Unleavened Bread study series, pt. 5/7: incomplete restoration of the bread of life
Brief overview.
Regarding the last three church ages of the New Covenant era preceding the close of probation: these gospel dispensation eras don’t uniformly align with the seal openings and trumpet soundings, at least not in a simple 1-to-1 recapitulation framework. Furthermore, the at-large chiasm of the Book of Revelation doesn’t affix the seven seals and seven trumpets in the same structural-transitional narrative flow as it does for the seven assembly ages: whereas all seven epistles to the seven angels of the seven assemblies are neatly defined within the B branch of the menorah a.k.a. seven-branched candelabra (epistle 1 comprises B.i; 2-4 comprise B.ii; 5-7 is B.iii), the first six seal opening descriptions are situated in the C.i sub-branch almond, while the seventh seal opening is located in C.ii as the penultimate lead-up to the trumpets, only the first six out of which are blown within the C.ii almond unit while the description of the seventh trumpet’s sounding is only at the very end of C.iii. Grasping the full typological fulfillment of the Hebraic sanctuary as revealed in Revelation of Jesus Christ is obviously no simple task, and this study series only pertains to this year’s Unleavened Bread!
This is evidently (author’s note: I am less resolutely certain about the latter three for the first four—anyone is welcome and free to correct me in good faith if I am incorrect) the pericopal chiastic structure of the sixth letter:1
a: ‘And to the angel of the assembly in Sardis, write:
b: These things says He who is having the Seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars: I have known your works, and that you have the name that you do live, and you are dead!
c: Become watching! and strengthen the rest of the things that are about to die, for I have not found your works fulfilled before God.
d: Remember therefore how you have received and heard, and be keeping and repent. If, then, you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.
c’: You have a few names even in Sardis who did not defile their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, because they are worthy.
b’: He who is overcoming—this one—shall be arrayed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the book of the life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before His angels.
a’: He who is having an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies!’
There are hardly—if any at all—“new” symbolic imagery to explain:
“Seven Spirits of God”: symbolic conveying of the Holy Spirit of Jehovah of Hosts as present in all seven assembly ages of the New Covenant era from 30 A.D. unto the close of probation, represented in the subsequent throne room theophany as the seven lamps of fire2
“seven stars”: the seven angels,3 a.k.a. those of the seven churches
“white garments”: representation of God’s imputed purity to cover the nakedness of otherwise-sinful men4
“book of the life”: same book of life referenced by the prophets Moses5 and Daniel,6 additionally in Psalms,7 and by the apostle Paul8—it is the heavenly list of the redeemed who will inherit everlasting life in the New Jerusalem unto the end of the ages
The introduction of this epistle bears a similarity to the letter addressing the Ephesian assembly: both mention the seven stars as belonging to Jesus.9 Considering that likewise there is also the shared theme of a call to repentance,10 there inherently is begged the question as to how new any thing is under the sun! The audience addressed here is blatantly one that has failed to fully live up to the light of the world that shined upon them and which lacks heartfelt repentance for their earthly shortcomings in the sight of the God of Heaven.
Determining the exact time frame and detailed fulfillment for the fifth assembly era is tricky, because the majority of theological historicists applying this general “church era” framework either resort to arbitrarily simplistic genericizing assumptions that fail to crystalize upon a cemented conclusion, or arbitrarily contrived specific assumptions that are grounded upon sloppy hermeneutical foundations and which can run in any absurd directions of fantastically uncountable trajectories. As a whole, the combined fourth and fifth church eras encompass almost definitely the 1,260 years of papal antichrist rule from 538-1798 A.D., wherein the fifth era encompasses a latter fraction of those 1,260 prophetic days, usually identified with the Protestant Reformation throughout Europe.
