Over the years, I have taught the book of Revelation several times – verse by verse. Each time I taught the book, I had to adjust my understanding. It wasn’t that Scripture had changed. I began to see a simple understanding of what the Lord was saying.

Whether one sees the seven churches as a progression of ages of development with the Church or it refers to actual churches is not the critical issue. What the Lord highlighted in each church, both the good and the bad, applies to all of us no matter where we find ourselves on the timeline of Church history.

I began to notice repetitions. There are repetitions in the Lord’s discourses to the Churches like a mention of the Nicolaitans who were involved in a belief system that compromised their spiritual and physical morality. I saw a repeated mention of a lessening of the faith in some churches because they had compromised their faith by accepting cultural falsehoods that polluted their faith.

The Lord offered a remedy for these repetitions. When He spoke of the church in Thyatira, He told them to “Hold tightly to what you have until I come” (Revelation 2: 25). He went on to say, “All who are victorious, who obey me to the very end, to them I will give authority over all the nations” (vs. 26). While the first and most important work of the Holy Spirit is to lead us individually to Christ, the Lord also has His eyes on entire nations. The faith of a single person will begin to influence an entire society.

Another common and sadly repeated thread was a spiritual slippage away from historic and established truths. That slippage occurred when truth was abandoned as they yielded to the influence of the surrounding culture, Gnosticism. and the imitation of the worship of false gods embedded within the surrounding culture.

The word of the Lord to the Church in Sardis provides us with an over-arching safeguard of our faith against a slippage away from the truth. It contains both a promise and a warning, “Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief” (3:3).

Going back and re-engaging the established truths of God and repenting of our sin of slippage from those truths is the only safe path to walk as we journey into an uncertain future.