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In Revelation 2 and 3 Christ is revealed as the Priest who trims the lampstands, the churches. As the testimony of Jesus, the golden lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God. With the golden lampstand there are three main factors. First, the entire lampstand is gold. It is not only golden but gold itself. In biblical typology gold signifies God the Father’s divine nature. Hence, the golden essence of the lampstand signifies God the Father. Second, the golden lampstand is not a lump of gold but a piece of gold in a definite form and a purposeful shape. The shape, the form, the appearance, of the lampstand signifies Christ the Son as the embodiment of the Godhead and the embodiment of the Father’s nature (Col. 2:9). Third, the seven lamps of the lampstand signify the seven Spirits (Rev. 4:5). The seven lamps, which are the seven Spirits of God, shine for the expression of God. Thus, with the lampstand are the nature, the embodiment, and the expression. Based upon these items, we may say that the golden lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God. God the Father is embodied in the Son, and the Son is expressed through the Spirit. According to Revelation 1, the golden lampstands are the churches (vv. 11-12). Every local church is a golden lampstand, and the golden lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God as the testimony of Jesus. Thus, the local churches are the multiplied embodiment of the Triune God.
Priests in ancient times, who trimmed the lampstands in the Holy Place for the shining of God, typify Christ as the Priest who takes care of all the local churches as the lampstands by dressing the lamps (Exo. 27:20-21; Lev. 24:1-4). The high priest in the Old Testament dressed the lamps of the lampstand every morning so that they would continue to shine brightly (Exo. 30:7). To dress the lamps, the priest first had to snuff the burned-out wick. The wick in the lamps burned with oil to give light. When the wick burned out, it became charred and black; hence, the priest had to come to cut off the black part of the wick. This is what it means to snuff the wick, that is, to cleanse the lamp so that the lamp may shine better. At the same time, to dress the lamps the priest had to add more oil. Christ in Revelation 2 and 3 is like the priest in the Old Testament coming to the Holy Place to dress the lamps.
The first vision of Christ in Revelation, recorded in chapter 1, is that of the High Priest clothed with a priestly garment. As the High Priest, Christ is walking among and taking care of the lampstands. He especially cares for their shining by trimming the lamps. Then in chapter 8 Christ is revealed as the Priest offering incense at the golden altar: “Another Angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer, and much incense was given to Him to offer with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne” (v. 3). Therefore, in chapter 1 Christ is revealed as the Priest taking care of the lampstands, and in chapter 8 He is unveiled as the Priest offering incense to God. In chapter 5 He is revealed as the Administrator over the whole universe. To the church Christ is the High Priest; as the ascended One in the heavens, He is now living, working, and ministering as a Priest. But to the universe Christ is not the Priest; He is the Administrator.
Christ is caring for the churches in an administrative way. The churches are God’s lampstands shining forth His testimony. They need Christ’s administration. Sometimes troubles and difficulties arise, requiring His administrative attention. Christ takes care of the churches as the lampstands in His humanity as the Son of Man (1:13a). Christ as our High Priest takes care of the churches, which He has established, in His humanity in order to cherish the churches, to make the churches happy, pleasant, and comfortable. He does this by dressing the lamps of the lampstands. To dress the lamps is to make them proper. Christ cares for the lampstands by trimming the wicks of the lamps of the lampstands. The charred part of the wick, the snuff, signifies the things that are not according to God’s purpose and need to be cut off, such as sin, the world, the flesh, the natural man, the self, and the old creation. All the churches as lampstands are organic; they are living lampstands. Since each church is a living lampstand, each church has much feeling. A church with charred wicks will not feel comfortable, having no feeling of happiness or pleasantness. But when Christ as our High Priest comes to dress the lamps of the lampstand by trimming the wicks to snuff all the negative things, this is a cherishing to make the church happy, pleasant, and comfortable. This is Christ’s taking care of the church in His humanity to dress the lamps of the church.
