The apostate church in Thyatira is not willing to repent, and the Lord causes her to be sick in bed (vv. 21-22). This indicates that the apostate church is incurably sick and will remain so until the judgment at the Lord’s coming.
The Lord said to the apostate church, “Behold, I cast...those who commit adultery with her, into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works; and her children I will kill with death” (vv. 22-23). Tribulation here is the particular portion of affliction that the Lord will cause the Roman Catholic Church to suffer when He judges her. To kill her children with death may refer to the destroying of the Roman Catholic Church by Antichrist and his followers during the three and a half years of the great tribulation (17:16-17; 19:1-3). By this the churches will know that the Lord is He who searches the inward parts and the hearts (2:23).
The fifth epistle was written to the church in Sardis (3:1-6). In Greek Sardis means “the remains, the remainder,” or “the restoration.” The epistle to the church in Sardis is a prophecy concerning the Protestant church from the time of the Reformation to the second coming of Christ. According to church history the Reformation in the sixteenth century was a reaction to the apostate Roman Catholic Church, signified by the degraded church in Thyatira. The Reformation was accomplished by a minority of believers, the remainder. Hence, it was a restoration by the remainder. What the church in Sardis signifies is the Protestant church produced after the Reformation.
The Lord said to the messenger of the church in Sardis, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are living, and yet you are dead” (v. 1). The Reformation was the direct work of the Holy Spirit, but the Protestant church after the Reformation is a human organization. The Protestant church is considered by many to be living, but the Lord says that she is dead. Hence, she needs the living seven Spirits and the shining seven stars (v. 1) to recover from the condition of having lost her power and life. The Protestant denominations seem to be better than the Roman Catholic Church prefigured by the church in Thyatira, but they have lost the vitality of life and are living in name only. The frequent revivals in the history of the Protestant denominations are a proof of their being dead.
In Revelation 3:2 the Lord asked the church in Sardis to “establish the things which remain, which were about to die.” The things which remain are the things that were lost and then restored by the Reformation, such as justification by faith, the gospel of grace, and the open Bible. Although these things were restored during the Reformation, they were about to die. Hence, they needed to be revived.
The Lord also said, “I have found none of your works completed before My God” (v. 2b). Nothing that began in the Reformation has ever been completed by the Protestant churches. In the eyes of God there are no completed works in the so-called reformed churches. Even though they recovered the open Bible and gained many precious truths, they still hold on to their creeds and rituals. They left the organization of the Roman Catholic Church, but they produced many more state churches, which are joined to politics, and independent churches, which uphold partial truths; they have not returned to the proper ground of the church as revealed in the Bible. Hence, even though many servants among them have been greatly used by the Lord, their works are not complete in God’s eyes.
Therefore, the Lord charged them, “Remember therefore how you have received and heard, and keep it and repent. If therefore you will not watch, I will come as a thief, and you shall by no means know at what hour I will come upon you” (v. 3).
The sixth epistle was written to the church in Philadelphia (vv. 7-13). Philadelphia in Greek means “brotherly love.” The church in Philadelphia prophetically depicts the church of brotherly love, that is, the recovery of the proper church life. The church of brotherly love was a reaction to the dead, reformed church. It started in the early part of the nineteenth century, when the brothers were raised up in England to practice the church life outside the system of sects and divisions, and it will continue until the Lord comes back.