Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to the eleventh part of our study on the Book of Revelation and to the fifth congregation in the series of seven. Here in Sweden we have been snowed in by a sudden blizzard out of the blue, having been lulled into a false sense of security by the spring-like conditions, a reminder to be prepared as best one can for the unexpected. This is true of politics, human relationships, health, finances, and so many other things in life. You just never know what's coming. For as most of you by now know, Russia yesterday recognised the independence of the two eastern breakaway Ukrainian republics of Lugansk and Donetsk and sent in peacekeeping tanks and troops. (See Halakah on Ukraine and Moldova), and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada is becoming more and more dictatorial in his response to those who do not accept the mainstream narrative.

As you will see from the map we are now moving in a south-south-easterly direction from Thyatira (#4) to today's destination, Sardis (#5), known in some cultures as Sardes, and thereafter to Philadelphia (#6), all three of which are located in the territory of Lydia, until finally in two week's time we shall arrive at our final destination, Laodicia (#7), in the land of Phrygia.

I realise that we are not a superstitious people - or ought not to be since undoubtedly 'superstition is the religion of fools' - but you might have noticed that today is a rather unique one mathematically in the Gregorian calendar being as it is 22 February 2022, or 22-02-2022 (02-22-2022 if you're American, 2022-02-22 if Swedish). And though Yahweh certainly can, and sometimes does, use that which grabs our attention as a springboard to some truth He wants to draw our attention to, as we have been seeing in the way He uses things familiar to the local congregations in Asia Minor to illustrate spiritual realities (and last week we saw how He used the intense fire of the metal foundries of Thyatira as an illustration of His demand for spiritual purity, presenting Himself as having eyes like flames of fire and his feet like the metal they produced in Thyatira, burnished bronze), and given that we currently are in the very midst of Penultimate Judgment of the Messianic Community (Church) and the world and the purification of the Remnant), should not the presence of six 2's in today's date, making a total of 12, at least grab our attention for a minute? Yahweh knows how some of us are intrigued by numbers. For 12 is the number of governmental perfection, or the rule of Elohim (God) over His Creation which Judgment always preceeds, and that is something that we eagerly look forward to given how weary we are of all the corruption, imperfection and wickedness in our world today.

Whether today itself signifies that we are going to get closer to Yahweh's perfection, in any way, in the immediate times ahead, is highly dubious (since we are neither superstitious nor given over to 'foolish religion', as I said) but it is certainly worth reminding ourselves of the significance of this number 12 anyway. Perfection and order in love are dear to the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones). Additionally, this number is the last of it's kind forever because there can never be a '33-03-3033' as there are only 31 days in March! And the last time a similar configuration existed - 11-01-1011 - was on 11 January 1011, a little over 1,000 years ago. So these two types of calendar date are unique, never to be repeated again. I think that's fun. Oh, and incidentally, nothing significanty happened on Friday, 11 January 1011 that I know of, nor did I expect to find anything.

Hard times, such as we are going through today, are never the 'end', and do not mean we should just 'lie down and die' when at times all seems hopeless, as sometimes it may feel what with Covid-19 and its alleged 'vaccine' injuring and killing hundreds of thousands, a number sure to climb into the millions eventually, and what with the economy of the world devastated by imprudent 'lockdowns', and sinning just multiplying with little or no sign of national repentance anywhere, we need reminding how Yahweh views us and of what things we can and must do to turn our personal situation around if it's on a downward trend.

For the next congregation at Sardis is in dire straits and as we will see if it does not take this last opportunity to repent, it's finished, a message repeated in various ways in each of the seven letters to the Asian assemblies in Anatolia or Asia Minor. And as we saw last week, sexual immorality or porneia is a big problem that's destroying three of those seven congregations, thanks to the pernicious influence of the surrounding pagan culture with (in Thyatira in particular) its trade guilds that involved religious rites attended by fornication.

