Letters to Seven Churches

One more thing was sent to the churches, and it was not like any of the letters. Nobody carried it up a road to a church with a problem. It was written on an island. Out in the sea off the coast of Asia, a hard day’s sail from the mainland, there is a small rocky place called Patmos — stone, and thin grass, and the water all round it. An old man named John had been put there because of the word of God and because of what he kept saying about Jesus. He called himself their brother, and he said he was sharing the same hard time they were, and the same waiting. It was a hard time. On the mainland people who belonged to Jesus were being arrested. Some of them had been killed.

Seven towns along that coast had gatherings in them, strung out on the roads like beads: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Ephesus was the city of the little silver shrines, where the silversmiths filled the theater with shouting for two hours; it was the place Paul stayed longest, and the place whose elders walked down the road to Miletus to say goodbye to him and cried on his neck. What John sent them was seven letters — and these ones were not from Paul.

And right at the top of the scroll, before the letters begin, John put down a line for whoever would be reading it out loud — because that is how it would reach most of them, read aloud in a room with everybody else sitting and listening. Happy is the one who reads the words of this prophecy out loud, and happy are the ones who hear it and keep what is written in it. Because the time is near.

This is how they came. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” John says, “and I heard a loud voice behind me, like a trumpet.” “Write down what you see in a scroll,” it said, “and send it to the seven gatherings: to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamum, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”

John turned round to see whose voice it was. He saw seven lampstands made of gold, and standing in the middle of them one like a son of man, in a robe down to his feet with a gold band across his chest. His head and his hair were white — white as wool, white as snow — and his eyes were like a flame of fire, and his feet were like bronze that has been in the furnace until it glows, and his voice was like the noise of a great deal of water. He had seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp sword with two edges came out of his mouth, and his face was like the sun when it is too bright to look at.

“When I saw him,” John says, “I fell down at his feet like a dead man.” And he put his right hand on John, and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and the living one. I became dead — and look, I am alive forever and ever — and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Write down what you saw, and the things that are, and the things that are going to happen after them. The seven stars in my hand are the messengers of the seven gatherings, and the seven lampstands are the seven gatherings.”

Then he told John what to write to each town. Seven towns. Seven letters. Every one of them says what the town is doing right, and what is wrong with it, and what to do about it; and every one of them ends the same way.

To Ephesus. “I know what you do. I know how hard you work and how long you have kept at it, and that you cannot put up with wicked people. Men came saying they were apostles, and you tested them and found out they were lying. You have carried it because of my name, and you have not got tired. But I have this against you: you have left the love you had at first. Remember how high up you were before you fell. Change your mind, and do the things you did at the beginning. If you do not, I am coming to you, and I will move your lampstand out of its place. But there is this in your favor — you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, and so do I. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings. To the one who wins I will give fruit to eat from the tree of life, which is in the garden of God.”

To Smyrna. It is the shortest of the seven, and there is nothing wrong in it at all. “This is from the first and the last, who was dead and came alive. I know your hard time and how poor you are — and you are rich. And I know the evil things said about you by people who say they are Jews and are not; they are a meeting house of Satan. Do not be afraid of any of the things you are about to suffer. Look — the Accuser is going to throw some of you into prison, so that you may be tested, and you will have trouble for ten days. Be faithful all the way to death, and I will give you the crown of life. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings. The one who wins will not be hurt at all by the second death.”

To Pergamum. “This is from the one who has the sharp sword with two edges. I know where you live — where the throne of Satan is. And you hold on to my name. You did not say you did not know me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was killed among you, there where Satan lives. But I have a few things against you. Some of you there hold the teaching of Balaam, who showed Balak how to trip up the sons of Israel — to eat food that had been offered to idols, and to go with other people’s husbands and wives. And some of you hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans in the same way. Change your mind, then. If you do not, I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war on them with the sword of my mouth. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings. To the one who wins I will give some of the hidden manna, and a white pebble, and a new name written on the pebble that nobody knows except the one who gets it.”

To Thyatira. It was a town of dyers and cloth; Lydia, who sold purple in Philippi and washed their feet under her own roof, came from Thyatira. “This is from the Son of God, whose eyes are like a flame of fire and whose feet are like glowing bronze. I know what you do — your love and your trusting and your service and how you keep going — and you are doing more now than you did at first. But I have this against you: you put up with the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches my servants and leads them off the road, to be unfaithful and to eat food offered to idols. I gave her time to change her mind, and she does not want to. Look — I am throwing her onto a sickbed, and the ones who go with her into great trouble, unless they turn away from what she does; and her children I will strike dead. And every gathering will know that I am the one who sees straight through people, and I will give each of you what your work has earned. But to the rest of you in Thyatira — the ones who do not hold this teaching, who never learned what they call the deep things of Satan — I am not laying any other load on you. Only hold on to what you have until I come. And the one who wins, and keeps doing my works right to the end, I will give authority over the nations, to shepherd them with an iron rod the way clay pots are broken — the same as I was given by my Father. And I will give him the morning star. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings.”

To Sardis. Sardis had a name. Everybody up and down that road had heard of the gathering at Sardis. “This is from the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know what you do. You have a name for being alive, and you are dead. Wake up, and put some strength into what is left, which is about to die — because I have not found your work finished in front of my God. Remember what you were given and what you heard. Keep it, and change your mind. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know what hour I am coming to you. But you have a few names in Sardis who have not got their clothes dirty, and they will walk with me in white, because they are worth it. Whoever wins will be dressed in white like that, and I will never rub his name out of the book of life, and I will say his name out loud in front of my Father and in front of his messengers. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings.”

To Philadelphia. “This is from the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David — who opens, and nobody shuts, and who shuts, and nobody opens. I know what you do. Look — I have put an open door in front of you, and nobody is able to shut it. You have only a little strength, and you kept my word, and you did not say you did not know me. Look, I will make the ones who say they are Jews and are not, and are lying — I will make them come and bow down at your feet and know that I have loved you. Because you kept my word about holding on, I will keep you out of the hour of testing that is coming on the whole world, to test everybody living on the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold on to what you have, so that nobody takes your crown. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings. Whoever wins, I will make a pillar in the house of my God, and he will never have to go outside again; and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God — the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from my God — and my own new name.”

To Laodicea. Laodicea was rich, and its letter is the hardest of the seven. “This is from the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of what God made. I know what you do. You are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. But you are lukewarm — not one thing and not the other — and I am going to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich, I have made my money, there is nothing I need.’ And you do not know that you are the wretched one, and pitiable, and poor and blind and naked. So here is what I tell you to do. Buy from me gold that has been through the fire, so that you will really be rich; and white clothes to put on, so that the shame of having nothing on does not show; and salve to rub on your eyes, so that you can see. Everybody I love, I correct and put straight. So put your back into it, and change your mind. Look — I have been standing at the door, and I am knocking. If anybody hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat supper with him, and he with me. Whoever has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the gatherings. Whoever wins, I will let him sit down with me on my throne, the way I won and sat down with my Father on his throne.”

Seven letters went out from a rocky island to seven towns on the mainland: two of them with nothing wrong in them, one of them dead on its feet, one of them lukewarm, and all of them told to hold on. And then John’s writing stops being letters altogether. He looked up, and there was a door standing open in the sky.