The contention is that the letters to the churches in the Revelation of Jesus Christ should be read in only one way with one intended purpose. If read in that way, the contender states, then the rest of the book should be read that way.
I will deal with the first charge by examining if the letters in Revelation 2-3 have only one purpose for one audience.
James was found riding his bike every other Saturday.
Allow me a moment to apply a term to this sentence that isn’t normally used: story*. You understand that the sentence is attributing an action (riding his bike) to a specific person (James) within a certain time frame (every other Saturday)—but this doesn’t have to be a beginning or an ending.
It remains as a self-contained Happening in James’ world. It’s believable to enter into that world. There’s no logical contradictions encountered. It just exists.
From here, you can walk away from this story and remain happy. The story stands on its own.
On the second post on Doctrine for Everybody, we noted that the Church is to believe and teach what someone with Authority tells them to believe and teach—and that someone wasn’t a board of directors! Authority wasn’t derived from within the Church or from the collective body of the Church, but directly from God. Only God is the one who reveals to the Church what she is to believe and teach. In this post I want to discuss how God’s revelation operates.
Go check it out.
This is the series home for the Flashes of Glory series, a short story about the Apostle John writing his biography of Christ and considering the unveiling of the God of Glory.