Last week I hinted that there might be a prophetic significance to the order in which Yah'shua (Jesus) addresses these seven congregations, and certainly there is a correspondence to the 7 Ruachot Elohim or Spirits of God which are mentioned both here (Rev.3:1) and in three other passages in the Book of Revelation (Rev.1:4; 4:5; 5:6). Indeed, this is the only book in the Bible where they are mentioned! Whereas the apostle Paul emphasises grace - the undeserved loving kindness or unmerited favour of Elohim (God) toward us sinners, in books like the Apocalypse of John we are reminded that there is a vitally important Torah or Law-based Justice component too. Grace cannot exist apart from Justice, nor be made available to us in the generosity of Elohim's (God's) heart unless we first repent of our violations of His Rule by readjusting to the lifestyle required of us individually and as a national collective, Messianic Israel.

Let's see if such correspondences are true or not as we zoom in on this fifth congregation which I would like to suggest to you is in deep trouble because it is, in part, faking its religion. We're not told who are impressed by these Sardisian believers, whether it's other believers in different congregations, the pagans they share the city with (in part because that's where they're compromising), or both, but, barring a tiny handful of genuine believers, their religion is all a sham. This congregation is on the way out - there is a tiny minority which is genuine but the rest are basically putting on a virtue-signalling performance of some kind. It's a show. They were more about image than about substance. But before we get into all of that, let's first of all learn a little more about this city and its people.

Sardis was the ancient capital of Lydia and was founded over 3,000 years ago around 1200 BC by ancient Etruscans, in what is now Italian Tuscany and part of Umbria. 'Lydia' was also, in our time period, a proper name, and you may remember a lady called Lydia last week who was a well-to-do businesswoman from Thyatira trading in expensive purple-dyed fabric, and no doubt a member of that professional guild. Sardis was the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Lydia, famous for its two rich kings, Midas and Croesus, who became wealthy because of the electrum deposits of gold and silver in the River Pactolus turned into an alloy. What you may not know is it was the Lydians who invented coinage in the West which were made of this electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. They were also the first to debase the value of coinage by adding copper, which our modern bankers did in the 20th century too. You will very rarely find coins circulated by governments today containing silver or gold so they are practically as worthless as their counterpart paper money. Originally money had 'substance' (precious metals) but now it is as fake as fake religion itself. Perhaps there's a connection here with the spiritual condition of Sardis too.

Sardis became one of the important cities of the Persian Empire when it was conquered in the 6th century BC. Alexander's defeat of the Persians in 334 BC brought independence, but it was once again conquered and made a provincial capital by the Seleucids. Roman occupation began in 189 BC and for two centuries Sardis lived under the government of Pergamum, becoming the seat of the Proconsul of the Roman Empire and the metropolis of the province of Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times. When in AD 21 Emperor Tiberias decided to erect a grand temple in a city in Asia Minor, the Sardisians insisted that their city would be the natural home for such a temple, reminding the Senate that the Etruscans were their colonists, sent out centuries before, which proved that Sardis had always possessed intimate ties with Italy. Their argument won the day. Sardis was an imposing regional capital until 616, with marble-paved streets, porticos and one of the largest synagogues in the Mediterranean. So anciently this was a city of some importance, with five important roads meeting there. Like Smyrna and Thyatira it still exists as the modern Turkish town of Sart, though it was known as Sartmahmut before 2005. So like all these places we're discussing, it's three times as old as Sweden where we are and ten times as old as the United States!

Archaeology has uncovered, aside from the ruins of an acropolis, a gymnasium and a basilica that was transformed into a synagogue in the 3rd century AD, a temple dedicated to the worship of the Asiatic pagan deity called Artemis, an imitation of the Temple of Diana in Ephesus mentioned in Acts 19. Also worshipped here was another Anatolian deity called Cybele, the mother goddess of Lydia's neighbour, Phrygia, who survives in modern, times albeit assimilated, into the earth goddess Gaia so beloved of today's New Age nature-worshippers. Incidentally, a red version of the Phrygian cap came to be adopted by the French revolutionaries of 1789 known as the Bonnet Rouge and by 1791 became the badge of loyalty to that early form of communism, once more showing communism's religious connections to ancient paganism and mother-goddess worship.

Many scholars believe that Sardis was the ancient homeland of today's Armenians, an ancient race, whom as we saw when we studied Smyrna met with terrible persecution and genocide at the hands of the nationalist Moslem 'Young Turks'. Today's Armenians live at the other end of modern Turkey, further east.

