![]() Back to Revelation 3:7, Christ Himself is writing this. So as you look at every single church, the letter is written from Jesus Christ, every one of them, so this one is no different. When we go down to Smyrna, verse 8, "These things says the First and the Last, He who was dead and came to life," that's Jesus Christ. Here, we have the same thing, beginning in verse 1, "These things say He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lamp stands." It's talking about Christ. Like all the other letters, there are connections here, whether we read here, these things says, "He who is holy, He who is true, He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens." Well, who is writing the letter? Well Jesus Christ is writing that letter. ![]() And he's taking note, this is what is written to him. And it says, "To the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write." So this is to the messenger, not necessarily a spiritual angel as you might think but most likely to the pastor, to the leader of that congregation, to the messenger of that congregation. And that becomes important when we consider the letter to the church there, and we'll see how that fits in as we get a little bit further on in our studies, so keep that in the back of your mind for just a little bit.īut let's go to this letter to Philadelphia, it's in Revelation 3:7 is where that letter begins. In fact, this whole region had a history of that. The other thing that's significant for Philadelphia is it was in an area that experienced a lot of earthquakes. He loved his brother and became known as that. But it is interesting that this particular founder was a lover of his brother. Of course, if you look in history, it had a whole lot of bunch of other names as well, Decapolis and others, but we won't get into that tonight. That's what the name means.Īnd so, that's where this particular city got its name from, as well. And so, it's the city of brotherly love, not much unlike Philadelphia in the United States, which is supposed to be the city of brotherly love, as well. And so, that's the name Philadelphia, to love your brother. He loved his brother, in fact, he had a nickname, brother lover. And you'd never guess how he felt about his brother. And the reason it became known as Philadelphia was because of this guy named Attalus, this was like 150 BC or so. It was founded by one of the rulers I guess you could say, someone who was in charge, his name was Attalus, Attalus. Now, it was an interesting spot, maybe just a tiny, little bit of background. Rather than do that, I thought that it might be a little more helpful to jump more straightway into the Bible itself and talk about the message to the church in Philadelphia. We can probably take most of this time during the study to give you a lot of background on the city but I decided not to do that. Philadelphia was a major stop on that road, where the mail, the imperial post road is what they called it, the mail route is an easier way to think of it, the mail route from Rome, a direct access there. You can see how it came down through Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis. Philadelphia was on that mail route from Rome. Well, tonight's study is on the church in Philadelphia. So we thank you for the study, we pray for Your guidance and presence, and we pray and ask all of this, by the authority of our Savior, Your son, Jesus Christ. So we pray for Your inspiration, we pray for Your guidance, we pray for Your direction in our lives, Father, so that the things that we hear, we can come to a deeper understanding, not just that we can know it but that we'll be able to apply it in our lives and become more like You and our elder brother Jesus Christ. We open up Your Word and look at the inspiration that You have there for us. And so Father, we just ask for Your presence tonight, as we do that very thing. We are so blessed Father, to be able to have Your Word in front of us, to be able to open it up and study it whenever we want. ![]() Good, loving Heavenly Father, thank You so much for Your wonderful ways, Your truth, Your love, Your mercy. If you'd like to stand and we'll bow our heads, and ask God's blessing. So we're going to be wrapping up this series in two weeks, so we hope you'll join us for that last study as well.īut before we begin, let's ask God's blessing on our Bible study night. And then, our last in the series will be two weeks from tonight, where we'll close out with the church in Laodicea. We're getting near the end, we're down to the church at Philadelphia, is the topic for tonight. Tonight, we're going to be continuing our series on the churches in Revelation. Welcome to those of you joining us on the web as well. Good to have you here with us, right here in the room, in Cincinnati.
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