TO W EASTON

TO W EASTON

[To the same.] W Easton, I do not believe the Greek church⁺⁺ enters into the account. She forms no part of the history of the four beasts or “times of the Gentiles,” and here these two points are from Daniel associated together. Next Thyatira takes the church aspect of this, and the whole history is complete.

I know of no corporate taking away of the candlestick till then. A local church may have suffered this judgment, but as the general history of Christendom — then only: that is, the whole position of church testimony is set aside. Besides this, from its state certain positive judgments are inflicted on it. The following suffer at the end dissolution and decay. They are not properly an ecclesiastical system. You must remember that there is an apostasy referred to in Thessalonians, and here negatively, which must not be left out of account. I believe this answers all your questions.

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

⁺‘Is the candlestick the united church testimony on earth (no other churches or rather kind of churches), Ephesus standing for the whole when it was there, Smyrna (another phase) likewise, Pergamos likewise, then Thyatira in the same way till the candlestick was removed on her refusal to repent, her judgment being final — the united ecclesiastical testimony being gone in Thyatira, though popery as a system runs to the end? 2. Does not another kind of thing begin with Sardis. Protestantism, but not having the ecclesiastical tendency, running to the end, and treated as the world; Philadelphia being neither popery nor Protestantism, but a return to divine principles, that too running on to the end that is, the Lord’s coming for us; and Laodicea, being none of these but all the dissent which has sprung from Protestantism itself going on also to the end? 3. Thus the last four quite distinct from each other, but running parallel to the end — Sardis and Laodicea embracing all the dissent, and judged at the Lord’s return, Thyatira before by the beast and the kings.’

⁺⁺‘Is it that the whole papal system is the only ecclesiastical right on to the end, only disowned by God in Thyatira, though existing to the end, and as the only ecclesiastical system? And that “the testimony gone in Thyatira” is the candlestick, and removed then only and never before? Does any historical event shew this removal of the candlestick? Where does the Greek church come in, if at all, in Revelation 2, 3 — is it popery or dissent?’