"The seven candlesticks are seven churches."
The Lord does not present the seven candlesticks as a mystery. He does not say, "The mystery ... and of the seven golden candlesticks;" but "the mystery of the seven stars; and the seven golden candlesticks." No more does he say, "And the seven candlesticks are the seven churches of Asia," which would positively limit the interpretation to that sole point of view which I shall call "local." The Lord says, "And the seven candlesticks are seven churches." The order contained in verse 11 is not confined to the explanation of the seven candlesticks, but He charges John to write what he sees to the seven churches which are in Asia. This order itself is extended to all the churches, if it be compared with 22:16.
The seven candlesticks are, in my opinion, the fullness of the Gentile church; or the fullness of the phases of the Church's existence since its forfeiture of its first estate.
During the administration of shadows and in the time of the tabernacle, the light of reconciliation shone in symbol, represented in the holy place by a single candlestick of pure gold with seven branches, and weighing 144 pounds. Its seven lighted lamps illumined before it the golden table on which was deposited the show-bread, and the golden altar of incense.
The candlestick, which bore the light, was a type of Christ and of the church after Him.
When Israel was established in Canaan, its fidelity was to manifest in the world the outward fullness of blessings promised under the Mosaic covenant. This fullness was symbolized by ten candlesticks, placed in the temple built by Solomon. One then met with ten candlesticks in the holy place, before the veil of the oracle, each bearing up seven lighted lamps before ten tables of gold bearing 120 loaves of show-bread. Israel having failed in its responsibility, beginning with Solomon its king, the ten candlesticks became, to the eyes of the intelligent, a type of the glory of the church risen and united to Christ, when this brilliant light shall be displayed to the world. It was a promise of the visible manifestation of the glory of Christ and of the glorious liberty of the children of God. The glorified church, and (filch of its members transformed into the image of Christ, the church surrounding Christ and reflecting His glory and beauty, will be one day with Him, the anti-type of the ten candlesticks of gold in the temple of Solomon. God is pleased thus to reproduce, in a bright luster and in a magnificent abundance, the luster and abundance of the perfections of his Beloved, that the world may know that it was that one whom He had sent.
Nevertheless, Christ is always in Himself the light of the world, and, in that sense, His return to Jerusalem will accomplish the type of the single candlestick with seven branches of which Zechariah speaks. This light will shine anew in the age to come and in the world to come. In the earthly Jerusalem are to be concentrated light and blessing in that which concerns the earth.
When the fullness of time was come, Christ, the true candlestick, the light of the world, being come, the type was no more any thing; it could not even be called a shadow. God having passed by angels, and chosen man to redeem him, the earth, man's habitation, is become the altar of creation and the center of redemption. But Jerusalem was, and ever will be, the center of the earth in the eyes of God, and it is in virtue of this privilege that she became, soon after the death of Christ, the point whence the light was to be shed in Judea, Samaria, and unto all nations. Christ, having withdrawn into heaven, the metropolitan Church of Jerusalem replaced Him as the candlestick on earth, by bearing witness to its Savior. (Acts 15: 28. John 1:4, 5, 94In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1:4‑5)
9That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9).) At that time the candlestick, though it might extend its branches and carry its light on all sides outside Jerusalem, had there its pedestal and its shaft, and the light of reconciliation was manifested at Jerusalem, in the exterior visible unity of the apostolic Church. Then also, the world, by seeing this unity, might believe that God had sent Jesus. The gathering of all saints around Jesus alone, present though invisible, to be nourished by one loaf, as being one body; such was the realization of the candlestick with seven branches, filled with the oil of the single olive tree, and set in the center of the earth to lighten the Jews first, afterward the Gentiles. But, on the one hand, the nation rejected the light, resisted the testimony of the twelve, and killed Stephen, sending him in some sort to Jesus to say to Him, We will not that thou shouldest reign over us! On the other hand, sin introduced itself into the metropolitan church; since then, this order of things fell under the judgment of God, and Israel, as a nation, was driven back into darkness.
Then God, in His grace, made the ruin of the church of Jerusalem subservient to the diffusion of light in the world and to the more general introduction of the Gentiles into the heavenly sanctuary. God separated the seven branches of the candlestick, as a gardener would do with the slips of a single plant. Outward, visible unity being spoiled by the fault of man, God, in grace, made use of what remained. This establishment of the seven candlesticks, replacing and multiplying the light of the single candlestick, which itself replaced Christ, was not besides a mystery before the Revelation.