As we shall see, Sardis and Laodicea, of all the seven congregations of Asia Minor, receive the harshest criticism. Even though this assembly was in severe spiritual jeopardy, some of its members were faithful and had not spiritually "soiled their clothes" (Rev.3:4, NRSV) as we shall see in a moment. The congregation at Sardis continued to grow in the Patristic period and one of its most famous members was undoubtedly Bishop Melito who was a Judahite (Jew) in origin and who fought hard against the paganising tendencies in Rome to change the divine annual moedim or appointments. Specifically, he came down on the side of John the Apostle and his successor, Polycarp, and against Bishop (Pope) Victor who wished to move Resurrection Day or 'Easter', as it was starting to become known, from the Passover Season which begins at Aviv (Nisan) 14, to the nearest Sunday. In the end, the Romanising party won the debate which was resolved in favour of the Romanists at the Council of Nicaea, one of many reasons we do not accept this council's decisions. (You can read more about the Quartodeciman Controversy, as it came to be called, in my article, Keeping Yah's Calendar: Patching Up an Evangelical Blindspot).

We don't know when Melito was born but we do know he died in AD 180, that he was a prolific writer, and that he strongly criticised the rival Jewish community at Sardis. You can still read some of his sermons. Though he professed to be of the Johannine School, like Polycarp of Smyrna (remembering that the assemblies in this area were all part of the apostle John's Circuit), there can be no doubt that he was in most respects a well Hellenised Judahite and fully integrated into the local Greek culture. And though he was held up to be a navi (prophet) and was highly regarded, it cannot be said that he maintained a pure Hebraic Besorah (Gospel).

If apostacy was raplant at the end of the first century, as Revelation chapters 2 and 3 make plain, then we should not be surprised to find that, 80 years later, aposacy had advanced even further and that the Messianic Community (Church) was gradually evolving into something else. In that part of the world, it would mutate into what we today called Eastern Orthodoxy, the eastern counterpart to Catholicism.

Melito is distinguished in that he created the first list of the Christian Tanakh or Old Testament books from which he excluded not only the Catholic Apocrypha but, as do we, the Book of Esther which is not to be found in the oldest Old Testament collection, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is in our opinion a reworked pagan myth created by the Pharisees to bolster their political position. (See our articles on Purim and the Origin of the Canon: 1. The Tanakh (Old Testament) for a full analysis).

By the 4th century Christianity was growing (and evolving) rapidly in the Roman Empire, and at Sardis a large basilica complex was built. Sardis was conquered by the Arabs in AD 716 which severed it from the Eastern Roman Empire. Bishops are recorded for Sardis up to the 14th century, but the subsequent Turkish conquests put an end to the ecclesiastical leadership that is so important to Catholic and Orthodox tradition. It's hard to know if there are any believers in modern Turkish Sard. The number of Christians in Turkey has declined from 20-25 per cent in 1914 to 3-3½ per cent in 1927, to 0.3-0.4 per cent today. So throughout the whole country there are probably no more than 200,000-320,000 believers of all denominations, including Armenian Orthodox. They are probably keeping a low profile what with the rise of militant Islam in what was once a secular state. How many, if any, believers are to be found in modern Sart, I do not know, but I think it's a safe bet to assume that no Christian assembly exists there any longer. The prophecy made by Yah'shua (Jesus) that the Sardisian congregation would fall if it did not repent has most definitely been fulfilled.

Let's now look at today's text:

1 "And to the malak (messenger, angel) of the assembly (congregation, church) in Sardis write, 'These things says He who has the seven Ruachot Elohim (Spirits of God) and the seven stars: 'I know your works, that you have a name ('reputation' - KNT) that you are [spiritually] alive, but you are [spiritually] dead. 2 Be watchful, and strengthen the [healthy spiritual] things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect ('complete' - KNT) before Elohim (God). 3 Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch ('keep awake' - KNT), I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. 4 You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments ('haven't allowed their clothes to become dirty and polluted' - KNT); and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy ('as they deserve' - KNT). 5 He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His malakim (angels). 6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Ruach (Spirit) says to the assemblies (congregations, churches)'" (Rev.3:1-6, NKJV)

