In Revelation 2 and 3 Christ is revealed as the Priest who trims the lampstands, the churches. As the testimony of Jesus, the golden lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God. With the golden lampstand there are three main factors. First, the entire lampstand is gold. It is not only golden but gold itself. In biblical typology gold signifies God the Father’s divine nature. Hence, the golden essence of the lampstand signifies God the Father. Second, the golden lampstand is not a lump of gold but a piece of gold in a definite form and a purposeful shape. The shape, the form, the appearance, of the lampstand signifies Christ the Son as the embodiment of the Godhead and the embodiment of the Father’s nature (Col. 2:9). Third, the seven lamps of the lampstand signify the seven Spirits (Rev. 4:5). The seven lamps, which are the seven Spirits of God, shine for the expression of God. Thus, with the lampstand are the nature, the embodiment, and the expression. Based upon these items, we may say that the golden lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God. God the Father is embodied in the Son, and the Son is expressed through the Spirit. According to Revelation 1, the golden lampstands are the churches (vv. 11-12). Every local church is a golden lampstand, and the golden lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God as the testimony of Jesus. Thus, the local churches are the multiplied embodiment of the Triune God.
Priests in ancient times, who trimmed the lampstands in the Holy Place for the shining of God, typify Christ as the Priest who takes care of all the local churches as the lampstands by dressing the lamps (Exo. 27:20-21; Lev. 24:1-4). The high priest in the Old Testament dressed the lamps of the lampstand every morning so that they would continue to shine brightly (Exo. 30:7). To dress the lamps, the priest first had to snuff the burned-out wick. The wick in the lamps burned with oil to give light. When the wick burned out, it became charred and black; hence, the priest had to come to cut off the black part of the wick. This is what it means to snuff the wick, that is, to cleanse the lamp so that the lamp may shine better. At the same time, to dress the lamps the priest had to add more oil. Christ in Revelation 2 and 3 is like the priest in the Old Testament coming to the Holy Place to dress the lamps.
The first vision of Christ in Revelation, recorded in chapter 1, is that of the High Priest clothed with a priestly garment. As the High Priest, Christ is walking among and taking care of the lampstands. He especially cares for their shining by trimming the lamps. Then in chapter 8 Christ is revealed as the Priest offering incense at the golden altar: “Another Angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer, and much incense was given to Him to offer with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne” (v. 3). Therefore, in chapter 1 Christ is revealed as the Priest taking care of the lampstands, and in chapter 8 He is unveiled as the Priest offering incense to God. In chapter 5 He is revealed as the Administrator over the whole universe. To the church Christ is the High Priest; as the ascended One in the heavens, He is now living, working, and ministering as a Priest. But to the universe Christ is not the Priest; He is the Administrator.
Christ is caring for the churches in an administrative way. The churches are God’s lampstands shining forth His testimony. They need Christ’s administration. Sometimes troubles and difficulties arise, requiring His administrative attention. Christ takes care of the churches as the lampstands in His humanity as the Son of Man (1:13a). Christ as our High Priest takes care of the churches, which He has established, in His humanity in order to cherish the churches, to make the churches happy, pleasant, and comfortable. He does this by dressing the lamps of the lampstands. To dress the lamps is to make them proper. Christ cares for the lampstands by trimming the wicks of the lamps of the lampstands. The charred part of the wick, the snuff, signifies the things that are not according to God’s purpose and need to be cut off, such as sin, the world, the flesh, the natural man, the self, and the old creation. All the churches as lampstands are organic; they are living lampstands. Since each church is a living lampstand, each church has much feeling. A church with charred wicks will not feel comfortable, having no feeling of happiness or pleasantness. But when Christ as our High Priest comes to dress the lamps of the lampstand by trimming the wicks to snuff all the negative things, this is a cherishing to make the church happy, pleasant, and comfortable. This is Christ’s taking care of the church in His humanity to dress the lamps of the church.
