“John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne” (Revelation 1:4 NKJV).

      How would you like to get a letter from the apostle John, the seven Spirits who are before the throne of God, and Jesus Christ? We did! That’s the book of Revelation. It was a letter to the seven churches in Asia (Minor) that are specifically addressed in it, but it is also a letter to all who would believe in Him and follow Him in the age to come. Seven is the number of completion, and these letters to the seven churches are letters to the complete church—all the churches that exist now and all that have existed throughout the age.

      In these letters, we see an outline of church history written in advance. Now, as we stand near the end of the church age, we can look back over the centuries and see how what was prophesied through John has unfolded. God still saves His best wine for last. At the end of this age, as we see how His word was fulfilled, we can have the greatest understanding of the prophecies that were “seen through a glass darkly” and are now clear to us because they have been fulfilled.

      Remarkably, virtually every congregation will also go through these seven stages, just as the whole church did through this age. God, who sees the end from the beginning, knew what His church would go through, the problems that would beset it, and what it needed to overcome those problems. More than just giving us a strategy for overcoming our challenges, it is a path to reaching maturity in Him.

      An analytical mind would like for each of these ages to be uniform—the same length of time—but these ages are not based so much on the passage of time as they are the passage of events and challenges the church would experience. Some are just a few centuries in duration and some over a thousand years.

      As we see how the church in each period fits the one prophesied in these letters to the seven churches, we must keep in mind this was not given to impress us with the Lord’s ability to foretell the future. It was meant to be a map that we could use to see where we’ve been and where we are now to go. We’ll do an overview of these as we cover the seven churches.

      There are other “maps” of this age given to us in prophetic metaphors in Scripture. We’ll also briefly cover how an outline of the entire age of man, from Adam until the present, is metaphorically predicted in the seven days of creation. Another is in the sequence of the birth and the prophecies for and the unfolding histories of the twelve tribes of Israel. The “sons of Israel” prophetically foreshadowed the lives of “the sons of God,” born of the Spirit, that would come forth during the church age.

      Such prophecies embedded in Scripture are great treasures for searching hearts. They were generally known and accepted by many of the Protestant movements in the Middle Ages, and it helped them recognize the fulfillment of biblical prophecy in their times. Much of this knowledge was forgotten after the 1844 Advent Movement, when the doctrines were developed and taught that the biblical prophecies which did not apply to the coming of the Lord as Savior were all about the very end of the age when He would come again, instead of how God was very busy throughout the age.

      The two greatest events in human history—the Lord’s first coming as Savior and His second coming to establish the kingdom of God on earth—would kind of take up all of the oxygen in the room. However, understanding all that had to happen to prepare for both His first and second coming gives us a much clearer picture of our purpose to prepare the way for Him—and how to do this.

      The Lord does not use prophecy to just convince us of how awesome prophecy can be, but rather to make His people knowledgeable of the times so we can be prepared for them. God gave John the book of Revelation not just so His people would wonder and debate what the extraordinary imagery meant but so we could discern our place in the plan of God and be prepared for our part in it.

      As for “the seven Spirits that are before His throne” in Revelation 1:4, these have historically been considered “the seven Spirits of God,” or the seven messengers to the churches herein addressed. There are other possibilities, though I have not been convinced of any of them. So, I will leave it a mystery until the Lord chooses to reveal it or give me confidence in one of the existing proposals.

      I encourage you to do the same with anything I propose in this study of which you are not convinced. Keep a list of them. We’re just starting this study. We all “see in part.” As we proceed and see other parts, many things are going to come together that we cannot see at this time. The ultimate goal of this is to see the entire picture of God’s plan for the ages.