Let’s pray.
Our Father, we come to You tonight in the name of our Lord Jesus. We realize how dependent we are upon Thy Spirit’s keeping the incense burning. Lord, even through the week now, where our bodies may be tired, we pray that Your Spirit would blow that refreshing breeze and quicken us—body, soul, and spirit.
We come dependent upon You tonight, Lord, in matters so great. As we heard even yesterday, it seems like the enemy just waits for the man-child with great hatred. But so Your Spirit is invested in preparing that man-child for the overcoming victory. And so we pray that You would help us to further understand Your will and Your way. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I’d like you to turn to Revelation 1. We’re just going to read some various verses from that chapter.
Tonight, Lord willing, I want to use John as the illustration of somebody who bears the torch of the testimony. Then, Lord willing, tomorrow night, a simple message on Timothy as one who receives the torch of the testimony and carries on. So that’s what I’d like to try to do tonight and tomorrow.
Beginning in Revelation 1:1—the first three verses:
The revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave Him to show to His bondservants,
the things which must soon take place;
and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bondservant John,
who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ,
even to all that he saw.Blessed is he who reads,
and those who hear the words of the prophecy,
and heed the things which are written in it;
for the time is near.
Verse 12:
Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me;
and having turned I saw seven golden lampstands.
And then verses 19 and 20:
Therefore write the things which thou sawest,
and the things which are,
and the things which shall come to pass hereafter;
the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in My right hand,
and the seven golden lampstands.
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches:
and the seven lampstands are seven churches.
Now, what I’m going to share tonight will touch on various writings of the apostle John, because we want to look at him bearing the testimony. But I would just like to put in a plug here as a little bit of homework for the young people who were out of the ministry this morning. I would like to really encourage you, young people, to listen to our brother Lucio’s message. It was so very clear and wonderfully presented as to the testimony of Jesus.
I hope that all of you will listen to that, because he’s very clear. My own ministry is to obscure things. So I will be speaking on much of the same ground, but in parables and dark sayings—hard to understand. But if you listen to Lucio’s message, I think you’ll see, “Ah, now I see what Dana was talking about.”
I’d also like you to listen to Lucio’s message because, basically, he ransacked my message. I don’t know why he thought he had permission to run through all the letters of John, and the Gospels, and Revelation. All he left me were a few monsters in the book of Revelation. He’s taken everything else.
However, that’s what you get when you have two New Yorkers speaking in one day. This is over the legal limit, but we have to let it go tonight.
In a very wonderful way, this book, the revelation of Jesus Christ, is John passing the torch of the testimony. This was the last thing we have recorded. Of course, he lived after this, and church tradition tells us various stories about him, but he was quite aged.
The story that I loved the best—and I have no reason to doubt that it was authentic—is that they released him eventually from Patmos. He was just so old. They brought him to the meeting in Ephesus, and they had to carry him in; he was that elderly.
The saints saw him, and of course they all went crazy. They wanted him to share a message. So he said, “I have a message: my little children, love one another.” That was the last message ever recorded. Our brother shared it.
But this letter, this Revelation, is in a sense passing the torch of the testimony even unto us, if we can be as John was—in the Spirit. You know, it says that John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day when he saw this revelation. It is a revelation so grand, so wonderful, that it takes a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus Christ to truly understand these things.
When we look at John, we see a man who, of course, bore the testimony of Jesus. It says so even in this introduction:
God sent and communicated this revelation by His angel to His bondservant John,
who testified to the word of God
and to the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Here was a dear brother who shared and bore the testimony of Jesus, held a torch high throughout his life. I’d like for us to look at John in that light, as the one who bears the torch of the testimony.
Of course, John was a special agent. He was an apostle—one of the originals—and the last who was alive at this particular time. But in principle, John represents everyone who, by the grace of God, lays hold of that torch of the testimony down through the centuries.
It is God Himself who sovereignly prepares such a vessel to carry the torch of the testimony. Down through the centuries of church history, we’ve seen various ones carry this torch. Some of them are well known. We know their names, and we look at them as men of great faith who paid a great price to hold high the testimony of Jesus.
But, you know, there are probably even more of those whose names we do not know. Yet they were faithful and bore the testimony even through the darkest hours of church history.
John, as I said, was an apostle, and God sovereignly prepared him for this special hour. When there is a passing of a torch, there has to be one who is carrying it, one prepared to take hold of it, and a divine event that causes the passing. God prepares the whole thing.
So when we look at John, we see that he was one specially prepared to bear this torch at the end of the first century.
By the end of the first generation of Christians—that is to say, forty years after Jesus went into heaven and the church was started—there were some things that had happened which changed the landscape of the church in those days.
The first thing, of course, was that in AD 70 Jerusalem was destroyed. The Jewish Christians who had been abiding there, living there, bearing the testimony of Jesus there, escaped to Pella, a little place far away. Others dispersed into the greater diaspora of the Roman Empire at that time.
In a way, it’s kind of a shame that these Jews did not, for the most part, go into the churches that were already there. Many of them stayed apart, though some became part of the church that has no walls between Jews and Gentiles. But the reality was that there was no home base, if you want to put it that way. There never was, in fact. But Jerusalem was no more.
Secondly, of course, all the apostles had been martyred. It’s a study, if you will just take a few moments and read of the apostles, according to church history, what happened to these various apostles. You’ll find that they were martyred, really strewn all over the world.
These men took literally that commission to go out and make disciples of all nations. They went out to places where they did not know the language. But the Lord was with them, mighty things were done, and they were often martyred in far-flung places all over the world. But He left John alone.
