Week 52 Revelation
Chapters two-three are a kind of Church Quality Assessment Report that John wrote to the seven congregations of Revelation.
To clarify things for myself I drew up a table with three columns: Church – Pros – Cons. Below I had seven rows – one for each church.
I ended up with a cumulated listing of the Pros and the Cons of the seven churches.
On the Pro-side John commended churches for things like this: they worked hard for the Lord, had patience & endurance, didn’t tolerate evil, assessed what they heard to see if it was true, suffered patiently, hated immorality, experienced opposition-slander-imprisonment-persecution but stayed loyal to the Lord, loved each other, had faith, helped other people, were obedient to the Lord, and persevered in their faith. This lists pretty much all the Pros. No church had all of them; each church got at least one (except Laodicea which got none).
The Con-side was pretty sobering. John criticized churches for: not loving the Lord, not loving each other, being idolaters, practicing immorality, accepting bad teaching and believing it, doing evil things, being confident because of their money, being indifferent in their faith, and not being diligent. Smyrna and Philadelphia weren’t criticized at all. Laodicea was described as a dead church.
These lists seem like a pretty useful place to start thinking about the church I attend, its pros & cons.
And since I go to the church, I guess that means thinking about me.