Overcomers Pt 5 Sardis: The church that died

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dead, name, overcomers, sardis, servant, white

Rev 3:1  And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.

Rev 3:2  Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.

Rev 3:3  Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Rev 3:4  Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.

Rev 3:5  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

Rev 3:6  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

This is perhaps the saddest letter John ever wrote.  Jesus tells them He knows their works and that they “have a name” and live and are dead.  Now no other church has a “name”, in fact having a name may be seen as being OF the world.  But it is the next statement that is perplexing.  That you live and are dead, is an oxymoron.   But the Key to it is found in the next sentence.  Jesus has not found their works Perfect, before God, and what is remaining, needs strengthening because they are perishing as Body of Believers.  Moreover He tells them to remember HOW they received and heard and hold fast to it and repent.  How did the Believers receive?  They received by the Holy Spirit who had apparently been quieted or quenched or just not paid heed to.  Moreover the Apostles teaching was a means to “hear”, so this church has “something else” going on.  They were also not “watching” for His return, so comes the warning that was given in the Gospels.  Seeing as by this time the other Gospels including perhaps that of the John the Beloved’s were in circulation and the teachings of James Peter and Paul were more widely around, the warnings of Jesus to the servants would have been known to this church.

Mat 24:45  Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?

Mat 24:46  Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

Mat 24:47  Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

Mat 24:48  But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;

Mat 24:49  And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;

Mat 24:50  The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,

Mat 24:51  And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

You see when Jesus talks about knowing the works and that they are not perfect before God He is alluding to their service to Him.  It is a sort of “weighed, weighed, found wanting” deal.   But you see this was an attitude that this church’s heart had and it killed them.  But there is always mercy given.  If they strengthened what remained and watched they might be alright.  Also, there is always a remnant.  There were those who had not “sullied” themselves but were diligent.   These walk in white.  The reward, the only reward is to walk in white and not have their names blotted out of the Book of Life. They are also confessed before the Father.  Now here is the thing.  The lesson of this church is that to live we must be diligent in watching and obedient in our lives to God as His servants.

The Revelation here is simple, Jesus Lord of the Church.  These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars;.

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Beginning to Begin Anew

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dead, death, earth, fire, hades, lake, second death

Rev 20:13  And the sea gave up the dead that were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

Rev 20:14  And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of fire.

Rev 20:15  And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.

Ok here is something I bet none of us ever considered.  Look at verse 14, death and hades are cast into the lake of fire.  When we think of death, we think of cessation of bodily function as in the heart arrests and stops and the lungs fail and cease to bring in the oxygen we so desperately need for physical continuance in the physical plane or the world around us. The eyes close the final exhalation and the brain madly scrambles to perhaps restart things or run the video of your life before your eyes, and you … die.  But God sees this form of death as a pause and discontinuance of the life in the flesh; never forget Jesus experienced this process first hand.  He experienced it in perhaps one of the most gruesome manners ever, Roman crucifixion. Now Jesus being fully God as if He were no man AND fully man as if He were not God is His own conundrum of existence, He being God in flesh had a “deathless life” He actually had to permit Himself to be torn apart with whips and bruised with impacts and pierced with nails and allowed to let go of that which made His body function even under such strain.  It is said that the true cause of death may very well be a “broken heart” in that the strain may have actually ruptured His heart.  If He keeps all things by the Word of His power and those things are the universe around us how hard do you think it is for Him to keep alive despite all the major damage until the precise moment when the wrath of the Father had fully spent itself and that is another thing altogether in that this wrath He took and took and took until there was no more to take must have had an impact on Him physically.  Thus once the task of redemption ransom expiation propitiation atonement and fulfillment of His own law was complete His purpose for remaining was over and He committed His spirit to the Father.  But having died on one day and being entombed the next and over the night part of the third (Jewish days run sundown to sundown so they start at night) such that as the sun rose perhaps during what we would call the morning watch part of the third day, Jesus body not only is restored to full function but that void of decay and somehow it slips it bindings.  It is said that the thing which made the disciples believe was that the wrappings of the body from the neck down were INTACT or still as if wrapped around something but the something was missing.  The napkin over the face is what was tampered with in a manner that suggested the occupant was finished with His occupancy. At least that is one theory put forth of the facial napkin and the other may be that it was not tampered with at all and simply lay as if it had been covering something that sunk beneath it and was gone.  Either way it was its own mystery until He showed up in a locked upper chamber of someone’s home.  Is it not interesting that the gospels don’t record that the owner of the house below the locked upper room never saw Him at all?  So the way we view death is not the way God views death.  Also if you go back to the passage in Revelation that talks about the prophetess Jezebel, Jesus speaks of killing her children WITH DEATH.  It would appear that to God Death and Hades are entities which might also be places but all this goes into one lake that burns eternally.  A lake of fire with brimstone is only place… where the lava is constantly molten.