The third circumstance was that Paul had been martyred, but not without establishing some precious churches—with barriers down, Jews and Gentiles, slave and free—bearing the testimony of Jesus. Christ is all and in all.
Into one of those churches, the church of Ephesus, John went to sort of base himself. He actually continued to travel around as an apostle, but he also lived there in Ephesus.
It became apparent, as we draw toward the end of the first century, that John was raised up for that unique moment when the church began to have problems and needed to be recovered. Someone was needed to hold this torch of the testimony high as the shadows and darkness of the world began to affect the church through persecution and all different kinds of things.
Obviously, John was that God-wrought, God-prepared man. You know, the story is that when Jesus first saw John, he was a fisherman, but he was mending his nets.
As it turned out in the history of things, when it came down to him at the end of the first century, with all the other apostles martyred, he was the one given this charge to recover the church, to recover the testimony of Jesus, to mend the nets through the generation and the things that had gone on.
So, when we talk about John holding the testimony of Jesus, the first thing we have to help us is, of course, his writings. Lucio went especially into the Gospel of John and tread this winepress well, but let me just share a couple of things about the testimony of Jesus.
There is an objective side to bearing the testimony of Jesus, and that is to faithfully preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. If we would truly bear the testimony of Jesus, then preaching the gospel of Jesus must be part and parcel of our life.
If we see ourselves as a church, as a lampstand with the light of Christ upon it, then we understand that the gospel must be preached. John, of course, ministered and preached the gospel through his Gospel.
These things have been written that ye may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God;
and that believing ye may have life in His name.
The other three Gospels also share the basic life, death, resurrection, glorification, and victory of the Lord Jesus. All of them talk about salvation. Of course, John did too. But John wrote retrospectively, having seen and watched.
In John’s Gospel, even as he preached the gospel through signs—as our brother shared so wonderfully this morning—he said, “Look, what does that sign point to? Jesus.” Bearing testimony of Jesus.
John felt that even the gospel nets needed to be mended. When he shared the gospel, he shared it from a quite unique angle, as all of you know who have read his Gospel. What he tried to convey was not merely the bare-bones facts of the life of Jesus, His death on the cross, and His resurrection.
What he wanted to restore to the church—something that was starting to be missed a little bit in the presentation—was who Jesus was: the nature of who Jesus was.
That is why he stressed again and again that when we looked at Jesus, we beheld the glory of the Father. Jesus spoke of Himself, saying, “I am,” because John revealed to us things that Jesus had spoken in confidence to His disciples. Until John wrote them, we actually did not know most of it.
We had no idea of John 14, John 15, John 16, and John 17—all those intimate conversations about His coming, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the inner side of things. Of course, John’s Gospel emphasizes zoe: eternal life, life. John’s Gospel was all about life.
He would try to repair the nets by talking about these things, even saying what is not in the other Gospel accounts: Jesus was the Logos, the Word. A deep concept.
But what was John doing? He was trying to recover something as to who Jesus was. You know, it’s possible to preach salvation. We gutsy Baptists used to preach salvation and sometimes not even mention the Savior. You could preach righteousness but not mention the Righteous One.
John was trying to restore that. The center of our gospel is a Person whom we come to know and in whom we receive life.
Then we see, secondly, in the letters of John another aspect of recovery. John was a late starter. He did not start writing his books until he was in his sixties. He was not one of these young guys who just gets out of Yale and starts writing at twenty-two years old.
He was a faithful apostle. He preached the gospel many times, traveled with Peter, and did many wonderful things. But later on in his life, as he wrote these letters and Gospels, there was a depth there that revealed the testimony of Jesus.
In his letters, basically, what was he trying to recover? He was writing to the saints. What is he recovering? He is saying, “Look, the Word of Life, the everlasting Word of Life, came down, and I touched Him. I heard Him. I saw Him. I want to communicate this Person, who is life, so that your joy may be full.”
Now listen: if you are going to be a Christian, you cannot just preach the gospel. You have to have Christ in you. So John is saying, “Abide, abide, abide.” He wants the Christians to see this, which is probably one of the first things that gets lost in the history of the church.
As the church becomes more and more concerned with outward righteousness, outward holiness, and outward ministry, the thing that gets lost is the life in Christ. Even as Paul says, “Christ in you,” that gets lost.
I think probably we know many Christians who are saved and love the Lord, and they really have no idea what this means: Christ in you, and you in Christ. But this is such a vital aspect of life that John says, “Listen, my little children, abide in His love; young men, abide in His Word; fathers, abide in the Everlasting One.”
By the end of the first century, darkness had started to come in. Think about it. John said that you can tell the difference between a spirit of truth and a spirit of error. Doctrine is not merely a question of false doctrine or true doctrine; there is a spirit behind these things.
Unless we know the anointing within, we are going to have trouble with false teaching. Then he says, “You can overcome that which is in the world.” How? He that is within you enables you to overcome.
Once again, what is John stressing? The testimony of Jesus is the gospel that we proclaim, but the testimony of Jesus must be in our lives—His life, the reality of His life.
That is why, when John said things such as, “Little children, love one another, for God is love,” there was something powerful in the way John said it, because the life of Jesus, as it were, was saying it through him. Do you understand what I’m saying?
This always needs to be a vital aspect of our life together if we want to bear the testimony of Jesus. There has to be the life of Christ within us. Something has to be crucified. Something has to be resurrected. Something must be worked out of His life in such a way that people begin to see the character of Christ through us—the light of Christ through us, the love of Christ through us, and so on and so forth.
This was the second aspect of the testimony: not merely preaching the gospel, but fellowshipping by that life which is within.
