Law and Spirit Not at Odds
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Welcome to the new subscribers! (Please sign up via this subscription link to receive news of the most recent posts and email updates.) I have been on vacation for the latter half of September visiting our grandchildren in Colorado. Then as soon as we returned to our home in Florida, Hurricane Matthew was bearing down on us, and we had some things to do to prepare for that storm. However, all the time away is now behind us, and daily endnote posting is resuming. We will be celebrating the Fall Feast days which are right around the corner (see Posted Holidays) but no more time away from the office other than that is planned for the foreseeable future. Thank you for learning with me! – Christine Miller
On Thyatira
The church at Thyatira allowed a woman who called herself a prophetess (the Lord did not call her one) to teach the above mentioned heresies from a position of authority. (The Letters to the Seven Churches, pg. 13).
“Thyatira was specially noted for the trade guilds which were probably more completely organized there than in any other ancient city. Every artisan belonged to a guild, and every guild, which was an incorporated organization, possessed property in its own name, made contracts for great constructions, and wielded a wide influence. Powerful among them was the guild of coppersmiths; another was the guild of the dyers, who, it is believed, made use of the madder-root instead of shell-fish for making the purple dyestuffs. A member of this guild seems to have been Lydia of Thyatira, who, according to Acts 16:14 , sold her dyes in Philippi. The color obtained by the use of this dye is now called Turkish red. The guilds were closely connected with the Asiatic religion of the place. Pagan feasts, with which immoral practices were associated, were held, and therefore the nature of the guilds was such that they were opposed to Christianity. … It was taught by many of the early church that no Christian might belong to one of the guilds, and thus the greatest opposition to Christianity was presented.”
“Thyatira,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
“But the same evil practices taught in ‘the doctrine of Balaam,’ which were accepted by a few in Pergamum, were countenanced in the leadership of the church in Thyatira. Quite possibly this danger to the church involved not only a spiritual compromise with paganism but also the literal question of Christians’ attending actual feasts, such as the trade-guild banquets with their idolatrous aspects and their probable tendencies to immorality. Certain it is that such problems had been real in Paul’s day (Acts 15:20; 1 Corinthians 8; 10:20-28), and that the trade guilds, so necessary to the prosperity of the Christian craftsmen, were particularly numerous and important in Thyatira.”
LeRoy E. Froom, Prophetic Faith of our Fathers, Vol. 1, p. 93.
Pope Benedict XIII, 1394-1417
For many centuries at this time, the worst popes in the history of the office, committing the most heinous crimes against God and man, sat on the papal throne, and used their position not only to trample the flock, but to grasp ever more power, wealth, and licentious living to themselves. (Ten Horns, pg. 261).
“In the year of our Lord 1408, when pope Benedict XIII did oppose the French church by tributes and exactions; the clergy, assembled by the command of King Charles VI decreed, That the king and inhabitants of the kingdom ought not to obey Benedict, who was an heretic, a schismatic, and altogether unworthy of that dignity: the which the estates of the kingdom approved, and the parliament of Paris confirmed by a decree. The same clergy also ordained that those who had been excommunicated by that pope, as forsakers and enemies of the church, should be presently absolved, nullifying all such excommunications, and this has been practised not in France only, but in other places also, as histories do credibly report. The which gives us just occasion most perspicuously to see and know, that if he who holds the place of a prince do govern ill, there may be a separation from him without incurring justly the blame of revolt; for that they are things in themselves directly contrary, to leave a bad pope, and forsake the church, a wicked king, and the kingdom.”
Junius Brutus, A Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants, part II (written in 1579).
