Msg#2539 From Pergamos to Thyatira
God says to the church, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. … For all that is in the world, … is not of the Father” (Jas.4:4,1Jhn.2:16). All forms of ritualism mix the church with the world. Supposing a person is made “a member of Christ and the child of God” by baptism makes the church’s separation from the world impossible. Grant states it “all systems in which the church is made a means of salvation, instead of the company of the saints, … mix the world into the church” (Lecture3). Sons of God are born, “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jhn.1:13). So Pergamos, dwelling where Satan’s seat is, migrates to a Thyatira, where Jezebel teaches. We have been tracing her arrival; first with ‘church‘, called out ones, losing separation and becoming ‘synagogue‘, indiscriminate gatherings, and then appointments of priests and clergy to stand between God and people. Jezebel, with her idolatress doctrine of Balaam, is clearly Popery and Romanism. It is the woman in the Man’s place; it is the Roman Church substituting herself for Christ. It is not confined to Roman Catholicism, this teaching of Jezebel is found just as widely in Protestants that came out of Popery. Jezebel, the worst part of Israel’s history, was a Canaanite, an idolatrous and bitter persecutor of God’s saints. In Revelation 17 you find her drunken with the blood of the saints and martyrs of the Lord. These messages to the seven churches are indeed the “Prophetic History of the Church.” “He that hath an ear let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches.”
An Essay for week #39, Sep 28, 25
See F.W. Grant Lectures in Vol 09 www.GSBaptistChurch.com/theology