I believe myself authorized, by the expression "I became in the Spirit," to recognize, in the seven candlesticks, a vision outside earthly things, though necessarily corresponding to the latter, and I consider the seven candlesticks as a heavenly model, set in heaven before God, and owned of Him. (pure gold.) These candlesticks are the rule, the pattern, and the measure of the judgment of the Son of man upon that which the churches of the Gentiles ought to be since the fall of the church at Jerusalem. The seven candlesticks form one whole, or fullness, even as their number indicates. Just as the seven stars are united in the hand of Jesus only, the seven candlesticks are gathered round His person. The Spirit and life of Jesus risen are the source of union and activity in all the body. His word addressed to the seven churches by His Spirit, and communicated to the seven messengers whom He keeps in His hand, is their rule, even as His gifts are the channels which make the life circulate, the joints which cause the body to grow and move.
Under the Mosaic economy there was only one people of God, and only one place of assembly for worship and the feasts. The tabernacle, afterward the temple, was their center at Jerusalem. Here Jesus is the center and bond of unity of the seven candlesticks. Jesus, walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks, deals with, succors, warns, exhorts, menaces, judges and chastises His witnesses, with the view of maintaining pure the light of God on earth.
The Eternal Himself discharged this office in the wilderness in the midst of the camp of Israel, before their revolt made a priesthood needful between God and the people. From that time Aaron discharged this office in the holy place.
Just as the Jewish tabernacle and temple were to answer to the heavenly model Moses saw on the holy mount, so was the Church, as a body of witnesses and as representing Christ, to answer to the model of the seven candlesticks, and, in the quality of God's Church on earth, to spread around, by its very union, the testimony of Christ risen and glorified.
In continuing, for a moment, to consider the seven candlesticks as the representation of the normal and visible unity of the Gentile Church, we can say that this last epoch of the life of the Church no more answers to that of the single candlestick in the tabernacle which represented Christ.
This period, which is our own, is no more one in which the primitive Church existed as a single candlestick, succeeding Christ on earth. The economy of the Church, in general, is an economy intermediate between the shadows and the reality of Christ on one hand, and his return on the other.
The body of Christ on earth is essentially a testimony to Him who was dead, but who is coming back. The first and most glorious period of this dispensation had already closed before that which the seven candlesticks represented. The period figured by the seven candlesticks corresponds with the beginning of the churches of the Gentiles or with the establishment, such as God speaks of it here, of testimony in the midst of the nations.
After the return of Christ, the antitype of the single candlestick of Zechariah will shine only at Jerusalem in the person of the Lamb. Then also Christ and the Church, in all their glory, with all the saints, shall manifest salvation to the world delivered from the yoke of Satan. This will be the antitype of the ten candlesticks in Solomon's temple.
We can now consider each candlestick separately, just as each particular epistle authorizes us to do, and here we meet with the local unity of the children of God. Each candlestick, viewed in itself in its unity and as a branch of the old candlestick, was a limb of the body. The candlestick of Ephesus represented that which God wished the Church of Ephesus to be on earth; that is, the assembly of all the saints of Ephesus united round the Lord alone, and that outside the world, and so as to give light to it.
In this sense, each of the seven local churches on earth was the antitype of a heavenly candlestick, and a concentration in a single focus of the entire light in one locality.
A Church, then, was to unite all the saints of the place, but separate from the world; for what communion hath light with darkness? Without separation, no union is possible, nor consequently concentration of light and collective testimony.
Each assembly was necessarily united to the whole of the body; it was a part of the totality, so that local unity merged in central or catholic unity. An Ephesian saint was, in fact and right, a member of every other local assembly; that flowed from the fact itself that he was a member of the Church, Christ's body, represented then by the seven candlesticks, gathered round Him alone, and under His sole government.
In reality, to spoil local unity was to spoil and destroy catholic unity, for if we one moment suppose a single local assembly to be divided into two candlesticks or two branches, the order established by God and represented by seven candlesticks was destroyed on earth, and the golden candlestick or heavenly pattern, in particular, had no more a correspondence on earth.
John saw seven Gentile Churches (including Jews doubtless) representing the Church of God on earth. Here is the order, visible and outward, established in fact, owned by Jesus who walks there, judges there and prophesies there, in order to maintain it. The Church for a while corresponded, after the ruin of the metropolitan order, with the order of the seven golden candlesticks, placed under the view of God. The seven epistles will give us some prophetic details on that which this order was to become on earth. —(To be continued, D. V.)