Revelation 1:11

11. The words I… and inclusive, are here a spurious reading. The voice does not as yet announce who is the speaker. St. John hears his commission, but is not yet told who commissions him.

What thou seest This Christophanic commission includes only the revelations of the first three chapters.

Write in a book A volumen, or parchment or papyrus roll.

Seven Churches… in Asia When the sons of Japhet, our Aryan ancestors, first emigrated westward from the fertile regions of the Euphrates, they found no fairer clime than in this land of Ionia. Here settled the sons of Javan, the fourth son of Japheth, and in the beautiful language formed by their genius the Greek Ionia is but a varied form of Javan, just as Hellas, the name of European Greece, is but a form of Elisha, the oldest son of Javan. This was the land of Homer and Herodotus. The soft clime rendered the Ionians gentle, refined, and brilliant, but too effeminate. So when, five centuries before Christ, the great Cyrus led his conquering legions westward, all Ionia submitted for centuries to the Persian sway. But when, three centuries before Christ, Alexander the Great, from European Greece, marched to the conquest of Persia and settled forever the superiority of Europe over Asia, Ionia easily accorded with this new Greek supremacy. And when, in the first two centuries before Christ, the Roman arms from still farther west spread their power over the known world, Ionia readily accepted their government. When Christ came, and Paul came proclaiming the Gospel of Christ, and when Timothy came, and an apostle John came, flourishing Churches, among which were these seven, were, in spite of persecution, established. When Rome, under Constantine, became nominally Christian, and Constantinople was by him built, paganism gradually disappeared, and Ionia became Christian. A Christian literature sprung up, and great Christian councils were here held. But in A.D. 1453 the followers of Mohammed took Constantinople. The Turks became masters, and from that time the Christianity, the civilization, the prosperity of the land perished. It is now, with few exceptions, a scene of semi-barbarism, stagnation, and decay. A glance at our little map will show reason for the order of the names of the seven Churches. From the metropolitan Ephesus, northward some fifty miles, is Smyrna, and more than fifty miles farther northward is Pergamos, or, according to the most authorized form of the name, Pergamum. This is the northernmost point. Thence south-eastwardly in succession are the other four Churches. Hengstenberg suggests, and we adopt the suggestion, that this was the usual order of St. John’s apostolic visitations; such visitations as are indicated in 2 John 1:13 and 3 John 1:10, and also in the account of his apostolic circuits after his return from the isle of Patmos.