Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

2:4-6
endure evil men. . . . And you have perseverance and
have endured for My sake, and have not grown weary.”
4-6 Yet the Lord rebukes the angel: I have this against
you: You have left your first love. The church’s desire
for sound doctrine had become perverted into a
hardening-up against their brothers in Christ, so that
they lacked love. It is important to note that even the
most rigorous concern for orthodoxy does not
automatically mean an absence of love. It is only a
perversion of orthodoxy that results in hardness toward
brethren. Christ does not criticize the Ephesians for
being “too orthodox,” but for leaving, forsaking the
love which they had at first. The question of “doctrine
versus love” is, Biblically speaking, a non-issue. In fact,
it is a specifically pagan issue, seeking to put asunder
what God has joined together. Christians are required
to be both orthodox and loving, and a lack of either
will eventually result in the judgment of God.
Remember therefore from where you have fallen:
The Ephesians had once had a harmonious
combination of love and doctrinal orthodoxy, and
Christ calls them to repent, to change their minds
about their actions and do the deeds you did at first.
Love is not simply a state of mind or an attitude; love is
action in terms of God’s law: “By this we know that we
love the children of God, when we love God and keep
His commandments. For this is the love of God, that
we keep His commandments; and His commandments
are not burdensome” (1 John 5:2-3; cf. Rom. 13:8-10).
Christ’s antidote for the Bride’s spiritual malaise is not
simply an exhortation to change her attitude as such.
Instead, He commands her to change her actions, to
perform the works that had characterized her romance
with the Bridegroom at the beginning. Repentant
actions will nourish and cultivate a repentant attitude.
If they do not repent, however, Christ warns: I am
coming to you in judgment – a warning stated three
more times in these letters (2:16; 3:3, 11). As we have
seen before (1:7), the Coming of Christ does not simply
refer to a cataclysm at the end of history, but rather
refers to His comings in history. In fact, He warns, He
will come quickly, a term emphasized by its seven
occurrences in Revelation (2:5, 16; 3:11; 11:14; 22:7,
12, 20). The Lord is not threatening the church at
Ephesus with His Second Coming; He is saying that He
will come against them: I will remove your lampstand
out of its place. Their influence will be taken away,
and, indeed, they will cease to be a church at all. For
lack of love, the entire congregation is in danger of
excommunication. If the elders of a church fail to
discipline and disciple the church toward love as well as
doctrinal orthodoxy, Jesus Christ Himself will step in
and administer judgment – and at that point it may
very well be too late for repentance.
It is likely that St. John was using an important
“current event” in the life of Ephesus as a partial basis
for this imagery. The coastline was continually
changing because of the sediment brought down by the
nearby river Cayster; sand and pebbles progressively
filled up the harbor, threatening to turn it into a marsh.
The city was in danger of being, in effect, moved out of
its place, completely cut off from the sea. Two centuries
before, a massive engineering project had dredged the
harbor, at the cost of much toil, perseverance, and
hardship. By the middle of the first century, however,
the harbor was again filling with silt. It became
apparent that if Ephesus was to retain her influence as
a seaport, the citizens would have to repent of their
negligence and do the first works again. In A.D. 64,
the city finally began dredging the harbor, and Ephesus
remained in its place for years to come. (Over later
centuries, the silting was allowed to go on unimpeded.
Now, the sea is six miles away from the ruins of
Ephesus, and what was once the harbor of Ephesus is
now a grassy, windswept plain.) 4
But a return to love does not imply any lessening of
theological standards (in a real sense, it means a
heightening and enforcing of a full-orbed theological
standard). True love for Christ and His people requires
the hatred of evil, and the Lord commends them for
their steadfastness in this: Yet this you do have: You
hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
According to the second-century bishop St. Irenaeus,
“the Nicolaitans are the followers of that Nicolas who
was one of the seven first ordained to the diaconate by
the apostles [Acts 6:5]. They lead lives of unrestrained
indulgence . . . teaching that it is a matter of
indifference to practice adultery, and to eat things
sacrificed to idols.” 5 If St. Irenaeus is correct here – his
viewpoint is certainly debatable 6 – the deacon Nicolas
(in Greek, Nikolaos) had apostatized and become a
“false apostle,” seeking to lead others into heresy and
compromise with paganism.
One thing is obvious: St. John is calling the heretical
faction in Ephesus after someone named Nikolaos
(even if we allow that St. Irenaeus was confused about
his identity). His reason appears to be based on
linguistic considerations, for in Greek Nikolaos means
Conqueror of the people. Interestingly, in the third of the
seven messages St. John mentions a group of heretics in
Pergamum, whom he calls followers of “Balaam” (2:14).
In Hebrew, Balaam means Conqueror of the people. St.
John is making a play on words, linking the
“Nicolaitans” of Ephesus with the “Balaamites” of
Pergamum; in fact, he clearly tells us in 2:14-15 that
their doctrines are the same. Just as Nikolaos and
Balaam are linguistic equivalents of one another (cf.
the same technique in 9:11), they are theological
equivalents as well. The “Nicolaitans” and the
4. William J. McKnight, The Apocalypse: A Reappearance, Vol. I: John to the
Seven Churches (Boston: Hamilton Brothers, Publishers, 1927), pp. 81ff.; C.
J. Hemer, “Seven Cities of Asia Minor” in R. K. Harrison, ed., Major Cities
Of the Biblical World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985), p. 236.
5. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, i.xxvi.3; in Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, [1885],
1973), p. 352.
6. It is debatable on two counts: first, the question of whether the “Nicolas” of
Ephesus was really the deacon of Jerusalem; second, whether the
“fornication” and idolatrous feasting (v. 14, 20) are to be taken literally.
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