On the one hand, the churches need Christ to snuff out all the negative things. On the other hand, the churches need Christ to add more oil, which typifies the Spirit (Isa. 61:1). In Revelation the oil is the seven Spirits of God, the sevenfold Spirit. The Lord Jesus desires to add more oil into the lampstands. According to Revelation 2 and 3, in nearly every epistle to the seven churches, the Lord as the High Priest was snuffing the wicks and adding more oil to the lampstands in order to make all the lampstands golden, pure, and shining. When the Lord has to come in to cut off the burned-out, black wicks and to fill the local churches with the oil, the local churches will be cleansed from the burned-out wicks and be filled with more Spirit to shine more brightly as the testimony of Jesus. It is by this way that a local church is built up more and more until it becomes a golden lampstand in reality.
According to the vision, a local church is a golden lampstand, but in our locality the actuality, the practicality, of the church may not look exactly like what we see in the vision. But we should believe that the day will come when the churches of the Lord will be golden lampstands in reality. We may realize that the church in our locality is not yet according to the vision in Revelation 1 of a golden lampstand. But our saying “not yet” indicates that there is hope that the time will come when all the churches will be golden in reality. In the Lord’s heavenly ministry, His intention is to snuff all the burned-out wicks of the local churches, to cut off the unnecessary, negative things. No doubt, there are some negative things in the local churches, but we must be careful not to focus on these things and talk about them with a critical spirit. If we are critical, we will become a part of the burned-out wick. We believe that in the church and ministry meetings, the Lord is continuing His work of snuffing out the negative things and filling up the lampstands with oil.
Year after year, the local churches are being brought more and more into the reality of the golden lampstands. More of the Father’s nature as the gold is being added to the churches, and the churches are increasingly being shaped into the form of Christ the Son. Furthermore, as the Spirit, the oil, is being added to the lampstands, the churches shine brighter and brighter. Year after year we can see more light in the local churches. This means that the Lord as the Priest is cleansing the lamps by snuffing the burned-out wicks and filling the lampstands with the oil so that they are increasing in the Father’s nature, the Son’s image, and the Spirit’s expression. As we enter into the Word with the help of the footnotes of the Recovery Version and the Life-study messages, we partake of more of the Father’s golden nature (2 Pet. 1:4), and this gives the Lord a way to shape us more and more into the image of Christ and to add more of the Spirit into us so that the lampstand will shine more brightly. Every local church needs to be an embodiment of the Triune God shining in its locality.
In this lampstand there are only two basic elements — the gold and the oil. The gold is the solid form, and the oil is the burning element. When these two are put together, there is a lampstand shining to express God in His trinity with the Father’s nature and essence, the Son’s image and appearance, and the Spirit’s expression. Zechariah 4:12 tells us that the oil of the lampstand is golden oil. This means that the gold flows as oil. The two elements of the lampstand are the golden element and the element of the oil, but according to Zechariah these two elements are actually one. When more oil is added into the lampstand, more gold is added also. The church as the lampstand is the solid embodiment of the Triune God with the sevenfold Spirit as the oil, the essence of which is the element of the gold.
This can be confirmed by the churches’ experience. Whenever Christ as the High Priest comes to snuff all the negative things and add more oil to the churches, He is actually adding more of the sevenfold Spirit, which is to add more of the divine nature, more of the gold, into the churches. At the beginning, the church in a locality may not have much gold. As time goes on, however, the Lord snuffs the negative things and adds the oil. Eventually, the church will have more gold, more of the divine nature. This indicates that the church as the embodiment of the Triune God must be reduced in all the human, natural things but increased in the divine nature all the time. Our flesh, our self, our natural man, and everything about us related to the old creation must decrease. By Christ’s trimming the wicks and adding oil, the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation in the local churches are being reduced, and God’s element, the Spirit, is being increased. Through this process, the churches become the pure golden lampstands in reality, and this is the testimony of Jesus in today’s age on this earth.
Christ as the Priest trims the lampstands, the churches, by His speaking (Rev. 2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14; 1:16b). In Revelation 2 and 3 the most striking point is the speaking of this all-inclusive, excellent, marvelous, mysterious, and wonderful One. He spoke seven times, to each of the seven churches. At the beginning of each of these seven epistles the Lord told us what kind of person He is, according to the condition of the church revealed in that particular epistle. Based upon the claim of what He was, He spoke something. As He walks among the churches, He speaks to each one according to what the church is. His speaking is both practical and equipping. Revelation 2 and 3 are composed of seven epistles and are the Lord’s last words written to His churches. These chapters reveal the speaking One’s status and what He promises to the overcomers. We need to see all the main points of this person and His promises. In Revelation 2 and 3 the all-inclusive Christ as the Head of the church, walking in the midst of the churches and searching and infusing the churches, speaks to the churches in order to purify them and call forth the overcomers to enjoy Him so that they would overcome the deformed churches to bring in His kingdom.
