“Let the Revelation speak and tell what is truth. . . . Uplift Jesus as the center of all hope.”
Copyright, 1910, by Milton C. Wilcox.
VIII. Sardis
The ancient city of Sardis was the opulent and luxurious capital of the renowned kingdom of Lydia, proverbial for its riches. Its last king, Croesus, was conquered by Cyrus, who is said to have found treasure of the value of $600,000,000. Sardis then passed to Alexander and his successors.
Under the Romans it rapidly declined in rank and importance. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of Tiberius, but was rebuilt by that emperor’s order. Its inhabitants bore ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life, slaves to the abominable goddess Cybele, where the ruins of her magnificent temple existed. We have no mention of a Christian church in this place in the Bible save in the Revelation. It was a fitting symbol of the post-Reformation churches. The ancient, opulent, voluptuous city is now a heap of ruins. A little village close by, called Sart, is composed of a few wandering Turkish tribes.
The Answer of the Text
[The answers are from the American Revised Version. Omitting questions, and disregarding sometimes the capital at the beginning and the period at the close of an answer, the text may be read continuously. In notes and comments both versions are used without designation.]
1. How does the Master introduce Himself to the congregation at Sardis?
“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith He that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars.”
2. What does He assure them that He knows?
“I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.”
3. What admonitions are given?
“Be thou watchful, and establish the things that remain, which were ready to die: for I have found no works of thine perfected before my God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear; and keep it, and repent.”
4. What solemn warning is given?
“If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”
5. What redeeming feature was found in Sardis?
“But thou hast a few names in Sardis that did not defile their garments: and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.”
(FOR ARTICLE, SEE PAGE 6)
6. What promise is made to the overcomer?
“He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments; and I will in no wise blot his name out of the Book of Life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.”
7. What final admonition is given?
“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
Note and Comment
1. “Sardis.”—The meaning of the name may have significance given by some as “song of joy.” If so it would rightly apply to the various Protestant bodies which broke from the thraldom of Romanism and found freedom in Christ; but alas, this condition did not continue. “The seven Spirits of God.”—First brought before us in 1:4, but here affirmed as the possession of Christ. Rom. 8:9 shows the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ to be synonymous. Jesus declares that the Spirit “shall bear witness of Me.” John 15:26. We may therefore know that the Spirit message was Christ’s message, and that it will agree with His word and works in all things. He who has the fulness of the Spirit of God endows with His Spirit His messenger whether angel or man.
2. “I know.”—He would have us remember the solemn, searching, condemning, comforting fact that He knows. How it affects us depends upon our relation to Him. We may hide from priest or preacher, from father or mother, from wife or husband; but we can not hide from Him whose eyes are “like a flame of fire.” He sees, He knows. How much better it is not to want to hide from Him, but to have a heart open to all His mighty molding life for good. “Thou hast a name that thou livest.”—How good it is, when the child of God is converted, his name is written in the Book of Life, he is one of the living ones bound in the “bundle of life.” Luke 10:20; Phil. 4:3. There Moses’ name was written (Ex. 32:32), there are written the names of the church of the first-born (Heb. 12:23), there many in Sardis had been written, recorded among the living. “Thou art dead.”—That too was recorded before the Omniscient One. Nothing could be sadder—to have a name among the living and yet be dead, dead in apathy, coldness, indifference, worldliness, sensuousness, backsliding. Sardis, who sang her song of joy, had defiled her garments by union with the world. Her formal profession or great prestige in the world may mislead others, but not Him of the seven Spirits. How fitting is the application to the great popular churches of the world since the aggressive days of the past. It is not our testimony, it is theirs. Listen to one of a vast number:
“The class books [of the church] are filled with the names of unconverted men and women. Official members may be found in box, dress-circle, and parquet of opera and theater. Communicants take in the races, and give and attend card-parties and dances. The distinction between inside and outside is so obscure that men smile when asked to unite with the church, and sometimes tell us that they find the best men outside. . . . The enforcement of the unmistakable letter of the Discipline for a single year would cut our membership in half, bankrupt our missionary society, close our fashionable churches, paralyse our connectional interests, and leave our pastors and bishops unpaid and in distress. But the fact remains that one of two things must happen—the Discipline must purge the church, or God’s Holy Spirit will seek other organized agencies. The ax is laid at the root of the tree. The call is to repentance. God’s work must be done. If we are in the way, He will remove us.”—From an editorial entitled “To the Church of Methodists Write,” in the “Western Christian Advocate” (Cincinnati, May 19, 1893), a Methodist Episcopal paper.