On the one hand, the churches need Christ to snuff out all the negative things. On the other hand, the churches need Christ to add more oil, which typifies the Spirit (Isa. 61:1). In Revelation the oil is the seven Spirits of God, the sevenfold Spirit. The Lord Jesus desires to add more oil into the lampstands. According to Revelation 2 and 3, in nearly every epistle to the seven churches, the Lord as the High Priest was snuffing the wicks and adding more oil to the lampstands in order to make all the lampstands golden, pure, and shining. When the Lord has to come in to cut off the burned-out, black wicks and to fill the local churches with the oil, the local churches will be cleansed from the burned-out wicks and be filled with more Spirit to shine more brightly as the testimony of Jesus. It is by this way that a local church is built up more and more until it becomes a golden lampstand in reality.
According to the vision, a local church is a golden lampstand, but in our locality the actuality, the practicality, of the church may not look exactly like what we see in the vision. But we should believe that the day will come when the churches of the Lord will be golden lampstands in reality. We may realize that the church in our locality is not yet according to the vision in Revelation 1 of a golden lampstand. But our saying “not yet” indicates that there is hope that the time will come when all the churches will be golden in reality. In the Lord’s heavenly ministry, His intention is to snuff all the burned-out wicks of the local churches, to cut off the unnecessary, negative things. No doubt, there are some negative things in the local churches, but we must be careful not to focus on these things and talk about them with a critical spirit. If we are critical, we will become a part of the burned-out wick. We believe that in the church and ministry meetings, the Lord is continuing His work of snuffing out the negative things and filling up the lampstands with oil.
Year after year, the local churches are being brought more and more into the reality of the golden lampstands. More of the Father’s nature as the gold is being added to the churches, and the churches are increasingly being shaped into the form of Christ the Son. Furthermore, as the Spirit, the oil, is being added to the lampstands, the churches shine brighter and brighter. Year after year we can see more light in the local churches. This means that the Lord as the Priest is cleansing the lamps by snuffing the burned-out wicks and filling the lampstands with the oil so that they are increasing in the Father’s nature, the Son’s image, and the Spirit’s expression. As we enter into the Word with the help of the footnotes of the Recovery Version and the Life-study messages, we partake of more of the Father’s golden nature (2 Pet. 1:4), and this gives the Lord a way to shape us more and more into the image of Christ and to add more of the Spirit into us so that the lampstand will shine more brightly. Every local church needs to be an embodiment of the Triune God shining in its locality.
In this lampstand there are only two basic elements—the gold and the oil. The gold is the solid form, and the oil is the burning element. When these two are put together, there is a lampstand shining to express God in His trinity with the Father’s nature and essence, the Son’s image and appearance, and the Spirit’s expression. Zechariah 4:12 tells us that the oil of the lampstand is golden oil. This means that the gold flows as oil. The two elements of the lampstand are the golden element and the element of the oil, but according to Zechariah these two elements are actually one. When more oil is added into the lampstand, more gold is added also. The church as the lampstand is the solid embodiment of the Triune God with the sevenfold Spirit as the oil, the essence of which is the element of the gold.
This can be confirmed by the churches’ experience. Whenever Christ as the High Priest comes to snuff all the negative things and add more oil to the churches, He is actually adding more of the sevenfold Spirit, which is to add more of the divine nature, more of the gold, into the churches. At the beginning, the church in a locality may not have much gold. As time goes on, however, the Lord snuffs the negative things and adds the oil. Eventually, the church will have more gold, more of the divine nature. This indicates that the church as the embodiment of the Triune God must be reduced in all the human, natural things but increased in the divine nature all the time. Our flesh, our self, our natural man, and everything about us related to the old creation must decrease. By Christ’s trimming the wicks and adding oil, the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation in the local churches are being reduced, and God’s element, the Spirit, is being increased. Through this process, the churches become the pure golden lampstands in reality, and this is the testimony of Jesus in today’s age on this earth.