything less.

It is that time to come that we proclaim here on Tomorrow’s World. If you want to begin seeking the power of tomorrow’s world in your own life, seeing through the madness of today’s world is a great start.

Thanks so much for watching! All of us here at Tomorrow’s World work very hard to help you make sense of your world through the pages of the Bible.

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[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

The Meaning of Revelation’s Churches—Revealed!

The Book of Revelation is a mystery for many. Yet, the word revelation means “revealing, making known something previously unknown.” Are you intimidated by it, finding it impossible to understand, preferring rather to put it on that proverbial shelf? If so, today’s Tomorrow’s World program is for you.

Many are familiar with the four horsemen of Revelation, the book often referred to as “The Apocalypse,” but what about the seven letters to the seven churches in Asia, as recorded in chapters 2 and 3? These letters have puzzled scholars and lay members alike for more than 1,900 years. Do these letters have some special meaning for you and me?

The answer is, yes, and that is the subject of today’s program. Now stay with me, as I’ll be back in five seconds to explain the seven letters to the seven churches of Revelation.

Five Vital Questions for Understanding Revelation

A warm welcome to all of you from those of us here at Tomorrow’s World, where we bring you the good news that Jesus proclaimed of the Kingdom of God, explain the prophecies of the Bible, and make sense of the world in which we live. On today’s program, we’ll open the biblical book of Revelation, and discover the significance of the seven messages given to seven churches.

The first verse of this book gives us answers to five vital questions:

Who can open our understanding of the book?

What is the source of its message?

Who is the intended audience?

When do its prophecies begin?

And,

Who is commissioned to take the message to its intended audience?

So, let’s begin by reading Revelation 1, verse 1, where we read the answers to our five questions:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ [Jesus Christ is the One who reveals the message], which God gave Him [God the Father is the Originator of the message] to show His servants [so the message is not primarily to the world, but to the servants of God]—things which must shortly take place [the events prophesied would soon begin]. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John [the Apostle John is to take the message to God’s servants] (Revelation 1:1).

We see from these opening verses that Jesus Christ is the One who unveils the message, that the message comes from God the Father, that the message is intended for God’s servants, and that John is given the responsibility to carry the message to those servants. But, as rich as this opening verse is, it does not reveal the theme of the book. For that, we must turn to verse 10, where John writes:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet (Revelation 1:10).

What is the meaning of being “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day”? Almost all translators and commentaries erroneously promote the idea that, “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day,” means that John was worshiping on Sunday; but there is a huge problem with this. To claim the expression “Lord’s day” means Sunday, is flawed on multiple fronts. If it were talking about a day of the week, which it’s not, it could not be Sunday.

If the Bible is our source, we find that not once does it identify Sunday, the first day of the week, as belonging to the Lord. On the contrary, it tells us three times that Jesus is “Lord of the Sabbath.” Notice:

Matthew 12:8—For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.

Mark 2:28—Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.

and

Luke 6:5—The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.

So, according to the Bible, if the Lord’s day is a day of the week, it is not the first day of the week—not Sunday; but the seventh day—Saturday. However, the statement, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day,” has nothing to do with any day of the week. The book shows that John was projected forward in vision to the day of the Lord, a time referred to more than 30 times in the scriptures, in both the Old and New Testaments.

The first six chapters of Revelation set the stage for the theme. In Chapter 4, John sees a vision of God, the Originator of the Revelation, on His heavenly throne. Chapter 5 describes Revelation written on a scroll that is locked with seven seals. It also explains in this chapter that the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, is the only one capable of opening these seals. We then read in the sixth chapter how He opens six of the seven seals. The first four seals are the famous four horsemen. The fifth seal pictures a martyrdom of some of God’s servants. Then comes the sixth seal—the terrifying heavenly signs:

And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:13–17).

These six seals, all opened within a short chapter, are preludes to the theme of Revelation, the day of God’s wrath on rebellious mankind. This wrath is explained by the seventh seal, which is made up of seven trumpet plagues.

