Useful Bible Studies > Revelation Commentary > chapter 2
It is a terrible thing when God’s people are not loyal to him. His love for them is as a husband’s love for his wife should be (Ephesians 5:25-27). He loves them very much; they should be loyal to him.
A certain woman in the church at Thyatira was telling church members that they should carry out wrong and evil acts. She urged them to do whatever they desired to do. She persuaded them not to be loyal to their husbands or wives; they carried out sex acts which are against God’s law. Also, she persuaded them to eat meat that other people had offered to false gods. A person who gives honour to a false god is not loyal to the real God.
That woman refused to change her behaviour and to return to God. So, Christ declared that he would make a judgement against her. Revelation 2:22-23 may describe her actual punishment, but it may contain word-pictures.
A bed can be a word-picture for wrong sex acts (Proverbs 7:16-17). Here, however, the bed is a word-picture for illness. That too may be a word-picture to show that she would become weak; in other words, she would lose her power over people.
Wrong sex acts are a frequent word-picture in the Bible for people who are not loyal to God. All the people who were not loyal to God in this matter needed to return to him. They must confess their evil deeds to him and they must stop this wrong behaviour. Otherwise, God would allow them to suffer great troubles. 1 Corinthians 5:5 explains the purpose of such troubles. These troubles can give a person the opportunity to return to God. That person’s body will suffer because of these troubles, but God wants to save the person’s spirit.
Next part: God’s judgement is against people who do evil acts (Revelation 2:23)
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© 2016, Keith Simons.