The great Methodist Church we can not believe is worse than many others, or has more worldly members. One mighty evidence of the backsliding in Christendom is the appeal to the state, is the minister in politics, is the union of religion with the state. Union with the world and the state is separation from Christ, and separation from Christ is spiritual death.
3. “Be watchful.”—It is a strong term,—wake up and watch; “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.” Eph. 5:14. “Become what thou art not.” Vincent phrases the thought, “Do what there is every inclination not to do.” “Things that remain.”—Not all the good had gone from Sardis. There are truths, principles, still. Establish them by letting them into the heart and out in the life. Inactive, they too die out of the heart. “No works . . . perfected.”—No works made full, complete. “Ye did run well,” Paul says to one church. So did the post-Reformation churches; but worldliness and human wisdom entered, and when new truth pressed for recognition in heart and life, human wisdom’s response was a hard and fast human creed. The profession of Protestantism7—“the Bible and the Bible alone”—was good; but it could not be said to be full, perfected, complete, till the human creed power was forever broken, and the church was standing upon the Word, believing, living the Word, in its very fulness.
4. “Remember . . . how;” not so much the what as the how. The what rests largely with God; the how with us. In the Christian life and service the heart—the affections—is more important than the mind. The most ignorant loyal soldier in the American Revolution was better than the brilliant Benedict Arnold. Loyalty is better than knowledge. The promise is not that the brilliant, or the intellectual, or the student, or the philosopher, will He guide in judgment and teach His way; but “the meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His way.” Meekly, humbly, hungry for God and His salvation, Protestants received the great principles of truth in the Reformation. Human greatness and pomp and power were nothing; God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Word were everything. But when the storm and stress of battle for God, of persecution for Christ’s sake, of trials, of poverty, were over, and the growing cause became popular, worldliness came in, human wisdom became exalted, and the Christ life leaked out of the broken cisterns of men. Sardis should return to the meek, humble attitude of a needy, empty suppliant before God; then she would receive and hear and keep the very fulness of the truth and light and power. The reception of the very fulness of God’s truth rests upon the attitude of the human to the divine.
5. “If . . . not.”—O Sardis, the dread message must be given, the sure result must be stated. If thou shalt not watch—awake (See note 3), I will come as a thief. Christ’s coming is life to His own. That great, dread day when He shall leave His throne of interceding priest for sinful men, when the judgment shall have closed, when He comes in to view the guests, a little while before He appears in the clouds of heaven, is spoken of as coming as a thief. That day will not so overtake His people, for they are watching (1 Thess. 5:3); but it will come as a thief upon all who do not believe, who do not watch, who do not repent of everything un-Christly.
6. “A few names.”—Names stand for persons, for characters. These have held fast and do hold fast to Christ; they are the salt in the great Protestant churches. They are the godly among the worldly, the true among the false; they are those true to all they see, opposed to the false and the vile. As they have kept themselves undefiled by the world, Christ will clothe them in the white garments of eternal righteousness; for in Him “they are worthy.”
7. “White garments.”—The robes of God’s righteousness given in Christ Jesus—a result in the overcoming. “The Book of Life” contains God’s roll of characters worthy of eternal life. Every soul of earth is called to one of these names and characters. These characters are in the plan of God’s eternal purpose concerning this earth, and the names of these characters were written in the scroll of life from the foundation of the world. Rev. 17:8; 13:8. These characters are foreordained. When a soul accepts God’s call, his own name is entered into that book as a candidate for the eternal character; if he fails, his name is blotted out; if he overcomes, he receives the eternal name, to him “the new name.”