So we see in chapter 4 and 5 the Originator of Revelation, the One who can open the scroll to our understanding, and the opening of six seals that bring us to the theme of the book, but what about the servants of God? Who are they?

The Churches in Asia Minor—Their Symbolic Meaning

In this portion of the program, I’ll show that those servants are defined by the seven churches as described in chapters two and three.

William Ramsay wrote a highly respected book titled—The Letters to the Seven Churches of Revelation. There is a lot of excellent information in it, but Professor Ramsay missed the key element. Instead of realizing that the seven churches define that intended audience, and are an integral element for the entire book, he sees the letters as an afterthought. As he writes on page 35:

In this work, Jewish in origin and general plan… there is inserted this episode of the Seven Letters, which appears to be almost entirely non-Jewish in character…. The reason was that the form of letters had already established itself as the most characteristic expression of the Christian mind, and as almost obligatory on a Christian writer. (Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches, pp. 35–36)

Ramsay goes on to speculate as to the reason for inserting these letters, suggesting that they were an afterthought, rather than critical to understanding the book.

In the subsequent development of St. John’s thought it is plain that he had recognized the inadequacy and insufficiency of the fashionable Jewish literary forms. It seem highly probable that the perception of that fact came to him during the composition of the Revelation, and that the Seven Letters, though placed near the beginning and fitted carefully into that position, were the last part of the work to be conceived (Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 36).

He then makes this incredible statement on page 37:

The Apocalypse [Revelation] would be quite complete without the Seven Letters (Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 37).

In other words, Ramsay speculates that the letters were an afterthought, that John realized that the composition of Revelation lacked the most common means of transmitting information in the New Testament—that is by written letters. But were these letters an afterthought as Ramsay speculates? Is the book, as he wrote:

… quite complete without the Seven Letters?

John is told to take the revealed message to the servants of God. So, where are these servants to be found? Even if scholars don’t understand, you can! Does that sound too arrogant? Or is that not what Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:25:

At that time Jesus answered and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes (Matthew 11:25).

Here are four keys that reveal the mystery of the seven letters.

Key #1: The servants of God and the Seven Churches are the same.

Notice once again John’s commission found in chapter one and in verse 1:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants [that is the audience]—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John (Revelation 1:1).

Yes, the message is to go to the servants of God. So where does John go? The answer is found in verse 4:

John, to the seven churches which are in Asia (Revelation 1:4).

So, even before we know which churches these are, John immediately addresses them. Furthermore, John is commanded to record in a book what he sees, and send it to these seven churches—that is, the whole message of Revelation, not the letters only.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,”

and

“What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” (Revelation 1:11).

In other words, the message is to go to the servants of God, and John is to take it to seven churches in Asia. Is it not obvious that the servants of God and the seven churches are the same? This is confirmed in the last chapter of Revelation. In a sense, the connection between the servants of God and the Seven Churches is bookended by the first and last chapters. Notice Revelation 22, and verses 6 and 16:

Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true.” And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His angel to show His servants the things which must shortly take place….

And then in verse 16:

I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches (Revelation 22:6, 16).

So, key #1 is:

Key #1: The servants of God and the Seven Churches are the same.

Servants and churches are used interchangeably—they are synonymous—but note that not all Christian congregations in Asia are mentioned. Nowhere does the book introduce any other congregation than these seven. Obviously, there is something special or significant about them.

So we must wonder: Why these churches? Why only seven if they are the servants of God? Does that mean that none of the other congregations of the first century were God’s servants? What about today? Are we somehow left on the outside of being God’s servants? Not at all.

Key #2: There is a special relationship between these seven and Jesus Christ.

We now come to a remarkable vision. Following a trumpet sound and the listing of the seven churches, we read, beginning in verse 12:

Then I [John] turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band…. He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength (Revelation 1:12–13, 16).

