REVELATION
SIMPLIFIED
CHAPTER 2.20
Gleanings
from the Book of Revelation:
A
Weekly Verse-by-Verse Bible Study Series
The
REVELATION
TO JOHN
(The
Apocalypse)
LETTERS
TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES
CHAPTER
2
The
Letter to the Church at Thyatira (continued)
Outline
1. The
Addressee – To whom the
letter is addressed (2:18)
2. The
Address – To where the letter is
addressed (2:18)
3. The
Addresser – From whom the
letter is addressed (2;18)
4. The
Approval – The acclamation
of good qualities (2:19)
5. The
Accusation – The
presentation of bad qualities (2:20-23)
6. The Appeal
– The application to change (2:24-25)
7. The Advice
– The recommendation to change (2:26-29)
5. The
Accusation – The
presentation of bad qualities
(Verse 20)
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou
sufferest (tolerate, permit, allow, let be) that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,
to teach and to seduce (deceive) My
servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
(Verse 21)
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she
repented not.
(Verse 22)
Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit
adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
(Verse 23)
And I will kill her children (Jezebel’s followers) with
death; and all the churches shall know that I am He which searcheth the reins
and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
Thyatira: Continued
The Church at Thyatira was a thriving and
flourishing Church. On the outside, it appeared to have all of the earmarks of
a fruitful ministry. Quite the contrary, Thyatira practiced syncretism – the
amalgamation, merging, or fusion of Christianity, Romanism, Paganism, and the
procedures of the trade guilds. It disproportionately homogenized all this as
biblical dogma.
Similar to many mega-churches today, its activity
was attractively grandiose, but the love and personal relationship with Christ
and sound doctrine were deficient. After a commendation to a select few for
their steadfast endurance, Jesus addresses the mass in this fashion:
I have a few things against thee
Note: In many of the later translations of the Bible the
phrase a few things are omitted and
replaced with the word this, thus
rendering the text as I have this against thee (you). Because they tolerated:
That woman Jezebel
Thyatira is the only Church letter where a woman's
name is mentioned. Her name Jezebel is defined
as chaste
[Hebrew: איזבל 'îyzebel (H348)], However, in the Greek language, her name is synonymous
with a false teacher.
Question
Who is that woman Jezebel?
Answer
In the Church of Thyatira, there was a woman who
called herself a prophetess named Jezebel, whom the Lord likened to her evil
counterpart in the Old Testament. She was infamous for wedding the church to
the world by teaching Christians how to compromise with worldly cultural
practices. In doing so, the Thyatira Church became a conglomeration of Judaism, Christianity, and
paganism, and the purity of Christ's teachings was compromised.
In the Old Testament
To correlate the Jezebel of Thyatira to the Jezebel of
the Old Testament, some historical background is necessary.
God’s Law
Pertinent to this church are two commandments the
Lord God Almighty gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. Written on stone tablets are
these words:
Exodus
20:3-5 - Thou
shalt have no other gods before Me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image,
or any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above, or
that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under
the earth:
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to
them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy
God am a jealous God.
Exodus
20:14 - Thou
shalt not commit adultery.
The Phoenicians
The Phoenicians were great mariners and merchants
of the ancient world and were infamous for the worship of the sun god Baal and
the fertility goddess Ashtoreth or Astarte. Occasionally they made child
sacrifices to the Canaanite king fire god Molech. To the Phoenicians, Jehovah
was regarded as a local deity.
Ahab
In the chronology of the ten tribes of the northern
Kingdom kings of Israel, they are all listed as bad kings until Assyria took
Israel into captivity at approximately 734 B.C. In this record of evil kings,
Omri, an exceptionally wicked king, caused Israel to sin and provoked the LORD
God of Israel to anger (cf. I Kings 16:26).
Omri had a son, his successor, who ruled over
Israel for twenty-two years. His name was Ahab, the seventh King of the
Northern Kingdom, “and he did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that
ruled before him.” (cf. I Kings 16:29-30). Thus, Ahab was the worst.
During this period, the Israelites were strictly
forbidden not to marry foreign women, the only exception was found in Exodus 2:21
when Moses married Zipporah, an Ethiopian (Cushite) woman, who was not of the
nation named in Deuteronomy Chapter 7.
Exodus
34:12-16 – Take
heed (be very careful) to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the
inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst
of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down
their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants
of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods and do sacrifice unto their
gods, and one call thee, and
thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of
their daughters unto thy sons, and their
daughters go a whoring after their gods and make thy sons go a whoring after
their gods.
Deuteronomy
7:1-4 - When
the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess
it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the
Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the
Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And
when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt
make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou
shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn
away thy son from following me that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of
the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.
Ahab, so captivated by Jezebel, espoused her against
the Lord’s precepts.
I Kings
16:31 – [Ahab] took to wife Jezebel the
daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal,
and worshipped him.