Rev 21:1  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more.

Now there are passages all over scripture that allude to this verse.

2Pe 3:5  For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God;

2Pe 3:6  by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

2Pe 3:7  but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

2Pe 3:10  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

2Pe 3:11  Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness,

2Pe 3:12  looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

Mat 5:18  For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.

Mar_13:31  Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

Luk_21:33  Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

Heb 1:10  And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands:

Heb 1:11  They shall perish; but thou continuest: And they all shall wax old as doth a garment;

Heb 1:12  And as a mantle shalt thou roll them up, As a garment, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, And thy years shall not fail.

In fact this is even referenced to in the Old Testament.

Psa 102:25  Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth; And the heavens are the work of thy hands.

Psa 102:26  They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:

Psa 102:27  But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end.

Isa 34:1  Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye peoples: let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all things that come forth from it.

Isa 34:2  For Jehovah hath indignation against all the nations, and wrath against all their host: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.

Isa 34:3  Their slain also shall be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies shall come up; and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.

Isa 34:4  And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fade away, as the leaf fadeth from off the vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig-tree.

Isa 34:5  For my sword hath drunk its fill in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.

Isa 34:6  The sword of Jehovah is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Jehovah hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

Now verse four is what we are looking at but I chose the passage because it also speaks of the last major battle before the second death.

In each verse we find the old being “rolled up” or gathered up or burned up and being destroyed and disposed of, which means our monuments and legacies will go with them, so much for enduring testimonies of men.

(Rev 21:1  And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. )  So we have NEW GENESIS, God has created again.  Recall that He has told us He will make all things … new?

But lets go on.

Rev 21:2  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

Now it may seem as though this is   It is a ready-made place and in today’s thought of building and construction one might say it is “modular” and they would be correct.  This is a complete ready to go assembly that will be placed on a massive piece of real estate.  What we need to remember here is that the maps of the Earth as we know it with its seas do NOT exist now.  So the land masses are different which means the national boundaries are different.  This then gives credence to certain passages of the Old Testament.

Isa 11:16  And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.

Isa 19:23  In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.

Isa 19:24  In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land:

Isa 19:25  Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.

Isa 35:8  And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

I cannot at present locate the passage I want but it talks about there being land set aside and sparely inhabited all throughout the Palestinian lands ( I think) It is a massive foot print.

Rev 21:3  And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God:

This is Temple, the Greek word of Tabernacle is a tent or a gathering place as it were, but this place is where the Living God will now once again be among humanity but as King of the Nations and those who are not fearful, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sorcerers, idolaters, or liars, these do not inherit the Kingdom because this is the Kingdom fully manifest.  Here there will be no sorrow no tears no pain no sickness no evil, in the presence of This King no sadness or darkness will be. Because Jesus will remove all the reasons of the heart and circumstances for it.

Rev 21:4  and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.

Rev 21:5  And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.

Rev 21:6  And he said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

Rev 21:7  He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

He who over comes….  This references the first three chapter so the book which I shall cover.