An Exposition of Revelation .pdf

meant. The nature of the case precludes it.
As "angel" is used in the sense of a representative, so in reference to the assemblies the Lord
here avails Himself of this general idea. A messenger or moral representative of each assembly is
implied. "Angel" was used of a human representative. For instance, when John the Baptist sent two of
his disciples, there was a representation of his mind by these men when they gave the message of him
who sent them (Luke 7: 24). The representative force appears also in Acts 12: 15 (only here it was of a
spiritual character); and so in Matthew 18: 10. But it assumes a different shape when it was a question
of assemblies. They were His chief lights, representing each the assembly, and so became His medium
in judging its state according to the divine standard.
If therefore we look at the abstract nature of the angel of the church, what is taught by the term?
Presumably this, that the Lord had in view not necessarily an elder, nor a teacher, but one who might
be either or both; but before His mind he truly represented, and was in a special way bound up with
the responsibility of, the state of the assembly. Whoever that might be was meant by the angel of the
church. The state of Christianity, or rather of the churches, made this reserve suitable morally. The
Lord adopts it in judging, rather than the ordinary medium of either the gifts or the local charges. It is
the prophetic character of the book, the critical condition of the churches, which accounts not only for
the angel representatives, but for the separate view of the churches. For the unity of the body of Christ
is a wholly distinct truth, and stands on the basis of divine counsels now and for ever made good by
and in Christ the Head. "The seven churches" have their own moral bearing as introducing God's
future dealings with the world when they vanish from the scene. All effort, from this special aim, to
set aside unity, and to supplant it by independency, is as unintelligent as it is vain and evil. To deduce
from the stars and the candlesticks new officials and congregational independency would be to
overthrow the nature of ministry and the unity of the church, as already taught wherever the Holy
Spirit reveals either truth. But what does man's will not essay? "The things that are" abide still, though
going on from danger at the beginning to utter rejection at the last: a strange time and state to organise
the church anew, and an unheard of function.
Revelation 2
"To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars
in his right hand, he that walketh in the midst of the seven golden lamps." Here we are on broad
ground. The characteristics are general. The first epistle, the message to the angel of the church in
Ephesus, looks at the state of the Christian testimony on the earth in its most comprehensive form,
and, as one may suppose, from the days of the apostle John himself. The Lord accordingly presents
Himself with similar latitude, "He that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, he that walketh in the
midst of the seven golden lamps." The position, both ministerial and ecclesiastical, is ruled by His
relationship to the angels (i.e. those that morally represented the assemblies to His eye), and to the
churches in view. The "star" is that which acted on the assembly — the vessel of light from the Lord
to bear on the condition of the assembly. If that light were ineffectual, if evil mixed with it, the state of
the assembly would partake of it; if bright, the assembly would be elevated morally thereby. In Him
who held the seven stars in His right hand, and walked in the midst of the seven golden lamps, we
have Christ not merely holding fast those ideal representatives, but also judicially interested in the
assemblies themselves. In short, it is Christ in His fullest but most general ministerial and
ecclesiastical aspect according to the governmental tenor of the book.
The state of the church in Ephesus has the same generality. "I know thy works, and [thy] labour,
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