But now we come to the book of Revelation. Here again, John is going to pass along the torch. As our brother mentioned this morning, and as you all realize, this term, “the testimony of Jesus,” suddenly seems to come into prominence. It is mentioned several times: the testimony of Jesus, the testimony of Jesus. John held the testimony of Jesus.
First of all, individually, regarding John: because he bore that torch of the testimony of Jesus, what does that mean? He held the testimony of Jesus. He bore the testimony of Jesus. It says he was on the isle of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
So here is my question: why was he exiled because of it? I know a lot of preachers are on the radio every day, and they could not get thrown in jail if their life depended on it. They are preaching the word; nobody is listening—or their faithful ones are listening, or whatever.
But my point is: what was it about John that was so threatening that the Roman Empire had to exile him? He was like the Zika virus. He was so dangerous. What was it that was so dangerous?
Was it because he was a powerful preacher of the word of God? Well, he was getting old, and I hope he had a strong voice, even as our brother Stephen has had in these days. Praise God. But that is not exactly why they were afraid of him, although that is part of it. Nor was it merely that he did tremendous miracles, so he was a threat.
There is something intangible about the testimony of Jesus. I would put it this way: when somebody truly bears the testimony of Jesus in their life and ministry, the Lord bears testimony in them.
That is to say, when John would preach, the Lord would attest to what John was preaching. Do you understand what I am saying? It was not just John preaching. It was as if John was preaching, but Jesus was preaching. There was that unseen presence.
You know, ancient art—because the early church still had some flavor of what this meant—put halos on the apostles. Now, these things look stupid. We cannot imagine why somebody would have a halo over their head.
Well, actually, what they had was something beyond themselves—an anointing, if you want to call it that, but it is a little bit more than that. A countenance. You remember when Stephen preached the gospel and got stoned? It said he had the face like an angel. How does that happen?
When Stephen preached the gospel, there was something so powerful attesting to what Stephen was saying that the people could not stand it, and they had to stone him. There was this presence there. Somebody was upholding this vessel because he had borne the testimony.
That is a tremendous promise. When somebody bears the testimony of Jesus, the Lord stands with them. Because John did that, he was a threat. It was not just words he was speaking; they were words empowered by Jesus.
When he spoke the word of God, he was like a living word of God. He spoke about righteousness, and you looked at him and saw righteousness. If he spoke about holiness, you looked at him and saw holiness. If he spoke about love, you looked at him and saw love—the fire of love pouring out of him. It was not talk. It was reality. Thus he bore the testimony of Jesus.
But now the wonderful thing for us, as we look at the book of Revelation in this matter of the testimony of Jesus, is that the testimony of Jesus was more than preaching, as in the Gospel. It is more than having Christ within you, as in the letters. The testimony of Jesus is a corporate testimony.
John had been an apostle in the church, and he had been living in that corporate testimony. But the testimony of Jesus, as it is referred to in the book of Revelation, is talking about the testimony of Jesus in His church.
I really think, across the Christian world today, there are many preachers who not only love Jesus, but preach Jesus. They preach the gospel of Jesus. They know Jesus, believe Jesus, and pray to Jesus. In some way, they manifest Jesus on that individual level.
But we all know that what the Lord wants is a corporate bride. The Lord wants a corporate testimony in which this presence of Jesus can be known in the world.
Now, by that I am not saying that every time you meet as a group and have such a testimony of Jesus upon your lampstand, there is going to be some kind of special cloud over your head. But it is the same thing that applied to Jesus when He walked upon this earth.
John said, “We watched Jesus walk upon earth, and then we watched and looked more closely, and then at some point we beheld the glory of the Father in Jesus. We realized this is so much more than a man. This is the Son of God.”
That came as they beheld. The church is supposed to be such a congregation of people, assembled together and living out the life of the Lord, that if somebody beholds—if they look past the humble exterior of the tabernacle, as it were, and look inside the church—they can see Jesus.
The testimony of Jesus is talking about that church. When we read about that church in the book of Acts, we see that when people walked into the church—of course, there were no church buildings in those days—if they went to Solomon’s porch, where the saints were meeting, or went to somebody’s house as they were gathering, breaking bread, worshipping, praying for healing, preaching the gospel, and doing all those things in house meetings, they said, “Wow, God is here.”
You remember when Peter was being threatened by the Sanhedrin to stop preaching the gospel, and he said, “I preach that Jesus was crucified and He rose from the dead, and I bear witness of these things. And so does the Holy Spirit.”
That is what made Peter, the apostles, and the church in Jerusalem so dangerous to the Jews. If they were just talking some talk, there were rabbis all the time talking talk. But they would say, “Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead, and He is alive and enthroned at the right hand of the Father.” As they said it, people could feel that it was true.
That attestation of their gospel was where the Holy Spirit backed them up with signs and wonders—but just backed them up. I always say to young people, this is our greatest asset when it comes to witnessing.
Talk to your unbelieving friend. It does not matter how they react. Tell them the truth in Jesus’ name. Then, when they go home and lay down, the Holy Spirit will haunt them all night long.
Because when you share the gospel, the Holy Spirit says, “Let Me at them, let Me at them.” That is the way I got saved. When people shared the gospel with me, at first I laughed it off. Then the Holy Spirit got in my ear, and I started having trouble. “God, I’ve got to say, well, maybe? No, no. And then if that happened—well, no, that can’t…” You get into this whole thing. It is the Holy Spirit when the gospel is preached.
But people could see Jesus among these disciples. They said, “These are people walking in the Way. We do not know who is their drummer. Who is leading them?” Of course, it was Jesus. You could sense Jesus in the midst of them.
