Revelation Chapter Three, Still Listening?

Revelation 3:6 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”’

Before merely skipping past verse 6 since we have covered it several times now, I would like to briefly relate God’s penchant for instructional repetition. God inspires the writers of Scripture to repeat something several times, and that for good reason. We easily forget, gloss over, or outright ignore something staring us plain in the face.

In Isaiah we read, “Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little,” Isaiah 28:9, 10. Knowledge is slow and incremental. Yes, there are the Pauls of this world who have been given a vision that illuminates more rapidly. But they are painfully few and far between. For the rest of us we learn in slow, repetitious doses. Like public school information is slowly presented, repeated, expanded upon until we comprehend a fundamental truth. Only when the fundamental truth is seized may we begin building with loftier ideas.

Paul, expanding on Isaiah’s teaching, writes, “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe,” Philippians 3:1. Why does Paul say this? Verse 2 has him warning the church about, “dogs…evil workers…the mutilation,” Philippians 3:2. Repetition of truth is the surest way to safeguard against the intrusion of error. The church of Sardis sounds like it could have benefited greatly from this message, as could many of our own churches today. The Lord is patient in teaching His children, because we often backslide and need severe correction, Hebrews 5:12.

Isaiah began with the idea that babes were not taught knowledge and understanding; rather, such items were left to men of maturity, Hebrews 5:14. To that end systematic teaching of Scripture was necessary to impart truth in a slow, palatable way for we who are spiritually dull and imperceptive. Thus, some “slow” books (I hear complaints about Leviticus) are considered boring, dry and too difficult to read by professing Christendom. But God clearly told us that all Scripture is profitable for us, and that all Scripture is God-breathed and should be accorded the same reverence. Yet every verse is a thread, every book a portion of the elegant tapestry God wove through the Old and New Testaments. Without a book, or even without a thread, the tapestry is not complete. Paul claimed that he had not shunned to share the whole counsel of God with the Ephesian eldership, Acts 20:27. Neither should we avoid books or verses we find off-putting, boring, etc. There is nothing contrary in the Bible for the Christian to unearth; it is a letter from God to man meant for our good and His glory.

Paul writes that repetition helps to protect us from false teachers. When we become intimately acquainted with the truth of the Bible, it makes it simple to point out counterfeits that attempt to roll a Trojan Horse into the church. The repetition sharpens us and our senses to perceive and differentiate between what is good and what is evil. This becomes apparently necessary, as there are many who handle the word of God carelessly. Peter, when addressing Paul’s letters, acknowledges that their contents contain, “some things hard to understand,” 2 Peter 3:16. Peter, one of the first Christians and an apostle of the Lord had some difficulty with Paul’s letters by his own admission. Worse, however, were the, “untaught and unstable people twist [Paul’s epistles] to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” Peter recognizes Paul’s writing as canonically authoritative. He also recognizes certain professing teachers as being guilty of distorting truth to agree with their own ideologies. Men such as Valentinus in the second century, and men such as Charles Taze Russell of Watchtower fame both qualify here. They searched the Scriptures daily, like the Bereans, but unlike the Bereans they came to radically different conclusions about Christ.

A student of the word must take in the whole word indiscriminately. The Holy Spirit wants us to hear what He is saying to the churches, and He speaks to the churches through the agency of the Bible. The Bible should be consumed at a slow pace, so we can be confident that we are grasping what is being said about the topics within. When a given topic is heavily repeated we should pay more attention–not less–to the subject matter. Finally, we must recognize that Scripture’s inculcation is an insulating safety to guard us from heretical teaching. Canon and orthodoxy matter; in fact, it is really a matter of life and death. Ecumenism, which once was an innocuous term, has come to stand for compromise within various Christian sects and even cults, or with pagan religions that do not align with the Christian faith. To that end, ecumenical advancement must blur the line between sound doctrine and alternatives that are rooted not in Christ, but in the world system Satan champions. To stymie or outright prevent this within one’s church we recall what the Lord Jesus said, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”