Because of his wickedness, Ahab
was warned by the prophet Elijah that God would pronounce a three-year famine
in the land (cf. 1 Kings 17:1; James 5:17). The story reached its apex at Mount
Carmel with the famous contest, between 450 priests of Baal and Jehovah God, to
bring down rain. Instead, fire from the Lord consumed the sacrifices of Baal. The
prophets of Baal were defeated and as a result, Ahab ordered them to be
slaughtered (cf. 1 Kings 18:40).
Jezebel
The counterpart of the lady in Thyatira was Ahab’s
wife, Queen Jezebel, the daughter of a Phoenician King Ethbaal (meaning ‘with
Baal’), king of Zidon or Sidon, an area today located in south Lebanon, coastal
Israel, and Syria.
Jezebel had a long list of offenses attributed to
her. Some include:
1. She intended to have Baal coexist with the worship
of Jehovah God
2. She tried to extinguish true worship by allowing
Baal worship to become widespread throughout northern Israel for over sixty
years
3. She fed the priests or prophets of Baal at her
table
4. She endeavored to persecute and kill all the
prophets of the Lord including Elijah (cf. 1 Kings 19:2)
5. She was responsible for persuading Ahab to order the
stoning of Naboth, from the tribe of Issachar, simply to gain possession of his
inherited vineyard (cf. 1 Kings 21:1-16)
6. She was known for harlotries and sorceries (cf. 2
Kings 9:22)
7. Her horrible death was predicted by Elijah (cf. 1
Kings 21:23-24) and it came to pass (cf. 2 Kings 9:30-37)
Jezebel, as prophesied, was ultimately thrown out
of a window, horses ran over her body, her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and
dogs ate portions of her flesh so that she was unrecognizable, appearing like
dung on the face of the earth.
Jezebel in the Church
A. Either there was a literal woman in the local
assembly named Jezebel, or it may have not been her real name. However, she was
symbolic of the Jezebel of 1 Kings who lived during the days of Elijah, and the
faithful believers nicknamed her as such, since, most likely, no one would name
their daughter after the notorious idolatrous queen.
B. Two older manuscripts support thy (your) woman
or thy wife rather than that woman lending to the
presumption she was married to the pastor of the church.
C. As the feminine is often used in Hebrew for the
word prophetess,
it may be used collectively to express a multitude, a set, or a multitude of
false prophets.
Due to the righteous indignation of our Lord in
this letter, that woman was unacceptable and had zero tolerance.
Her Characteristics
Given are but a few words describing Jezebel’s
character and behavior:
1. Ungodly
2. Wicked
3. Idolatrous
4. Licentious
5. Promiscuous
6. Adulterous
7. Murderous
(Verse 20)
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou
sufferest (tolerate, permit, allow, let be) that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to
seduce (deceive, leading astray) My
servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
Jezebel, a prophetess (claiming to be inspired), was
a female foreteller who persuaded or seduced the Lord’s servants (church folk)
- by corrupting the purity of Christ’s teachings and fusing them with her pagan
practices. Some included:
1. To eat things sacrificed to idols (which
constitutes the term, idolatry). As mentioned previously, membership in the
trade guilds involved lavish banquets where meat sacrificed to pagan deities was
part of the menu.
2. To embrace fornication [Greek: porneuō
(from which we obtain our English word pornography: the act of harlotry
- indulging
in unlawful lust either by sex or by the practice of idolatry)]. Convincingly,
Jezebel lured believers into compromise rather than sacrificing their
employment.
To Teach
1 Timothy
2:12 - But I
suffer (allow) not a woman to
teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence (in religious assemblies).
This is an interesting passage. Paul, as an Apostle,
is training Timothy to be a pastor and is advising him not to allow a woman to
be in a public pastoral position under appropriate conditions, but to be in a
subordinate role as stated in 1 Corinthians 14:34.
Even though the Greek interpretation is not
strictly forbidding under certain circumstances, these verses have been widely distorted
and misused in the contemporary church. The passage above specifically states
Jezebel was teaching and seducing the Lord’s servants to
commit the above atrocious acts. Therein lays a hidden danger. Jesus warned:
Warnings from Scripture:
Matthew
7:15 - Beware
of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Jude 1:4 - For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation,
ungodly men, turning the grace of our God
into lasciviousness, and denying the only
Lord God,
and our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Seduce
Seduction in this context means a fundamental departure
from biblical truth, i.e., leading astray by deception.
(Verse 21)
And I gave her space (time) to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
During the Thyatira Age of church history –
approximately one thousand years – there was no repentance. In verse 21, the
Lord, through His lovingness and graciousness, allowed time for Jezebel to
repent or change her mind, nonetheless, she resisted and refused to mend her
ways, but…
The ongoing drama will resume in the next lesson.
QUESTIONS:
1. What does the word Jezebel mean?
2. What two of God’s commandments were jeopardized?
3. What was the religious character of the Phoenicians?
4. Describe Ahab?
5. What were some of Queen Jezebel’s character traits?
6. Name two things Jezebel accomplished in Thyatira.
7. How did her actions affect the total church?
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