Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Albany Conference 2004, Part 2.
Tuesday, September 14 PM, 2004
1. The Ephesus type of believer who has good works but has left their first love, REV 2:4.
2. The Smyrna type believer who is willing to accept suffering for blessing and not quit when the spiritual life gets tough,
REV 2:10.
3. The Pergamum believer warned about compromising and becoming a stumbling block to others, REV 2:14.
4. The Thyatira types who tolerate false doctrine and false teaching even though in they have love and faith and service and perseverance, REV 2:18-25.
REV 2:18 “And to the messenger [or the future pastor-teachers] of the church in Thyatira [or to the future pastor-teachers of the Thyatira type believers in the Church-age] write or communicate: The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:
Thyatira was the world’s center for the worship of the sun-god Apollo and was also famous for its labor unions.
They were being led away from the PPOG through the unions (representing your business, job or occupation), or the cults (representing idol worship or putting something before God.
So TLJC has eyes like a flame of fire, which means that He is scrutinizing them, uncovering all the hidden things of darkness, penetrating the secret rooms in their heart.
Burnished bronze is a reference to historical judgment to the nations of history from the principle that Jesus Christ controls history.
Bronze was used for economic judgment of a client nation, DEU 28:23-25.
When Jesus Christ controls history, and He does right now, these are judgments that come to believers who fail to execute their very own personal drama and fulfill their own personal sense of destiny.
REV 2:19 ‘I know your deeds [your accomplishments, Christian production, your works], and your love [functional virtue of impersonal love] and faith [operation of the 3 stages of faith-rest drill] and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first.
TLJC still gives them a warning concerning falling away from God through idol worship or through an inordinate attachment or extreme devotion to something.
REV 2:20 ‘But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
MAT 23:13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
MAT 23:14 [Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation.]
MAT 23:15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
She was known by the name of Jezebel although it was not really her name, it was her title.
Jezebel was wife of Ahab, the king of Israel, 1Ki 16:31.
Jezebel has stamped her name on history as the representative of all that is conniving, revengeful, malicious and cruel..
She is the first great instigator of persecution against the saints of God.
She represents all of the distractions that the opposite sex and false religion can make upon those believers who desire to execute their very own personal drama and fulfill their personal sense of destiny.
She represents any person or goal or thing that is designed to take the believer away from executing his very own personal drama and fulfill his personal sense of destiny.
She chased many of God’s people away from the plan of God just as Jezebel of the Old Testament did, 1Ki 19.
Jezebel represents that which is dangerous and magnificent that lures the believer away from the PPOG and their very own personal sense of destiny.
Jezebel means beauty and brains otherwise she wouldn’t have been so designated by the writer under the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.
Prophetis –
She calls herself a prophetess or an inspired woman, a woman under inspiration.
1. In the church of Thyatira, the woman called Jezebel is not her name but a nickname.
A reference to a very smart, and beautiful woman living in the city of Thyatira and one of the leaders or promoters of the phallic cult.
2. She had succeeded in luring believers away from doctrine into the unions and the phallic cult in a manner similar to the historical Jezebel who invaded Israel.
3. The word of God strongly opposes female leadership in spiritual things, 1TI 2:11-15.
1TI 2:11 A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.
1TI 2:12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.
1TI 2:13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.
1TI 2:14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
1TI 2:15 But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.
4. The pattern for this Bible objection, this prohibition of female leadership, goes back to the Garden of Eden, and the historical trend related to the weak controlling the strong.
The first mention principle reiterated in 1Co 11, 1Ti 2.
5. The woman sinned first and at that moment became weak which is why the Bible calls the woman the weaker vessel.
In the Garden of Eden we have the first case of the weak and the strong, the woman who had sinned first is the weak, and the man who had not yet sinned was the strong.
6. From the very beginning of man’s failure on planet earth, he was the victim of the weak controlling the strong.
Nagging means to push the old boy ahead of his own thinking, or his own will in a matter, into a form of action he doesn’t appreciate.
From the very beginning of man’s failure on planet earth, the weak have manipulated and controlled the strong.
Because men are vain, and a smart woman can appeal to a man’s vanity and easily control him.
7. Adam took the forbidden fruit from the hand of the woman, not from the tree.
8. Jezebel of the OT, the evil, weak, ambitious, beautiful, smart, arrogant woman controlled one of the greatest soldiers of her age.
Jezebel in Thyatira is controlling believers, luring them from the blessing of the PPOG into the cursing of the cosmic system.