Revelation 1 clearly depicts Christ as our High Priest, wearing the priestly garment, which signifies that He is ministering Himself and the divine life and nature into us. Chapters 2 and 3 cover His priestly service in His dealing with the seven churches; they reveal how He ministers the priestly service to us. This ministry of the priestly service is accomplished mainly by His speaking. Christ’s heavenly priesthood is a speaking ministry; He is a speaking High Priest. As the High Priest, He speaks to God to intercede for us, and He speaks to us to minister the priestly service. He is carrying on His twofold speaking, a “Godward” speaking and an “usward” speaking. Besides His speaking Godward to intercede, He has a speaking which is usward. Christ’s speaking to us surely follows His speaking to God the Father. In other words, first His intercession takes place; then by His speaking to us He continues to accomplish that for which He has interceded before the Father. What Christ intercedes for, He speaks to us. Then after He speaks to us, He again speaks to the Father. In Revelation 2 and 3 He has much to say to the seven churches; correspondingly, He has much to say to the Father for the carrying out of what He has spoken in the seven epistles. This speaking goes back and forth: first to the Father, then to us, then back to the Father again.
If our speaking is genuine and proper, it is also a part of the Lord’s speaking. In our ministry of the word we should have a twofold speaking: while we speak to the saints, our inner being should be speaking to the heavenly One. Prior to our speaking, there is Christ’s intercession before the throne for the ministry of the word. After our speaking, the intercession goes on again. All of this is part of the proper speaking.
The nature of Christ’s priestly speaking to the churches, the lampstands, is trimming and infilling. In Revelation 2 and 3 Christ as the Priest was trimming away those things that were not needed and that frustrated the shining; simultaneously, He was supplying the oil, which was needed and which would make the lampstands burn brightly. As we have seen, the oil is actually the flow of the gold, which is the sevenfold Spirit as the divine element. The seven lampstands were receiving His trimming and His infilling.
Of all the things He trimmed away, the most striking is the synagogue of Satan (2:9). That the Lord spoke of Judaism in such a way indicates that by the time of the church age, Judaism had become satanic. A Jewish believer may still be for Judaism subconsciously. When he hears that it has become satanic, he may want to protest. Nonetheless, this is the word of our heavenly High Priest. In fact, He used the term a second time in 3:9. A synagogue is the symbol of Judaism, just as a building with a steeple is a symbol of Christianity. Judaism is utilized by Satan in rebellion against God’s New Testament economy. Today Judaism is in rebellion against God. It was neither Pilate nor Herod who sentenced the Son of God to death; rather, the high priest and the Jews called for His death (John 18:13-14; 19:14-15; Matt. 27:20). Judaism must take the responsibility for His crucifixion. This indicates that our old religious concepts are against God’s economy and need to be trimmed away. These concepts are “black” and “charred”; they hinder the shining of the local churches as the lampstands. Thus, we need our High Priest to step in and trim them away.
Another thing that chars the wick is worldliness. Our heavenly High Priest cannot tolerate worldliness, which is seen in the case of the church in Pergamos, the church married to the world (Rev. 2:12-17). All our worldliness must be trimmed away. When the Lord came to the church in Thyatira, He condemned her for tolerating the woman Jezebel, whom the Lord described as one “who calls herself a prophetess and teaches and leads My slaves astray to commit fornication and to eat idol sacrifices” (v. 20). This evil represents the apostate Roman Catholic Church, which is full of evil. All that Jezebel represents must be trimmed away.
