Revelation 2:1

I. EPHESUS. The Church of former faith and power, but present decline, Revelation 2:1-7.

1. Ephesus The messenger who bore this epistle to Ephesus would have a sea route through the blue AEgean, of sixty miles, a brief trip for a modern steamer. Of the great and noble city into whose harbor he arrives we have given some account in our notes on Paul’s visiting the city and founding the Church, in Acts 19:1. Paul came down upon the city from the interior high-lands; our messenger approaches it, reversely, from the sea. How Paul here found a few believers in John the Baptist, preached in the school of Tyrannus, encountered Diana of the Ephesians, and founded the Ephesian Church, we have duly noted in that chapter. How afterwards Paul, returning from his final missionary tour, called the elders of Ephesus to a last interview with himself at Miletus, (see our map,) we have noted on Acts 20:17-38. Paul’s warning to the elders should be read before reading this epistle to this same Ephesus. Next we have the epistles of Paul to Timothy at Ephesus, and we see Timothy either briefly or permanently at that city. John arrived there probably soon after the commencement of the Roman war against the Jews, or after the fall of Jerusalem, and was banished to the rocky isle of Patmos by the Emperor Domitian. And now this epistle of Christ to Ephesus gives us the last glance at the Church and city furnished us in the New Testament. After that we must go to history for a knowledge of their destinies.

Historically, Ephesus had ever maintained an eminence among the cities of Ionia. In the earliest times, before their conquest by the Persians, Ephesus was head of the confederacy of twelve cities. Under the Romans, while the other cities tended to decline, its favourable commercial position, and the munificence of its Roman rulers, rendered it the emporium of Asia Minor. The Bishop of Ephesus, in later times, was a Metropolitan and a Patriarch. But when, in 1308, it submitted to the Turk, its inhabitants were transported to Tyraeum and there massacred.

Write Mohammed wrote, or at least claimed to have written, his own Koran; but Jesus Christ dictates to another to write. It is not recorded that he ever wrote, except mysteriously, upon the pavement. His majestic words, uttered as by the voice of many waters, and penned by his apostle, were, doubtless, received at that apostle’s Ephesus as virtually written by Christ’s own hand. To none but these seven Churches did Christ ever address a written epistle, yet in these seven Churches are we all represented. What he wrote to them he writes to us.

Was one copy of each single epistle carried to each single church, or was the whole Apocalypse carried to the whole in a single volume or roll? We think that the whole first three chapters are one Christophanic Apocalypse; but as each epistle was truly for all the seven, (and really for us all,) and as the title and introductory parts preface all the epistles as a unit, we may believe that the whole first three chapters were, either in separate copies or in one common circular for each in succession, sent round to the whole circuit of Churches in the order in which they are named. Each Church could then transcribe its own copy, with the common understanding that this body of epistles was the harbinger of a further and great Apocalypse, with which it was to be a unit, and which was soon to be received from their own great apostle, now in Patmos. When, after the death of the savage Domitian, John and the other banished Christians were returned to their homes by the Emperor Nerva, Domitian’s successor, John resumed his apostolic circuit around the seven Churches, and may have reduced the Apocalypse to a unit, so that no separated copies survived.

These things The two clauses by which the divine Speaker describes himself here, are taken from St. John’s description of his person, Revelation 1:13; Revelation 1:16. They describe his authority over the Churches, and are beautifully appropriate to the metropolitan Church of Ephesus, the Church of St. John’s own residence.

Holdeth Is here a different word from had, in Revelation 1:16, and a stronger, signifying graspeth, or holdeth fast. It asserts strongly this power and possession, as if each Church were a gem in his grasp and at his disposal. None can pluck them from his hand, (John 10:28,) and it is his to exalt them to heaven or cast them down to hell, according to their faithfulness or apostasy. When, therefore, these letters patent came from Christ at Patmos, with what earnestness did both he that readeth to the congregation and they that hear within the congregation, listen to the words of this prophecy! Revelation 1:3.

Walketh In St. John’s description, Revelation 1:13, he is apparently standing, but here he walketh. He walketh in the midst of the… golden candlesticks, to watch the strength or fulness of their blaze, to supply the oil of grace, to trim their dead wicks, and to remove them when their lustre, in spite of his every care, persistently dies away. These seven Lydian Churches, lying on the soil of Asia as their names lie on our little map, know that the glorious Lord is walking around their circuit that he is even present while they listen to his golden letters.