The Seven Churches of Revelation, also known as the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse and the Seven Churches of Asia, are seven churches of early Christianity mentioned in the Book of Revelation, part of the New Testament. All of them were located in then-Greek-speaking Anatolia, and currently sit within the borders of present-day Turkey.
According to Revelation 1:11, on the island of Patmos in the far east of the Aegean Sea, Jesus instructed John of Patmos to "[w]rite in a book what you see in your visions, and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea." [a] [1] [2]
The seven churches are named for their locations. The Book of Revelation provides descriptions of each Church.
Some Christian historicists interpret the seven churches as representing seven periods in the history of the Western Church from the time of Paul the Apostle to the Second Coming. [3] C. I. Scofield stated that "these messages by their very terms go beyond the local assemblies mentioned." [4] He believes that the letters have a prophetic purpose disclosing the seven phases of the spiritual history. Other writers, such as Clarence Larkin, [5] Henry Hampton Halley, [6] Merrill Unger, [7] and William M. Branham [8] also have put forward the view that the seven churches preview the history of the global Church.
Historicism has been criticised by the Eastern Orthodox priest Dimitri Cozby, who writes that historicists take a greatly oversimplified view of history: "Since dispensationalism is Protestant in origin its 'Church history' is strictly Western. The dispensations take into account almost nothing of Orthodox history after the period of the early councils which we share with the West." [9]
Chapters 2–3 of the Revelation have specific messages for each of the seven angels of the seven churches. The message of each of the seven letters is directed to the angel of the particular church that is mentioned.
Origen [10] explains that these "angels" are the guardian angels of the churches, a view upheld by Henry Alford. But Epiphanius of Salamis [11] explicitly rejects this view, and, in accordance with the imagery of the passage, explains it as the bishops.
John's vision of the Son of Man walks among seven lampstands and has seven stars in his right hand. Revelation 1:20 states that "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches." The comparison of a teacher to a star is scriptural. [12]
Augustine of Hippo's reason for interpreting angels of the churches as the prelates of the church is that St. John speaks of them as falling from their first charity, which is not true of the angels. [13] [14] Others would say that the falling away relates to the churches, not to the messengers, as each of the seven letters conclude with the words "He who has an ear, let him hear what Spirit says."
In the New Testament, the Greek term άγγελος is used for all messengers, whether divine or not, such as John the Baptist (Matthew 11:10, Mark 1:2, Luke 7:27) and God's prophets (Revelation 22:8–9) [15] C.I. Scofield has noted that "The natural explanation of the 'messengers' is that they were men sent by the seven churches to ascertain the state of the aged apostle.
In 1869, the London publishing firm Sampson Low, Son, and Marston published Alexander Svoboda's The Seven Churches of Asia. [16] The Seven Churches of Asia is divided into three primary sections: an introduction written by English clergyman and Biblical scholar H. B. Tristram, Svoboda's personal travel account visiting the Seven Churches sites, and an itinerary detailing Svoboda's route. The book also includes twenty full-page photographs of the Seven Churches sites, photographed by Svoboda. These images are the first produced and published photographs of the Seven Churches. Photographs from Svoboda's Seven Churches project were exhibited in the rooms of the Arundel Society in London in 1868. [17]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Apocalypse". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.