8. “Confess his name.”—Confessing Christ is giving one’s self to Him in heart, by word, in conduct. “Every one therefore who shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” Matt. 10:33. It is highly honorable for us to confess Christ here, our greatest Benefactor; it will be glory eternal for Him to confess us there as those who have prevailed to bear the new name, wear the crown, and be enrolled in the scroll of eternal character. The confession is public in both cases.
9. “What the Spirit saith.”—The Spirit bears the messages of Christ. These messages are not alone for Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamos and Thyatira and Sardis, but for you, reader, and for me.
The Rainbow of Promise
By Katerina Blossom Wilcox
ALL day long, the tempest raged, the waves lashed high, the rain poured in torrents, the dark clouds hung heavy over that sea on which many frail barks were battling with the elements.
Night was approaching, the long, dark night of despair, which would shut away all hope of human assistance.
But look! the storm is breaking! Away on the western horizon there is a rift in the clouds; the sun is peeping through. Now he shines forth in resplendent glory, making the rain-drops sparkle like jewels, and the foam-capped waves a tinge with gold.
Far off in the eastern sky the once black clouds are aglow with glory, for they are spanned by a beautiful rainbow—the bow of His promise—reflecting in sevenfold measure His love and care.
Hope is kindled anew in the hearts of the weary mariners; and with brighter hopes, with lighter hearts, and with steadier hands, they bend every nerve to reach the other shore.
Troubled mariner on life's sea, are you discouraged? Do the dark waves of sin beat upon your frail craft? Are you losing hope, and ready to sink in the great sea of doubt and strife?
Lift up your eyes, and behold yonder light-fringed cloud. Amid the rain of trial and temptation and discouragement, the Sun of Righteousness is bursting through the dense clouds, and lo! the dark sky is aglow with the seven-hued rainbow of promise—the covenant bow of our Father's presence.
Take courage, faint heart, and remember that the great Sun of Righteousness is ever sending His bright beams of light toward His trusting children below, and the fiercer the storm, the stronger the blasts, the heavier the rainfall, the brighter and more beautiful to the trusting heart is His rainbow of promise.
KATERINA BLOSSOM WILCOX.
Using Available Resources for Happiness
By E. J. Hardy
FEW of us use to the full the resources of happiness that are available. Happiness depends upon the treatment of what we have, and not of what we have not.—E. J. Hardy.
Playing Cards and the Empty Mind
“SCHOPENHAUER said that the invention of playing cards was a striking proof of the emptiness and vacancy of the human mind.”
Parables
By F. D. Starr
By F. D. Starr
The reasons why the Master spoke in parables to the people are clearly given in the Bible. This method of instruction was in use in the days of the Old Testament writers. As will be seen by John 16:25, 29, a parable is a proverb, and a proverb is a parable. The marginal rendering is “parable,” while that in the regular reading is “proverb.” The Proverbs of Solomon might, according to the Greek title found in the Septuagint, be called the Parables of Solomon.
There are two Greek words that are rendered either “proverb” or “parable.” John uses one of these, while the other three Gospel authors use the other. Both these words are used in the same way in the Old Testament Greek. A proverb seems to be a very short parable. The idea is that of teaching by illustration, a very forcible method. It would seem as if there could be no excuse for any one in whatever vocation in life for not understanding the Saviour’s teachings after He has used the occupations in which we are daily engaged as illustrations of His work.
A very common complaint among the people when they are appealed to in regard to Scripture study, is that they are very busy people, that they have to work for a living, and so their minds are diverted from spiritual concerns, and they can not be expected to know much about eternal things. The people who thronged about the Lord to listen to His teachings, were also toilers for bread. To accommodate this class the Saviour likened His work to their work.
About Him were many fishermen whose lot was severe, sometimes to toil all night and catch nothing. To them and to others He said the kingdom of heaven was like the fisherman’s net and consequent labor. Whenever the poor fishermen from that time went to their ordinary toil, they would naturally say, The Master said our labor was like His; and their minds would be drawn toward, not away from, the great concerns of eternity.
Shepherds were numerous in that part of the country. The life of this class of toilers is well represented by that ancient shepherd, Jacob: “In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes.” Gen. 31:40. The next time one of them was called to keep his flock by night, he might beguile the weary hours by remembering what the Good Shepherd who was to lay down His life for the sheep, had told the multitude about the “ninety and nine” and the search for the one lost sheep.