Church life was so wonderful back in those days. Paul defined the church in one place as the household of God, the church of the living God. I just love that: the assembly of the living God. That is not a name, so do not call yourselves now the Church of the Living God.
Here is the point: they were the church, and the living God was there. They were the pillar and foundation of the truth. You just walked into the church and saw the truth. If somebody was prophesying, you said, “Oh, that guy is talking to me.” You said, “God is in this place.” That is God. Isn’t that wonderful?
I think probably the best illustration of what I am trying to say—this intangible testimony of Jesus over and beyond our lives as it is lived out—comes from the Old Testament: the Shekinah glory.
It was a wonderful thing to see that glory come down on Mount Sinai. It was a wonderful thing to see that glory come down on the tabernacle. As the tabernacle went through the wilderness, there was that fire, that cloud, that presence of God.
The same was true when the temple was arranged in accordance with the design of God: the glory of God came down. This is, in a way, a picture of how wonderful it is to be this body of Christ—sinners saved, but in whom Jesus is living, in us and among us.
There is this testimony over us. People come into our midst and say, “I don’t understand. This is something unusual. I can’t put my finger on it.”
I was just somewhere recently, and there was a brother there who is a minister in some church somewhere. He said, “Every time I come to this group, it is just the most unusual group I have ever seen in my life. I have no idea what it is about them.”
It was just a simple group of believers meeting around the Lord and breaking bread. But this minister had never seen anything like that. Isn’t that amazing? In all of the big church that he is involved in and everything, he had never seen that wonderful presence of God.
This Shekinah glory was the protection. It was the mark of God upon the children of Israel. The church should have this mark: Jesus’ presence in the midst.
Of course, this Old Testament picture illustrates the danger of having a tabernacle without the ark. That is Ichabod, right? The glory has departed. You remember when the ark was stolen. Suddenly, Ichabod became the experience of the children of Israel.
If the glory—if the ark—is out of the temple, what is left? There is a danger, isn’t there? I do not know if we sense the fear of God in this, but even to the church of Ephesus, which I feel was the best of the seven churches in Revelation, the Lord said, “I will remove your lampstand unless you repent.”
That is how seriously the Lord wants to be the real, practical Head and life of the church—not merely talking about it. What church group do you know that does not say Jesus is the Head of the church?
How many assemblies do you know where Jesus is the Head of the church? That is a whole other question. How many churches do you know where everybody says, “We are the body of Christ”? How many do you know where the body of Christ can be seen full of Jesus, moving by Jesus, inspired by Jesus, gifted by Jesus?
These things that we take for granted and enjoy when we come even to a place like this—we sing songs led by the Spirit, and people pray as inspired by God—are touches of this matter of body life in reality.
The church grew and developed, went through problems, and suffered persecution. In the midst of fighting, serving, and being externally faithful, there was the problem of losing the reality of Jesus in the church: the testimony of Jesus on the lampstand.
You could still have the lampstand, but where is that light? Is it still there? So we ask that question for ourselves: do we corporately bear the testimony of Jesus?
Now, I want to say something. The testimony of Jesus is not a fickle, temporary, probationary thing. Mystics get hold of something like this and do great damage, because it makes it sound like the testimony of Jesus is like Tinker Bell.
Here is Peter Pan and here is Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell is here; Tinker Bell goes. If you say something bad, there it goes. As if you have the testimony—oh no, you do not have the testimony. Somebody said something bad, the testimony is gone. No.
The testimony of Jesus built into His saints is a durable, real testimony. It is not skittish. It does not come and go. It is not something mystical and foolish. It is a reality, because the testimony of Jesus happens when a lampstand has been beaten out and people have been brought together.
This is not something that God would lightly remove. I think we can assume that even among the seven churches in the book of Revelation, with all of their problems, they still had the lampstand.
Let me put it another way. If you remember the passage in Ezekiel when the glory of God leaves, it takes a couple of chapters, because the glory of God was so hesitant to leave the temple, Jerusalem, and Judea.
It slowly moved from the Holy of Holies to the edge of the temple, then out to the edge of the city—as if to say, “Can We go back? Can We go back?” No, but the glory was departing in Ezekiel’s vision. Soon, of course, the temple would be destroyed and Jerusalem would be destroyed.
God wants His testimony, His lampstand, in the church. When He puts all of that work into joining people together, He means for there to be a lampstand of testimony that is durable.
But there is still a responsibility on the part of Christians gathered together in assembly to make sure that there remains the light of the testimony of Jesus upon that lampstand.
When we see the book of Revelation and what is called the mystery of the seven lampstands, we want to look at that. What is this mystery of the seven golden lampstands?
Remember, at the end of Revelation 1:20, it says that the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches. Let’s take that one mystery right there. What does that mean? What did John see in that mystery?
He was already living a corporate life in the testimony of Jesus in Ephesus and the other churches. But this is why the book of Revelation is so precious to us: the Lord wanted to reveal more of Himself to John in order that he might be able to pass the torch of the testimony in these last days under these present circumstances.
Let us look at these things that John saw as he was in the Spirit and this revelation and mystery came to him. The first revelation mystery, as I am going to put it, comes in Revelation 1. The second mystery he sees in Revelation 2 and 3. But let us take chapter 1 first.
What did John see in this mystery of the golden lampstands? This is the mystery: the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches. Now you say, “Well, what does that mean?”
What if I said to you that this was a picture of the church in heaven—the perfect church, where we are all going to get to one day when Jesus has finished working on us; the ideal church; the ready church; that invisible church glorious up in heaven? What if I said that?
