Thyatira ecclesia (Rev 2:18-25)
"Thyatira had a false prophetess Jezebel who had already been
openly admonished regarding her evil teaching (whatever it was): 'I gave her
space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.' Included in the
Lord's rebuke of this ecclesia is the reproach: 'Thou sufferest that woman
Jezebel to teach and to seduce my servants....' Even so, Thyatira was not deemed
unworthy of fellowship with the Lord. And far from there being any requirement
placed on the faithful to separate themselves from the contaminating influence
of Jezebel and her coterie, the exact opposite is explicitly laid upon them:
'But unto you I say, and unto the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as have not
this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I
will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already, hold fast
till I come.' Such words need no explaining. They tell their own
story.
"Other letters to the Churches emphasize the same lesson even
more forcefully, if that be possible. Ecclesias like Smyrna and Philadelphia
incurred no reproach from the Lord of any sort. Yet if the 'exclusives' are
right in their insistence on a 'pure fellowship', both of these ecclesias were
sadly at fault in that they had not broken off all fellowship with Sardis,
Thyatira, Laodicea. The rejoinder that they were too far from these other
ecclesias to know about the vexed problems existing there is ridiculous
nonsense. Asia was one of the most highly developed areas in the Roman Empire,
and these cities lay on its main arteries. Intercommunication in remote corners
of the empire may have been somewhat uncertain, but here in Asia conditions were
more comparable with the twentieth century. Thus Smyrna and Philadelphia
continued in uninterrupted fellowship with ecclesias which the Lord himself
castigated" (HAW, "Block Disfellowship", Tes 43:341).
Brother Thomas concludes the same -- that is, that all other
ecclesias (those other six mentioned in the Apocalypse and their latter-day
counterparts) are "in fellowship" with Laodicea (Eur 1:403). His position here
is decidedly at variance with many of the "stricter fellowships" of
today!
