The Revelation Report Cards

Chapter 2-3 of Revelation brings up 7 churches that this letter is written to. Each church is given a report card. This is a short introduction to these chapters, and then I will go a bit in depth with each church following this post.

The general pattern to them is as follows :

1. Revelation – Each church, the very first line that Jesus gives to them, he gives them this fresh revelation of seeing who he is. When a church is stuck, sometimes they need to revisit Jesus from a different angle, and revive that worship of him.
2. How they are going – Jesus will aptly state the health of the church. He doesn’t mince around words.
3. What needs help – What are they lacking in. Is there something that the church is blindly following?
4. Repent – That is, take what Jesus tells you and change from it. The consequence of not repenting is the promise that Jesus will in fact close the church down.
5. Word of Encouragement – Jesus always ends with an encouragement, for them to keep working hard, and a promise that they can be part of if they do endure and repent.

Each church will differ in their report cards. Some have nothing really bad. Others have nothing really good. But there does seem to be a structure in how Jesus reports to the churches.

This is a rough estimation from best to worst:

Some people have suggested that these churches are not really connected to any real church, but are symbolic of the different ages that the church goes through in history.

I do not buy into that. I think it is pretty clear that John was to write this Revelation and send it to these 7 churches which probably were ones that he had done some type of ministry to.

But I will say this. There are 7 churches. We know that Revelation is all about numbers. The number 7 is that complete perfect godly number. In saying that, I do think that Jesus is writing to all types of churches. We should all listen in and think : Which church do we relate to most?

What would Jesus say to our church? Would it be a good report card?