Keep the Word - July 21, 2019

Jesus is the holy, authentic, and sovereign Lord, the promised one of David. He commends the church at Philadelphia for keeping both scriptural fidelity and their witness to Christ, and doing so by grace (little power of their own). As reward, the church is granted an open door, ostensibly for evangelism. As a crossroads city, Philadelphia had been so employed centuries before – spreading Hellenism into the interior of Asia Minor. Now they get to do so again, for something much greater than Alexander. Further, the church will be rewarded with removal from the worldwide testing to come. While most see this as Tribulation language, there is no indication of certainty that such is in view. This could be instead a particular temporal reward. (For example, Philadelphia held out har longer than any other city in Asia Minor when the Arabs & then Turks swept all the known Mediterranean world. It wasn’t until 1390 that the Ottoman Turks took Philadelphia, as which point the Christians had fled to safety in Russia. The non-Christians left behind were slaughtered so thoroughly that Timur built a wall of their corpses. [A fragment of the wall is preserved in the library of Lincoln Cathedral.])

Jesus then reminds that He will return soon, according to His measure, and exhorts them to keep what they have that no one takes their stephanos crown. He finishes by reminding Christians that in Him they overcome and are thus promised permanence of place in God’s eternal temple. What a blessed reminder for Christians so often displaced! Jesus adds as well that Christians will be tattooed (or at least Sharpied) with three names – the Father, Son, and New Jerusalem, depicting breathtaking closeness, acceptance, and unity.