It seems like a beautiful picture. Is that the way you see it? The church is a golden lampstand. You say, “Oh, yes, one day we will be a golden lampstand.” It is a beautiful picture, but the problem is that is not what is being revealed.
Here is what is being revealed: those seven churches surrounding Jesus on the earth are golden lampstands already on the earth—not up in heaven.
If you notice in the book of Revelation, it always makes a very clear distinction between what John sees on earth and what he sees in heaven. He is brought up to heaven to see things up there. But here he is on earth. He hears a voice and turns around. He is on the isle of Patmos. He has not been lifted up to the heavenly isle of Patmos.
He is in the Spirit, hears the voice, turns around, and right behind him, on this earth, are seven golden lampstands. He is overwhelmed when he sees this mystery.
What is being revealed here? This was an unveiling here on earth of the church as it is—as it was then and as it is now.
Actually, the first thing John saw was who was standing in the midst of the seven lampstands. That is what overwhelmed him, because he saw Jesus standing in the midst of the seven lampstands here on earth.
We talk about Jesus being present every time two or three are gathered together. He is there in the midst. But how about if you actually saw Him? You saw that He was working on the church, and you were one working on the church—as John the apostle had been, ministering and working and doing his best.
Suddenly John sees this glorious High Priest, this Jesus standing in the midst of His churches. It was overwhelming to John to see. These things would change his whole life.
I wonder if we can put it this way: I wonder if we cannot see the church rightly in its reality unless we see the church with Jesus in the midst. Do you understand what I am saying?
We talk about Jesus being here, but I think when you look in the Scriptures and see the church, you always see Jesus there. Paul never says the church is the body without saying Christ is the Head.
Lance used to famously talk about this headless body that used to walk around. I remember back in the Baptist days we used to have what we called the invocation. We gathered everybody together on Sunday morning and said, “Now, Lord, here we are, the headless body, and we are praying, Lord, that You will come down and scrunch Yourself on us, and we will know Your presence today.”
So we invoked God to come down, as if He were somehow floating up there and we were just down here, the body separate. It was such a noble prayer. It is actually very wonderful if you do it in a real religious way. But it is not a reality.
When the church gets together and the folks sit down, the Lord is there in the midst—if it is a reality. But here is a spiritual reality that must be seen in the Spirit.
Would it change your life at all if you realized that Jesus was right here now? I mean, if you could see it—maybe with the eyes of the spirit. If that dream of A. J. Gordon’s was not just a dream, and every time you gathered Jesus came into the midst to see what was going on.
That is something of what John must have seen. I believe this presence of Jesus in the midst of us is something that we should be more aware of, because it will make all the difference in the world whether we are merely a wineskin or whether we really have wine.
Is the life there? It is Jesus’ life. If Jesus’ life is not there, we are just human beings who have gotten together in a social club. But if Jesus is there, there is a sudden connection among all of us and a presence in our midst that can lead us.
John saw this first of all. Then, right there, seeing Jesus—which was enough to make him fall down as a dead man—he also saw this mystery: the seven churches of Asia, but they were all golden lampstands.
Is that what you call your fellowship? “What is that assembly like up there in Manhattan where you are meeting, Dana?” “Oh, it is a golden lampstand.”
Do you see that? This says, all of gold—a golden lampstand. What John saw to pass along is that the church on earth is already gold.
Now you say, “Well, wait, wait, wait—that is impossible.” The gold in the New Jerusalem somehow has a correspondence with something going on here on earth that is gold. It is beautiful. It is God-wrought. It is pure. It is full of Christ. That is the church.
Can the church be this heavenly, golden, glorious thing located here on earth? It is not a question of whether it can. It is.
That is where we miss it. Let me put it another way, as an analogy. I told you that I confuse things that Lucio made so clear this morning, I am sure.
You know how we live our Christian lives and begin to take ground and gain in our Christian lives when we realize that the finished work means your salvation is already done, and your sanctification is already done? Then you live out of that realization that you are already saved, you are already a saint. You work that out by the power of the Holy Spirit and the work of the cross in our lives.
But if you do not see that perspective, then you think, “Well, I am still a terrible sinner, but I am trying to improve.” You have missed the whole thing. It means, “I have been crucified, and now I live by a whole new life.”
We also talk about spiritual battles sometimes in this way. Unless you see that the victory is already won, you must get there first, and then you fight out of the victory. Not, “No, we are all losing here. We are losing. We have got to do something if we are going to win.” Jesus already overcame and won the victory. We stand in His victory, and then we do battle.
We all recognize that, right? Okay.
But when it comes to the church, we say, “Well, the church has just fallen far down. Our fellowship is not doing very good. I do not know what the future of this whole thing is going to be. It certainly is not very heavenly. It is not very glorious. It is pretty earthy, full of flesh.”
How can you possibly build the church when you see that? But what if you saw what the church is, complete in Jesus Christ? What if you saw her glory as God values her?
What if suddenly the valuation of your little assembly was adjusted by God’s valuation, namely: that is a lampstand of gold?
That is something that has to happen in a revelation. Otherwise, all you can see is what is on this earth, and you do not see too much gold sometimes on this earth.
But I want to suggest to you that John saw this. Imagine it: John had been ministering to these seven churches for many years. He had been faithful as an apostle, trying to build up the church. He had been a shepherd to them, an evangelist among them, faithfully working.
Then suddenly he sees that the church is a golden lampstand, with Jesus working on it. It is overwhelming when you see that. You realize immediately how far you have missed the perfections in your observations of what the church really is.
