Revelation 2:1-7 To the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things said he that holds the seven stars in his right hand… What then is it which a man has to do who is desirous of becoming truly repentant? We reply that his great business is earnest prayer to Christ, that he would give him the Holy Spirit, to enable him to repent. Of course we do not mean that he is to confine himself to prayer, and make no effort at correcting what may be wrong in his conduct. But there is more in this exhortation than the summons to repentance: memory is appealed to as an assistant in the duty to which men are called. The great evil with the mass of men is, that, so far at least as eternity is concerned, they never think at all — once make them think, and you make them anxious; once make them anxious, and they will labour to be saved. We should feel that we were gaining a great moral hold on a man, if we prevailed on him to contrast what he is with what Adam was ere he ate the forbidden fruit. It is a contrast which must produce the sense of utter degradation. And if I have been like the Ephesian Church, what Scripture calls a backslider, may not memory tell me of comforts I experienced, when walking closely with God, of communion with eternity so real and distinct that I seemed already delivered from the trammels of flesh? It may well be, if indeed I have declined in godliness, that through musing on past times, there will be excited within me a poignant regret. There will come back upon me, as upon the criminal in his cell, the holy music of better days; and there will be a penetrating power in the once gladdening but now melancholy strain, which there would not be in the shrill note of vengeance. And thus in each case, memory may be a mighty agent in bringing me to repentance. But we turn from the exhortation to the threatening contained in our text, "I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." Where are those Christian societies to which St. Paul and St. John inscribed their Epistles? Where is the Corinthian Church, so affectionately addressed, though so boldly reproved, by she great apostle of the Gentiles? Where is the Philippian Church, where the Colossian, where the Thessalonian, the letters to which prove how cordially Christianity had been received, and how vigorously it flourished? Where are the Seven Churches of Asia, respecting which we are assured that they were once strenuous in piety, and gave promise of permanence in Christian profession and privilege? Alas, how true is it that the candlesticks have been removed. And never let it be thought that such sentence is of no very terrible and desolating character. Come any evil rather than the unchurching which is threatened in our text. It is not merely that Christianity is taken away — though who shall measure, who imagine, the loss, if this were indeed all? — but it is that God must frown on a land from which He hath been provoked to withdraw His gospel; and that, if the frown of the Almighty rest on a country, the sun of that country's greatness goes rapidly down, and the dreariness of a moral midnight fast gathers above it and around it. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; |
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