However, isolating the prophetic fulfillments of Revelation to regional currents would be a reductionist error—even for the fourth gospel dispensation era that focuses on the result of the antitypical abomination of desolation in western Rome, the beast that “Jezebel”/“Babylon” rides upon is one that received worship from “all the land,” a.k.a. encompassing everyone dwelling in the earthly abode of God’s covenant, both the West and the East.11 Concurrent to the Dark Ages in western Rome, Jehovah’s faithful adherents in eastern Rome—under the Byzantine-“Orthodox” ecclesiastical theocracy—likewise faced violent persecutions, even if not necessarily at the same brute scale of mass annihilation as groups such as the Waldensians from western papal Rome. The ingathering of God’s people predestined for salvation has always encompassed both the west and the east as declared by both the ancient Hebrew prophets and by the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,12 and likewise in Revelation the unified body of God is spoken of in prophetic-symbolic language in ch. 11 as two candlesticks (remember: candlesticks = assemblies/churches),13 a.k.a. encompassing both east and west.
As to the actual history of the late papal era into 1798, this author—myself—unfortunately lacks for the time being the full knowledge of the historical record as to the specific details and especially the shared threads between the western and eastern realms of “Christendom” of that time period as to determining when it began, exactly what are all the defining moments constitute the substantive fulfillments of what was spoken of in Jesus’s letter to the assembly in Sardis, which individuals comprised the few who shall be walking in white et al., especially so for the Eastern Orthodox realm.
In any case, some baseline conclusions can nonetheless be reached—Jesus said to recognize men by their fruits.14 Whatever efforts of the late papal era were mounted to restore biblical truth, they undoubtedly fell short—very short and wanting. In the long-run, the core of the heavenly dew emanating from the chief of the bread of life failed to mete out to full tsadaq (vindication): Jehovah’s sabbaths, His appointed mark between Him and His adherents, that the latter may know that Jehovah is the One who sanctifies them.15 Neither the weekly sabbath nor Quartodecimanism were systematically restored (do correct me if I’m mistaken) in both the eastern and western halves of divided Rome, and reformatory prospects began over time to slacken in complacency rather than continue climbing the mountain, settling on a halfway mixture of restored truth and still-yet-purged dross rather than continuing on the fundamental journey to purify themselves as silver and gold to permanently separate from all the remaining dross. This was especially so in western Rome at the Council of Trent, where the Protestants acquiesced to the Catholic position of weekly Sunday observance rather than declare their theological alignment with weekly seventh-day sabbatarian observance, undercutting their own Reformation in what came to pass as a permanently cemented institutional failure.
Where the oil and wine remained, it was amongst the few rather than the many—as the Lord declared:16
Woe to you when all men shall speak well of you! for according to these things were their fathers doing to false prophets.
For as the pure freshwaters of God’s dew and the bread of life remained detached from the mainstream consolidated lukewarm bulk of the Christian church, only a minority remnant from that era lived up to the light they had. The pure word of God expounded in the scriptures were restored through the collation of manuscripts and rigorous studying of the likes of Erasmus who restored the original New Testament as the Textus Receptus, offering the Christian world in both the East and West an opportunity at long last to read the full word of God and internalize the bread of life in verity and substance. And yet, despite their restored opportunity to access the scriptures as they originally were recorded, the majority failed to live up to that tremendous light shown upon their faces. Thus is fulfilled the word of the Lord and Savior, who declared:17
Go you in through the strait gate! because wide [is] the gate, and broad the way that is leading to the destruction, and many are those going in through it; how strait [is] the gate, and compressed the way that is leading to the life, and few are those finding it!
Rev. 3:1-6.
Rev. 4:5b.
Rev. 1:20b.
Cf. Ecc. 9:7-8; Dan. 11:35, 12:10.
Ex. 32:31-34.
Dan. 12:1-3.
Ps. 69:27-28.
Phil. 4:3.
Rev. 2:1b-2.
Rev. 2:5.
Rev. 13:3.
Isa. 43:5; Zech. 8:7-8; Matt. 8:10-12.
Rev. 11:3-4.
Matt. 7:15-20.
Ex. 31:13; Ezek. 20:12, 20.
Lk. 6:26.
Matt 7:13-14.