Revelation 3:9

9. Behold In view of this little strength, the hast kept, and the not denied; therefore I will give them a royal triumph in the New Jerusalem, to which the open door admits them. The triumph is expressed in an image drawn from Isaiah 60:14. “All they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” When the developments of the judgment day are unfolded, how will the despisers of the now humble Church acknowledge, with profound abasement, its true glory as the real city of God! The Jewish troublers of the Philadelphian Church are selected as the very present specimens of such “despisers,” who are bound to “wonder and perish.”

Say they are Jews And are so “after the flesh;” the which is now a nullity; but are not the spiritual Israel, which is now the only true Israel.

Worship before thy feet Of course no literal fact, but imaging the severe and final humiliation of all evil in presence of the truly good. In the judgment-day development the atheist will learn there is a God; the impenitent Jew will confess a true Jesus the Christ; the scorner will find there is a hell; and the haughty despiser of the weak and humble, yet pure Church, like our Philadelphians, will discover, to the sad reversal of his pride, that they were heirs of an eternal crown. When a great lady once spoke with contempt of Lady Huntingdon’s associating with her conventicle of saints, one replied to her, “Madam, in the day of judgment you may be glad to grasp hold of Lady Huntingdon’s skirts to draw you into heaven.”

That I have loved They will recognise not only the loved in its true glory, but they will truly learn and know also this great I, whose love is the bliss of the heavenly world, as it makes the poor Philadelphian Church “the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One.” The interpretation of Alford, which makes the open door an opening for missionary enterprise for propagating the gospel, and which holds Revelation 3:9 to describe the resulting conversion of their bitter Jewish opponents, seems inapplicable. It has, indeed, Paul’s open door, 1Co 16:9 , 2 Corinthians 2:12, as an apparent precedent: but the opening and shutting of Revelation 3:7 clearly refer to the lordship of Christ over the entrance into heaven, the New Jerusalem, (22,) and Revelation 3:8 can be no description of the happy conversion, but of the penal humiliation, in the final day, upon the incorrigible. And Revelation 3:10-12, continue the same line of thought, describing the rich final reward of Philadelphian faithfulness. Revelation 3:10 promises preservation in the great day of the final trial; Revelation 3:11 describes the speed of its approach; Revelation 3:12 promises eternal security within the domain of heaven, beyond the day of trial.