18 And to the angel (messenger) of the assembly (church) in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, Who has eyes that flash like a flame of fire, and Whose feet glow like bright and burnished and white-hot bronze:
19 I know your record and what you are doing, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your recent works are more numerous and greater than your first ones.
When Jesus was personally asked about His Own works, He said that it was the Father within Him doing the works, John 14:10. Yet, Jesus doesn’t say to the people of Thyatira, that I know our Father is using you more now than He did at your beginning? Jesus told us that people will do works and He told us that many will even do miraculous works, but He will proclaim that He never knew them, Matthew 7:23. The people who Jesus knows, or who are His Bride, are the ones who our Father is doing His works through. Our Father does the works and the Bride glorifies Him for using them and being the power behind everything. The Bride lives to direct people and their attention towards her Groom. Religion wants us to say what we have done for Christ. This will be the cornerstone message of the anti-christ’s church: what man is doing for God. When the Truth causes us to say what Christ is doing through us for the Kingdom.
20 But I have this against you: that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess [claiming to be inspired], and who is teaching and leading astray my servants and beguiling them into practicing sexual vice and eating food sacrificed to idols. [I Kings 16:31; II Kings 9:22, 30.]
21 I gave her time to repent, but she has no desire to repent of her immorality [symbolic of idolatry] and refuses to do so.
Jesus knew that Jezebel wouldn’t repent, but isn’t it great that He gave her a chance to repent! She will get another chance, just as all of the people in Hades did when Jesus went there right after He was crucified, 1 Peter 3. Jesus is the Shepherd of the True Church, or the true chosen ones, and Jezebel was a wolf who tried to pass herself off as a chosen one. Jesus never lets a wolf overtake His sheep! He may allow a wolf to take over a religion, but never one of His chosen ones! Our Lord will never lose one of us.
During the last 3 1/2 years of this earth the anti-christ will look and sound so very religious. Just as I am sure that Jezebel sounded religious. Our Father will even allow the anti-christ to perform miracles. Many will be deceived, but not the Bride of Christ. Our Shepherd will empower us to know exactly who and what we are. We will be enabled to see clearly and understand all that is going on. We will be counted as sheep headed to be slaughtered, but through Christ we will be more than conquerors. Grace will flow from us and we will be used to forgive so many sins during these years. Our Groom will never let us be deceived and His mercy will flow abundantly through us.
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