What does this vision mean? We can be thankful that we don’t have to speculate, because verse 20 explains it:

The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels [or messengers] of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches (Revelation 1:20).

As we have seen, the churches and the servants of God are synonymous, and Christ is seen walking amongst them. Mysterious? Yes. Impossible to comprehend? No.

A Prophetic Message for Future Christians

In the previous portion of this program, we saw two vital keys to understand these prophecies.

Key #1: The servants of God and the Seven Churches are the same.

And it is evident from the vision of the glorified Christ walking in the midst of seven lampstands that represent the churches, that:

Key #2: There is a special relationship between these seven and Jesus Christ.

There’s a third key that should be obvious by now, something that William Ramsay, who speculated that the letters to these churches were an afterthought, clearly missed. So,

Key #3: The entire book of Revelation is addressed to the seven churches.

John is instructed to take the message of the book to the servants of God. As we’ve seen, the servants and the churches are the same. It therefore follows, that the whole book of Revelation is for the seven churches. This is confirmed, as we saw earlier, in the last chapter of Revelation. For review, I’ll repeat that here:

Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true.” And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His angel to show His servants the things which must shortly take place…. I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches (Revelation 22:6, 16).

There is a fourth important key, but before I give that, let’s notice two easy to understand lessons that are generally understood about these letters. The first one is that these were real church congregations and the messengers to each of them described conditions that existed at that time. So, when Ephesus is told that it had lost its first love, that was a problem in that first century congregation located in Ephesus.

The second takeaway is understood from this refrain that is given to each of them:

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (Revelation 2:7).

The admonition is not to that church alone, but to the churches—plural. A condition that exists in one congregation could also affect congregants in any of the others. The difference being that the condition mentioned dominated that church. In the example of the church in Laodicea, a lukewarm spirit prevailed, but the admonition to “hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” indicates that this same lukewarm attitude could be found among some in the other congregations. This is mostly how ministers down through the centuries have understood these letters. As a teenager, I remember a chaplain giving a seven-part series of sermons on this subject.

But, our fourth key is something that has not been generally understood and is perhaps the most important of all the keys. Let’s go back to the last part of verse 1 and all of verse 2, where John is given three sources of information that he was to record.

And He [God] sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who [#1] bore witness to the word of God, and [#2] to the testimony of Jesus Christ, [and #3] to all things that he saw (Revelation 1:1–2).

We have already seen that John was commanded to do number three—write in a book what he saw and send it to the Seven Churches. But he was also to record the word of God [that is, references to the Old Testament scriptures], and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The testimony of Jesus Christ, is of course, what Jesus spoke, but what He spoke in Revelation is prophetic in nature. We read in chapter 19:10:

Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10).

If you have a red-letter Bible, the red letters are what the translators believe were the direct words of Jesus. And where do you find the overwhelming majority of Christ’s words in Revelation? If you guessed the letters to the seven churches—you guessed correctly. In other words, these letters have prophetic significance.

And it is evident from studying the book that the subject matter began in John’s day and yet ends in our future. So, in addition to recording conditions in the very real first century congregations, and warnings of attitudes that can apply to anyone,

Key #4: The letters to the seven churches are prophetic.

Why is this important to understand?

Living in the Last Days

Our resource—God’s Church Through the Ages—describes seven stages through which the true church of God would progress from the first century until the return of Christ. As the author of this resource, the late John Ogwyn, explains:

When we look at the context of the book of Revelation, we must recognize that it is primarily intended as a prophecy. Revelation 1:1 shows that the book’s purpose is to show to God’s servants things that would soon begin to happen. Thus the seven churches should primarily be understood as representing the entire history of God’s Church in seven successive eras (pp. 20–21).

Why is this not generally understood? It’s not that others have not tried to trace the history of the Church through seven distinct stages, but they fail in these efforts. Why? The answer is simple. They try to shoehorn mainstream Christianity into these scriptures, and mainstream Christianity simply does not fit. Put another way, they are looking for the answer in the wrong place.

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