Keepers of vineyards came to listen to the great Teacher. Had any of them had the experience recorded so long ago in prophetic lore: “They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept”? Cant. 1:6. See also Isaiah 5. Their diligence in connection with the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts would be renewed by the earnest teaching of the Master in His interesting parable concerning their occupation. How could they help thinking about the kingdom of God the next time they went to prune the vines or gather the grapes?
The festivities of the marriage ceremony were woven into the teaching of the Man of Nazareth to illustrate His work, so even the bewildering preparations for the nuptial occasion should but lead the contractors and friends to thoughts of the marriage of the Lamb.
The merchantman, seeking to increase his riches, and in fact nearly every legitimate calling, were used by our Lord in illustrating His Gospel teachings. Even the busy housewife could not complain that she was left out. What is more important than the making of good bread! Much of a woman’s time is spent in this line of work.
When she sets herself to this task, she can remember that in mingling the leaven in the meal to prepare to make the loaves, her work is likened to that of the kingdom of heaven; so her work need not divert her mind from God and the future life, but rather lead her thought toward heavenly things.
What is esteemed to be more of a drudgery than sweeping the dusty floor? But even this is employed by the heavenly Teacher to illustrate the kingdom of God. What employment then need keep the soul from God?
Perhaps there is no more common occupation than farming, therefore our Lord’s parables concerning the sower of the grain and the tares of the field will certainly interest in a personal way a very large number of laboring people. The tiller of the soil may have his mind directed above from the time he prepares the ground for the seed till he reaps and garners the golden grain. With him the important event is the harvest; for it he looks and longs and waits with patience. Without the harvest his well-laid plans of farming would come to naught. What is the harvest in the great Gospel plan? “The harvest is the end of the world.” Matt. 13:39.
How essential, then, is this grand culminating event to which sages and prophets have looked forward with so much glad anticipation. Let us not fail to learn the parable and its meaning.
Our Bible Reading
Christ and the Sabbath
1. What prophecies were given seven hundred and one thousand years before Christ, concerning Christ’s attitude toward the law?
“Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart.”Ps. 40:7, 8.
“The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will magnify the law, and make it honorable.”Isa. 42:21.
2. When Jesus came, what testimony did He bear to the truth of these prophecies?
“For I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.”John 6:38.
3. What did He say regarding His attitude toward the will of God as expressed in His law?
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”Matt. 5:17, 18.
4. What did He say of those who disregarded and those who taught His law?
“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”Matt. 5:19.
5. What was His testimony respecting those who made high profession and yet disregarded the law of God?
“Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.”Matt. 7:21-23.
6. What testimony did He give regarding the first day of the week?
Absolutely none. Eight times in the New Testament is the first day of the week mentioned, but in no instance is it said that the day is holy or sacred or should be observed in any other way than as a working-day. Jesus does not say that “ye are My friends if ye will observe some man-made institution;” but He does say, “Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” And He asks the pertinent question, “Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
7. How did the holy women who had been under His teaching for three years regard the Sabbath?
“And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.”Luke 23:56.
8. What then may we conclude regarding Christ and His attitude toward the day?
That both by His life and by His teaching He confirmed the law of God and taught the immutability of the Sabbath. No stronger proof could possibly be given of the Sabbath itself than God’s commandment, Christ’s teaching, and Christ’s example. All are in favor of the seventh-day Sabbath. None are in favor of any rival.
Our Shelter in Time of Storm— Where?
By Delwin Rees Buckner
By Delwin Rees Buckner
The rushing waters of the angry flood
Against the castle on the cliff were dashed;
And yet the each wave still more furious crashed,
The castle still securely, firmly stood.
The houses builded on the treacherous beach—
When scarce the raging tempest had begun,
Their frail, light timbers loosened one by one,
And drifted with the current out from reach.
O Soul, hast thou a care where best to build?
Upon the shifting sand, or lasting Rock?
If on the Rock’s foundation, thou wilt stand
When strong Temptation’s storm at last is stilled;
But thou must fall before the first hard shock
If thy sole hope is only placed on sand.