With the knowledge that we have about the history of Sardis that I just shared with you, we can see what connections Yah'shua (Jesus) is getting the Sardisians to make with their deplorable spiritual state. You see, 600 years before the Besorah (Gospel, Good News) reached them, their forefathers had thought of their city as being completely impregnable. How many times in the past have humans had this attitude? Think of Jericho with its thick walls - the Jerichoites thought their city was impregnable too until Yahweh arrived with His army under Joshua and supernaturally brought the walls tumbling down, probably by means of a localised earthquake. The creators of the Titanic thought their ship was unsinkable until it struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The German Wehrmacht through it was unbeatable until it was defeated at Stalingrad. Mighty Babylon was thought to be unconquerable until Cyrus the Mede had the brilliant idea to lower the River Euphrates by diverting it and so his troops waded across virtually unopposed. The city had years of food with which to sustain its population for a long siege but it was useless in the end. This last example is important because the way this ancient city was captured is a prophetic picture of how the end-time 'Babylon' spoken of in the Book of Revelation will be overcome by a latter-day Cyrus too in spite of their underground cities, their immense wealth and political power, and their ability to hold out for many years during a nuclear winter [1].

And then there was Sardis, ancient captial of Lydia, sitting on top of a steep hill with its imposing defences. Attackers might come and go, as they often did in Western Anatolia, but the Sardisians were content to see them come and go in the security of their 'impregnable' sanctuary. They 'knew' they could never be captured. Then one night, during the famous reign of King Croesus, the invading Persian army found a way in. Someone, greatly daring, got up part of the sheer cliff and managed a surprise attack. Because nobody was expecting it, the result was all the more devastating. The very same Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, who features in many biblical stories, conquered Sardis in 546 BC. And though most of you have probably never heard of this event, I hope you'll remember it from now on, in connection with modern events unfolding. Our Enemy is not impregnable, he is not undefeatable. The history of nations and political powers turns on small hinges which Elohim (God) alone knows about before we do.

True, Sardis remained an important city even after the Persian conquest, but an important lesson had been learned nonetheless. Or had it? Apparently, no, because Yah'shua (Jesus) is here saying to the Christian/Messianic Sardisians that they need to learn this lesson all over again! Habitual, persistent sinners are not prepared no matter how much they think they are! They have a reputation of being 'alive' - 'charismatic', if you will, a vibrant concern - but they have gone to sleep on their reputation and need to wake up. It's possible to begin authentic and to end up fake because of carlessness and spiritual laziness. In my experience, the modern Calvinistic 'Once Saved, Always Saved' doctrine causes modern Evangelicals to fall asleep too who think their spirituality and 'savedness' is a function of their original decision to become a Christian and has nothing or little to do the way they have lived their lives since. Many of my relatives are like this - nominal believers who think they're 'Christians' but whose spiritually casual lifestyle and not infrequent immoral behaviour testifies otherwise. They're asleep and they need to wake up, just as the Sardisians did. For if they don't take action soon, they will wither on the vine.

This is actually a common problem amongst Christians. Psychic-driven charismatics and nominal OSAS Baptists aren't the only ones. It's something that happens in every denomination, in every Christian or Messianic community, because this is fundamentally a human failing that we all need to be alert to. You see, there are still some good things happening among these Sardisian folks but what they're doing isn't enough to stop them sliding, often by small almost imperceptible increments, into complete apostacy. As we'll see, the Laodiceans had a similar problem though Yah'shua (Jesus) uses a different illustration (lukewarmness), connected to their city's water supply, to point it out.

