Revelation 2:29

Revelation 2:29. Comp. on Revelation 2:7.

In the church at Thyatira we seem to pass for the first time to the Church considered in her widest aspect and as brought into positive relations with the powers of the heathen world. These powers have penetrated within her, and she has in part yielded to their influence. God's people have allied themselves with a heathen princess, and she has tempted them to sin. The first Epistle of the second group thus corresponds to the first of the first group, although with a difference in harmony with the general nature of the two groups as wholes. In the first Epistle of the first group the evil is wholly from within; the church has forsaken her first love. In the first Epistle of the second group the evil enters from without; the world tempts, and the church yields, at least in part, to the temptation in order that she may have a share in the world's glory. In the one case she has forgotten Him who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, and whose love never fails: in the other the power of the present and the seen has led too many of her members to break their covenant with Him who is the Son of God, whose kingdom is not of this world, and whose rewards are future and unseen.