In the last epistle, to the church in Laodicea, the Lord spoke of her lukewarmness: “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am about to spew you out of My mouth” (3:15-16). We ourselves may be lukewarm. We may come to the church meetings, yet we may be somewhat indifferent. We may be proud of being moderate or mild, thinking that it is good to be neither too zealous nor too apathetic. Many Christian meetings are in this category. Their church service is neither too hot nor too cold; it is just right for the indifferent audience who attends the service. Yet according to the Lord’s word, we must be hot, and we need to burn others. Lukewarmness, along with religion, worldliness, and the evils of Jezebel, must be trimmed away.
The Lord’s promise to the overcomers in the church in Ephesus, Pergamos, and Laodicea — eating of the tree of life, partaking of the hidden manna, and dining with Christ, respectively — refer to the refilling of the oil into the lampstands. By Christ’s high priestly service, all the dark things of religion, worldliness, evil, and lukewarmness are trimmed away, and the heavenly, divine element of the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the heavenly feast is ministered to us.
The effect of this heavenly ministry is a metabolic transformation through which the old things will be discharged and replaced with something new, heavenly, and divine. We will be transformed into precious stones for the building of God’s dwelling place. We are transformed because our High Priest in the heavens is doing His priestly service, walking among us, speaking to us, and interceding for us. The heavenly High Priest has kept us in the church, and day and night He has been taking care of everything that concerns us. When we are under the proper ministry that is under the heavenly priesthood of Christ, such a ministry seeks to trim the churches and supply them with oil so that all the saints in the churches might be metabolically and organically transformed.
All of Christ’s service and care have the aim of making us overcomers. Religion, worldliness, evil things, and lukewarmness are not part of the golden lampstand. But when we eat the tree of life, partake of the hidden manna, and enjoy the heavenly feast, this nourishment will become the divine element with which the lampstand is constituted. Consequently, every local church will be a lampstand, and in every local church there will be overcomers. These overcomers will constitute the lampstand. With them religion, worldliness, evil, and lukewarmness will have been trimmed away, and the heavenly element will have been supplied to them as the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the heavenly feast. What they will have is the Triune God Himself, who will become their constituent. With such a golden constitution there will be the lampstand. A lampstand eventually is the overcomers in a local church.
According to 1:16, the words that proceed out of Christ’s mouth are like a sharp two-edged sword. In the Gospel of John the words that proceeded out of His mouth may be considered words of love. Then in Acts and the Epistles the words that come out of the speaking Christ may be regarded as words of grace. But in the last book of the New Testament the words that come out of the mouth of Christ are portrayed as a sword to judge and destroy for dealing with negative persons and things.
According to the church in Pergamos, a fallen and worldly church, Christ, the speaking One, has a sharp two-edged sword (2:12) proceeding out of His mouth. Such a worldly church is qualified to receive the Lord’s judgment in His sharp word. The sword out of the Lord’s mouth is to cut, to judge, to discern, to kill, and to slay. To the degraded and worldly church He is the One who has such a slaying and judging tongue. If we know Him as such a One, we cannot be worldly.
Revelation 2:1 says that Christ “walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.” This indicates that Christ, the all-inclusive One, is now walking among the churches, the golden shining lampstands, to care for them. If we desire to touch Him, enjoy Him, and partake of Him, we need to be in the churches. We also need to see that Christ is speaking and walking in every church meeting.
Christ’s priestly service includes His walking in the midst of the churches, by which He gets to know the condition of each church. He could write the seven epistles to the seven churches because He visited all those churches. He traveled through Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Such a tour made Him thoroughly familiar with the situation of every church. After seeing their situation, He spoke to the churches.
Today our High Priest in His heavenly ministry is walking among the churches to look into the condition of each one. Then according to what He sees, He speaks to us. This is the Lord’s priestly service. His speaking is His serving, His ministering. Therefore, His speaking is not doctrinal but priestly.
For every local church to be an embodiment of the Triune God as the lampstand, Christ’s heavenly priesthood is needed. His walking in the midst of the churches is His functioning as the heavenly High Priest. By ministering His priesthood to us, He purifies and transforms us, and we become white stones and are built into the temple as pillars. The outcome of our High Priest’s ministering in the churches is that a number of overcomers are brought forth. In the local churches the Lord has the full ground and a full entrance to come in and purify His seeking ones, supply His lovers, and transform them into stones for His building and pillars for His temple.
