Revelation 2 and 3: Parsing the Letters to the Churches

Parsing the Letters to the Churches

Rev 2-3

Many years ago I thought I saw a pattern in my reading through the letters to the seven churches. It's not a novel thought.

Five distinct parts of each letter were evident. For the sake of my own memory I called them:

The Preamble -- Jesus' introduction of his words by Himself ("these are the words of...")

The Praise -- What is good in the church

The Problem -- What is bad for the church (usually a problem at least partly within the body)

The Prescription -- What the church needs to do

The Promise -- What the church can expect if they do what is asked

Mostly, the order is the same in each letter.

What was particularly noteworthy was when I started to examine each segment in each letter independently, each segment message dovetails well with the other segments.

What is the relationship of the preamble with the praise? Or with the problems, prescriptions, and promises?

Jesus gives a different introduction of himself to each church, and it is very deliberate.

Simply by asking why is one section worded this way, a number of details present themselves as to what is going on with the church. We can pull out much of the information from the text itself. Outside books may lend more information but are not critical.

The phrasing "he who has ears to hear let him hear what is written to the churches" confirms the suspicion that the order of the churches is important. We see the pattern of an encyclical letter, multiple letters written to the churches, to be read by all as they traverse what is effectively an ancient postal route, from Ephesus to Laodicea.