Yah'shua (Jesus) is more specific, though, and points out two things. First, the Sardisians' works are 'imperfect' or 'incomplete' - they don't 'meet Yahweh's requirements' (v.2, AmpV). Oh yes, you see, Yahweh does have requirements, things we are supposed to do, 'works' we are supposed to perform for Him, as the apostle James reminds us, "for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith (emunah, trusting) without works is dead also" (James 2:26, NKJV). In other words, their Torah-lifestyle, the ways they live the Besorah (Gospel), leaves a lot to be desired. What they call 'faith', as so many Christians still do today, isn't biblical proactive 'emunah' or faith but armchair faith - faith unmatched by righteous deeds, in in their particular case, their relationship toward their former pagan religion. The issue is an 'all-or-nothing' one. Either Yah'shua (Jesus) really is Master or Lord, with requirements on conduct, with the mitzvot (commandments) of His Father Yahweh, old and new, or He isn't.

Either He is Master/Lord and we give Him absolute, total allegiance and loyalty, or He isn't and our religion is a sham, in which case we need to reject Him and go on our way and at least be honest. But what we can't do is bumble on, looking busy, but achieving little or nothing, pretending to be Christians or Messianics. Reputation isn't enough. What people think of us doesn't determine our spiritual status because we all know how to perform. Only what Yahweh thinks matters and nothing gets by Him. You cannot fool the Creator. Our initial salvation isn't enough any more than my Entrance Examination into Oxford was enough to get me through my Final Examinations 3-4 years later. Salvation isn't just a single event but is past, present and future. We haven't made it until we've actually made it after all's said and done.

People do fall away and never return. We have to keep on "work[ing] out [y]our own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil.2:12, NKJV), just as Paul taught, lest we fall or (in the language to the Laodiceans) we are 'spat out' or rejected with no hope of return once this lifetime is over. Understand this, Evangelicals! Our eternal security is not based on an initial decision for Christ alone made donkey's years ago any more than my marriage is secure because I was (hopefully) an attractive person when I first met and married my wife. Marriages go wrong and fall apart just as our relationship with Yah'shua (Jesus) can through carelessness. We have to keep 'walking the walk' (substance) and stop relying on 'talking the talk' (image) as though that was all that mattered. Reputation isn't enough, even if it matters (1 Tim.3:7), nor is assuming that we were right with Yahweh yesterday necessarily means we are automatically right with Him today. That's not how life and reality work. That ought to be common sense but so many theologies twist this self-evident truth around and persuade people to believe lies. One wicked lie is to tell authentically born-again believers who do fall away that they were never saved in the first place, as Calvinists do to shore up their own false doctrines (see Calvinist Judgment Day).

The second charge Yah'shua (Jesus) makes against the Sardisians comes in verses 4 and 5 by acknowledging that some of the believers there "haven't allowed their clothes to become dirty and polluted" (KNT). Now obviously He isn't picking on them for not doing any laundry. Theirs is a problem of spiritual laziness, like those who don't bother to wash their clothes - in other words, they have stopped repenting when they sin and their sins are piling up. It's all to easy to fall into slack habits. 'Being saved' is an habitual thing too - retaining salvation, not drifting off into immorality because of carelessness, requires some effort, because the gravitational pull of the flesh is always with us. We have to resist it. That's what 'active faith' means - we react properly and effectively to temptations, and when we slip up, we repent immediately and are forgiven by the grace of Elohim (God).

That is how you 'remain saved'. Now in the case of the Sardisians, as elsewhere in the pagan world generally, the more specific reference here is almost certainly to the toleration, within the community, of some sort of immoral behaviour. This is a big problem in a lot of modern churches and messianic assemblies. They tolerate immorality amongst their people and do nothing to rescue them or disfellowship and then expell (excommunicate) them from the congregation when they refuse help after exhaustive ministry has been offered, as we're commanded to do [2]. I know from personal experience how some churches shelter wicked men like pedophiles out of a misguided sense of protecting their families and how destructive this can be. One of these churches burned to the ground two times. A relative, who was herself abused growing up, wrote a book exposing this when the pastors refused to do anything about it and was treated as though she were guilty of their sin, and she didn't even 'name names'. Something like this may very well have been going on in some of the assemblies we are studying, though in their case the specific problem seems to have been involvement in the sexual immorality of the ceremonies of the pagan guilds that professional members in their respective congregations were expected to take part in.

