REVELATION ITS GRAND CLIMAX AT HAND!/John Behold the Glorified Jesus

 In the Lord's Day

In this first vision, before John sees anything, he hears something: "And I heard behind me a strong voice like that of a trumpet, saying: "What you see write in a scroll   and send it to the seven congregations, in Ephesus and in Smyrna and in Pergamum and in Thyatira and in Sardis and in Philadelphia and in Laodicea.' "  (Revelation 10b, 11)  Authoritative and commanding as a trumpet call, a voice calls on John to write to "the seven congregations." He is to receive a series of messages and to publish the things he will see and hear.  Notice that the congregations mentioned here actually existed in John's day.  All of them were situated in Asia Minor, right across the sea from  Patmos. They were easily accessible  to one another by means of  the excellent Roman roads that existed in the area. A messenger would have had no trouble carrying the scroll from one congregation to the next. These seven congregations would resemble a section of a modern-day circuit of  Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Most of the prophecies in Revelation were to be fulfilled after John's time.  They referred to "the things that will take place after these." But the counsel to the seven congregations deals with the things "that are," situations that really existed in seven congregations at that time.  The messages were valuable  aids to the faithful  appointed elders in those seven congregations, as well as in all other congregations of anointed Christians of the time. Since the vision has its prime applications in the Lord's day, what Jesus says serves notice that similar conditions  are to be expected in the congregation of anointed Christians of our own day. - REVELATION 1:10, 19.

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