I have a concern. That concern, and in a way, harasses me whenever I think of God. I guess the simplest way to convey the import and probability that one should be both concerned and harassed by these thoughts, by this issue, is in one of the passages that haunts me during these meditations. That is Revelation 3:14-22. To me, that passage, expresses the revelation and judgement of God that we, in this present time, are the epitome of 2 Timothy 3:5. We appear ‘godly’ but don’t have much if anything to do with him.
We are ‘plugged-in’, but plugged in to the wrong thing.
In the Revelation passage it is clear that we believe and say we are where we should be concerning our relationship with God but don’t actually have the ‘him’ in that relationship we purport to have. Years ago there was a book: I’m OK, You’re OK. Myriad other works have, I think, pushed a similar philosophy as expressed by that title. There is a predominate apathy toward self-incrimination even a selfishly-motivated-drive toward self-acceptance that precludes a relationship with God.
In the stead of that relationship with God, we’ve plugged into something else that fits us.
I claim that we have plugged into something that ‘fits us’ because that is the actual Relevation 3:14-22 judgement expressed by God. He says “because thou sayest…” and then follows a record of our confession. God is not accusing us of this, he has already found us guilty, he has judged us guilty. Our confession is that we have plugged-in: “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing”. This is not a group of heathen, machiavellian, atheistic or “if it feels good, do it” type of unsaved people. This is the Laodicean Church, the last church in the sequence of church types to exist after the giving of the Revelation, this is OUR church, OUR generation, this is US.
To be clear, these churches are both literal churches that existed at the time of writing, but they also, in a prophetical sense represent a period of time, of church history. These churches therefore are both present and future at the time of the writing. At the time of the writing you could go visit each of these churches. You could talk to the 25, 50, 100, or more members of each Local and Historical church. After the writing you would have to live for a couple thousand years and talk to millions of people to talk to the Ephesian, Philippian or Laodicean church. In the prophetical scope of the Revelation passage, you’d have to live the span of hundreds of years to experience “that” church. Prophetically, these are not single individual churches, but the entire group of all true christians during the entire “age” called “The church at Philippi”, etc. These christians live in different cities, have different names applied to their congregations and vary in beliefs and practices. These churches are ‘typical’ of the spirit of that ‘age’.
Our church type and the spirit of our age:
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–I Am Rich
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–And Increased With Goods
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–And Have Need Of Nothing
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–And Knowest Not
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–Wretched
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–Poor
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–Miserable
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–Naked
WE are plugged into the Laodicean Church–Blind