Yah'shua (Jesus) does not beat around the bush: He says, most emphatically and unapologetically, that the assembly in Sardis will suffer the same fate that the city itself suffered six centuries earlier. The Saviour says He "will come like a thief," (v.3, KNT) suddently and unexpectedly, to deal with the matter. This echoes similar things in Paul (1 Thes.5:2) and Peter (2 Pet.3:10), and in the teaching or Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself (Mt.24:34). It was obviously a regular warning note sounded among the early believers. The Yah'shua (Jesus) who holds the life of the messianic assemblies (churches) - their messengers, and the Seven Ruachot Elohim (Spirits of God) which bring the assemblies to life (Rev.1:4; 4:5; 5:6) - will come with judgment. And they won't know what's happening until it's too late. So take this warning seriously - it applies to all of us.

Is Yah'shua (Jesus) here speaking of the Second Coming? Probably not, this sounds more like an imminent judgment like the current Penultimate Judgment we are in now, yet the Second Coming and the Final Judgment are definitely in view as the backdrop. Throughout the Book of Revelation we get glimpses of 'other comings' or 'special anointings' in times of persecution (when the Master is 'coming' invisibly to cleanse and purify His people) or moments of comfort and restoration. Even Laodicea, which I keep on mentioning in advance because it was in such a sorry state, is promised that if they open the door He will "come in to them and eat with them" (3:20, KNT), so there is always hope. In this instance, the 'coming' would seem to indicate that this would be in a time of persecution or simply an internal collapse, a congregation quietly drowning in its own inoffensiveness (much as modern 'politically correct' churches virtue-signal to the wider community that they are in agreement with their demonic agenda), unable to believe in its reputation for being 'alive' is no longer deserved, and/or as I suggested at the beginning, that it was consciously trying to fake its spirituality whilst it deliberately masked its collective guilt.

But the promise, to those who "wake up", to those who "overcome" or "conquer", and those who have managed to keep their spiritual "clothes from being polluted", is that they will share the triumphal procession when Yah'shua (Jesus) returns visibly as the Conquering King as He and the resurrected Qodeshim (Saints, Set-Apart Ones) coming from Heaven are met briefly in the air for a few moments by those being resurrected on the earth, before returning to the earth to begin the glorious Millennium. This is what the so-called 'rapture' is actually all about, it has nothing to do with being whisked into Heaven before the Great Tribulation starts or even in the middle of it - it's part and parcel of the triumphal procession of the returning, victorious king from His wars of conquest against Satan and his demonic hosts! This theme is taken up again and again later in the Book of Revelation. The 'rapture' is the Triumphal Procession of King Yah'shua (Jesus)! not an easy way out for cowardly believers. The qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) will wear white robes, as people did anciently in triumphal processions on earth, and as the newly baptised would do when they emerged from the water and still do in some churches today. They would, in other words, share the victory of Yah'shua (Jesus), as victors or overcomers themselves, over all (including ultimately death itself) that relentlessly drags human life down into the ground.

What's more, their names will remain written in the Book of Life where they were entered when they were saved, something that's mentioned in five other places in the Book of Revelation (13:8; 17:8; 20:12,15; 21:27). This idea of a Book containing the names of the redeemed goes all the way back to the Torah which, speaking of the ancient Israelites in Exodus, reads:

"Yet now, if You (Yahweh) will forgive their sin - but if not, I pray, blot me (Moses) out of Your book which You have written" (Ex.32:32, NKJV).

Nearly all the Israelites deserved to have their names botted out or removed from that heavenly book and it was only Yahweh's fresh act of mercy - His grace or undeserved loving kindness - that rescued them upon Moses' intercession, just as Christ interceeded for us on the cross and gives us the same opportunity for on-the-spot deliverance. Now what you might not know is that many pagan Greek cities had an official register of all citizens. Some places kept the grim custom, when a citizen was to be condemned to death, his name would first be blotted out of the book, so that the sentence could proceed without any stain on the city's reputation through one of its citizens facing the ultimate penalty. So this symbolism in the Book of Revelation would have made perfect sense to the Sardisians even without them knowing the parallels in the Tanakh (Old Testament). Here, then, we are shown in familiar terms to both Sardisians and Judahites (Jews) that the names of the saved at present in Yahweh's Book can be crossed out or removed - there is nothing of absolute Calvinistic predestination here, which is probably one of the many reasons John Calvin wrote no New Testament commentary on the Book of Revelation because it contradicted his doctrine that those who are saved turn out to always be those who persevere. Indeed, Calvin would tell you that the saved, being predestined, have always been written in the Book of Life, and that those so predestined cannot therefore have their names blotted out, since in their system Elohim (God) has already deceided who will be saved and who will be not, no matter what kind of life they live out on earth, thus contradicting what Yah'shua (Jesus) here clearly teaches. Like I said, the Book of Revelation exposes a lot of false doctrines that you'll find taught in many modern churches.