I say all that because it comes out of my own experience. It was about forty years ago when I first began to see that the church was a lampstand, all of gold, with Jesus there in the midst.
All I can say is that when I saw that, I am not sure I could have described what I saw. But I can tell you immediately, as soon as I saw that, I knew that what I was building was wood, straw, hay. I knew I was on the wrong track.
I was a servant of God. I was a pastor in a church. But because I did not see the church in its reality, I was trying to whip up a bunch of ornery people to go in the same direction I wanted them to go.
Suddenly, when I saw the church was gold, I wondered how I could ever have been allowed to put my hands on the thing. I immediately saw my imperfection, and I immediately saw the vain attempts of my life to build a human organization. It just came like that. Nobody had to say, “Repent.” It was right there.
From that moment on, I have not been able to settle for the imperfect church, because there is not that in the mind of God. He does not see an imperfect church.
There is no longer one who is going to try to build that compromised church. All the ministers used to say, “Oh yes, the church is a wonderful place. It is going to be the bride of Christ one day, but right now it is just imperfect, messed up, no good.”
“That is the way the church is. Of course, you have divisions. You have this group and that group, and they are fighting each other. But that is just people. That is just the church. It is the way it is always going to be.”
I am thankful I was arrested by seeing something glorious and trying to minister according to the standard: all of gold. What if you see the church is gold and try to minister by the standard, all of gold—where Christ is all and in all, and He is the church?
When you see the church as God evaluates it, it is a humbling thing. It causes repentance. For me, I was undone for quite a while.
But when you see His glorious church—when we sing that song, “I will build My church,” and then sing, “‘Tis a glorious church”—immediately our minds shift to the future: without spot or wrinkle. But what if it is a glorious church now?
What if you have a lampstand in the midst and you do not even realize who you are? It would profoundly change, I think, your ministry, your approach, everything about it. You see things differently.
When you see that, it becomes a tremendous comfort to you. Can you imagine how comforted John was, after first being undone by seeing this revelation, when he realized, “Wow, I am now in exile on Patmos, but Somebody better than me is working on the churches right now.” It is Jesus.
He knows what to say to them. He knows how to trim the wicks. He knows exactly what is going on. He has the eye, the perfect eye, to see. His ministry is the ministry that is needed: Jesus in the midst.
What if you saw Jesus in the midst of the church, working on the church? Do you think maybe you could end up helping out in a more fruitful way?
What if we heard what Jesus is saying to His church? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier simply to amen what Jesus is saying rather than make up something of our own?
How many guys here who preach the word in your assembly on Saturday night say, “Oh boy, what am I going to share tomorrow? Let’s see, what have I been reading lately?” Whatever.
What if you knew what Jesus was saying and you just wanted to say, “Amen”? Wow. I think that might be a pretty fruitful speaking ministry.
If you see the church in all of her glory, you see the church is gold, and you are allowed to pound out that gold. But it depends what you see.
We have a dear brother up in New York. One time our group was going through a little kerfuffle, where some of the saints were complaining about some things. I said to my brother, “What do you think about that?” He said, “I am just looking at the gold.”
What does he mean by that? When you have a gathering of however many people—whatever your group is—let’s say you have fifty people, you have a gathering of fifty people. We do not know exactly who is there, but there is some gold. You keep looking at the gold.
Then, as John was watching Jesus, a second mystery was revealed. Not only the seven golden lampstands—that the church was a golden lampstand—but a second thing: how will the Lord perfect these churches that are going through these various problems in Revelation 2 and 3?
We see this lack in the churches and all of that. John had the chance to watch Jesus and see just the way Jesus ministered to these churches. If John was clever enough, he would watch Jesus and begin to understand the way the church needs to be ministered to.
He watched the Lord mercifully come to each church and commend them for things they were doing as an expression of His life and as an act of faith. But then he noticed how, before the Lord rebuked, the Lord shone a certain part of His character to the church. Then He said, “Repent.”
Let me give you an example. To the church of Pergamum, do you know their problem? He says, “I have this against you, that you are holding to the teachings of Balaam and to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”
Who is the church supposed to be holding to? Their Head, Jesus Christ—not to some teaching, whether Balaam or Nicolaitan or something else. The church does not hold on to teachings. The church holds on to its Head, Christ.
When Jesus comes to rebuke them and says, “You are holding these teachings. I do not want you to hold these teachings; I want you to hold on to Me,” He comes to them as the sharp two-edged sword.
Here is the word of God, the real word of God. “Repent of holding to teachings. I am the living Word of God. I am the two-edged sword.” Do you see that? He revealed Himself as the living Word, and when you see that, you repent of holding to some doctrine.
Sardis was a church that had, as Jesus says to them, fallen asleep. They had left things half done. As a matter of fact, there were things that might even suffer death in their midst.
But how does He come to them? You do not just come and say, “You are dead and asleep.” No. What does He do? He says, “I come to you as the seven Spirits of God.”
What is that? Let us put it in a simple way: He comes with a fullness of the Holy Spirit. He says, “What is this deadness? What is this sleepiness? What is this leaving things half done? Be filled with the Spirit.”
“Do you see who I am? I am the Spirit of life. I quicken. You should not be falling asleep.” When you see who He is, you understand what needs to happen.
John saw how Jesus did these things as He was among the churches. Having seen the Lord’s method, John began to understand even more importantly how you minister in the last days in the church.
How do you minister in the last days of the church? Well, if we follow Jesus’ example, we realize what He does. Jesus speaks to the whole church when He sees the testimony of Jesus flickering on the lampstand. Jesus speaks to the church and calls everyone to overcome.
