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:
I know thy works, and thy labour and thy patience,
and how thou canst not bear them which are evil:
and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles,
and are not, and hast found them liars: and hast borne,
and hast patience, and for My name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted
Revelation 2:1-3
The messenger (angel) to the church at Ephesus received a message from the One who walks in the midst of candlesticks, the Church, and Who holds the stars, the elders or leaders of the Church in His right hand, the hand considered to be clean, even sacred. This One Who walks among the Churches knows their works and all their labor even their patience. God knows all things and we cannot do anything that He does not know. Did God wait until we did it to know? No! God is eternal and sees things eternally, that is all that will happen is already known by God. God Who created all things Who does not live in time knows our time, our future, our past, our now, God knows and as God this must be true of Him for if not then God is limited. If God is limited then we would have no sure hope of ever pleasing Him for we do not know what is limiting Him. Our hope for eternal life, for salvation then could never be sure and we would be living a hopeless life. This is not of God! Why would He then send His Wisdom to become flesh to die for sin if He was limited? Some may say that He did this to settle His question as to how He could have a people who will live with Him forever. This is foolish for God does have need of anything. At God's good pleasure He does whatever He does and for His reason's and His reason's only. God knows your works, your labor or lack of labor and your patience or lack of patience. You cannot hide from God. God is Spirit and has no boundaries and cannot be measured or known outside of Him revealing something we need to know about Him. God gives us only what we need, when, why, and how, and what and all of this is to be found in His Revelation throughout all those who wrote what He inspired men to write. Those men were not recording just history, albeit, they were writing historical events, but there were many events and those recorded were the ones that God inspired to be written so that we could come to know Him and His requirements.
Yet, many men and women have overreached in their attempt to teach something about God and how we are to worship Him, or to live and in their attempt they teach false doctrine. It is this overreaching that many of us have done so that we can make some sense out of those hard things to understand like symbols. We far too often make those symbols mean something that we can grasp onto, as to those objects that have some resemblance to the symbol. Maybe they do, but maybe they do not so how are we to know the difference? We study Scripture as I have previously pointed out that by our knowledge of history we can come to a conclusion, not based on what sounds good to us, but has a foundation in Scripture. God has given us history to reveal to us Him and by our study of the Scriptures we can come to know Him. Those who will not study Scriptures or have come to dismiss God will never know Him and often come to false conclusions.
This was happening in the early Church, false apostles who are declared to be evil and require much patience on our part to define them, to address them, to teach about them and then to avoid them. We do this for the sake of the name of Jesus. Not His name as in Bill or John, no His name that tells us about Him, His attributes, and His requirements set forth for His bride. The literal name has no power, but the name that describes Jesus has all the power in the world. We have many false preachers, teachers, professors, and others who are teaching speculative theories, and good sounding representatives of symbols and many have succumbed to them as they do not learn what is the truth and have succumbed to the overreaching by false teachers.
Do you belong to such a church? Do you and are you following speculation and good sounding words? Are you taking time to study what is being taught and said by Scripture and Scripture alone. Is this so important to you that you will do all, that is labor so that your works are the true works of God. You will do what you hold as important.
My soul, wait thou only upon God;
for my expectation is from Him.
He only is my rock and my salvation:
He is my defence: I shall not be moved.
In God is my salvation and my glory:
the rock of my strength, and my refuge,
is only in God.
Psalm 61:5-7
Inspect what you expect: trust with caution'
Richard L. Crumb
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