So here is our resurrected Messiah holding out a standard early Christian/Messianic warning, going back to John the Baptist, Paul and to Yah'shua (Jesus) when He was in mortality. It's a warning against presuming that belonging to the community of the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) of Elohim (God) through spiritual rebirth and water-baptism, irrespective of their subsequent behaviour within it, is all that is required 'to get to heaven'. Clearly a set of divine rules or mitzvot (commandments) are still in force, contrary to what the antinomian (lawless) churches teach, which common sense alone should tell us is so, and that our failure to live up to our 'savedness' and profession of faith in living out life can, and will, mean that we could possibly lose it...which is what having your name struck out of the book would represent. Yes, we are to persevere but that is always a free choice to repent and change course whether we actually sin or not.

To those who wake up, who stay unpolluted, and who overcome or conquer the tendency to sin which happens when we choose to yield to the deathly fleshly Adamic nature, Yah'shua (Jesus) finally reiterates another promise well known from the Gospel traditions. He will "acknowledge their names before the Father and His malakim (angels)" (v.5):

"Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the malakim (angels) of Elohim (God). But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the malakim (angels) of Elohim (God)" (Luke 12:8-9, NKJV).

"For whoever is ashamed of Me and My devarim (words) in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the qadosh (holy, set-apart) malakim (angels)" (Mark 8:38, NKJV).

To be acknowledged by Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself will surely be amazing. Now understand that the word 'ackowledge' implies a strong confession on our behalf - a testimony of our fellowship and oneness with Him that confirms and assures our heavenly citizenship (Mt.10:32; Lk.12:8). What ultimately counts is not, as so many of the Sardisian members believed, our acceptance by this world's society but that our eternal relationship to Christ is genuine. The world will never accept us because the system that runs it has a satanic foundation empowered by satanic forces. To then have Him acknowledge us before Yahweh, His Father, will be the moment of all moments. So let's wake up before it's too late!

So to summarise: the assembly in Sardis has a history of good deeds but is in spiritual torpor. The believers there need to wake up and change their "dirty clothes" for clean ones. The Master's coming is like a thief in the night and they must be ready. The Book of Life will contain the names of those who "overcome" or "conquer".

Five down two to go! Next week we shall examine Yah'shua's (Jesus') letter to the Philadelphians.Until then, Yahweh bless you all. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] See Vladimir Putin who may very well bring down the satanic Western élites
[2] See Matthew 18:15-18; 16:19; 1 Corinthians 5:1-6; 1 Timothy 1:20; 1 Corinthians 5:11-13; 2 Corinthians 2:5-11; Leviticus 18:29; Numbers 15:30; 19:20; Matthew 18:15-17; Romans 16:17; 1 Corinthians 5:19-13; 2 Thessalonians 3:6; Titus 3:9-11; John 16:2; 9:22; 12:41; Luke 6:22; John 9:24; 1 Thessalonians 2:15; Ezra 10:8; Psalm 36:11; 1 Kings 22:46; 1 Corinthians 5:2,13; 3 John 1:10; Galatians 4:17

Acknowledgements

[1] David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Allen Lane, London: 2011)
[2] Tom Wright, Revelation for Everyone (SPCK, London: 2011)
[3] N.T.Wright & Michael F.Bird, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (Zondervan Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 2019)
[4] Eerdmans, ed. David Noel Freedman, Dictionary of the Bible (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 2000)
[5] Ed. Tokunboh Adeyemo, Africa Bible Commentary (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 2010)
[6] Tom Holland, Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (Abacus, London: 2005)