Jesus preached to the overcomers—to the whole church—and He called for those to overcome. Let me put it pictorially: when this golden lampstand has the flame flickering and even going out, the Lord says, “Now who is willing to stand up with the torch? Who is willing to take the torch and hold it up high? Hold up Jesus high. Maybe that candlestick can be relit.”
Who is willing to hold it up in a time when that flame is going dark? The testimony of Jesus involves more than merely the corporate. It is actually the light that comes when brothers and sisters holding the torch stand together.
The testimony of Jesus is individual and corporate. When the corporate is flagging, it is time for those to stand up and testify of the fullness of Jesus and of the life of Jesus in the midst of that which is growing dark.
For that, there need to be overcomers who seize the torch by faith and hold it up in the last days. Seeing the Lord and hearing what He said was caught by John. We see Jesus as the example for us as well.
Wherever we are, whatever fellowship we are in, whatever church we happen to be attending at the time, if we hear Jesus’ call, then we have to hold up the torch of the testimony, even as an individual, paying the price that others may see His reality.
When we minister to the saints, we are gracious. We commend the church for what they have done by the life of Christ and real faith.
There are many churches having real problems in this matter, but they have been faithful, and the Lord commends them. Even in churches like Thyatira, He really commends them for those things they have done out of faithfulness.
But then also, in His mercy, after we hold up the torch of the testimony, He rebukes whatever disobedience, heart attitude, or breach in church life that the enemy has come into.
There is usually something at the heart of every assembly that is causing problems with the torch of the testimony, with the testimony of Jesus. There may be many problems. Corinth had many problems. But Jesus was able to discern that one matter at the heart of the life of the church that was causing compromise and problems with the testimony of Jesus.
You see that at the very beginning of Revelation 1. Here is a way that we are to minister in these days.
Only the Lord can raise somebody up to carry the torch of the testimony. We see in Revelation 1:1-3 that the torch has to be passed on to bondservants who are willing to overcome.
In one sense, man cannot actually pass the torch. If you are bearing the torch, you cannot just say, “Here, take it.” Only the Spirit can pass the torch from one to another.
Listen to what Revelation 1:3 says:
Blessed is he who reads,
and those who hear the words of the prophecy,
and heed the things which are written in it.
You speak to the church. Blessed are those who read—but not all hear. Blessed is he who reads and hears the word.
When Jesus spoke to those seven churches, the letter of Revelation eventually came to them. Now, in the church of Laodicea, He comes to the part about them: “You are lukewarm. I am going to spit you out of My mouth because you think you are rich, increased with goods, and have need of nothing.”
Everybody heard what was read. But how many heard what the Spirit was saying? Those who heard what the Spirit was saying—we wish everybody would hear what the Spirit was saying—but some people said, “No, we are not like that. We are a good church.”
Some people talk back to Jesus. Jesus says, “You are this.” “No, no, we are not.” Not everybody who reads this thing is going to hear. But Jesus says, “Let him who hath an ear” hear what the Spirit is saying.
Then in Revelation 1:3, it says that not only do we need to hear it, but we need to heed it. That is my translation, but it means obey.
There are some who read but do not hear. Then there are some who read and hear, but do not obey.
But how can we tell a bondservant? When it is read, they hear it. When they hear it, they obey it. They repent, and the testimony is restored.
Unfortunately, those are the overcomers—those who are willing to go through the repentance and do what is right. The mystery remains: many are called, few chosen.
This book, the revelation of Jesus Christ, is so clear. The messages to the seven churches are so clear. But we need ears to hear. If we hear, we need to obey the word that we hear.
So, bondservants, today in these last days, if you are going to hold up the torch of the testimony, you have to hold up and confess the truth of the church in all of its glory, with the Lord Jesus in the midst. That is what we are to confess.
When we speak to the church, whether it is commendation or rebuke, it has to be done with the revelation of Jesus Christ before His people—not merely rebukes and exhortations made without that vision before them, so that those who would see would see.
One famous preacher listened to a young guy who had a lot of fire and was preaching, all fired up. When he got through preaching, he asked this older pastor what he thought of the message. The older man said, “Boy, you have got to decide whether you want to feed the sheep or club the goats.”
What we need to do in this day is not beat on everybody. What we need to do is show them the revelation of Jesus Christ, bear that testimony of reality in our lives and in the word that we proclaim.
When they see that revelation, then they can be adjusted as they are forged in this golden lampstand.
What is this mystery of the overcomer? As soon as we talk about the church, we see the ministry to the church and an overcomer rising up. How can an ordinary saint overcome?
The testimony of Jesus needs to be held up. When the testimony of Jesus is held up, you see. When you read the testimony of Jesus, you see. You hear.
How can I tell that you saw it—that you saw the golden lampstand? I cannot tell merely by looking at you. But if you have seen it, you have been undone by it. If you have seen it, you have repented. If you have seen it, you have been adjusted by it.
If it is just a theory, then you can go around on your way. But the first thing is: when you see it, it is awesome. Our brother Lucio was sharing awesome things of the size of God. If you really see that size of Jesus, it causes us to repent for the little Jesus that we have been hanging on to.
When that testimony is fully borne in front of us, not only do we repent, but the Bible likes this two-handed method: you repent, and then exercise faith. Faith lays hold of that reality which you have seen.
You say, “I have seen it.” They say, “What have you seen?” “The church in all her glory, with Jesus in the midst. I have seen it.” People say, “What, are you crazy?” But once you have seen it, you confess by faith what you have seen. It is so important to do that.
