The Apocalypse: When Conquest, Chaos, and Scarcity are Just Monday — Q&A

The church at Thyatira was warm, loving, and growing — and Jesus was about to come against them. In this episode, we go deeper on what the four horsemen have to say to a congregation that confused love with accommodation and grace with compromise. Because in a broken world, a church with a spine isn't one that's harsh — but one that shows true love, which requires courage and conviction.

Transcript

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Welcome to uh another episode of From the Cutting Room Floor. If you were in the room Sunday, you heard about the four horsemen of the apocalypse: geopolitical war, civil strife, economic breakdown, disease, and death. And you heard that they've been riding since the resurrection of Jesus, that they they're riding now, and they'll keep riding until he returns. And uh and you heard that every one of them moves only at the command of the lamb on the throne. But there was a thread I had to leave on the cutting room floor Sunday that I want to pick up here because I think it's one of the most clarifying things in um in the text. It has to do with Thyatira. Now I explained it a little bit, but I want to unpack that a little more. Keeping in mind that the letters to the seven churches are introductions to the rest of the book. If you were in Thyatira, you'd be reading Revelation 6 and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse right through the lens of what Jesus said to you. And in Revelation 2, when he's talking to Thyatira, he opens the letter with an unusual self-description. He doesn't call himself the Alpha and the Omega. He doesn't call himself the first and last. He says, I'm the one with eyes like blazing fire and feet like burnished bronze. Burnished bronze. Now here's what you need to know about Thyatira. It was a trade city. It was famous throughout the ancient world for one thing above almost everything else: bronze working. The city's identity was built around it. Its economy ran on it. Jesus is not pulling random imagery here. He's presenting himself to a bronze working city as the master craftsman of their own industry. He's saying before, before anything else, I am the Lord of the guilds, before I am the Lord of the church. So, so so take run with that image for a minute. It's important. Every trade in Thyatira had its guild. Woolworkers, dyers, leather workers, potters, bronzemiths, every craft organized, every guild with its patron deity, and every guild membership tied directly to your ability to earn a living. Guild membership meant income. It meant standing in the community. It meant putting food on the table. But guild membership also meant attending the guild feasts. They were held in pagan temples. They were held to honor those patron gods. You didn't get the economic benefits without the religious obligations that came with them. This is the world the church in Thyatira was living inside. And this is the pressure that a teacher Jesus calls Jezebel. This is Jezebel. This is who he's responding to. He's responding to this teaching that Christians could participate in those guild feasts. Um it was that was almost an attempt to relieve the economic anxiety of the congregation. Basically, Jezebel is saying, you can participate. The idols are nothing. You have to eat. So it wasn't really raw wickedness, it was theology pressed into the service of economic survival. And a warm, loving, growing church had listened to it. Now, flip to Revelation 6 and look at what the third seal releases: a black horse, its rider carrying a pale of a pair of scales, scarcity, economic breakdown, a day's wages for a day's food. The very system the church in Thyatira was compromising to remain a part of the guild economy, the trade networks, the commercial machinery of the empire is itself under the lamb's sovereign judgment. The horsemen are riding through their world, and one of them is carrying scales. Here's the way I'd put it. Imagine a friend is borrowing money from a company you happen to know is three weeks from bankruptcy. You wouldn't say that's a wise financial relationship. You'd say, get your money out of there. That's what John is saying to Thyatira. Get your spiritual money out of there. The system you are compromising to preserve yourself within is not a permanent fixture. It's a condemned building. And the one condemning it is the same Jesus who appeared to them with feet like burnished bronze, the Lord of their guilds, the Lord of their economy, the Lord of their bronze working city. So Jezebel's teaching wasn't just wrong, it was dangerous. She was offering what looked like a lifeline, but was actually an anchor. She was teaching the church to trust in a system the Lamb was already judging. Now, take the same four horsemen, different century. Let me tell you a story. It's 1944, occupied Holland, Nazi regime is the white horse made flesh, conquest at every corner. You got economic rationing, shortage shortages, the constant threat of losing everything. That's the black horse with scales. Death is a daily reality. In that world, the pressure to accommodate was not abstract, it was survival. Most of Corey Tenboom's neighbors made their peace with it. Many churches did too, finding theological frameworks for why resistance was unnecessary, why cooperation was wisdom, why love meant keeping the peace. Her family hid Jews in their home anyway. Not because the world was safe, not because the cost was manageable, but because they knew who held the scroll, and they refused to make peace with what he had already condemned. When Corey's father Caspar was arrested, he was 84 years old, a German officer offered him release on one condition. Promise to cause no further trouble and you can go home. Caspar Tenboom looked at the officer and said, If I go home today, tomorrow I will open my door again to anyone who knocks. He died in prison ten days later. That's love with a spine. And it's precisely what the lamb on the throne asks of his church. Not when the world is safe, but precisely when the horsemen are riding. Now here's the thing I think that about Thyatira that that cuts closest to home. Most of us are not facing guild feasts, but we are facing enormous pressure to accommodate ourselves to systems, ideologies, and cultural structures that are not neutral with respect to the gospel. Jobs can be at stake, friendships can be at stake, social standing can be at stake. And the temptation, exactly like Thyatira's, is to find a theological framework that lets us have both faithfulness to Christ and accommodation to the world. A little trimming here, a little silence there, adjusting what we believe and love and say out loud until the guild feast is something we can live with. The horsemen say you can't get there from here. The world you are accommodating is not permanent, it's not sovereign, it's not stable, it's under the authority of the Lamb with eyes like blazing fire, and he will not be outmaneuvered by a theology of convenience. But this is not only a word of warning. If you lose a client because you won't compromise, if you lose a friendship because you won't affirm what you can't affirm, if you face economic hardship because the guild feast is not where you belong, you are not outside the lamb's purposes. You are inside them. The lamb who sets the horseman loose on the condemned order is the same lamb who stands with those who suffer for refusing to bend the knee to it. So the four horsemen are not an argument for compromise. They are an argument for courage. Because in this broken world, this violent, this economically unstable world, a church with a spine is exactly what the world needs to see. Not a church that looks like the culture, sounds like the culture, baptizes the culture's values with religious language, but a church that believes something, holds to something, and refuses to let go, even when the horsemen are riding. That is not harshness. That is love with a spine. Thyatira had love without one. The morning star doesn't come from the guild, he comes from the lamb. Let's reflect on those things. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.