Revelation 3:12

12. A pillar An emblem of his unchangeable permanence in the final heaven; not limited to a few eminent rulers, like the “pillars” of Galatians 2:9, but including every saint in the New Jerusalem. Such a pillar is not, like the Jachin and Boaz of Solomon’s temple, outside, but inside namely, of the living temple, the glorified Church. A tall pillar still stands a most conspicuous object in the city of Philadelphia, reminding the modern traveller of this passage, if it be not the source of the allusion. This permanence is explicitly expressed in the words he shall go no more out. He is, then, a fixed pillar; forever God’s, whose name is written upon him, and the name also of the city which is to be his eternal home. His name is Jehovah, and its name is the New Jerusalem, whose glories are unfolded in 22. In addition to the name of my God, Christ writes upon him his own new name, thus doubling the ownership; a name, as already said, which is not a mere word, but a power; namely, the full, final, glorifying power embraced in the word Jesus, Saviour, Redeemer, and which is new at the glorious resurrection in its renewing effect upon soul and body, and then will be forever and forever new; forever renewing the man in the image of Jesus. Thrice is the phrase my God here repeated; my as a term of claiming affection shared with Christ by all saints: God, as the primordial and eternal author and assurer of the whole great plan; thrice occurring as symbol of the divine threefoldness. In the permanence of the heavenly system and the saints’ abode, the whole Trinity is pledged, with all the omnipotence and immutability of God.

Though we find no temporal promises of prosperity to the little Church, yet it is historically true, that in the midst of the changes of war which have swept over this land, Philadelphia has had a wonderful preservation. The bravery of its inhabitants, whose home overlies the sleeping earthquakes, has ever signalized it in its own defences. On this subject see the impressive language of Gibbon. “In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick, of the Revelation; the desolation is complete; and the temple of Diana or the Church of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus and the three stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardis is reduced to a miserable village; the God of Mohammed, without a rival or a son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamos, and the populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the Franks and the Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by prophecy or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore years, and at length capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and Churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect a column in a scene of ruins a pleasing example that the paths of honour and safety may sometimes be the same.” When Brewer visited the place, in 1831, he found the Greek population about 2,000 souls, being three or four hundred families, amid as many thousand Turkish. “As a whole they have, for a century or two past, had a good name among travellers as a civil and hospitable people.”