Wouldn’t it be a whole other thing if people heard the confession out of our mouths—not a negative testimony: “Oh, we are hopelessly flawed, gathered in an earthly organization. We will never be perfect until one day when Jesus will do magic.”
“We have all been carnal. We have not grown a bit. But one day, presto change, we are all perfect. We are the beautiful bride. Until then, we are just flawed down here on earth.” Is that what you think about the church? Is that what you confess about the church?
No. I think the confession is a positive testimony. We say, “The church is all of gold. I am in the church, and it is all of gold.”
As soon as you say that, because you know yourself, a couple of things have to happen. If you are going to confess that testimony—that the church is all of gold, that is what Jesus sees, that is what God desires, that is what is here on this earth at the present time—then immediately two things happen.
First, you have to be under the blood of the Lamb. If you are going to confess that the church is a glorious church, you can only do it under the blood of the Lamb, because we are imperfect.
If we say that, and then say, “Here I am in the full flesh—that is part of it,” then, oh boy, we are in trouble. If you see the glorious church, you see the only way you can be part of it is under the blood.
Second, you see that the only way you can be part of it is when you stop loving your life even unto death. If you really see the golden church, you say, “Lord, whatever it takes for that golden church to be reality in my life, I am willing to lay down that soul-life, to lay down those things that would cause division between me and sisters and brothers.”
“I am going to stand in the reality.” If you say, “I am standing in the reality of a glorious church,” A: you have to stand under the blood. B: you have to love not your life even unto death.
That is how the overcomer develops. In Revelation 12:11, they overcame. How?
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
and because of the word of their testimony;
and they loved not their life even unto death.
There is a positive testimony about what you have seen and what the church really is. The church is not a flawed organization. You may see that all around you, but that is not the church.
The church is a golden lampstand that has been pounded out by God. It is one piece, pounded by God, to bear the testimony of Jesus. That is our confession.
Finally, if you are willing to take up the torch of the testimony, what will happen? If you are willing to stand up and say, “I have seen, and I testify to, the reality of Jesus Christ and His church”—if you stand with the torch of the testimony—what will happen?
I wonder how many of these seven churches—of course, we do not know what happened subsequently to Jesus speaking these things—but let us say, as an example, that somebody, or some few people, in the church of Pergamum truly repented of holding onto anything but Jesus.
They confessed, “Our life is Christ. Our truth is Christ. We hold fast to our Head. We do not hold onto teachings; we hold onto Christ.” They stand in that light, and the reality of Christ and the truth of what they say burns like a light in their lives.
Others in Pergamum must say, “Wow, that is right.” Then they repent, and the church can be recovered. There have been well-known cases where a young person stood up with the torch of the testimony of Jesus and brought a whole church to its knees.
Are you willing to stand up and bear that testimony?
Another thing is, we need to remember that there are many people around us who are Christians, who love the Lord, and who are even serving the Lord to the measure of light that they have.
Because they truly are serving the Lord, they would love to be led in the more perfect way. They would love to meet Aquila and Priscilla and find out the testimony of the church. They would love to meet you with the torch of the testimony.
They would see, and then they would have to decide what to do. But there are so many around us. They are not all against us. There are many who really love the Lord, but they have never seen that torch—the testimony of Jesus Christ in His church.
Perhaps the last thing would be—and this has been, as you know, a prayer in my heart for years—that our young people would come back.
Our sons and daughters have gone out many places, to tribes on the other side of the Jordan. Some have stopped attending anywhere. If our assemblies could truly bear the testimony of Jesus in its lampstand, I think some would come back.
I have seen in recent days that people who left a number of years ago seem to be trickling back. Sometimes you have to go out and try a lot of other things before you come back to appreciate the reality of the testimony of Jesus in the assembly.
It may be a simple thing, but it is life, and it is true, and Jesus is there.
These are the last days. It is time for us to overcome. Who hears what I am saying? Who will heed what they hear? Who will stand up with the torch of the testimony?
I know there are other testimonies that I could say here. I will just mention one more. Many times in a young people’s group, all the young people are down in the dumps, and one young person gets hold of the Lord and lifts that torch of the testimony up in the air.
One by one, the young people come back to life. It just took one young person.
Sometimes, when we gathered here in Richmond back in the old days—a long time ago—I used to work with the young people. Sometimes we would have seventy-five teenagers, and they were all bent on rebellion.
We would pray before the meetings, whoever was working with me and whatever, “Lord, raise up one or two. Just raise up one or two.” When those one or two were raised up, repented, got right, whatever, they fell like dominoes.
They just needed to see somebody with that torch of the testimony up in the air. This is what the Lord is calling us to do: to be overcomers in this last day.
If you have to stand individually, God bless you. Maybe the Lord will lead you with others who are standing and holding up the torch of the testimony. The Lord wants us to be faithful.
To me, here is the beautiful thing: John was faithful. He learned how to pass this torch of the testimony on to us—for us to read, hear, and obey.
Lord, we pray that You would help us, even as we think about these things. Lord, I do not want us to be too mystical about it, but we do pray that Your presence would truly be upon us in these days.
We believe Your Spirit is deeply working upon our lives and trying to show us the more perfect way. Lord, help us to confess what is true and not confess what is false about ourselves, about the state of the church.
Help us to see the church as You see the church. Help us to agree with that, get under the blood, and have Your cross work upon our lives so that we can work out that which we have seen.
Lord, this is something that only You can do by Your Holy Spirit. But even now, raise up overcomers by the power of Your Spirit who are willing to stand against the tide of compromise and darkness, stand in the light of the truth, and bear testimony.
These things we pray in Jesus’ name.